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Why Isn’t the “Parental Rights” Movement Fighting for the Parents of Transgender Youth?

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2022 //
84

At the Network for Public Education conference in Philadelphia on May 1, I moderated a panel to discuss attacks on public schools and the groups behind those attacks. Peter Greene identified a long list of groups that claim to be protecting “parents rights.” Peter described groups such as “Moms for America,” “Moms for Liberty,” “For Kids and Country,” “Parents Defending Education,” and the “National Parents Union,” which seem to be led by women with close ties to Trumpism and funded by the usual rightwing crowd. They asserted ”parent rights” to oppose teaching about race and sex. They insisted that parents have the right to control their children.

They say they are fighting for parental rights, yet they have said nothing about the legislation in several states that sever the rights of the parents of transgender youth.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a conservative Republican, vetoed a bill in his state that eliminates parental rights to seek medical care for their transgender children. The legislature overrode his veto.

“The Republican Party that I grew up with believed in a restrained government that did not jump in the middle of every issue.”

He said transgender health care of young people should be limited to the patient, parents and physicians. “And we ought to yield to that decision making unless there’s a compelling state reason.”

In an attempt to provide context for the trend by Republicans in passing anti-transgender legislation across the country, Hutchinson said there is an overwhelming sense among party members that “there’s undue influence” on young people to reconsider their gender.

But he said, “This was one step way too far and I couldn’t abide by it.”

The “parent rights” groups are silent. They have nothing to say to states that take away the rights of parents of transgender children.

Medical decisions involving children should be made by parents and doctors, not politicians.

Medical decisions affecting adult women should be made by them and their doctors, not by politicians.

Medical decisions affecting adult men should be made by them and their doctors, not politicians.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Disruption, Parent Groups

Jan Resseger: Inequality of Educational Opportunity Is America’s Shameful Reality

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2022 //
36

Jan Resseger, now retired, spent her career as an activist for social justice. Her recent essay was reposted by the Network for Public Education. It seemed appropriate to post it on the 68th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Decision of 1954. In trying to assess the meager progress towards the ideals of Brown—specifically, equality of educational opportunity—she lays some of the blame on No Child Left Behind and the corporate school reform movement,

Jan Resseger attended the recent Network for Public Education conference, where she took inspiration from speaker Jitu Brown, director of the Journey for Justice Alliance. Reposted with permission.

She wrote:

A highlight of the Network for Public Education’s recent national conference was the keynote from Jitu Brown, a gifted and dedicated Chicago community organizer and the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance. His remarks made me think about the meaning of the last two decades of corporate school reform and the conditions today in his city and here where I live in greater Cleveland, Ohio. It is a sad story.

Brown reflected on his childhood experience at a West Side Chicago elementary school, a place where he remembers being exposed to a wide range of information and experience including the study of a foreign language. He wondered, “Why did we have good neighborhood schools when I went to school but our kids don’t have them anymore? For children in poor neighborhoods, their education is not better.”

Brown described how No Child Left Behind’s basic drilling and test prep in the two subjects for which NCLB demands testing—math and language arts—eat up up more and more of the school day. We can consult Harvard University expert on testing, Daniel Koretz, for the details about why the testing regime has been particularly hard on children in schools where poverty is concentrated: “Inappropriate test preparation… is more severe in some places than in others. Teachers of high-achieving students have less reason to indulge in bad preparation for high-stakes tests because the majority of their students will score adequately without it—in particular, above the ‘proficient’ cut score that counts for accountability purposes. So one would expect that test preparation would be a more severe problem in schools serving high concentrations of disadvantaged students, and it is.” (The Testing Charade, pp. 116-117)

Of course, a narrowed curriculum is only one factor in today’s inequity. Derek W. Black and Axton Crolley explain: “(A) 2018 report revealed, school districts enrolling ‘the most students of color receive about $1,800 or 13% less per student’ than districts serving the fewest students of color… Most school funding gaps have a simple explanation: Public school budgets rely heavily on local property taxes. Communities with low property values can tax themselves at much higher rates than others but still fail to generate anywhere near the same level of resources as other communities. In fact, in 46 of 50 states, local school funding schemes drive more resources to middle-income students than poor students.”

