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.
Montgomery County Public Schools, in Maryland, has decided it’s had enough of parent input regarding its program of “storybooks” with sex workers, kink, drag, gender transitions and same-sex romance for elementary-age children. The MCPS, in its magnanimity, had allowed parents to opt their children out of such things, but the parents, en masse, opted their children out.
MCPS responded by issuing a blanket policy of no exceptions and no notifications—no more opt out for all those uppity recalcitrant parents.
Never mind that
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.