The same concept works with ideas. Yet, people tend to have a different reaction to loud voices, regardless of how fringe the idea. If it’s loud and repeated often enough, your average individual will grant it a degree of merit. The idea of acceptance upon repetition is stupid, but it’s the reality of how terrible ideas spread.

For a much more in depth understanding of how terrible ideas spread into acceptance, I would recommend a book called The Parasitic Mind by Gad Saad.

It’s how we’ve arrived at the idea of Critical Race Theory, or state sanctioned racism being taught in public schools. Students are taught that the idea of meritocracy is a characteristic of white supremacy, and schools work to lower the bar in the name of equity, to celebrate mediocrity over achievements. 

This has been the work of loud voices being mistaken as popular or rational. The squeaky wheel has gotten the grease. As radical Left and Communist ideology achieve benchmark after benchmark, the wheel keeps squeaking towards the next ideological goal. 

The squeaky wheel gets the grease is an idiom people tell their children, that ironically conflicts with the children’s book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. 

But outside of the world of storybooks and idioms, at some point we must ground ourselves in reality. A wheel that won’t stop squeaking needs to be replaced. Otherwise, your own well-being and that of your family’s is at risk.

Resident of the Pacific Northwest, Christopher Rufo, has been a leading voice of reason to replace that wheel.

Much of his work against state sanctioned racism has resulted in legislation at state levels to ban racism from being taught in public schools.

So far Idaho has signed such legislation into law, while bills in Oklahoma and Arkansas are awaiting their Governors to sign into law, while a number of other states have passed the house and are awaiting on a Senate vote, or are in the process of amending.

Some people actively go along with terrible ideas because they believe them to be popular. Other people quietly tolerate ideas out of fear of being called names and eventually submit into acceptance.

Others stop living at the demands made by their own bane and peril, roll up their sleeves, pump up the car jack, and replace that wheel. 

It may be thankless work now, but you’ll thank yourself later.

The post The Squeaky Wheel Needs To Be Replaced appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

It sounds like a ridiculous anecdote, but it is a simplified representation of the current primary and secondary educational system. As a recent high school graduate, I have seen firsthand so many flaws in the education system. From my experience, as well as research, I have identified three important factors that currently negatively contribute to the education of millions of students around the country. Some of these flaws are found not only in K-12 schools, but also in colleges as well.

COVID-19 Fear Mongering

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing well into the spring of 2021, some teacher unions have lobbied to stay on an asynchronous learning basis, with schools still remaining closed and the education of the children still being jeopardized for no currently scientific-based reasons. One example of such nonsense comes in the form of a video from the Chicago Teacher’s Union, which went live on Facebook on January 23 and depicts many of the teachers dancing while a narrator and captions convey the importance of staying safe during the pandemic. While the relation of dancing and safety is unclear, what is evident is the many falsehoods that are indirectly propagated by the video. These need to be analyzed to see whether a case can be made that it is too early to go back to in-person learning.

To debunk such a ridiculous video, it is important to first look at the number of cases and deaths by age group to determine the validity of any possible claims the union might make. First, deaths have been on the decline—even on the day that the video was originally published—and future projections as of the writing of this article show a similar trend. What if the students get each other infected and spread the coronavirus even more? Good question, yet statistically the number of deaths from COVID-19, pneumonia and the flu among the sick aged 0-17 is only 978 people across the whole country.

In comparison, the average age of a teacher in the United States is 42 years old. Looking at the figures, those in the 40-49 age range, accounted for 20,148 COVID-19 related deaths. These figures are from the start of the pandemic to today. This indicates that students are more than 20 times less susceptible than their teacher counterparts and, although the student population is large, they would not be at an elevated risk of infecting each other and the teachers. With vaccines being administered in daily increasing numbers, older teachers would be at an even lower risk than everyone else. As a result, safety is not as big a concern as the unions or the media make it out to be.

While the figures are not in the favor of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, I am not arguing that there should be no masks or social distancing in place. What I am saying is that schools need to open up and allow students to have face-to-face interactions with their teachers. What are the implications of continuing online learning? According to one Gallup poll, 30 percent of parents said that their child’s mental health has worsened as a result of online schooling and restrictions that are in place. In terms of education, it has been estimated that the students are only receiving 70% of their knowledge for a typical school year, while in mathematics that figure drops to 50%. Children are simply not learning the material that they would be able to learn in person.

