As Ron DeSantis and his compliant legislature tightens their control of tenure and academic freedom in the state’s public universities, many of the faculty at the private University of Miami have joined to protest the attack on their colleagues.
It has long been said that the states are “laboratories of democracy.” If you wonder why I post so much about Florida, it is because it has become a “laboratory of fascism,” where the state’s leadership is intent on controlling thought and expression, research and study.
Nearly 1,000 faculty, staff and students at the University of Miami have signed an open letter opposing a state bill moving through the Florida Legislature that they say is an “unprecedented attempt to exert political control over free thought and professional expertise in higher education.”
As a private university, UM isn’t funded or governed by the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the 12 public universities in the state. As such, it wouldn’t be affected by House Bill 999, and its companion Senate Bill 266, which could make it harder for professors to hold onto tenure and would give university presidents the authority to hire and fire faculty, instead of deans, department chairs and faculty committees currently making those decisions.
Because of these proposals and others in the bills, some of UM’s faculty, staff and students are “standing in solidarity” with their counterparts at Florida International University and the state’s other public universities.
“We affirm our commitment to the principles and practices of academic freedom and shared governance in all Florida institutions of higher education, whether public or private,” reads the missive, which a small group of UM faculty members started in early April and now want to share with as many people as possible, particularly elected officials…
Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at UM, said she stamped her name on the open letter because she sees the bills as an attack not only on education, but on democracy.
“I’m incredibly angry, and I’m concerned for students everywhere, and I’m particularly saddened for my fellow faculty members at public universities,” she said. “Florida is becoming known as a state where intellectual freedom goes to die.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis thinks that if he bans or censors a subject, then the thing he banned will disappear. Obviously, he hates gays. Therefore, his state board of education voted in the last hour or so to ban any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity unless they are part of a reproductive health course. Ironically, Florida has a very large gay population in Miami and Fort Lauderdale and elsewhere. But DeSantis believes he can appeal to the MAGA base by repeatedly showing his hatred for gays. Every fascist must have scapegoats. For DeSantis, it’s gays, trans, and drag queens, but also Blacks and immigrants. And any books about them. Some Republican mega donors have decided to back off and withhold funding him to see how far he goes with his calculated campaign of hatred and divisiveness.
The Orlando Sentinel reported:
The State Board of Education on Wednesday voted to bar Florida middle school and high school teachers from “intentionally” teaching students about sexual orientation or gender identity, unless the lessons are part of a reproductive health course or are “expressly required” by the state’s academic standards.
Teachers who do otherwise could be suspended or their teaching license could be revoked.
Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, the head of the Florida Department of Education, said the rule is meant to “provide clarity” to teachers about what they can and cannot teach on those topics.
The new rule goes beyond the state’s Parental Rights in Education laws — dubbed by critics as “don’t say gay” — that prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, and older grades in cases when the lessons are deemed to be not “age appropriate.”
It would also go beyond what Republican legislative leaders have proposed during the 2023 legislative session, which would extend classroom restrictions on those topics through eighth grade.
The Tennessee legislature has passed a law controlling the freedom of teachers and college professors to discuss racism. Quite literally, teachers are required to deliver content without expressing a point of view, for instance, acknowledging that slavery was wrong. The author of the bill says he is promoting freedom of expression by restricting freedom of expression.
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—
“Divisive concept” rules are a set of laws passed last year that include many concepts usually taught in courses like sociology, psychology and political sciences.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on April 13, after passing Senate on April 5.
In 2022, lawmakers passed rules that allow state leaders to withhold funding for schools that teach about social, cultural and legal issues related to race and racism. Most of those concepts focus on how the impact of racism affects people today.
The law also specified that schools can teach about ethnic groups’ histories as described in textbooks and instructional materials. Educators can also only teach about controversial aspects of history, such as racial oppression or slavery, as long those discussions are impartial.
The bill, HB 1376, was introduced by Representative John Ragan (R – Oak Ridge). He previously said that the new bill was meant to strengthen the law passed in 2022 by “promoting freedom of expression,” and keep “colleges about advancing knowledge, not about advancing political or social agendas.”
Originally, the bill required institutions to publish a syllabus for each course offered in the semester on its website, meant to assess whether a “divisive concept” may be included in the curriculum. That requirement was removed in an amendment to the bill.
