Tag: education

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

Don’t Ask, We Won’t Sue

Solas, CRT, Critical Race Theory

Uh oh. Haul out the armament and load and aim — at least if you’re responsible for educating the young daughter of Nicole Solas.

Solas is among the many parents who missed the memo about how sinful it is to have some idea of and influence on what their kids learn in public schools.

She’d heard about how public schools have been indoctrinating kids with a noxious ideological brew about race and gender. So she asked the principal of her daughter’s school in the South Kingstown School District of Rhode Island whether collectivist critical race theory and gender theory were any part of the curriculum.

The principal give hints that this was indeed happening. But then the school stopped talking. Instead of elaborating, school officials told Solas to instead send formal public record requests to learn what was happening at the school.

Which she did. Then the school district began publicly harassing her for being a “threat to public education” (as we all should be, given such doings). The Rhode Island branch of the National Education Association even went so far as to sue this mom.

Nicole Solas could easily have been swamped by litigation costs. Fortunately, the Goldwater Institute stepped in to defend her against the lawsuit and help her pursue her inquiries about the school.

As for her little girl, she’s doing fine. In a private school that is open about what it teaches, which doesn’t include any corrosive political agenda.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom national politics & policies

The Explosion in Alternatives

home school, student, education

“Across the country, we’re in the midst of an unprecedented explosion in homeschooling and alternative education,” Sharyl Attkinson reported last Sunday on her weekly news program, Full Measure, citing a “mass exodus from America’s public schools.”

And it’s not just about pandemic measures like mask mandates. In February, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly recalled three school board members over their fixation on wokeness to the exclusion of in-person education. And the school board’s antics in liberal Loudoun County, Virginia, turned last year’s race for governor into a referendum on whether parents have any say-so at all. 

They do, apparently. 

Though I have covered the enormous growth of alternative education during the pandemic — here and here, for instance — I have been looking for more specifics. 

“Relative to pre-pandemic levels,” Corey DeAngelis with the American Federation for Children told Attkisson, “homeschooling has at least doubled,” and now accounts for “closer to 4 million students.”

Too good to be true? I double-checked. The U.S. Census Bureau used the same language as Attkisson and DeAngelis: “the global COVID-19 pandemic has sparked new interest in homeschooling and the appeal of alternative school arrangements has suddenly exploded.”

At the end of the 2019-2020 school year, “about 5.4% of U.S. households with school-aged children reported homeschooling,” according to their Household Pulse Survey. “By fall, 11.1% of households with school-age children reported homeschooling.”

The increase was five-fold for “respondents identified as Black or African American,” with 16.1% homeschooling.

“Still more students have left for religious schools,” reminds DeAngelis, “or other private schools.”

Attkisson also pointed to a jump in support for school choice.

Parents of the world unite. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling term limits

Term Limits for School Boards

Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida, school boards, education

Statewide term limits on Florida’s school boards are finally here.

The limits passed by Florida’s legislature and signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis are not the best one could hope for. State senators pushed for and got a 12-year limit rather than the eight-year limit preferred by house members.

Regardless, parents and children are better off with at least some legal limit on the tenure of board members and on their opportunity to abuse power — some curb in addition to the possibility of surmounting the overwhelming electoral advantages that incumbents typically enjoy.

Governor DeSantis agrees that the legislation reaching his desk should have been an eight-year limit.

“They did three terms . . . and I wouldn’t veto the bill just over that. But if it were a standalone measure, I would have insisted on just two terms for school board members because I think that’s enough time to go, serve, get stuff done.”

In 2018, the Florida Constitutional Revision Commission sent eight-year limits on school-board tenure to the voters as Amendment 8. But the Florida Supreme Court knocked the question off the ballot because the limits were combined with other measures to reform education, like more freedom for charter schools.

It is a near-certainty that voters would have passed the measure — a prospect that terrified those who benefit from rampant school-board corruption.

Sure, what has now been enacted is only a partial remedy. But it’s something.

I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that something good is better than nothing good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Cowardice 101

racism, reverse discrimination, quota

An anonymous author at Quillette reports a 2017 conversation between the author, a professor, and a student, Daniel. Daniel had carefully analyzed abundant evidence of race-based “affirmative action” policies at their university and the destructiveness of those policies.

The author says he stressed that “it would be unwise for Daniel to launch a campaign against the admissions committee,” no matter how solid the data.

Bury the findings, was his advice. The campaign would fail and “probably” do no long-run good. (Implying that bad cultural trends are not even partly reversible, or at least “probably” aren’t; ergo, good men, do nothing.)