Speaking from experience, I spent my last semester of senior year, and now my second semester in college being stuck with online learning. Many of my lectures are asynchronous only. I have rarely been able to ask my professors for help, and I had to resort to using outside sources and spending more time than necessary just to be able to pass many of my basic general education classes. Although I have made some friends through my online interactions with other students and through clubs that I virtually attend, I have not been able to meet most of those people in person. It is time to open up the schools and get everyone back to normal and into the classroom.

Reject Alternative Schooling Options and Parental Choice

One key aspect that is ignored by many politicians is the many alternative options to public schools that could be available to students through the use of student vouchers. Parents could select where they want to place their children. The Department of Education itself admits that funding would not solve all of the problems that cause disparity in the performance of students from low-income and high-income families. One option that they themselves proposed is community schools, which allow a greater involvement of parents and the local community in the structure of the learning curriculum as well as spending. Instead of having the state or federal government make those decisions on behalf of a local community, the local ordinance should decide how to approach its wants and needs and how to resolve any issues that may arise.

Charter schools have gained a lot of ground in the past 20 years, and now more than 7,200 exist in 44 different states. The main benefit is the increase in parental choice and satisfaction ratings. Among the different types of schooling, charter schools had 13% higher satisfaction ratings than district schools. Charter school parents also indicated that they were able to have more extensive communication with their teachers by 15% more than parents in district schools. Of course, private schools scored at the top of the satisfaction ratings, as parents with more money are able to send their children to an even wider array of schools. However, since charter schools are free to the public and take a huge portion of low-income students there is more competition to get in. Instead of being stuck in a low-income area and having one’s child go to that one school, parents are able to take their children to a school of their choice that is more competitive and provides more opportunities to their students. Even under Barack Obama’s administration, millions of dollars were spent on the development of charter schools. If there was little belief in them, why would they be funded so heavily? Students would be able to attend a school that fits their learning needs and desires and a general district school is not always able to provide that.

In my high school, for instance, we had only a small fraction of the classes for humanity-related courses compared to other schools in my county. Students have asked for many years to add courses to the registration list, yet they were always denied for unclear reasons. I wanted to take Russian as my foreign language instead of French, and to have more classes that would have been more applicable to my future career goals instead of being stuck with math all of these years. I understand that it is not possible to please everyone, but I have not heard of a single class being added from student requests. What time we did have to take an interesting elective was taken up by physical education or other unimportant classes—at least in my opinion.

Force Standardized Testing On All Students

One of the bigger downsides of high school that every student knows, including myself, is studying for the SAT/ACT tests. Colleges heavily rely on this metric, claiming that it provides a standardized baseline for applicants across the country, so that the performance of each of them can be accurately measured, as opposed to a grade point average (GPA), which might vary from school to school. The main problem with the SAT (and this is coming from a person who scored in the top 2% of the percentile range) is that it only accesses two subjects—math and English. Students come from different backgrounds, have different skillsets, and, as a result, might struggle with one or both of these subjects. A more artistically inclined student might be trying to become an art major, yet he or she might not get in due to doing worse on two subjects that are almost unrelated to future prospects. Since many colleges have begun to realize the flaw in these standardized tests, almost a third of schools do not require standardized test scores for admission. Instead, they rely on other metrics, such as the GPA, Advanced Placement test scores, the quality of the admissions essay, etc..

This trend will most likely be seen in secondary level education as well. If charter schools and even district schools decide to do away with standardized testing entirely, students will be under less stress, and their performance can be measured with standard class tests created by that very institution. This will help address the problem of having teachers “teach to the test”, and allow them to have more creative control and do a much better job of educating their students. Teachers are often evaluated and promoted or fired on how students perform on this flawed metric, and in many cases, negative results may be out of the educators’ control. For the same reason, besides discontinuing the requirement of SAT and ACT tests for students to get into college, schools should also drop the various other tests, like the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) in their entirety, and having a more flexible approach in teaching students.

What Does the Future Hold?