The bill restricts universities from using state funds for meetings or activities of an organization that “endorses or promotes a divisive concept.” It also requires employees who support diversity initiatives to “increase intellectual diversity” and support students through mentoring, career readiness and workforce development initiatives.
Employees would be exempt from the requirement if the new duties conflict with other laws, such as Title IX officers.
It also allows students and employees who believe that the school violated last year’s law a chance to file a report with the school. The school would then need to annually report violations to the comptroller of the treasury, redacting them as needed to stay in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
The bill would also specifically require universities to allow any guest speaker on campus regardless of “non-violent political ideology” or “non-violent political party affiliation.”
The concepts that were banned from lessons in 2022’s law are listed below.
That one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex
That a person, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist or oppressive — whether consciously or subconsciously
That a person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of their race or sex
That a person’s moral character is determined by their race or sex
That a person, by virtue of their race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex
That a person should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress because of their race or sex
That a meritocracy is inherently racist, sexist or designed by a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex
That Tennessee or the U.S. is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist
Promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government
Promoting division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people
Ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes, privileges or beliefs to a race or sex, or to a person because of their race or sex
That the rule of law does not exist but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups
That “all Americans are not created equal and are not endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
That governments should deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the law
It also bans lessons that include “race or sex scapegoating” or “race or sex stereotyping,” as those terms are defined in law. In October 2022, a group of UT faculty called the law “chilling,” and questioned the law’s intent.
Rep. Justin Jones (D – Nashville) spoke about the bill when he returned to the House of Representatives after he was expelled and reinstated. He asked a series of questions, such as whether “college students are mature enough to talk about race and systemic racism, some of the concepts you want to prohibit being discussed at the college level?”
“I believe in God. All else is settled by facts and data,” Ragan said.
Jones again asked him to answer the question, but Ragan said he responded to the question.
“So, we’re playing ‘not-answer.’ Okay,” Jones said.
He also asked why the bill was introduced and said it seemed based on “white fragility and fears of the truth of history.”
“This bill was brought to me by a dean of college education, in addition to another university contributed to this bill. That was my motivation, too,” Ragan said.
He also said he did not want to name the person who brought the bill to him.
“How will we be honest about our history if you’re prohibiting any concepts about America’s racist history?” Jones said. “This sounds like fascism. This sounds like authoritarianism. This does not sound like democracy or freedom … This member has consistently invoked God to justify this unjust, immoral and extreme, racist law.”
Speaker Cameron Sexton (R – Crossville) stopped Jones from speaking. Rep. Justin Pearson (D – Memphis) also spoke after being reinstated to the House.
“This is a deeply concerning bill because it is continuing a pattern of practice that is harmful to all people,” he said. “When you try to control what a person thinks, then you are assuming the role of God rather than allowing freedom of thought.”
He said that the list of “divisive concepts” bars discussions on biases, white privilege and racism’s role in slavery.
The bill passed by a vote of 68-26 in the House.
During a meeting on March 13, Ragan said he received complaints from universities in the state about an “overemphasis” of the original law at the expense of “intellectual diversity,” which led to him proposing the new bill.
Representative Harold Love, Jr. (D – Nashville) previously asked if a conference focusing on Black history could still be held and promoted by a university should the bill pass. Ragan said it would be allowed as long as they “are not required to promote or endorse.”
Okay–where do you think this next excerpt came from?
Our public schools are one of the few unifying institutions that we have left. If we allow [something] to continue to individualize and atomize the classroom, we shouldn’t be surprised if our culture and political climate follow suit. In a traditional classroom with central texts, common knowledge, and routinized behavioral norms, our children learn to let another finish speaking before interrupting, no matter how much they might disagree. How many complete strangers could spark up a conversation over their shared love—or perhaps disdain—for the Great Gatsby because so many of us have read it in high school?
Traditional literature classrooms in particular seem all the more important as technology advances. When children spend ever more timeisolated in their rooms, endlessly scrolling on their phone, depressed and anxious, the act of putting a phone away, reading together, and then making eye contact to discuss the text could be the very “social and emotional” support that they need. When artificial technology can accomplish evermore tasks, enjoying a book with friends is one of the few remaining, distinctly human pleasures.
Is this me, arguing against current versions of school choice, particularly tech-based versions like micro-schools?