Also, publishing “would probably end up hurting him rather than helping him.”

Suppose a scholar like Thomas Sowell, who has compiled massive evidence contradicting the assumption that racism or the legacy of slavery “explains” all economic patterns and disparate outcomes, had followed such vicious advice when starting out?

“Don’t do it! Don’t report your research and conclusions, Mr. Sowell! You’ll never advance by pursuing the truth! Just go along to get along. Like me.”

According to the professor, Daniel was not entirely consistent in his indictment of quotas. The professor could have encouraged him to be more consistent. Instead, he encouraged him to give up.

Our quisling Quillette academic could have told Daniel: “You’re right, and I can help you to strengthen your argument. Why don’t we co-author something about this so that you won’t have to deal with the flak alone?”

Did the possibility even occur to him?

What an education.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling initiative, referendum, and recall

Woke Board Broke

San Francisco, school board, recall

The pro-education, anti-indoctrination counterrevolution is chalking up a major win in . . . San Francisco?

Homeschooling — or at least private-school schooling — sounds better every day. Pandemic-rationalized permanent shutdowns of classrooms, along with the accelerating ideological assaults that many school boards are waging on behalf of gender fluidity, racist “antiracism,” regimented speech, etc., do more than merely suggest we find alternatives.

Yet, for one reason or another, many families are stuck with public schools.

But they are apparently not stuck with the very worst that public schools can impose. Last Tuesday, in the first recall election in San Francisco in some 40 years, fed-up parents threw giant butterfly nets over three local school-board malefactors and dragged them off stage: Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga.

Instead of working to reopen schools, the board’s been busy these last couple of years killing merit-based admissions at the magnet school Lowell High, scrubbing the names of dozens of schools to get rid of such blighted appellations as “Abraham Lincoln” and “George Washington,” and spending a million bucks to repaint a mural of the life of Washington. Last year, the district’s budget deficit swelled to around $125 million.

After the votes came in, other educrats in town scurried to the defense of the downfallen trio and prayed that their replacements would consist of more of the same.

But what parents can do once, they can do again, and not just in San Francisco. 

Kids, shake their hands. Your moms and dads are cool.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom too much government

The Young and the Unmasked

your rulers, your child, masks, Covid

It wouldn’t surprise me if Tiffany McHugh, former director of the Foothills Christian Church Preschool in San Diego, wishes now that she had been running a preschool in a slack state like Florida.

Florida doesn’t penalize such malefaction.

It doesn’t even prohibit it. Yes, things have gotten pretty bad in states like Florida. They let the two-year-olds breathe: unthinkable! The policymakers in these states apparently labor under the presumption that the COVID-19 pandemic is not Bubonic Plague 2.0 and that, for kids, the risk of serious COVID-19 disease has always been very low.

Well, in California they take these risks seriously!!!!!!!

The Golden State’s Department of Social Services has shut down the preschool McHugh was directing and pulled her license. The problem? She couldn’t get the tykes to stay masked.

“There were a lot of children who were just too young to wear masks,” McHugh confesses,“they pull them off. It’s really difficult.”

This makes it sound as if she didn’t even try handcuffing the kids so that they could not remove their masks. Talk about dereliction of duty.

Other area preschools have not been similarly targeted, and so many suspect selective enforcement. But hold on. When you’re going after flouters of regulations, somebody has to be brought to book first. 

Rest assured, all other San Diego and California preschools will be outlawed momentarily.

McHugh’s school has appealed the decision to ban her forlife from working with children. The hearing will be held on February 11.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling

School Boards Withdraw

Merrick Garland, School Board, censorship

Several state school board associations are withdrawing from the National School Boards Association (NSBA). And doing so pointedly. 

Why? 

Because of the NSBA’s September letter to President Biden characterizing the many protests by upset parents across the country as “domestic terrorism.”

Those protests are ample evidence of the growing discontent with the injection of racist “critical race theory” (CRT) into K-12 classes. In addition to calling the avalanche of complaints a form of “domestic terrorism,” the NSBA claimed that the CRT agenda “is not taught in public schools.” 

This was met with widespread (and justified) incredulity. The NSBA claimed that CRT was not being taught because college-level texts purveying CRT aren’t used in K-12 classes. Nevertheless, teachers had been instructed, workshops had been conducted, and students had been lectured and censured — all in CRT lore and dogma.

The NSBA later unpersuasively apologized for “some of the language” of their previous letter without repudiating its main contentions or the CRT indoctrination.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland has issued no apology for using the original NSBA letter to rationalize establishing a task force to investigate parents.