With Joe Biden as President, it is unclear what will happen with secondary education in the United States. In his campaign, he pledged to spend more money funding low incomes areas, while improving teachers’ salaries. On his website, there is no mention of alternative schooling options, and the cycle of perpetually throwing money in hopes to solve the various flaws in the education system continues. At this point in time, not much can be done to make the mentioned changes necessary on the federal level. Yet, states have the power to design their own educational systems. Hopefully, they will realize that the current school districting system needs to be redone instead of slapping on band-aids time and time again. Charter and private schools need to be allowed to compete for students instead of having a government monopoly on education.

The post How to Destroy Your Child’s Education in 3 Easy Steps appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Now, math education itself has been deemed “racist.” A group of educators just released a document calling for a transformation of math education that focuses on “dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by visibilizing the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.”

Among the educators’ recommendations, which officials in some states are promoting, are calls to “identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views,” “provide learning opportunities that use math as resistance,” and “encourage them to disrupt the disproportionate push-out of people of color in [STEM] fields.”

Beyond activism, these recommendations also argue that traditional approaches to math education promote racism and white supremacy, such as requiring students to show their work or prioritizing correct answers to math problems. The document claims that current math teaching is problematic because it focuses on “reinforcing objectivity and the idea that there is only one right way” while it “also reinforces paternalism.”

Prominent Professors Push Back

This week, some prominent university professors spoke out against these new woke math education recommendations. Princeton mathematics professor Sergiu Klainerman wrote a guest post on the topic at journalist Bari Weiss’s website. He says: “Attempts to ‘deconstruct’ mathematics, deny its objectivity, accuse it of racial bias, and infuse it with political ideology have become more and more common — perhaps, even, at your child’s elementary school.”  

Klainerman, who grew up in communist Romania, warns that this current classroom dogma is dangerous. He writes: “When it comes to education, I believe the woke ideology is even more harmful than old-fashioned communism.” 

Columbia University English professor John McWhorter also chimed in against this math education document and its recommendations. 

“This lovely pamphlet is teaching us that it is racist to expect black kids to master the precision of math,” he writes in a blog post. “To wit – its message, penned by people who consider themselves some of the most morally advanced souls in the history of the human species, is one that Strom Thurmond would have happily taken a swig of whiskey to.”

While the growing emphasis on critical theory in American classrooms has broader societal implications, including the devaluation of objectivity and individualism, the real victims of this educational approach are the students themselves. In one of his final articles before he died last December, economist Walter Williams decried the poor academic performance of students in large urban school districts. 

“In two city high schools,” Williams wrote of Detroit, “only one student tested proficient in math and none are proficient in English. Yet, the schools spent a full week learning about ‘systemic racism’ and ‘Black Lives Matter activism.’”

Public School Exodus

As this “woke” worldview continues to penetrate classrooms with mandatory curriculum standards, families who don’t agree with this ideology—or who simply want their children to learn basic academics—should have the opportunity to pursue alternatives to their assigned district school. Currently, 26 states have active school choice legislation that would enable funding to follow students, including adopting education savings accounts or tax-credit scholarship programs. Meanwhile, overall support for school choice policies has grown since last spring. 

The COVID-19 school shutdowns have put parents back in charge of their children’s learning in ways that were unimaginable pre-pandemic, with many parents leaving their district schools in droves. Indeed, the Associated Press reported a sharp decline in public school enrollment this academic year across the 33 states for which data were available. Millions of families have pursued private education options such as independent schooling and homeschooling that can offer more consistent, higher-quality in-person instruction than a district’s Zoom schooling or hybrid offerings. 

As the New York Times reported on Monday, fewer than half of K-12 students are currently attending full-time, in-person schooling and families are increasingly seeking other options. 

“Now many parents are beginning to rebel, frustrated with the pace of reopening and determined to take matters into their own hands,” the Times reports. “Some are making contingency plans to relocate, home-school or retreat to private education if their children’s routines continue to be disrupted this fall — a real possibility as some local school officials and teachers’ unions argue for aggressive virus mitigation measures to continue, potentially even after educators are vaccinated.”

