Here is how parents are winning:
School district attorneys are the biggest obstacle to school districts making change. As my insider said, "The lawyers are a huge, huge problem in every school district." California public records requests in several pending lawsuits show where lawyers have counseled school districts on ways to circumvent the Constitution at the state and federal levels. So, when you get your board members installed, move to fire the district lawyers.
A fish rots from the head. Do like OUSD did: move to get rid of the superintendent and their assistants. "This is the most local control that any municipality has," my insider said.
Parent-first activists, pro-parent boards, and candidates must get their own public relations and social media arms. Every public entity—especially the unions—has a communications apparatus. If money is an issue, someone's savvy teenager can do this for their pro-parent school board and school board candidates. Part of the reason the unions get all the attention is that they have the legacy media in their pockets and they have activists on hand to work social media to their advantage. Pro-parent advocates and school boards need to pay greater attention to getting their message out.
The pro-parent agenda is winning in the courts.
Schools would benefit from an injection of morality and responsibility. Christianity and guns can teach those two things. Let people have these clubs.
With student test scores plummeting further every year, is cursive writing really that important? Absolutely!
In an interview with The Daily Signal, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita announced the launch of an online portal in which parents can monitor content of potential concern.
“This is a tool to empower parents in their dealings with their own school system so they can better raise their kids, which is their job and not the schools,” Rokita told the Signal. //
When Indiana officials tried to challenge teachers on the use of such material, many denied that they were using it. The portal was, therefore, designed to help parents collect proof of what was really going on in the classroom with the use of screenshots, lesson plans, emails, and more. //
LambeauPlain
17 hours ago edited
In a free enterprise society, competition raises all boats. It encourages creativity, effectiveness and efficiency.
In government run societies, competition is replaced with status quo dogma, lack of tangible results, and waste.
The unionized public school monopolies are terrified of having to sell and deliver results to earn customer loyalty. T
The teachers unions have been bloated with hubris. They have been turning to rampant marxism (using social platforms of sex, race and equity) to change the subject away from meaningful learning...and being a monopoly believed they could get away it. They have mostly succeeded...until recently.
Missouri legislators are trying to give Missouri families what they want and deserve: school choice and not school assignment. Mind you, they’re suggesting baby steps—a program that limits the number of students who can transfer out of a district and allows districts to decide whether or not to receive students from outside of their own boundaries. It is not the strong, mandatory program that Kansas has. It certainly isn’t the universal choice of any public or private school that all Iowa families have. But it still could provide a lifeline for Missouri families stuck in our lowest-performing districts or children who are struggling. //
And yet, the teachers' union leadership says they can’t support such a program unless students in high-minority and high-poverty districts are severely restricted from participating because otherwise there would be “no protection against resegregation.” First, resegregation? Missouri school districts aren’t currently segregated? Second, and more importantly, do you know what causes segregation? District lines. In many cases, district lines look a lot like the property red lines of 100 years ago. //
Open enrollment began happening in other states over 30 years ago. In 1988, when Minnesota first allowed all students to choose any public school in the state, they also began researching who chose to transfer and why. Since then, 27 states have passed mandatory open enrollment programs, and the research on them has continued.
So, who uses open enrollment? According to a 2015 study of the Michigan Schools of Choice program, it has been historically disadvantaged students, in this case, low-income and African American students, who were the most likely to request a transfer. //
I don’t really believe that the leaders of Missouri’s largest teachers union think open enrollment will lead to further segregation. I think the race card is a convenient excuse to try to prevent the two things that concern them most.
The first is finding out what families really think of their assigned public schools. I believe that families facing the biggest challenges are fully aware that their children are also trapped in low-performing schools. Charter schools in St. Louis and Kansas City quickly fill up because families want anything other than their neighborhood school. //
The second concern, if we’re being honest, is that enrolled students come with public money. If students leave low-performing districts, they will take money with them, and the schools will be even worse off. So, strap those kids to the deck of the Titanic. //
Cafeblue32
11 hours ago edited
As my dad learned in WW2, desperate actions for desperate times can somtimes get you killed pretty fast, because they lead to hasty unthought out decisions. Desperate times are when soldiers are most trained to remain clear headed and logical.
We are where we are because our solutions are always in crisis mode as a defense against the left. We act fast to try to stop it. In truth, if we simply returned to Constitutionl principles and ran the place as a Republic made up of multiple states rather than the permanent two party winner take all democracy they have turned it into, the system would correct itself. Until we do, all we're going to get is one party or the other's idea of what "our sacred democracy" should look like.
Desperate times call for a return to first principles, which are based in reason and informed by values, not in anger and moral panic.
In the video, Weingarten took aim at former White House Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, and American Federation For Children Senior Fellow Corey DeAngelis for advocating for school choice measures.
“They have not one thing that they offer as a solution other than privatizing or voucherizing schools which is about undermining democracy and undermining civil discourse and undermining pluralism because 90% of our kids go to public schools still,” she said. “They just divide. Divide. Divide. Divide.” //
Proponents of school choice measures have rebuked Weingarten’s remarks, arguing offering more education options to families accomplishes the opposite of what the union leader claims.
“This country was founded on the principle of individual rights. There is nothing democratic about forcing kids to remain in failing schools,” Angela Morabito, a spokesperson for the Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI) and former press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, told Crisis in the Classroom (CITC). “The right choice for our country’s future is to allow families to access the schools where their children learn best.”