The statement of the Ohio School Boards Association public sums up the sentiments of the state organizations leaving the NSBA: “OSBA believes strongly in the value of parental and community discussion at school board meetings and we reject the labeling of parents as domestic terrorists.”

Parents Defending Education reports that as of mid-November, some 26 state school board associations have “distanced themselves” from the letter. Fifteen have formally withdrawn their memberships.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

The Freedom to Say “Jesus”

Brian Hickman, religion, freedom, dance

Some people have it tough to begin with. Then others make their lives even tougher for no good reason.

Fifth-grader Brian Hickman has cerebral palsy. Inspired by his mother, Adriana, he doesn’t let it keep him down.

His resilience has recently been tested. One of the things Brian loves to do is dance, and he spent weeks preparing for a talent show at his elementary school. 

Then the school said no.

He wanted to dance to “We Shine,” a contemporary Christian song that mentions Jesus. In accordance with the school district, administrators told him he couldn’t use it. 

Too offensive.

The principal opined that permitting the song would violate “separation of church and state.”

Well, “separation of church and state” is a term of art for what is in the Constitution: the right to free exercise of religion, and a prohibition on establishing a state church.

Letting Brian dance to his preferred music could not have resulted in the imposition of a prayer schedule on the citizenry, in forcing Episcopalians to become Lutherans or vice versa, or in otherwise coercively establishing religion.

No, officials were merely consulting their own sensibilities and deciding that they or the students could not abide exposure to Christian sentiments. Since Brian likes only Christian songs, any alternate he might have come up with would probably also have been refused.

But why make him start from scratch anyway?

His mother knew what to do: enlist the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, which promptly filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District. Which promptly reversed course and let Brian dance to the music he wanted.

Case closed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom government transparency

Virginia is for Parents?

McAuliffe, Youngkin, Virginia, Governor, education

Virginia’s governor’s race offers 2021’s biggest prize. Might the outcome of the contest between former Governor Terry McAuliffe, the old Clinton pal, and Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin, portend partisan momentum going into 2022? 

In just the last dozen years or so, my adopted commonwealth has mutated politically from “Deep Red to Solid Blue.” There is, the FiveThirtyEight polling website explains, “a 13-election winning streak for Democrats in Virginia statewide races since 2012.” Though the McAuliffe/Youngkin race is “somewhat likelier to result in a Democratic victory,” it “could go either way.”

The biggest flashpoint? McAuliffe’s statement at the final debate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” 

I quoted that last week in “Burning Down the House.” But in a comment, a reader named Doug argued that I was “taking McAuliffe’s comment totally out of context.” 

Now, McAuliffe’s words had been widely reported in precisely the fashion I had placed them, so I felt comfortable. But I had not listened to the entire exchange, specifically to what McAuliffe was responding. So I listened.

“What we have seen over the course of the last 20 months,” Youngkin told the debate audience, “is our school systems refusing to engage with parents.” Noting how he had spoken with parents upset about “sexually explicit material,” Youngkin charged that McAuliffe “vetoed the bill that would have informed parents” about those materials.

“I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education,” concluded Youngkin.

In response, McAuliffe called Youngkin “clueless” and then famously dissed parents.

“School boards are best positioned,” McAuliffe wrote in vetoing that 2016 legislation, “to ensure that our students are exposed to those appropriate literary and artistic works that will expand students’ horizons and enrich their learning experiences.”

Whether their parents like it or not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

Combatting Campus Cancel Culture

education, wisdom, cancel culture

We keep hearing how students and professors are being targeted for saying stuff they’re not supposed to say — from the perspective of the hard-left students, professors, and off-campus third parties who launch most of the attacks, that is.

Which seem to be happening more and more often.

The numbers confirm it. New research by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) indicates that attacks on professors for impolitic speech have increased since 2015. Most of the attacks — 74 percent — have resulted in sanctions against the accused.

According to FIRE, “calls for sanction” of a professor rose from 24 in 2015 to 113 in 2020.

Three fourths of the tallied incidents, 314 out of 426, have led to punishments like suspension or termination.

The attacks tend to occur on university campuses with “severely speech-restrictive” policies. Like many Ivy League schools.

One of the researchers, Komi German, says that university administrators and presidents must “explicitly state that the protection of free speech and academic inquiry supersedes protection from words that are perceived as offensive.”

Good idea. Let them do that.

Why aren’t the censorious administrators doing it already, though? 

Probably because they lack allegiance to the value of freedom of speech on campus.

Until these academics all have Damascus-level conversions, parents and students must do what they can themselves to discourage these censorious policies. This means, abstaining from attending and paying tuition at schools that penalize professors and others for wrongspeech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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