The amplification of “woke” ideology in classrooms is likely to accelerate the current exodus from district schools. Parents have experienced a renewed sense of responsibility over their children’s education. Now they in many cases have had a front-row seat to what their children are actually learning through Zoom school, and hopefully will feel more empowered to push back against new critical theory curriculum standards—and choose education that values individualism over collectivism.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Image: woodleywonderworks on Flickr

The post Woke Educators Release Letter Declaring Objective Math a Form of ‘White Supremacy’ appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Protecting teachers from being sued is federal sovereign immunity, state sovereign immunity, and state qualified immunity unless there is some form of sexual assault involved. Also, there are unions and collective bargaining agreements that exclude parents from any voice in their child’s education. Simply, we parents/taxpayers are merely commodities that the teachers and their unions need so they can take our money whether they work or not.

I live in Fairfax County, Virginia and over half of my hefty tax payment goes to the $2.3 billion the county spends on schools and teachers each year. From a budget perspective, that is five times more than what is spent on public safety, 50 times more than on the administration of justice, and 10 times more than on all of the health, welfare, community, and family services provided by the county.

Neither Fairfax County teachers nor students have been in the classroom since March 2020. A small number of students are now returning, but will be supervised by non-teaching monitors, who certainly must be immune to Covid-19 if the teachers are willing to put them at risk in a classroom? Teachers have been prioritized for being vaccinated but want more before returning to teaching, including all students being vaccinated, young children being vaccinated (but there is no vaccine for them), new ventilation—and made-up new demands the night before any given day school is to start. This is not good-faith negotiating.

I could stop my tale of teacher woes and conclude as I started—by telling parents nothing can be done. For any American to come to that conclusion is un-American. We can always do something.

Parents in Fairfax County are starting recall efforts. A new collective bargaining law in Virginia requires only 30% of union members to approve the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers to be the exclusive bargaining agent for the teachers and to control the negotiating process. Parents need to make themselves involved, even if it means Gandhi-style passive resistance or non-cooperation.  Any school board member supporting a teacher-friendly agreement that ignores students should be on the recall list.

We have options. We need to use them.

The bigger issue, however, is that we need our children to get the best education possible so they can compete in the world. Teachers refusing to teach in a classroom is the best example of why the current public school system, created in the 19^th century, has failed and must be totally dismantled.

Throughout the past year, over 4.5 million students were in private (20%) and religious (80%) schools across the nation, and teachers have been teaching in classrooms without any serious illnesses. Those schools need to be the models. So how do we get more children into working schools?

Private schools are within the economic reach of all students.

The belief is that most parents cannot afford private school, which may be incorrect. Northshore Christian Academy asserts private school tuition ranges from $6,000 to $30,000 per year. But ranges are ranges and the real question is whether the U.S. is getting the value for the $720 billion dollars it spends annually on education. And this number is low since another $200 billion will be spent on education due to the pandemic. For the sake of discussion, are U.S. taxpayers getting $1 trillion dollars worth of value from teachers not teaching?

According to educationdata.org, in the U.S., the cost per student for public education is more than private education. Currently, the average cost per student is $14,840 at public schools, while the average cost per private school is $12,350. The range for private schools is $4,840 at the nation’s catholic elementary schools and can be as high as $37,500 at the 260 most exclusive boarding schools. On average, what is spent per pupil in public schools would pay for private school education, which would provide teachers for our students.

Action: Recognize teachers and their unions have made education a political issue.

Education is no longer about children. It is about teachers’ rights and union power in the Democratic Party. Teachers have paid handsomely for this protection, which insulates them from parents and government officials. Teachers are the leading financial contributors to the Democratic party since 1990. “Teachers union members comprise 10 percent of the delegates the Democrat National Convention, where they represent the single largest organizational bloc of Democratic Party activists.”

Once recognized as a political issue, it must be understood that it is a battle for the educational soul of children. Parents want their children to receive the best education possible so they can succeed in an internationally competitive world. Teachers want paychecks and protection from accountability. While there are more parents than teachers, unions have the money—which is what talks to politicians. Forget about small changes like a few more charter schools, a little more school choice, or a few extra scholarships to private schools. Those incremental steps merely let teachers’ unions win by giving parents a pyrrhic victory. The entire system must go!