Nope. This is Daniel Buck, rising star conservative education writer on the AEI/Fordham circuit. I’ve written about him before, and you can check that out if you want more of his story or the story of his website, but for right now, mostly what you need to know is that Buck’s specialty is arguing against straw versions of progressive education stuff, which is what he says he’s railing at. My impression is that Buck means well, but doesn’t spend near enough time reading actual non-conservatives about education.
Here he’s railing against progressives who, in his telling, are out there letting students in classes pick all sort of different texts and do different things and follow different muses and while I have no doubt such teachers exist (in a pool of 4 million, you can find examples of anything), I’ll bet that most teachers, conservative or not, find the idea of overseeing 130 different individual reading units the stuff of nightmares.
No, the place you’re much more likely to find an array of students following an atomized assortment of varied educational paths would be a city that offers dozens of school choices, from “classical” whiteness to computer-driven whatever to contemporary diverse authors to neo-Nazi home schooling.
The argument he makes in this latest piece–that the nation benefits from having students share core experiences together while learning some of the same material even as they learn how to function in a mini-community of different people from different backgrounds–that’s an argument familiar to advocates of public education. The “agonizing individualism” and personalized selfishness that he argues against are, for many people, features of modern school choice–not public schools.
The editorial board of the Miami Herald knows exactly what Ron DeFascist is up to: He wants to remove local control of public schools and gather complete power over what is taught in the schools. He wants to crush unions. He wants to censor books in school libraries. He wants to make sure that students use the bathroom assigned to the gender on their birth certificate. He wants to control the pronouns that teachers use in their classroom (check every student’s birth certificate so you don’t break the last two laws). He wants to control the state curriculum and tests to be certain that only patriotic history is taught. It’s not at all clear whether Black history can be taught (even though it is mandated) unless it meets his approval. He wants to control school boards, and he doesn’t hesitate to select and endorse candidates who share his views. He is power-mad. And he thinks his authoritarian behavior is a model for the nation! He must have skipped history at Harvard.
The Florida Legislature could de-certify many teacher unions in charge of negotiating salaries and working conditions.
Florida Republicans’ ‘ideology patrol’ is coming to a school near you | OpinionBY THE MIAMI HERALD EDITORIAL BOARD
It’s the biggest irony of a state that calls itself “free.”
A basic tenet of America’s political system — one that conservatives, more than liberals, have staunchly defended — is that the government closest to the people is best. But the Florida Legislature, egged on by Gov. DeSantis, is poised to further constrain locally elected school boards from making decisions about books, what teachers can say in the classroom and even school bathroom rules.
If the Republican-led House and Senate get their way, by the time they are done local education will be a mere arm of state leaders who act like the ideological patrol of Florida’s K-12 system. Meanwhile, there’s not enough talk about real issues like post-pandemic learning losses and the shortage of teachers. In fact, lawmakers might make the latter even worse with a union-busting bill that could de-certify many teacher unions in charge of negotiating salaries and working conditions.
So strong is the Legislature’s desire to turn K-12 into a field of culture battles, they are seeking to turn school board races, which are currently nonpartisan, into partisan contests. This would play right into DeSantis’ hands. He’s said that his goal is to elect candidates of his choosing in 2024 local races, including for the Miami-Dade County School Board.
This move would exclude millions of Floridians who aren’t registered with either major party — and who outnumberRepublican voters in Miami-Dade — from voting for their board member in primaries. The saving grace is that this measure would only go into effect if at least 60% of voters in the state approve it as an amendment to the Florida Constitution.
Another bill would relax residency requirements for school board candidates. They would not have to live in the district they want to represent until taking office. This isn’t unheard of in Florida. The same requirement applies to sheriffs and other constitutional officers. But it would allow any outsider with money and backing from, say, a powerful governor to run to represent communities they have no connection to.
To be fair, there are some sound proposals making their way forward at the Capitol. Lawmakers want shorter, eight-year term limits for school board members, down from 12 years. There’s a bill to require instruction on the effects of social media on young people and to ban the use of a school’s internet for social media, unless it’s for education purposes. Senate Bill 52 is ready for a Senate vote and also would ban cellphones in class.
But lawmakers are too busy fighting gender pronouns, sex education and transgender youth.