Again and again in his recent keynote address, Jitu Brown described the consequences of Chicago’s experiment with corporate accountability-based school reform. Chicago is a city still coping with the effect of the closure of 50 neighborhood schools in June of 2013—part of the collateral damage of the Renaissance 2010 charter school expansion—a portfolio school reform program administered by Arne Duncan to open charter schools and close neighborhood schools deemed “failing,” as measured by standardized test scores. On top of the charter expansion, Chicago instituted student-based-budgeting, which has trapped a number of Chicago public schools in a downward spiral as students experiment with charter schools and as enrollment diminishes, both of which spawn staffing and program cuts and put the school on a path toward closure.

As Jitu Brown reflected on his inspiring elementary school experience a long time ago, I thought about a moving recent article by Carolyn Cooper, a long time resident of Cleveland, Ohio’s East Glenville neighborhood: “I received a stellar education in elementary, junior high, and high school from the… Cleveland Public School system… All of the schools I attended were within walking distance, or only a few miles from my home. And at Iowa-Maple Elementary School, a K-6 school at the time, I was able to join the French Club and study abroad for months in both Paris and Lyon, France… Flash forward to this present day… To fight the closure of both Iowa-Maple and Collinwood High School, a few alumni attended a school facilities meeting held in October 2019 at Glenville High School… Despite our best efforts, Collinwood remained open but Iowa-Maple still closed down… Several generations of my family, as well as the families of other people who lived on my street, were alumni there. I felt it should have remained open because it was a 5-Star school, offering a variety of programs including gifted and advanced courses, special education, preschool offerings, and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).”

In his keynote address last week, Jitu Brown explained: “Justice and opportunity depend on the institutions to which children have access.” Brown’s words brought to my mind another part of Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood less than a mile from Iowa-Maple Elementary School. If you drive along Lakeview Road between Superior and St. Clair Avenues, you see a neighborhood with older homes of a size comfortable for families and scattered newer rental housing built about twenty years ago with support from tax credits. You also see many empty lots where houses were abandoned and later demolished in the years following the 2008 foreclosure crisis. Separated by several blocks, you pass two large weedy tracts of land which were once the sites of two different public elementary schools—abandoned by the school district and boarded up for years before they were demolished. You pass by a convenience store surrounded by cracked asphalt and gravel. Finally you pass a dilapidated, abandoned nursing home which for several years housed the Virtual Schoolhouse, a charter school that advertised on the back of Regional Transit Authority buses until it shut down in 2018.

My children went to school in Cleveland Heights, only a couple of miles from Glenville. Cleveland Heights-University Heights is a mixed income, racially integrated, majority African American, inner-ring suburban school district. Our children can walk to neighborhood public schools that are a great source of community pride. Our community is not wealthy, but we have managed to pass our school levies to support our children with strong academics. We recently passed a bond issue to update and repair our old high school, where my children had the opportunity to play in a symphony orchestra, and play sports in addition to the excellent academic program.

Jitu Brown helped organize and lead the 2015 Dyett Hunger Strike, which forced the Chicago Public Schools to reopen a shuttered South Side Chicago high school. Brown does not believe that charter schools and vouchers are the way to increase opportunity for children in places like Chicago’s South and West Sides and Cleveland’s Glenville and Collinwood neighborhoods. He explains: “When you go to a middle-class white community you don’t see charter schools…. You see effective, K-12 systems of education in their neighborhoods. Our children deserve the same.”

In the powerful final essay in the new book, Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, Bill Ayers, a retired professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, agrees with Jitu Brown about what ought to be the promise of public education for every child in America:

“Let’s move forward guided by an unshakable first principle: Public education is a human right and a basic community responsibility… Every child has the right to a free, high-quality education. A decent, generously staffed school facility must be in easy reach for every family… What the most privileged parents have for their public school children right now—small class sizes, fully trained and well compensated teachers, physics and chemistry labs, sports teams, physical education and athletic fields and gymnasiums, after-school and summer programs, generous arts programs that include music, theater, and fine arts—is the baseline for what we want for all children.” (Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, pp. 314-315) (emphasis in the original)

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Inequality, Injustice, Ohio, Race, Segregation

The Plaintiff in Landmark Gay Marriage Decision Says He is Terrified

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2022 //
52

Judge Samuel Alito went out of his way to say that the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would not affect other decisions, like contraception and gay marriage. But in the same decision, he asserted that the Constitution contains no “right to privacy,” on which these cases were built.

The Miami Herald interviews Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the gay marriage, who expressed his fear that the Court meant to strike down all rights based on the right to privacy.