Solution

Let all the taxpayers’ educational money paid to the public schools follow the student. Let the parents and the student select the best school for the child. In a non-pandemic year, there are $ 721 billion dollars to divide between students by state. Students in New York would receive $28,228 a year for the school of their choice. Students in the District of Columbia would receive $31,280 a year. The smaller, more rural states spend far less on education but costs are less; i.e., Utah and Idaho are in the $8,000 to $9,000 range. Most states would be in the $10,000 to $15,000 range. Literally, all public school expenditures are above the averages for private schools.

Schools will compete for the best teachers so they can be the best schools. Schools will also compete for students so they can support the school. When the money follows the student, the parents and students will use the taxpayers’ money to get the best education possible for their child. This competition also helps the nation by producing new generations of leaders and likely better teachers.

A free, competitive market will provide the best education for our children. It allows all schools, public or private, to compete for the taxpayers’ money spent on educating students—not supporting unions and all their silly work rules, outrageous demands, and total disregard for the people who pay teacher salaries.

This article was first published at www.reformthekakistocracy.com

Image: Phil Roeder, Flickr

The post Teachers Unions Treat Citizens as Commodities that Pay Taxes appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

This is no shock, considering most people were dissatisfied with public education before the COVID-19 pandemic. Understandably, parents are now worried whether their kids are learning and developing as they should be. This situation urgently needs to be resolved, and public education as it stands now cannot do that.

Of all parents, only 29% feel their child is progressing very well academically; 25% for emotional development, and 27% for social development under COVID-19 restrictions. It is a bleak reality that under a third of all parents feel schools are performing above mediocrity with their child’s development. 

Furthermore, the mental health of students has been considerably worse over the past few years, and school choice has a massive upside in curbing that loss in the long term. One article finds “that states that enacted charter school laws witnessed a 10% decrease in suicide rates among 15- to 19-year-olds. Private-school voucher laws were also associated with fewer suicides, though the change was not statistically significant.” Ten percent might seem small, but over time, that is hundreds of lives that can be saved.

Consider further that private schools  are rated the highest by parents on how they feel their children are progressing (all 45% and over for each type of development). The only other type of school to exceed the average of all parents in any development is charter schools and academic and social development. Unfortunately, these two types of schools are the least accessible either via economic means or state regulation of charter schools.

These sentiments are confirmed by the support for school choice policies, such as education savings accounts (81%), school vouchers (73%), tax-credit scholarships (74%), and public charter schools (72%). These are massively popular programs that people believe can make a difference.

Not only do we need that difference, but we need it fast. The United Nations Children’s Fund warns that “when schools close, children risk losing their learning, support system, food and safety, with the most marginalized children – who are the most likely to drop out altogether – paying the heaviest price.” That is not just in the United States, but worldwide.

Our current system is not working as it should and too many are suffering for it. The United States needs to be an example for supporting children and their families. It is the duty of any public education system to do so. So why not consider the prospects of widely popular programs that aim to help these families? Let us open education alternatives for families and make it work for those who need it most.

The post Pandemic Public Education is Leaving Children Behind appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

In 1899, the population of Boonville, North Carolina was under 200. It was a tiny crossroads town in the middle of farming country.

It was also the home of the Yadkin Valley Institute and School of Business, which 20 years later would become a public school.

My friend Allen, whose ancestors were among the first settlers of Boonville, loaned me a copy of the Institute’s catalogue for 1898-1899, a time machine that zoomed me off on an eye-opening ride into the past.

It’s 1898, and enrolled in this backwater school are 208 students, male and female, outnumbering the inhabitants of the town and ranging in age from 6 to 18. Most are North Carolinians, but there are three siblings from Union, Iowa, while W.L. Newton hails from New York City.

There are 10 teachers. Teachers and students use a total of 23 different texts, some of which are collections, such as “Holmes Series for Beginners.”

The older students follow three programs: college preparatory, business, or teaching. Courses for high school in the academic department – those preparing for college – include math up to trigonometry, Latin, rhetoric, elocution, the Constitutional history of the United States, and surprisingly for this time and place: psychology.