SB 1674 would make it a second-degree misdemeanor for adults to use a bathroom or “changing facility” that doesn’t align with their sex assigned at birth. The bill also would require districts to come up with “disciplinary procedures” to deal with students who violate the ban, further stigmatizing trans kids who already are often the target of ridicule.
Republican lawmakers want to prohibit teachers and staff from calling students by pronouns that differ from those given to them at birth, even when a parent is OK with it. SB 1320 expands a law that bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity — known by critics as “Don’t say gay” — through the eighth grade.
That same bill would also give outsized power to a single person to, at least temporarily, ban books from schools. Districts would be required to pull books that have been challenged while a complaint is being heard. It allows not just parents, but any county resident, to file an objection, likely resulting in blanket attempts by activists to ban books about LGBTQ issues and race.
SB 1320 also would take away school boards’ power to choose textbooks for sexual and reproductive health classes. Instead, that would be up to the Department of Education, which reports to the governor.
Current law already requires districts to teach that abstinence is the “certain way” to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and about “the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage.” But lawmakers seem to think we still cannot trust the people we elected to run our schools with basic decisions about curriculum.
We’re not fools. This isn’t simply a traditional power grab by Tallahassee. This is an attempt to ensure only certain voices are allowed in public education. Parents and educators who think differently be damned.
Tom Ultican left a STEM career to teach high school physics and advanced mathematics in California. Since his retirement, he has become a crack investigator of scams in education.
Amplify is a tech company that delivers instruction online. It was created by a tech company in Brooklyn to meet the needs of the New York City public schools when Michael Bloomberg was mayor and non-educator Joel Klein was chancellor of the schools. When Klein resigned, he persuaded Rupert Murdoch to buy Amplify for $500 million, and he became CEO.
Amplify developed software for its curriculum, and it sold both its own tablets and software. Launched with a bang, it soon imploded due to problems (the tablets sometimes spontaneously combusted), and sales never took off. Murdoch decided to sell it and write off a loss of $371 million.
Now we know that billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs owns Amplify, and the company is very cozy with the Texas Education Agency. Amplify is back with its plans to digitize and standardize instruction.
Tom Ultican begins:
In March, the Texas house of representative’s education committee introduced House Bill 1605. Chairman Brad Buckley from Killeen was lead sponsor and 25 other members are listed as co-sponsors including one Democrat. The actual author of the bill and who if anyone paid for it to be written is not known. The legislation creates two major changes. It transfers purchasing power from the state education board to State Commissioner of Education Mike Morath and it opens the door for Laurene Powell Jobs’ Amplify to control instructional materials for the Foundation School Program.
“The primary source of state funding for Texas school districts is the Foundation School Program (FSP). This program ensures that all school districts, regardless of property wealth, receive ‘substantially equal access to similar revenue per student at similar tax effort.’”
Foundation curriculum includes the list of the big four subjects mapped out by the TEA curriculum division.
The material is to be delivered using open education resources (OER). This means the content deliverance via interactive electronic screens. Districts will have the right not to use the curriculum however the structure of HB 1605 bribes them to employ it.
Under this new legislation, the state of Texas is contracting with Amplify to write the curriculum according to TEA guidelines. Amplify will also provide daily lesson plans for all teachers. The idea is to educate all Texas children using digital devices and scripted lesson plans while teachers are tasked with monitoring student progress.
Senate bill 2565 is the companion legislation. The language of neither HB 1605 nor SB 2565 mention Amplify. However, during the senate education committee public comments period on SB 2565 it was revealed that TEA had already given Amplify a $50,000,000 pandemic contract. When witnesses referenced Amplify as the purported contractor, senators did not push back and the only company the Senators spoke about themselves was Amplify. So it is clear that it will be Amplify and some people in the know believe Commissioner Morath has already made a deal with the company.
Please open the link and read on. Amplify is not only risen from the ashes, but it’s on the road to profiting by the creation of a teacher-proof curriculum.
Vallas’s solution for struggling schools was a corporate-style, top-down accountability system of high-stakes tests, test-prep teaching and punishment for failure — an experiment on Chicago’s Black and Brown children that set the stage for national education policy under George W. Bush. Schools that failed to meet test score targets were put on a warning list, on probation, or reconstituted by Vallas’s central office.
