Category Archives: education

Optimism

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Scott Fitzgerald (R, WI) and Aaron Withe, Freedom Foundation CEO, have it in spades regarding the National Education Association. The headline on their Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed illustrates it:

America’s Largest Teachers Union Isn’t Beyond Reform

Yes, it is. The NEA is utterly beyond redemption as its managers insist on pushing CRT, child transgenderism, and more from its pantheon of woke ideologies onto children, all the while deprecating the role of those children’s parents in their kids’ education.

The failure is sealed by NEA President Becky Pringle’s hysterical rant earlier this month at the NEA’s 2023 Representative Assembly, excerpted here.

This is a preview of Optimism. Read the full post (403 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Do What I Tell You

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Nice little school you got there. Be too bad if somethin’ was to happen to it.

In response to the Temecula Unified School Board’s decision not to adopt a controversial social studies textbook in May, California [Progressive-Democrat] Governor Gavin Newsom challenged the board’s decision and threatened it with legislative consequences if it does not reverse course.

Here’s Newsom putting it plainly:

If the school board won’t do its job by its next board meeting to ensure kids start the school year with basic materials, the state will deliver the book into the hands of children and their parents—and we’ll send the district the bill and fine them for violating state law.

This is a preview of Do What I Tell You. Read the full post (315 words, estimated 1:16 mins reading time)

A Bogus Beef

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Some academics object to Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott moving to ban TikTok from Texas government devices and from personal devices used to conduct Texas official business. Texas’ legislature passed the bill creating the ban, and Abbott signed it into law last December. Now a New York State-headquartered organization, ironically named The Knight First Amendment Institute, which is a facility of New York City’s Columbia University, is suing Abbott among other governors, over the ban, claiming free speech violations.

The lawsuit said the state’s decision…is comprising teaching and research. And more specifically, it said it was “seriously impeding” faculty pursuing research into the app—including research that could illuminate or counter concerns about TikTok.

This is a preview of A Bogus Beef. Read the full post (382 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

“Undemocratic”

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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) used his “line-item” veto power to veto part of a legislatively-passed law regarding public school funding. His veto authority actually is less a line-item veto authority than it is a words and phrases veto authority.

Evers, a Democrat, used his veto pen Wednesday to strike out text intended to increase funding for the 2024-25 school years, crossing out the “20” and the hyphen. The updated language allows K-12 schools to raise their revenue per student by $325 a year until 2425.

This is a preview of “Undemocratic”. Read the full post (416 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

“Understand Their Identities”

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In a Fox News article centered on the decision by Georgia’s Professional Standards Commission to remove terms like “equity” and “inclusion” from the State’s teacher preparation standards, Aireane Montgomery, President and CEO of Georgia Educators for Equity & Justice was quoted as objecting.

I cannot imagine thinking that teachers should go into a classroom not having an understanding of how important their students’ identities are[.]

That’s not at risk from the removal of artificial criteria from the State’s teacher professional standards. Regardless, the question of students’ identities is easily resolved.

This is a preview of “Understand Their Identities”. Read the full post (232 words, estimated 56 secs reading time)

Banning the Bible in Schools

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The Davis School District, Utah’s second largest for public schools, has decided to ban the Bible from its elementary and junior high schools, retaining it only in district high school libraries.

The district’s officials aren’t even claiming the transparent fig leaf of separation of church and state for the ban. The Bible is out because of its vulgarity or violence. It’s true enough that the Bible has what some might consider vulgarity—all those begets and begots, even incidents like one man in a leadership role sending a rival off to war to be killed so the one could have the other’s wife for himself.

This is a preview of Banning the Bible in Schools. Read the full post (289 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

Gone Too Woke

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Speak the truth, and be fired. Hurt someone’s feelings with that truth, and be banned altogether from your profession.

That’s what has happened to a teacher in Great Britain, a public school teacher who happens to be Christian, after having mistakenly “misgendered” (can there even be such a thing in a sane world?) a secondary school student and then compounding his sin by speaking honestly about his thoughts on gay marriage when a student asked.

This is a preview of Gone Too Woke. Read the full post (262 words, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)

A Parallel Solution

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DoEd Secretary Miguel Cardona (D) wants to enact a rule that would expand Title IX (illegally, but that’s a separate problem) to require State education systems to include transgender athletes in all heretofore women’s sports programs and all on heretofore women’s sports teams. Half of the governors of our States object.

If it comes down to it, Cardona’s move is very likely to fail in the courts. That will be an expensive and time consuming enterprise.

I propose another solution to be pushed in parallel with the lawsuit effort. It also would be expensive and time consuming to put into effect, but I think it would have a more permanent, and more beneficial, outcome.

This is a preview of A Parallel Solution. Read the full post (287 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

Teachers Union Disinformation

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In response to a collection of education-related laws recently enacted in Florida, Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said in his news release,

This new law grossly oversteps in trying to silence teachers, staff, professors, and most other public employees. We will not go quietly….

Here’s some of what those silencing laws do:

  • allow teachers to require students to hand over their phones at the beginning of class
  • ban the use of TikTok on school Wi-Fi and networks
  • does not allow students to use school internet to access social media (with some exceptions)
This is a preview of Teachers Union Disinformation. Read the full post (246 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)

Higher Ed Administrators and Values

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New Jersey’s Progressive-Democratic Party Governor, Phil Murphy, has decided to intervene, nakedly, on the side of unions in a labor dispute between Rutgers faculty and Rutgers administrators.

Rutgers faculty walked off the job Monday after three employee unions launched a strike. The move has left classrooms empty….

Under New Jersey law, university administrators can go into State court and get an injunction forcing an end to the strike and a resumption/continuation of negotiations. Murphy has stepped in, though, and told the administrators “don’t you dare.” Murphy’s diktat isn’t, strictly speaking, enforceable, but Murphy does control 20% of Rutgers’ state funding, and he appoints the majority of its board.

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