Tag: schools

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education and schooling First Amendment rights media and media people

License for Leftists

censorship, education, schools, Marxism

Libertarians should avoid taking sides in left-right antagonisms when promoting a principled third position would make more sense.

Regrettably, in “Christopher Rufo Wants To Shut Down ‘Activist’ Academic Departments. Here’s Why He’s Wrong,” libertarian magazine Reason fails to offer that alternative.

“In an essay published this week in City Journal,” author Emma Camp begins, “conservative activist Christopher Rufo argued that universities — or rather, the state legislatures governing these universities — should shut down ‘activist’ academic departments. But rather than protecting higher education, forcibly shutting down left-wing academic departments would be nothing more than routine censorship.”

Tellingly, she never defines “routine” censorship.

Let me help: routine censorship is the governmental policy of preventing or punishing private speech on private property. 

State colleges and universities are public institutions, politically established and subsidized by taxpayers. With few exceptions, “private colleges” are also routinely tax-funded at the demand end, and are further supported with research contracts.

Getting rid of Marxist professors preaching political revolution is no more anti-free speech than preventing the CDC and Anthony Fauci from conducting gain-of-function virus research within some college laboratory.

Ms. Camp quotes the Supreme Court about the importance of “safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned.” Freedom sounds great, but as usual, the Supremes forget that taxpayers have an interest, and that constraints on public schools was once routine.

So how not to “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom”? 

Offer a third position: de-subsidize and dis-establish government “education” by empowering higher education’s customers. Let Marxist professors find payers in the private sector.

Instead, Emma Camp effectively tells conservatives they have no choice but to fund every leftist program that politics and the bureaucracy allow. She could have recognized that “Academic freedom” in the context of tax-subsidized schooling is merely ideological license.

Which is itself a sad alternative to real liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

The Liars

teacher, education, gender, trans

Talk about proof positive that school officials have a policy of lying to parents about their children!

According to Fox News, Kansas teacher Pamela Ricard contends that “deceiving parents about their children’s pronouns was against her Christian beliefs.”

Yet her bosses demanded this precise deceit.

Officials at Fort Riley Middle School suspended Ricard for referring to a transgender child by his or her legal name and by standard pronouns rather than by his or her preferred name and pronouns. (The Fox News report is coy about the actual sex of the child.) Ricard had also been ordered to use only the legal name and standard pronouns when speaking to the child’s parents — i.e., to conceal the child’s stated preferences.

Parents of any religion, or none, may well dispute the notion that when their kid suggests that he or she is “really” a member of the opposite sex, this profession of sexual faith points in a direction that any supportive adult ought only to encourage and sanction.

Of course, it is precisely the fact that parents may well disagree with school officials about the appropriate response to such intimations that inspires dishonest officials with an ideological-cultural agenda to demand that parents be lied to.

With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, Pamela Ricard won a settlement of $95,000 from the Geary County school district for its treatment of her. After she filed the lawsuit, the district dropped its policy of lying to parents.

At least, so they say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling government transparency

Parents Kept in the Dark

education, sexual orientation, teachers, parents, children

When does it become irresponsible to send children to a public school? 

Has the line been crossed in Fairfax County, Virginia?

Their school board now prohibits teachers from telling parents when children “change gender” or pretend to change gender. Such decisions may be evidenced by a student’s changing his name or by identifying as a member of the opposite sex or as “nonbinary” on a school’s learning portal.

The district is not inviting teachers to exercise discretion about whether to inform parents. One can imagine cases in which a teacher knows parents to be physically abusive and likely to come down on a kid like a ton of bricks if alerted to such an event.

Rather, the policy stipulates that parents needn’t ever be told about such matters. To the extent teachers obey, parents won’t know unless informed by the children themselves.

If you live in Fairfax County, you could protest.

And you could do other things, such as

  • attend school board meetings to object, as parents attended a Fairfax board meeting to object to the policy of suspending fourth-graders for using the “wrong” pronouns for classmates;
  • join the shadow board that parents have formed to criticize the doings of the Fairfax County board;
  • vote against a school board member or try to recall members — unless a judge decides that your recall petition fails to show “probable cause for removal.”