Business students study typewriting, shorthand, bookkeeping, and a subject lost to the 21st century world, telegraphy. Budding teachers prepare to teach in the public schools of North Carolina. The catalogue states, “That the work is successful and the preparation thorough is proven by the fact that during the five years of its (the Normal School) existence not a single pupil recommended to County Supervisors has failed to obtain certificate.”

The Institute also offers instruction in piano and three clubs: The Aldelphi Society, where young men polish their skills in literature, oratory, and parliamentary procedure; the Clio Society, where “the young ladies” recite verse, write essays, and sing; and the Philomathean Society, whose goals are similar to those of the Aldelphi.

Equally amazing as the inclusion of these courses of study in such a village are some of the goals of the Institute:

–  “Yadkin Valley Institute…aims to occasion the activity necessary to develop the student’s mind, to impress upon him the refinements of culture, to strengthen his body and influence his heart for the right. Character formation being the ultimate end of all instruction, we strive to educate our students morally as well as mentally.”

–  “We endeavor to create in the minds of our students a desire to be more useful.”

–  “Pupils who enter are supposed to be ladies and gentlemen of good moral character, and as such they are put upon their good behavior; it is expected that they will conduct themselves in a becoming manner.”

–  “If you are not willing to obey the rules that are for the good of the school, we do not want you.” (Though unlisted in the catalogue, the rules seem few, the system dependent on student deportment.)

–  And finally: “We do as we advertise.”

In Western society, these tenets about inculcating morality, encouraging our young to exercise their brains, developing the skills of rhetoric and elocution, and studying basics like mathematics, literature, history, and science, were long considered the building blocks of an education. The Greeks, the Romans, the teachers of the Middles Ages and the Renaissance, the schools and colleges of nineteenth century America: all paid homage to these educational goals.

And today? It seems we’ve lost that vision.

Unlike private or religious institutions, and with the exception of the service academies, our public schools and universities cannot be places where virtue is taught, primarily because we as a society can hardly agree on the meaning of the word. Most of our schools no longer recognize character formation as “being the ultimate end of all instruction.”

On the other hand, we could educate students to think objectively, yet we are failing at that task. Faulkner University law professor Adam J. MacLeod addressed this failure in a talk he gave to his students:

Reasoning requires you to understand the difference between true and false. And reasoning requires coherence and logic. Most of you have been taught to embrace incoherence and illogic. You have learned to associate truth with your subjective feelings, which are neither true nor false but only yours, and which are constantly changeful.

Instead of stumbling forward, always seeking new pedagogical pathways like No Child Left Behind or Common Core, maybe we should look backward at the old ways and see what we might learn.

—

This post Why We Need to Take Education Back to Past Practices was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Jeff Minick.

The post Why We Need to Take Education Back to Past Practices appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Mary Margaret Olohan

Public schools across the country have begun to close over the coronavirus pandemic, with some states outright declaring that all public schools are closed.

Officials in Oregon, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, Kentucky and New Mexico declared this week that schools in their states will be closed, while some public schools in Washington state, Virginia and Connecticut also temporarily closed down.

Maryland officials announced Thursday at a news conference that all public schools would be closed beginning next week and through March 27.

State Schools Superintendent: Mon through Friday next week, all schools will be closed in the state of Maryland @wjz #BREAKING

— Mike Hellgren (@HellgrenWJZ) March 12, 2020

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine ordered Thursday at a press conference that all Ohio public schools, including public, private and charter schools, would be closed for three weeks beginning Tuesday, March 17.

New Haven, Connecticut, public schools closed indefinitely due to concerns over the pandemic, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ordered that schools in Seattle close for a minimum of two weeks. Virginia public schools have also begun to close down, including Louden County Public Schools and Fredericksburg City Public Schools.

The largest school district in Texas, the Housten Independent School District, will also close for two weeks.

Meanwhile, New York school chancellor Richard A. Carranza has said that school closings will only come as a last resort, and the Los Angeles superintendent announced Thursday that schools would remain open — despite demands from teacher’s unions that Los Angeles schools close down.

Update as of 8:32 PM PDT pic.twitter.com/2OVhpQ1vQ4

— Austin Beutner (@AustinLASchools) March 13, 2020

This post will be updated if additional states cancel or close school. 