In his draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito tries to limit the blast radius of his ruling by writing that abortion is fundamentally different from other privacy matters — like contraception and marriage equality — that have historically challenged the court. “The abortion right,” Alito writes, is “critically different from any other right that this Court has held fall within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of ‘liberty.’” Overturning one, he says, would not necessarily undermine the others. Jim Obergefell doesn’t believe him.

The plaintiff in the landmark 2015 case before the Supreme Court that established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right now says he is tired, disheartened and terrified of what may come after reading Alito’s sweeping rationale in the draft decision published Monday by Politico. “I’ve been asked if I believe what he says in that decision — that this is specific to a woman’s right to an abortion, and really should not be used on marriage equality,” Obergefell told McClatchy in an interview. “I don’t believe that whatsoever, because so many of the things he says in that decision open the door to using those arguments against marriage equality. And where does it stop?”

“I’m terrified. I really can’t put it any more simply than that. I am terrified,” he continued. “Marriage equality, while we had it for seven years, clearly will not pass his definition of tradition or history.”

Obergefell v. Hodges was a landmark civil rights case that culminated after years of litigation in a 5-4 decision at the high court, requiring all 50 states and U.S. territories to perform and recognize same-sex marriages the same as opposite-sex marriages.

Alito dissented from that decision, and in a speech to the Federalist Society in 2020 criticized it once again. “You can’t say marriage is a union between one man and one woman,” he told the conservative organization. “Until very recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now it’s considered bigotry.”

At that time, Alito found himself in the minority. But the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy — who wrote the Obergefell decision and several other key gay rights decisions that preceded it — provided then-President Donald Trump with an opening to nominate a conservative replacement.

Trump chose Brett Kavanaugh, who currently supports the decision to overturn Roe that Obergefell now fears.

“All I have to say is, they said in their confirmation hearings that they considered Roe v. Wade settled law,” Obergefell said. “Clearly they were misleading the Senate — not being truthful — so regardless of what they said during their confirmation hearings about marriage equality.”

“Losing Justice Kennedy was a loss to the LGBTQ+ community because he was so instrumental in decisions bringing us forward as a nation and toward a more perfect union,” he added. Gay rights organizations told McClatchy they have been preparing for a decision ending Roe v. Wade for months, but were nevertheless stunned by the sheer sweep of Alito’s written opinion.

Top officials and attorneys at the Human Rights Campaign held an emergency huddle on Monday night when the leaked draft published, and both HRC and GLAAD leaders are working to mobilize support for protests around the country with pro-choice groups. “The fact that Alito in this decision takes the track that, if these fundamental rights that we enjoy in our nation are not specifically enumerated in our constitution, then they’re questionable and should only be based on our nation’s history and traditions – to me that is one of the scariest things to hear a Supreme Court justice say,” Obergefell said.

“The history and tradition in North America, in the land now known as the United States of America, was for white people to own black people. There’s a longer tradition there than there is of freedom,” he added. “So it’s just a terrifying thing.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/article261132807.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Equity

Texas: Gov. Abbott Wants to Revoke State’s Obligation to Educate All Children, Taking Aim at Children of Immigrants

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2022 //
121

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott is in a competition with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to see who is meanest. He wants to relitigate a 1982 Supreme Court decision that requires the state to provide a free public education to all children, especially the children of undocumented persons.

In the wake of the leaked Roe decision, he assumes the Court might agree with him that children whose parents are not here legally have no right to be educated at public expense.

In a conversation with a conservative talk-show host, Abbott expressed his desire to stop funding the education of these children.

Here’s the exchange in full:

Talk show host:

“We’re talking about public tax dollars, public property tax dollars going to fund these schools to teach children who are 5, 6, 7, 10 years old, who don’t even have remedial English skills,” Pagliarulo said. “This is a real burden on communities. What can you do about that?”

Governor Abbott:

“The challenges put on our public systems is extraordinary,” Abbott said in reply. “Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler versus Doe. And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue about denying, or let’s say Texas having to bear that burden. I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago.”

Governor Abbott would like to have many thousands of children in the state who are illiterate. No doubt he would also like to deny them access to any healthcare or other public services.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Funding, Texas

Dana Milbank: If the Jackboot Fits, Wear It

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2022 //
12

Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post. He is one of my favorites. (I also adore Valerie Strauss and Jennifer Rubin, and of course, Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker). I’m sorry that his many links did not transfer when I copied and pasted. Subscribe to the Post.