Or you could just get your kids the heck out of the public schools.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling judiciary

School Choice Rescued

Tennessee, education, schools

Though not yet a complete victory for school choice, a recent decision by the Tennessee Supreme Court constitutes a big win for the Tennessee Education Savings Account Pilot Program.

The court rejected a major claim in a lawsuit filed by Nashville County and Shelby County to challenge the constitutionality of the program, which awards scholarships up to $7,300 to qualifying students so they can escape failing public schools.

The lawsuit contends that the program flouts a rule prohibiting the state legislature from passing local laws that are “applicable to a particular county . . . either in its governmental or its proprietary capacity.”

Judging that school districts aren’t counties and that the ESA program does not impair the ability of counties to govern themselves, Tennessee’s highest court threw out a determination to the contrary by lower courts and sent the case back down for review of other claims in the lawsuit.

The Institute for Justice and the Beacon Center of Tennessee, which have been working together on the case, are optimistic about the final outcome.

According to IJ attorney Arif Panju, the ruling means that “thousands of Tennessee parents and children trapped in failing school districts can look forward to seeking a better education this fall at a school of their choice.”

In its description of the program, the Tennessee government mentions the lawsuit and expresses the hope that the state will “succeed on appeal” and begin enrolling students in 2022.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling insider corruption

Principal Gets F and Payoff

education, school, cheating

Former principal of Maspeth High School, Khursid Abdul-Mutakabbir, exemplifies the who-gives-a-crap approach to education.

After a foot-dragging investigation, the New York City Department of Education finally fired the man for urging staff to concoct fake grades, fake classes, fake graduation rates.

His attitude: “I don’t care if a kid shows up at 7:44 and you dismiss at 7:45, it’s your job to give that kid credit.”

An official report outlines the many derelictions at this public school. Yet when the local DOE removed the principal, it also gave him a seven-year sinecure paying $260,000 a year.

Wha—? Why? 

Well, they’re all members of the same club.

Such nihilism and grift are rampant, if not universal.

Calling the settlement a “deeply symbolic insult” to taxpayers and students, columnist Bob McManus wants Mayor Eric Adams to “claw back” the payoff to prove that he really does mean to “fight for public education.” 

Frankly, the conduct of everyone involved is life-destroying — not just a matter of insults and symbolism. 

The minds and futures of young people are at stake.

In many schools, things only get worse. Maybe your kids are stuck in a public school that cannot be reformed, with perverse ideological agendas displacing reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic, never mind how to learn and think. Maybe homeschooling isn’t an option.

Glenn Reynolds advises shutting down the imploding public schools and replacing them with “universal vouchers, in the name of public health.”

Regardless of what specific reform we take to this mess, remember the goal: a learning lifeline to every kid who wants better. A choice. A chance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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 ideological culture social media

Discord Meets Democracy

San Francisco, schools

When it comes to public schools, “no city has experienced the level of discord as that in San Francisco,” reports The Washington Post. 

That’s because, as The Post posits, “the San Francisco school board has been operating” with “a heavy focus on controversial, difficult racial issues, and slow progress on school reopening.”

A sampling:

  • “In January, the school board voted to rename 44 schools” with purported “connections to slavery, oppression and racism” — though The Post notes “the alleged ties were thin or, in some cases, historically questionable or inaccurate.”*
  • One of the most controversial moves by the board was “[c]hanging the admissions process for the elite Lowell High School — eliminating grades and test scores and admitting students by a ranked-choice lottery.” As The Post explains, “the change means that students with the best grades and scores may not be admitted.”
  • The school board removed Commissioner Alison Collins as Vice President in March, after her anti-Asian tweets from 2016 came to light. She called Asian Americans (who happen to disproportionally earn entry to Lowell) “house n****rs” who employed “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”**

“Through all this, the city’s school buildings remained closed,” notes The Post, “even as private schools in the area and public schools elsewhere in the region operated in person.”

Thankfully, San Franciscans have launched a recall campaign against three members of the seven-member school board: President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga and Commissioner Alison M. Collins. 

The best thing for public education in Frisco will be to school these “first” recall targets in the power of the citizenry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Facing a lawsuit, the board voted unanimously to rescind their renaming of those “‘injustice-linked’ schools” — just a few months after the original vote.

** In response, Collins is suing the board for $87 million.

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education and schooling initiative, referendum, and recall

Organizing an Ouster

Learning Under

Despite everything, public schooling can help kids learn some important things.