Counter to research consensus, based on their scores on a single test, tens of thousands of students were sent to summer school, held back a grade for as long as three years, prevented from 8th grade graduation, or assigned to remedial transition high schools where a pared-down curriculum of math, English and world studies revolved around intensive test preparation.
It was typical for schools, particularly in Black communities, to spend up to one quarter of the school year drilling for tests in reading and math. Music and art were cancelled and social studies began in May — after testing. Engaging, culturally relevant classes were turned into test prep. In some schools, Test Best and Test Ready booklets were the curriculum for weeks. CPS Office of Accountability staff told me that when Vallas left in 2001, 59 schools — mostly Black — were using mandated Direct Instruction, in which teachers read scripts and students respond with scripted answers. Not surprisingly, under this regime test scores went up. However, a 1999 National Research Council assessment expert “concluded that Chicago’s regular year and summer school curricula were so closely geared to the [standardized test] that it was impossible to distinguish real subject mastery from mastery of skills and knowledge useful for passing this particular test.”
Turning schools into test prep factories — and punishing and publicly shaming “failing” schools, students, teachers and parents in Black communities — took a toll. Some of the most dedicated and revered teachers left the system. For example, in one Black elementary school Lipman worked with, from 1997-2000, 26 of 37 teachers left, to be replaced by a succession of inexperienced teachers and interns. An award-winning teacher at the school explained that they couldn’t live with the ethical crisis of Vallas’s policies; for both teachers and students “it’s like a hammer just knocking them down.” A 2000 University of Chicago study reported nearly one-third of eighth graders retained in 1997 dropped out by fall 1999. In 2000, Parents United for Responsible Education won a civil rights complaint against CPS under Vallas for adverse discriminatory impact of the retention policy on Black and Latinx students. Expulsions, particularly of Black students, also surged, as documented in a 2001 Chicago Reporter article titled “Alternative education: Segregation or solution?”
When test scores flattened in 2001, Vallas left. But the system he set up of ranking and sorting schools based on an inappropriate use of standardized tests, and disregarding the historical disinvestment and racism schools had suffered, laid thefoundation for almost 200 school closings and turn-arounds and the education market that followed. These school closings, 90 percent predominantly Black, devastated Black communities in particular. Vallas’s electoral campaign focuses on fighting crime, but the disruptions from the school closings that were a major factor in the destabilization of Black communities can be traced back to Vallas’s reign at CPS.
Please open the link and read the full article.
If Vallas should win, the students and teachers of Chicago will endure the failed policies of the past two decades.
Katherine Marsh is an award-winning novelist who writes for children in grades fifth-through-eighth. At that age in the 1980s, she remembers falling in love with books. But she knows that children today are not reading for fun as much as they used to. NAEP data say so; parents as well. She knows that the ubiquity of cell phones, the Internet, abd television explain some of that decline in reading.
But she believes there is a problem with the way children are taught reading. No, she’s not talking about phonics and how children learn to read. She refers to the pedagogical approach that is required by the Common Core. children in school are taught to analyze what they read. This technical mindset, she believes, kills the joy of reading.
What I remember most about reading in childhood was falling in love with characters and stories; I adored Judy Blume’s Margaret and Beverly Cleary’s Ralph S. Mouse. In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early ’80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills. Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment. Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive. But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost.
This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.: “Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.” There is a fun, easy way to introduce this concept: reading Peggy Parish’s classic, Amelia Bedelia, in which the eponymous maid follows commands such as “Draw the drapes when the sun comes in” by drawing a picture of the curtains. But here’s how one educatorexperienced in writing Common Core–aligned curricula proposes this be taught: First, teachers introduce the concepts of nonliteral and figurative language. Then, kids read a single paragraph from Amelia Bedelia and answer written questions.
For anyone who knows children, this is the opposite of engaging: The best way to present an abstract idea to kids is by hooking them on a story. “Nonliteral language” becomes a whole lot more interesting and comprehensible, especially to an 8-year-old, when they’ve gotten to laugh at Amelia’s antics first. The process of meeting a character and following them through a series of conflicts is the fun part of reading. Jumping into a paragraph in the middle of a book is about as appealing for most kids as cleaning their room.