He writes:

There were even more vermin than usual in Washington this week. A rabid fox at the Capitol bit at least nine people, including Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.). And Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison attacked Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) with an insult most entomological.

After Cotton implied that Supreme Court Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson is a Nazi sympathizer, Harrison referred to Cotton as a “little maggot-infested man” on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Fake news! Cotton may go low, but, at 6-foot-5, he is not little. Also, maggots typically feed on dead things, and Cotton, though stiff, is not currently deceased. The man likes to carry on, but he is not carrion.

Harrison went on to censure the Republican Party as a whole: “It is a party built on fraud, fear and fascism.” Interestingly, a statement from the Republican National Committee taking offense at the “maggot-infested” charge did not dispute the “fraud, fear and fascism” formulation. As your self-appointed fact-checker, I have therefore examined the merits of the accusation.

Fraud


Sixteen months after President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud failed in some 60 court cases, we have finally found evidence of potential voter fraud. Trump’s White House staff chief, Mark Meadows, reportedly registered to vote in 2020 using the address of a mobile home he never lived in. And former Trump State Department official Matt Mowers, a current congressional candidate, voted twice during the 2016 primaries, in New Hampshire and New Jersey.

The “big lie” about a rigged election, accepted by two-thirds of Republican voters, has spawned new frauds about the dangers of coronavirus vaccines (leading to sharply higher death rates in heavily Republican counties) and the promise, touted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) of the deworming drug ivermectin to treat covid-19; an exhaustive new study finds the drug useless.

Then there are the little everyday frauds. Just days after Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) told the world that his colleagues engage in coke-fueled orgies, Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) declared at a Trump rally that it was Trump who “caught Osama bin Laden,” record-low unemployment is at a “40-year high” and there weren’t “any wars” during Trump’s presidency. Never mind Syria and Afghanistan.

Fear

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said people like Ketanji Brown Jackson become public defenders because “their heart is with the murderers.” Cotton said Justice Robert H. Jackson “left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them.”

Republican senators used the Jackson confirmation to stir fear of minorities and vulnerable groups with manufactured crises about transgender athletes (of the 200,000 participants in women’s collegiate sports, perhaps 50 are transgender) and “critical race theory” (which isn’t taught in public schools).

Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance released an ad saying “Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

The Florida legislature approved an “election crimes” police force for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), with the potential to intimidate voters, while various GOP-led states move forward with new provisions providing residents with incentives to inform on each other.

The newly-revealed text messages of Justice Clarence Thomas’s activist wife, Ginni, show her sharing with the Trump White House her “hope” that the “Biden crime family” as well as elected officials, bureaucrats and journalists would be taken to “barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”
**
Is the GOP “a party built on fraud, fear and fascism”? Certainly, not all Republicans think this way. But too many others are subverting democracy, cavorting with white nationalists, spreading racist fears and fantasizing about extrajudicial punishment for political opponents and the media. For them, the jackboot fits

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Elections, Ethics, Fascism, Hypocrisy, Republicans

Ron DeSantis’ Abuse of Government Power to Impose His Hatreds Is Dangerous

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2022 //
37

Yesterday, the Florida Legislature passed legislation enacting Governor DeSantis’ personal vendetta against the Disney corporation, dissolving the special district status it enjoys, where it supplies all its own services, such as security and sanitation. Disney is a huge economic boon to the state, drawing millions of tourists to Florida every year. DeSantis wanted to punish Disney for criticizing his anti-gay law. Some pundits think this will backfire because it is likely to raise taxes in the counties that will have to pay for those services.

But Greg Sergeant of the Washington Post says that DeSantis’s retaliation against Disney is very dangerous for democracy. This is the behavior of a banana republic thug. Will he next punish corporations that encourage diversity, inclusion, and equity, another of his obsessions?

He writes that DeSantis’ thuggishness is admired by other Republicans, and that’s ominous:

What’s at issue is the use of such a policy as retaliation against Disney for taking a stand on DeSantis’s law. The measure bars or restricts instruction on sexual orientation and gender orientation in a way that’s plainly designed to chill even the most routine discussion of LGBTQ topics.
Disney opposes the law on the grounds that “it could be used to unfairly target” LGBTQ kids and families. And this is an absolutely understandable fear.