But this schooling is also something that kids have to survive. If and when Johnny can’t add, spell, figure out who’s buried in Grant’s tomb, or relate premises to a conclusion — the lessons and educational theories he’s been subjected to often have something to do with it.

Now Johnny is being told, if his skin is white, that he must feel guilty about his skin color and work to find, dwell on, and exterminate super-subtle racism buried deep within his privileged soul. He can’t just be happy and learn.

The rationale for this assault on the individual is called “critical race theory.” And in some school districts, this mislabeled “antiracist” indoctrination is being imposed on students (as it is also being imposed throughout society).*

Parents in Loudoun County, Virginia, are fighting back by forming a PAC with the mission of ejecting purveyors of critical race theory from the school board. The PAC is led by Ian Prior, who says that county parents “cannot wait until 2023 to elect new leaders.”

Board members must be recalled because of the board’s failure to reopen schools, its imposition of “dangerously divisive critical race theory,” and its cooperation with “tactics designed to intimidate students, parents and teachers from exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Good luck, parents. 

And if you can find a way to educate your kids without sending them to public schools, I suggest that you consider that alternative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Take Action

* “On April 19, 2021, the Biden Administration proposed a rule,” alerts Heritage Action, “that would allow the Department of Education to prioritize recipients to receive K-12 grants if they include critical race theory in their curriculum.” The Federal Register is accepting public comments on the proposed rule here until May 19.

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education and schooling

None of That Happened

Baltimore, schools, education

A high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland, has only passed three courses in his last four years of “study.”

But here’s the kicker: his 0.1373 Grade Point Average is average at his school. Out of 120 students in his class, the young man ranks 62nd, with 58 others failing to reach his hardly stratospheric GPA.

“Tiffany France thought her son would receive his diploma this coming June,” explained Project Baltimore, the local Fox affiliate’s watchdog effort on education. “But after four years of high school, France just learned, her 17-year-old must start over.”

The television exposé found that in three years her son had “failed 22 classes and was late or absent 272 days.”

But for some inexplicable reason, though the unnamed lad was flunking roughly nine out of ten classes, Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts continued to pass him on to higher grades and more advanced classes than those he had just bombed on.

“I’ve seen many transcripts, many report cards, like this particular student,” informed an anonymous (for fear of reprisal) administrator with the City Schools.

“He’s a good kid,” his mother offered. “[H]e’s willing, he’s trying, but who would he turn to when the people that’s supposed to help him is not? Who do he turn to?” 

Baltimore City Schools released a long statement detailing their bureaucratic procedures and protocols to prevent students from falling through the cracks. “France says none of that happened,” reported Project Baltimore.

I was privileged to have two parents who would never have allowed me to be so mis-educated. But when parents struggle, the theory is that public schools are there to help. In actual practice, though, this theory fails.

But gets passed along anyway.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Taxing Panicsville

Earl G. Jaques

There is a big problem with Delaware school districts asking voters for additional tax money via ballot referendums. You see, sometimes the people don’t vote the way school officials and politicians want.

Have no fear: Rep. Earl Jaques (D-Glasgow) has authored House Bill 129 to solve this thorny problem. 

“This bill creates a mechanism,” its official summary reads, “by which school boards may increase funds for a school district both with and without a referendum.” 

Meaning, of course, without a referendum . . . since current law requires a public vote. 

“That way, [school districts] know the money is there if they need it, and they don’t abuse it because they know it’s there,” explained Jaques. “The problem with the referendum system is that they have to ask for more than they actually need, because they know it’s going to be a long time before they can come back.”

“Despite his assurances that the system would not be abused,” the Dover Post reports, “technically, school districts could raise taxes by 2 percent each year.” Or by any increase in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is higher.

Inexplicably, three stories — in the Dover Post, Newark Post and Delmarva Now — told readers it was the “lower” of the two. The bill clearly says the “higher.” Odd that media outlets would not grasp the ever-so-subtle difference between the words “higher” and “lower.”

“Everybody’s in ‘Panicsville,’ but it’s really not that way at all,” offered Jaques. “We, my colleagues in the legislature and I, could raise your income tax right now, and what’s your recourse? Vote us out at the next election.”

Excellent advice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Earl G. Jaques

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