Tag Archives: education

Selfish

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And from that, a Texas bill that would create universal/State-wide school choice—paid for by Education Savings Accounts of $10,500 per K-12 student—is on the brink of failure to pass. Much progress has been made, courtesy of Governor Greg Abbott (R) having convened a special session of the Texas legislature for the purpose. However, here we are on the last day of that session (as I write), and the failure brink is caused by a few rural Republican representatives.

The bill would let any Texas parent withdraw his student child from a public school that parent deemed unsuitable or failing to educate his son or daughter and transfer him/her to a different school (typically charter, voucher, or private) more to his liking.

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Intrinsically Inferior

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The Oregon State Board of Education has waived, essentially, all high school graduation requirements—demonstrated competency in reading, writing or math—and is allowing anyone and everyone who had the initiative simply to enroll in a high school to graduate with a high school diploma.

Board members said the standards…harmed marginalized students since higher rates of students of color, students with disabilities, and students learning English as a second language ended up having to take the extra step to prove they deserved a diploma, The Oregonian reported.

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Don’t Take that Federal Money

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That’s what Tennessee is considering regarding Federal education funding transfers—$1.8 billion worth, especially since the money comes with mandates and other strings. Breaking the addiction to Federal dollars will sting: Tennessee has collected some $14.85 billion in its own tax revenues through August of this year, which projects to about $22.28 billion for the year; those $1.8 billion represent about 8% of Tennessee’s domestic income.

To see if such a rejection is “feasible,”

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“Employment Violence”

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Boston University has laid off some 15 staffers of the university’s Center for Antiracist Research. BU’s School of Social Work Clinical Assistant Professor and faculty lead for education and training at the Center for Antiracist Research, Phillipe Copeland, claims that’s violence.

This act of employment violence and trauma is not just about individual leaders. It’s about the cultures and systems that allow it to occur. And too often rewards it. Antiracism is not a branding exercise, PR campaign or path to self-promotion. It is a life and death matter[.]

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Firing a Teacher

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A Cobb County Georgia elementary school teacher was terminated by the school’s school board for reading a book centered on gender identity to her fifth-grade students. The book feature[d] a nonbinary character and challenge[d] the concept that there are only two genders. Such books are barred from elementary school instruction under Georgia’s Divisive Concepts Law that prohibits teachers from using controversial topics in their instruction. The school district also argued that the teacher, with her reading, violated three district policies.

The firing came after an investigative three-person tribunal had sided with the teacher, recommending that she keep her job. Of course, the teacher and her lawyer are crying politics over the firing. The lawyer, Craig Goodmark:

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Why Johnny Can’t Read

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An increasing number of States are looking at passing laws blocking third-graders who can’t read (well enough) from being passed on to fourth grade.

Tennessee, Michigan, and North Carolina are among at least 16 states that have tried in recent years to use reading tests and laws requiring students to repeat third grade to improve literacy. Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, and Nevada have all passed similar laws that will go into effect in the coming years.

Those laws, too, typically include extra tutoring, summer school, and…teacher training (what a concept that last is).

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Who Restricts What in K-12 Education?

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Cogently put by Keri Ingraham, Discovery Institute’s American Center for Transforming Education Director in her Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed:

[M]ost “public” schools aren’t public at all.
In most communities, children are restricted to a single assigned school based on their home address and arbitrary boundary lines. Private schools often have academic, behavioral or other admissions standards, but they don’t keep children out simply based on where they live.

There’s this bit, too:

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It’s Safer This Way

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Recall that, in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ (D) slur regarding Florida’s updated education curriculum, Governor Ron DeSantis (R) invited her to Florida to discuss with him that curriculum.

Harris doesn’t want to. She made it to Florida, though, to talk to the 20th Women’s Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Quadrennial Convention. That’s where she made her excuses and backed away.

They attempt to legitimize these unnecessary debates with a proposal that most recently came in of a politically motivated roundtable[.]
Well, I’m here in Florida, and I will tell you there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact. There were no redeeming qualities of slavery.

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Who Interviewed These Folks?

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I have to ask because:

Roman Devengenzo was consulting for a robotics company in Silicon Valley last fall when he asked a newly minted mechanical engineer to design a small aluminum part that could be fabricated on a lathe—a skill normally mastered in the first or second year of college.
“How do I do that?” asked the young man.
So Devengenzo, an engineer who has built technology for NASA and Google, and who charges consulting clients a minimum of $300 an hour, spent the next three hours teaching Lathework 101[.]

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A Start

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But it’s a move that could—and should—be made irrelevant by a larger move.

Senators Marco Rubio (R, FL) and Kevin Cramer (R, ND) have reintroduced their Protect Equality and Civics Education (PEACE) Act, which is intended to eliminate the ability of the Department of Education to commit tax dollars to any plan or program to push Critical Race Theory into our schools.

That’s fine as far as it goes, but there’s a larger solution that more broadly addresses this mess.

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