But here again, the law’s specifics are beside the point. You don’t have to back Disney’s stance to agree that the company should not be punished with a change in government policy for expressing its opinion of the law.

So what does this tell us about a possible GOP future? Well, on multiple fronts, the Republican Party is growing much more inclined to use state power to fight the culture wars, well beyond just DeSantis.

In an interview published this week, J.D. Vance told Vanity Fair that he envisions a kind of “de-Baathification” or a “de-woke-ification” of the “institutions of the left.”

Vance, who’s running for Senate in Ohio in the New Right nationalist vein, said that if Donald Trump is elected president, he should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat” and “every civil servant in the administrative state,” and “replace them with our people.”

It’s worth taking this seriously. Other members of that New Right movement recently told me they envision a ramped-up use of the state to impose a post-liberal moral order, justified by hyperbolic visions of the supposedly hegemonic power of the left over our institutions.

Meanwhile, GOP elected officials seem to be moving this way. Congressional Republicans have vowed retaliation against companies for opposing Georgia’s voter suppression bill and for cooperating with the congressional investigation into Trump’s coup attempt.

And DeSantis is a front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Importantly, he’s flaunting his willingness to use state power this way as a selling point for the presidency.

So let’s run a thought experiment. What might it look like if a President DeSantis took this view of the administrative state and decided to wield his power this way?

Donald Moynihan, an expert on the administrative state at Georgetown, says you can envision various scenarios. Such a president, he said, might use regulatory agencies staffed with right-thinking political employees (which Vance explicitly wants) to harass or investigate companies perceived as “culturally disloyal.”

Another possibility, Moynihan said, might be to change the tax status of liberal-leaning foundations. Those are already another favorite target of right-wing populists.

Faced with a president “who’s fully willing to use the powers of the administrative state,” Moynihan told me, such foundations might refrain from advocating for various causes or fund certain types of research, “because it’s not worth the potential risks.”

What if such a president were backed in this project by congressional leadership? Josh Chafetz, a Georgetown law professor who studies Congress, says you could see legislation targeted at offending companies, and even if it didn’t survive the courts, it could still function in a punitive way.

Those companies would sink large sums of money into litigating against such measures, even as Congress relied on taxpayer-funded lawyers on their side, Chafetz told me, meaning “the onus of the expense would fall on the companies, which would have a chilling effect.”

So a lot is at stake in how DeSantis’s war with Disney turns out. To glimpse the future, just look at what DeSantis is saying and doing right now. And given all the accolades he’s getting from the right, does anyone doubt that this could get a whole lot worse?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Democracy, Economy, Florida

Steven Sawchuk: States Enacting Bills to Limit or Eliminate Teaching about LGBT

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2022 //
9

Stephen Sawchuk, a veteran journalist at Education Week, has compiled a summary of current legislation that would limit or eliminate any teaching that includes references to LGBT topics. Legislators seem to believe that teachers are willfully indoctrinating students to become gay, which insults teachers. Teachers have become suspects, “grooming” students for a “gay lifestyle.” Legislators apparently believe that if no one talks about people who are gay, students won’t become gay.

Sawchuk writes:

At least 15 states are considering bills in the 2021-22 legislative session that would affect ways of discussing, addressing, or interacting with LGBTQ youth in schools, according to an Education Week analysis.

The bills—nearly 30 of them in all—variously take aim at school clubs for LGBTQ students, would put limitations on teachers’ and students’ use of gender pronouns, and would restrict or proscribe curriculum, instruction, and library books that feature LGBTQ themes, an Education Week analysis finds. They are only a subset of what LGBTQ-rights organizations have described as a sudden explosion of legislation aimed at LGBTQ people in 2021 and 2022. 

Education Week’s analysis shows that, while few of the proposals have passed as legislative sessions come to a close, they often go far beyond Florida’s much-discussed recent legislation, which forbids certain topics in grades K-3.

The bills generally echo broader fears that educators are indoctrinating students in liberal ideas or about social justice. That discourse has fueled legislation aiming to curb how racism and race are discussed in classroom settings. In fact, Education Week found that many of the LGBTQ provisions are located in broader legislative packages that address those topics, or are otherwise styled as a “parent bill of rights.”

Quite a few of the laws take aim at transgender students in particular—a newer theme that has gathered steam in recent legislative cycles. In 2017, many states considered proposals to require trans students to use bathrooms and changing facilities that matched the sex on their birth certificates. In 2021 and 2022, lawmakers have considered restricting which sports teams trans women can play on.