But as several educators explained to me, the advent of accountability laws and policies, starting with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and accompanying high-stakes assessments based on standards, be they Common Core or similar state alternatives, has put enormous pressure on instructors to teach to these tests at the expense of best practices. Jennifer LaGarde, who has more than 20 years of experience as a public-school teacher and librarian, described how one such practice—the class read-aloud—invariably resulted in kids asking her for comparable titles. But read-alouds are now imperiled by the need to make sure that kids have mastered all the standards that await them in evaluation, an even more daunting task since the start of the pandemic. “There’s a whole generation of kids who associate reading with assessment now,” LaGarde said.
Under the duress of Commin Core, students are analyzing passages without reading the whole book. They are getting read to do the same on the tests. This is a sure fire way to make reading a chore, not a pleasure.
The architect of the Common Core standards, David Coleman, used to claim all sorts of miraculous things that would happen, if everyone taught the way he wanted. Test scores would rise, achievement gaps would close, etc. in the decade after Commin Core was introduced in 2010, none of those miracles came to pass.
Coleman believed that children needed to interpret what was put in front of them, without context. Understand the four corners of the text in front of them. This may make sense for a test, where the only thing in front of the student is a short passage, but it’s no way to read for pleasure.
Worse, this approach is a sure fire way to turn reading into a dull exegesis of language, not into a source of joy.
Jan Resseger spent her waking years as a warrior for social justice in her church. Now she writes a brilliant and thoughtful blog.
Her recent post made me reflect on the fact that groups like “Moms for Liberty” and “Parents Defending Education” create turmoil and chaos over the issue of the day (masking, vaccines, school closings, trans kids, books about race or gender identity), then use the issues and conflict they created to demand vouchers to send their kids to schools with like-minded parents.
These Astroturf groups are funded handsomely by the Walton Family Foundation, Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos, and other billionaires to act as shock troops for their paymasters.
I cannot even keep track of all the press coverage I have seen in the past couple of weeks about school privatization proposals under discussion in the state legislatures. And in almost all of the articles I read, the move to privatize schools is accompanied by descriptions of culture war fights about book banning, interference with curricular standards, and elimination of programs that encourage “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in public schools and public universities. I have a stack of very recent articles about Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and New Hampshire, and I am sure I have missed others.
What is the cause of today’s attack on public schools and the kind of programming that many of us believe is essential to help our children live well in our diverse society?
And in a powerful report from the Network for Public Education, Merchants of Deception, political scientist Maurice Cunningham identifies the role of Astroturf parents’ groups that present themselves as though they are a spontaneous welling up of parent outrage. Even though financial support for these groups is untraceable dark money, here is how Cunningham tracks evidence that these supposedly local groups are well connected from place to place and supported by powerful, far-right political interests: “First we should watch for groups that have “grown at a pace that only a corporation’s monetary resources could manage.” Then we should identify the group’s allies to “get a better idea of the real powers behind” the organization. Additionally: “We’ll use another tool to draw telling inferences about these fronts: identification of their key vendors, such as law firms, pollsters, and public relations firms, which we’ll see are often instruments of conservative… networks… Another recurring clue… is the ‘creation story.’ A new non-profit group bursts forth with some version of claiming that two or three moms began talking over what they see as problems in schools and resolve to start a nonprofit to take on the teachers’ unions, administration, or school board. By some form of miracle, they almost immediately receive hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in funding from billionaires. Next, they find themselves gaining favorable coverage on right-wing media—Daily Caller, Breitbart, and Fox News…. ”
Of course both the disruption COVID thrust upon our communities and the use of parents by far-right groups trying to ban “WOKE” policies represent what many of us have been watching in the past couple of years. But on a deeper level, it is not a coincidence that the outrageous school board disruptions and the attempts by the far right to scrub the textbooks, and the legislatures considering parents’ bill of rights legislation also seem to be happening in places where slate lawmakers are also pushing vouchers, and not merely the old-fashioned tuition vouchers for private schools, but the new Education Savings Account universal programs to provide wider parental “freedom” and lack of oversight of the public dollars being diverted to these plans. These new vouchers are being designed to give parents the ultimate latitude in school choice—homeschooling and micro-schools where parents put their vouchers together to pay for a teacher for several families. Lack of regulation is a key ingredient in most of these plans. In every case the worldview underneath the proposals involves extreme individualism along with marketplace consumerism.