“Randi’s utopia is to have every kid in America stuck in a classroom that prioritizes failing standards, identity politics, and frivolous days of the year over academic achievement,” Michele Exner, a senior advisor at Parents Defending Education (PDE) told CITC. “She was the champion of school closures and is one of the main reasons students are suffering from historic learning loss.”
Recent polling suggests support for school choice is on the rise.
Funding should follow the student, not the school. //
gibbie | December 20, 2023 at 12:27 pm
If there is such a thing as systemic racism, its best example is the teachers unions preventing economically disadvantaged black children from attending better schools. //
Milhouse in reply to ChrisPeters. | December 20, 2023 at 8:40 pm
An argument can be made for public schools, as an education can help one to provide for oneself and to, in turn, contribute to our society.
Eating can help one keep on breathing, which is necessary for the above to happen, and yet that is not an argument for public commissaries. Instead we have private supermarkets, and those who need help are given subsidies by the taxpayer so they can shop there. The same goes for shoe stores; shoes are a necessity, but we don’t use that as an argument for setting up public shoe dispensaries. We make people shop for shoes at private stores, and we help those who need it. I can’t see an argument for why education should not be the same. Make everyone shop for their children’s education at private schools, and give vouchers to those who need help affording it.
After the past week's Congressional hearings, the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania are being exposed to an amount of publicity and scrutiny they're not used to and likely wish would go away. As we reported, the trio claimed that calls for genocide against Jews needed to be placed into context before deciding whether they violated student codes of conduct.
The backlash was swift, and so was the backpedaling. //
Hallen
2 minutes ago
...indicating that Gay might have plagiarized...
There is no 'might have'. She did. 100%, no doubt, blatant plagiarizing.
It's even more egregious because Swain, the brilliant woman Gay plagiarized, is also a black woman. It's even more funny because Swain is conservative and rational. She has done a lot of work debunking the whole 'Democrat to Republican migration in the south' canard. You can see her on Prager U talking about it. Brilliant woman.
It's dastardly that Gay stole so blatantly from Swain and the fact that the Harvard PhD committee didn't even notice. Talk about the bigotry of low expectations. Harvard so wanted a black female PhD that they willingly (I'm betting) ignored the plagiarism in order to credential here. And then they made her president as soon as they could even though she lacked any form of credible academic achievement or publishing. //
anon-t26i
4 hours ago
What we have is an infatuation with higher education. Once upon a time a PhD was granted to, not persons of continuing education, but to persons who contributed new, not re-hashed, not unusual view points on an already known idea, but new, original ideas to the corpus of knowledge in the discipline. There is no evidence that the number of PhD's we currently have, and paid for, and continue to pay for have contributed that number of new ideas. In any discipline much less than a "studies" program, which is no discipline at all.
In the future, when I think about the textbook definition of America’s failed pseudo-elite, I’ll think of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
In a Nov. 8 speech to Western state governors in Wyoming that was unearthed Monday, Cardona delivered this line about delivering technical assistance to states.
“As, I think it was President Reagan, said—‘We’re from the government, we’re here to help,’” he said. //
That’s certainly not what Ronald Reagan said.
The original, famous line comes from a 1986 press conference about agricultural policies in which Reagan said: “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Of course, Reagan was channeling the strong belief of many Americans at the time that the federal government had become too big and too intrusive, and was mostly incompetent at delivering solutions to the problems of American society. //
T. Becket Adams @BecketAdams
·
The "education secretary" misstating a well-known quote regarding bureaucratic incompetence is too on-the-nose even for absurdist fiction. Any good editor would send it back and say, "Too much."
Townhall.com @townhallcom
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona:
"I think it was President Reagan who said, 'We're from the government. We're here to help!'"
Here's the actual quote:
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."
Embedded video
4:18 PM · Nov 27, 2023 //
Has American education really improved since the department was created in 1980? What does it say that the man who now leads it seems to be lacking in a basic understanding of history?
Whatever Cardona’s reason for botching the Reagan quote, it is an excellent illustration of the shallowness of our nation’s overcredentialed ruling class. Lacking both wisdom and a real education, they instead thrive on bland ideological conformity that stifles independent thought and elevates mediocrities.
America has had plenty of corrupt, incompetent, sinister, and downright crazy politicians and government officials in the past. But never before in our history have we had such uniform incompetence and ignorance embedded in positions of power. //
Let’s say you buy into the progressive-era ethos of replacing constitutionally limited government with an empowered, educated elite. How can one look at our current system and conclude that trading in America’s long tradition of self-government ushered in the rule of wise philosopher- bureaucrats? //
This problem isn’t just about Cardona or the Biden administration. It’s about the current failures of Western civilization and the United States.
When we think of the large and long-term failures of our government, when we think of the frayed and failing domestic institutions that have lost the trust of the American people, we should consider that our problem is not a few clowns in high places. The problem is an entire elite ecosystem that rewards the wrong values, that fails to develop the thinkers and leaders capable of leading a great society.
Our leaders know little about where we came from and less about where we are going.
Maybe one of the many reasons the leaders of our elite institutions stood by and watched, or outright cheered, when the mob came for the statues of our great men is that toppling monuments relieved them of embarrassing comparisons.
Illingworth believes people who want a free country must be willing to suffer to keep it free. That’s why the Air Force veteran is on the board despite the pressure that puts him under. There’s no benefit to having a Constitution if the people of our country don’t act to enforce its ideals, he said.
“Every time you point to something great and enduring, it’s because some person followed through on the courage of their convictions,” he said.
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