The latest crop of proposals, say those who have studied them, reflects both old and new anxieties.

“Because of all the Zoom schooling, a lot of parents have had a peak into the classroom, and those that didn’t have read or seen reports that in some classrooms some very unorthodox, very liberal, LGBTQ+-type and other controversial position statements and lessons are being taught,” said Arizona Rep. John Kavanagh, who sponsored a bill in that state that would require parents to sign off on students’ decision to join an LGBTQ club at school. “I’m not saying it’s pervasive throughout the school system, but I think a lot of parents want to be assured it’s not something their students are being exposed to, if it’s controversial to the foundational beliefs of the parents.”

But in another sense, the fear driving these is older, said Chris Sanders, the executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, which advocates for LGBTQ people in that state. He pointed to the plethora of bills that address mental health screening, social-emotional survey tools, and sex education.

“One of the old accusations against our communities, and I think this fits into this, is that mental health screenings are this tool to be used to find out who might be gay, and somehow these tools might be used to help solidify people into gender identities or sexual orientations that aren’t cisgender,” he said. “It’s the old accusation of recruiting.”

Education Week has grouped legislation into several categories.

Note: We have not included bills that would outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender people, except those that specifically implicate school personnel. We have also not included bills prohibiting trans athletes from participating on school sports teams that match their gender identity; such legislation has now been passed in 12 states and introduced in many others. We have included only curriculum-related proposals that specifically mention LGBTQ students, though other, broader proposals could also lead to censorship of books and materials with LGBTQ themes.

Curriculum and instruction

The most widely known bill on these topics is Florida’s law, which prohibits instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for students in kindergarten through 3rd grade and says in later grades, teaching must be “age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate.” The law has already been challenged in federal court. An Ohio proposal introduced this week lifts the Florida bill’s language.

A Tennessee bill would prohibit schools from adopting or using textbooks or materials “that promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) issues or lifestyles.”

A Louisiana bill would prevent any teacher or school employee from covering the topics of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through 8th grade, and it would prevent them from discussing their own orientation or gender identity as well.

An Iowa proposal would require parents to opt in in writing to “instruction relating to gender identity.”

A Kansas parent-rights and curriculum transparency proposal, as introduced, would have prevented both public and private entities from using materials that included depictions of homosexuality. A substitute version eliminated that language, but still would designate some materials as recommended for parental review for their “sexual content.”

One Arizona bill would change the curriculum of sex education to “emphasize biological sex and not gender identities.” A second bill in the state would prohibit schools from giving students “sexually explicit materials.” Initially, the proposal included homosexuality in that definition, but that language was stripped out before it was passed in the House.

A South Carolina bill would prohibit state entities, including schools, from subjecting minors to “instruction, presentations, discussions, counseling, or materials in any medium” that involves topics including “sexual lifestyles, acts, or practices” or “gender identity or lifestyles.”

A Missouri bill would prevent public schools from requiring students to engage in “gender or sexual diversity training,” as would an Indiana bill; a South Carolina billwould extend that to teachers, staff members, and district employees. The language in these bills is identical to draft legislation prohibiting such training at the university level, which has been introduced in numerous states, but lawmakers in only these three states appear ready to extend it to K-12 education.

Gender-affirming care

Three states—Alabama, Arizona, and South Carolina—have introduced a version of legislation called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act. Its primary focus is to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors—a spectrum of services that can include the use of drugs to delay puberty and cross-sex hormones. (Sex-reassignment surgery is exceedingly rare before age 18.)

What distinguishes this proposal from other such legislation—like Arkansas’ controversial 2021 law, which has since been challenged in federal court—is its specific mention of school district employees in the list of people prohibited from providing gender-affirming services.

It also stipulates that “no nurse, counselor, teacher, principal” at a public or private school shall “encourage or coerce a minor to withhold from the minor’s parent or legal guardian the fact that the minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” or withhold any information related to that perception.

Student clubs

An Arizona bill would require students to get their parents’ written permission to participate in a group or club involving “sexuality, gender, or gender identity,” and allows parents to review foundational documents of any such club.

A Tennessee parents’-rights proposal does not specifically reference LGBTQ clubs, but would require parents’ permission for students to participate in clubs, and would allow them to see which library books their children had checked out, among other things.