In her new book, The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession, Alexandra Robbins describes parents who view themselves and their children as the customers teachers must please: “At a candidate forum during the COVID pandemic, a Maryland school board member called students the ‘customers in our school system,’ as if teachers existed to satisfy students rather than to educate them… On a broader level, the student-as-customer attitude has contributed to a growing politicized movement pushing for parents to have authority over what is taught in schools.” (pp. 66-67) Believing your child is the client who must be pleased by services rendered is a very different conception of the parent-teacher relationship than believing that the teacher is a professional whose expertise and cooperation you can and should consult for guidance about your child’s education.
Please open the link and read the remainder of this very important post.
We saw this coming. The GOP candidates for President have decided, for now, to focus their campaigns against “critical race theory,” Black history, the threat posed by transgender students, and any teaching about race, sex, and gender.
CULTURE CLASH — Once upon a time, back when people used fax machines, education policy — test scores, spending, school choice and the like — were a notable feature of Republican presidential campaigns.
Former President George W. Bush’s support for education spending and the transformative No Child Left Behind Act was enshrined in the party’s 2004 platform. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee railed that a general lack of concern about education in the 2008 presidential field “frustrates the fire out of me.” Bush’s brother, Jeb, invoked Martin Luther King Jr.in 2016 when he proposed a detailed education platform before his campaign fizzled.
This year, education is re-emerging as a prominent issue for the budding 2024 GOP field. But America is poised to witness a presidential contest where the debate over school policy sounds dramatically different — with discussions over academic standards and the stunning, once-in-a-generation hitto test scores taking a back seat to issues with a more distinct culture war bent.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is salting a back-to-basics education mantra with brimstone, targeting school lessons on race and sexuality. Former Vice President Mike Pence has put a small Iowa school system’s gender identity policy in the national spotlight. And Former President Donald Trump is stirring up concerns about “pink-haired communists teaching our kids.”
Haley’s campaign launch last week offered a sign of the heightened role the education wars are about to play in the GOP primary.
“They’re talking about critical race theory, where if you send a five year old kindergartner into school — if she’s white, you’re telling her she’s bad, and if she’s brown or Black you’re telling her she’s never going to be good enough and she’s always going to be a victim,” Haley said of the academic practice to a New Hampshire crowd last week. “That’s abusive.”
She added that a Florida ban on sexual orientation and gender identity lessons for young students — championed by rival Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law — “didn’t go far enough.”
“When I was growing up, we didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade,” Haley said to applause in New Hampshire. “That’s the kind of stuff you do at home, you don’t do that at school. That’s the kind of thing parents do.”
For his part, Pence has focused attention on an Iowa dispute, in which the conservative Parents Defending Education organization is suing the Linn-Mar Community School District to stop it from enforcing a policy that directs educators to protect their students’ gender identities on campus.
The court case has garnered supportive briefs from the Pence-backed Advancing American Freedom organization plus a coalition of Christian groups and Republican state attorneys general. The legal battle is also the focus of a Pence political initiative— funded with an initial budget of $1 million — that will advocate for “parental rights” policies embraced by conservatives.
“We’re told that we must not only tolerate the left’s obsessions with race and sex and gender but we must earnestly and enthusiastically participate or face severe consequences,” Pence told supporters last week. “Nowhere is the problem more severe, or the need for leadership more urgent, than in our public school classrooms,” he said.
Trump’s education plan, unveiled last month, calls for cutting federal funding for any school or program that includes “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.”
Trump would also open civil rights investigations into any school district that has engaged in race-based discrimination, particularly against Asian American students. He also called to “keep men out of women’s sports,” make significant cuts to school administrative personnel, elect school principals and end teacher tenure.
“As the saying goes, personnel is policy and at the end of the day if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids we have a major problem,” Trump said.
Sen. Tim Scott, who is testing the waters on a potential presidential bid, is taking a less combative approach. Speaking at a GOP Black History Month event in Charleston last week, the South Carolina senator said “the story of America is not defined by our original sin, the story of America is defined by our redemption” and urged Republicans to “be the party of parents.”
Scott and others are responding to the GOP grassroots energy surrounding issues at the intersection of race, gender, culture and education — which Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin successfully harnessed in his 2021 blue-state victory.
The sharp-edged rhetoric might get sanded down for the general election. But for now, not getting outflanked on education controversies that currently animate the right appears to be the first order of business for the 2024 field.
Diane Ravitch's blog 