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post At Least Six States Close Down All Public Schools appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Mary Margaret Olohan

Opponents criticized an Iowa bill that would require schools to notify parents before teaching LGBTQ content to children.

Lawmakers introduced the Republican sponsored House File 2201 in January, a bill that would require schools to annually notify parents about any kind of material that discusses gender or sexual orientation. This would then give parents the opportunity to inspect such material pull their children out of certain classes.

The bill is one of 13 pieces of legislation introduced in the Iowa state legislature that opponents are calling anti-LGBTQ, CNN reported Friday.

Republican Iowa state Rep. Jeff Shipley says that the bill is intended to help the parents and school cooperate on what kind of schooling children should receive, rather than forcing parents to home-school because the school does not cooperate.

“Because there are so many unknowns (with gender identity and sexual orientation), it just seemed like common sense to make sure parents are involved,” Shipley told CNN. “Because when parents aren’t involved, they tend to get upset.”

Iowa Pastor Brad Cranston told the Des Moines, Iowa, outlet WHO-TV: “Parents have the right to know when it comes to a controversial issue what their children are being taught in schools they’re paying for.”

But opponents of the legislation warn that the bill is anti-LGBTQ and limits the scope of topics to be discussed in school.

The nonprofit One Iowa Action called the bill “harmful to LGBTQ Iowans” and said that the bill would “restrict educators from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity,” in a Jan. 31 post.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post Opponents Go After ‘Draconian’ Bill Requiring Parental Notification Before Teaching LGBTQ Content In Schools appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

In its October 2019 national survey, EdChoice revealed a startling statistic: More than 80 percent of US school-age children attend a public district school, but fewer than one-third of their parents prefer that they go there. This represents a massive choice gap in American education, with many parents still unable to opt-out of a mandatory school assignment in favor of more preferable options. Still, there are signs of hope.

Vouchers, Education Savings Accounts, and Tax-Credit Scholarships

Education choice mechanisms, including vouchers, education savings accounts (ESAs), and tax-credit scholarships, continue to gain popularity in many states.

Vouchers enable parents to use a portion of their child’s tax dollars allocated for public schools toward tuition for private schools. I recently wrote about the powerful story of Virginia Walden Ford, the Washington, DC, mom who would not accept that her son had to be stuck in a failing district school and pioneered the Washington, DC, voucher program that gives low-income families the ability to exit their assigned school for private options.

ESAs are similar to vouchers in that they enable families to access some of the funds allocated to public schools, but they have the added advantage of separating education from schooling. Rather than only targeting tuition at a private school the way vouchers do, ESAs expand the definition of education beyond schooling, allowing parents to access funds for a wide variety of options, including tutoring, books and resources, classes, and tuition. Tax-credit scholarships, available now in 18 states, enable taxpayers to receive tax credits when they donate to approved non-profit scholarship organizations that then distribute scholarship funds to income-eligible families to use for tuition and other educational services.

The expansion of education choice mechanisms to more families may rely, in part, on how the US Supreme Court rules on the case of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. Last week, the Court heard arguments in this case, which exposes the 19th-century anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments that continue to exist in 37 states. This particular case focuses on a tax-credit scholarship established in Montana that allowed taxpayers to receive a tax credit when donating to a scholarship fund that would distribute those funds to children for private school tuition. Some parents, including the plaintiff, chose to use the scholarship money to send their children to religious schools, which the Montana Supreme Court said violated the Blaine amendment’s ban on funds to religious schools.

Writing recently about the case in The Atlantic, Nick Sibilla concludes:

In deciding Espinoza, the Court has the opportunity to do more than just settle the fate of one controversial tax credit; it could also junk Montana’s Blaine Amendment, finding it in violation of the Constitution’s religious-freedom and equal-protection clauses. In doing so, it would set a strong precedent against any law born of bigotry, even if other justifications seem neutral.

Homeschooling

In my Cato policy brief last fall, I found that some of the states with the most robust education choice mechanisms also had a large and growing population of homeschoolers. It makes sense: In an environment where parental choice in education is valued and expected and where a default school assignment is actively questioned, parents feel empowered to make more choices regarding their child’s education, and many of them choose homeschooling.