Disclosure of student pronouns/gender identity

Several proposals seek to make clear that parents have the right to determine the names and pronouns used for their child at school, or direct educators to disclose a student’s gender identity to parents.

A Wisconsin proposal includes parent’s rights to choose pronouns in a larger parents’-rights piece of legislation; the bill has been approved by both chambers in the legislature but has not yet been signed into law.

An Iowa bill would require schools to give a week’s notice to parents before educators ask students which pronoun they prefer or before administering a survey on pronoun use, and to send them the response upon request.

A wide-ranging Rhode Island bill would also require children to “be addressed by their common names and the pronouns associated with their biological gender” unless parent permission is given to change them.

An Indiana proposal would include parents’ written consent for students to receive sex education, including on “transgenderism” [sic]; it would also require parents to give consent for medical inspections or mental health treatment, including on counseling about “gender transitioning issues,” pronoun selection, and referral to other agencies that provide these services.

An Arizona parents’-rights proposal initially stated that school officials cannot “withhold or conceal,” or “facilitate, encourage, or coerce” students to conceal, a student’s gender identity or “requested transition” if it doesn’t match their biological sex. Parents also would need to consent before students are asked questions on a survey about gender expression, perception or stereotypes. Both provisions were removed before the bill advanced.

A North Carolina bill, while primarily focused on outlawing gender-affirming care, would also require any state employee to report to parents if a minor has “exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria, gender nonconformity,” or “otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with their biological sex.”

Several of these proposals appear related to several lawsuits in which parents have sued school districts that have allowed students to select new names or pronouns, allegedly without the parents’ consent or knowledge.

Library materials

Two proposals in Oklahoma would submit library books to scrutiny over sexual themes; one of them specifically would prohibit public schools or libraries from holding or promoting “books that make as their primary subject the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender issues or recreational sexualization.” It would also prevent teachers from administering a survey about gender or sexuality.

Book banning and censorship is currently experiencing a boom probably not seen since the McCarthy era of the 1950s, but it is occurring primarily via local school district decision-making, not through legislation.

Teacher beliefs/use of pronouns

Several bills on this theme are derived from the Partisanship Out of Civics Act, model legislation developed by the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, a nonprofit. Its provisions include one that specifies that “no teacher shall be compelled by a policy of any state agency, school district, or school administration to affirm a belief in … the so-called multiplicity or fluidity of gender identities, or like ideas, against his or her sincerely held religious or philosophical convictions.”

The language appears in one Ohio bill and two South Carolina bills.

A Tennessee bill would indemnify teachers who refused to use a student’s pronoun that is different from their biological sex. It would make them not civilly liable for doing so and shield them from penalties or firing.

The context for this legislation is a handful of lawsuits in which teachers have allegedly been disciplined for refusing to use a student’s preferred gender pronoun, or for speaking against a policy that required them to use students’ preferred pronouns. The most high-profile instance occurred in Loudoun County, Va., and ended in a settlement.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship

Tennessee Legislature Passes Hateful Laws

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2022 //
22

Representative Gloria Johnson posted a series of tweets describing the hateful legislation that her colleagues in the Tennessee Legislature have passed. Her Twitter handle is @VoteGloriaJ

When I got home this weekend someone asked how things are going in Nashville, I’m not sure they were ready for my answer, but it went kind of like this…

We have a “Don’t Say Gay” bill worse than Florida’s and about 4 more bills to go along with it-all equally filled with hate. GOP and B list celebrities are accusing librarians and teachers of “grooming” kids.

We have a vigilante abortion bill worse than Texas’. A bill that makes your friends and family $10k if they rat you out. Heck, if you decide to abort your rapists baby, his family and friends can sue you for $10k.

Did you ever imagine TN would give more rights to a violent rapist than a victim of a violent rapist. He can choose the mother of his child, but she can’t choose not to have her rapist’s baby. That is pure evil folks. That is today’s GOP, they don’t believe women are equal.

We have a school funding formula that’s not ready for prime time. It takes away local control, doesn’t have details and is more than 50% rule making we won’t see until AFTER the vote. And counties will love the property tax it will inevitably bring in 3-4 years😬. #whenleeisgone

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Disruption, Education Industry, Evil, Fascism, Shame, Tennessee

Peter Greene: “Moms for Liberty” Are Shocked by Literal Interpretation of “Don’t Say Gay” Bill

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2022 //
46

Peter Greene discovered an email blast from the radical rightwing group that calls itself “Moms for Liberty.” The “Moms” are outraged by a letter supposedly written by a teacher in Florida who promised to follow the letter of the “Don’t Say Gay” law and eliminate all references to gender identity from his/her/their classroom.