Nationally, homeschooling numbers hover near two million learners who are increasingly diverse along all metrics, including demographics, socioeconomic status, geography, ideology, and educational philosophy and approach. The majority of today’s homeschooling families choose this option because they are concerned about other school environments.

Hybrid homeschooling options, which include both private and public part-time programs, enable more families to choose homeschooling by providing some out-of-home, center-based learning and instruction that complements the central role of the family in a child’s education.

Charter Schools and Virtual Schooling

Despite periodic disappointments for charter school expansion, their popularity continues to climb. Charter schools are public schools that are often administered by private, usually non-profit organizations. They trade heightened accountability for more autonomy. The US Department of Education reports that the number of charter school students swelled from less than a half-million students in 2000 to three million students in 2016, or six percent of the overall K-12 school-age population.

According to a new poll ahead of the upcoming presidential primaries, voters are less likely to support Democratic presidential candidates who want to end federal charter school funding.

Virtual schooling, which is online learning that is often public and tuition-free for K-12 students, is also growing, as is blended learning, which combines online and in-person instruction.

While the education choice gap remains wide, and many families are unable to exercise school choice, education options continue to expand and diversify. Parents are being re-empowered to determine how, where, and with whom their children are educated. Policy and legislative efforts continue to extend access to education choice mechanisms, while entrepreneurs build new models and new marketplaces to catalyze choice and innovation. The future of parental choice and educational freedom is bright.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The post Families Today Have More Schooling Options Than Ever, But Nowhere Near Enough appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Any parent can relate to Walden Ford’s story, so get ready to feel her anger and sorrow followed by joy and triumph. It is a powerful new film that everyone should watch.

The DC Voucher Program

Walden Ford was instrumental in helping to launch the Washington, DC, voucher program, giving low-income children access to funding to exit unsafe and low-quality public schools in favor of private options. The film is rooted in her experience of craving choice and encountering bureaucratic obstacles.

When she removes her teenage son from a failing public school and enrolls him in a nearby private school, Walden Ford feels hope and optimism despite needing to clean toilets and scrub floors to try to pay the tuition. Her hard work isn’t enough to pay the bill, though, and she is forced to leave the private school and re-enroll her son in the district school, where his potential is squandered.

When Walden Ford learns that the DC schools spend twice the amount of money per pupil than the cost of her son’s private school, she refuses to believe the prevailing rhetoric that public schools are chronically underfunded, and she seeks to establish a local school voucher program that gives disadvantaged families the opportunity to opt-out of mandatory school assignments in favor of private options.

Indeed, these are the options that more well-off families, including the legislator who opposes Walden Ford’s initiative, exercise all the time. Education choice programs extend these options to all families regardless of zip code and socioeconomic status.

Cost-Effective Programs

The DC voucher program came under attack in recent years as previous assessments showed that achievement scores for voucher students were lower on average than district school students. But the most recent evaluation of the program, released last spring, showed no difference in achievement scores between voucher and public school students in DC while costing taxpayers about one-third the money.

Moreover, Corey DeAngelis, Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation, has discovered that participants in the DC voucher program reported much safer learning environments. He writes:

Students that won the voucher lottery and attended a private school were over 35 percent more likely to report that their schools were very safe. And parents of voucher-using students were about 36 percent more likely to report that their children were in very safe schools.

Students in the DC voucher program also had higher overall satisfaction levels with their schools and significantly lower absenteeism.

Choosing safe and satisfying schools for their children is a key priority for many parents. Affluent families exercise this choice all the time, selecting private schools that focus on their children’s well-being or moving to communities with safer, better schools. Lower-income parents, like Walden Ford, want the same opportunity to choose safer, better schools. The DC voucher program and others like it across the country offer more parents greater choice and peace of mind.

Miss Virginia is a must-watch film. Click here for more information and viewing options. Be forewarned that I needed some tissues while watching, but it was well worth a few tears, and a few dollars, to learn more about this incredible woman, her remarkable story, and the promise of education choice for all families.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The post “Miss Virginia” Shows the Dilemma Many Lower-Income Families Face on Schooling appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.