The teacher noted that the new law bans all references to gender identity or sexual orientation in K-3 classrooms.

To be in full compliance with the law, the teacher wrote, he/she/they will make the classroom gender-free.

Furthermore, I will be removing all books or instruction which refer to a person being a “mother” “father” “husband” or “wife” as these are gender identities that also may allude to sexual orientation. Needless to say, all books which refer to a character as “he” or “she” will also be removed from the classroom. If you have any
concerns about this policy, please feel free to contact your local congressperson.

To be in accordance with this policy, I will no longer be referring to your student with gendered pronouns. All students will be referred to as “they” or “them.” I will no longer use a gendered title such as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” or make any references to my husband/wife in the classroom. From now on I will be using the non-gendered title “Mx.”

In an earlier post, Greene had predicted that the first victim of the new law would be gendered bathrooms. If it is illegal to discuss gender identity, then schools should remove all references to gender.

Dana Goldstein, writing in the New York Times, suggested that the law would lead to the removal of any books that refer to gay men or women, in literature or history.

The language is vague and subject to interpretation. The preamble of the bill further muddles matters. It prohibits not only “instruction” around gender identity and sexual orientation, but also “classroom discussion” of these topics.

“Classroom instruction” could mean eliminating books in the classroom with L.G.B.T.Q. characters or historical figures. No “classroom discussion” is a broad phrase, and could mean that teachers with a student with gay parents should not talk about those families with the entire class.

And while the language of the bill highlights the youngest students, all grades are affected by the provision requiring gender and sexuality to be discussed in ways that are “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” Again, those terms are highly subjective. Parents, school staff and students are likely to clash over what this means.

Categories Bigotry, Florida, Parent Groups

The Real Purpose of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2022 //
194

Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law has two ostensible purposes. One is to bring national attention to Governor Ron DeSantis as the heir to Donald Trump’s MAGA base. The other is to humiliate gay people, who are collateral damage in DeSantis’ pursuit of the 2024 Republican nomination. Since teachers in K-3 in Florida do not teach sex education, the law is no more than a symbolic insult.

Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law is described as a “parental rights” law. Among other things, House Bill 1557 bans any instruction about sexuality and gender identity in grades K-3, and requires that any such instruction in grades 4-12 must be age appropriate. The law allows parents to sue the district if they believe the law has been violated, and the district must pay the cost of the lawsuit.

What’s it really about? This bill is rightly understood to be a condemnation of homosexuality across the board. It strikes out at students, teachers, parents, and other people who are gay. It stigmatizes all gay people. Children who have gay parents must not mention that fact in school. Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature want to shove them back into the closet.

The same people who worry that white children will be shamed by any discussion of racism in the history classroom don’t care at all about children who might be gay or who have gay parents and family members. The “Don’t Say Gay” law is the Republicans’ effort to “cancel” people who are gay, make them invisible. That should work as well as eliminating racism by banning any discussion about racism.

Florida does not require schools to offer sex education. If they choose to do so, the curriculum must emphasize the importance of abstinence. Parents may opt their children out of sex education.

DeSantis signed the bill at a charter school founded by the wife of the state education commissioner Richard Corcoran.

Here is House Bill 1557, which includes the history of the bill and the full text. Much of the language is vague, opening the door to litigation, which is already underway.

On a lighter note, I received the following joke from a gay parent in Florida:

Subject: DADDY IS A GAY DANCER!

A fourth-grade teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came up – fireman, mechanic, businessman, car salesman… and so forth.

However, little Johnie was being uncharacteristically quiet, so when the teacher prodded him about his father, he replied, “My father’s an exotic dancer in a gay cabaret and takes off all his clothes to music in front of other men and they put money in his underwear. Sometimes, if the offer is really good, he will go home with some guy and stay with him all night for money.”

The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on some exercises and took little Johnie aside. “Is that really true about your father?”

“No,” the boy said, “He works for the Republican National Committee and helped get Trump elected, but it’s too embarrassing to say that in front of the other kids.”

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Florida
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