Education / Youth – Page 16

An Ugly Omen

I’ll begin today’s post with a link to this report from The Week, but I’m reasonably certain that everyone reading this blog has already encountered reports about Ron. DeSantis’ most recent assault on the Constitution.

On the remote chance that you were vacationing in Bora Bora or blissfully hidden in an Amazon forest, I’ll explain: DeSantis refused to allow Florida schools to use a new Advanced Placement course in African-American studies, accusing it of being “woke.”

DeSantis has engaged in an unremitting war against “woke-ness”–otherwise described as any recognition that Black, Brown and LGBTQ people are citizens who are entitled to be treated as civic equals. My initial reaction to this latest eruption of racism in an effort to appeal to the increasingly racist GOP base was just to shake my head at this latest effort to protect Florida school kids from the evils of education.

Then came the reports prompting today’s headline–the utter capitulation of the College Board.

The alarming part of this story is that the College Board “completely bowed to his demands — and extremely quickly at that!” The nonprofit’s insistence that politics played no part in the decision is bunk. According to The New York Times, the writers and academics barred from the curriculum include Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a Columbia professor whose work has been “foundational in critical race theory,” and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, “who has made a strong case for reparations.” More than 200 African American studies teachers said in a Medium post this gutting of the course amounts to “censorship and a frontal attack on academic freedom… Happy Black History Month.”

As Robert Kuttner put it in Kuttner on Tap in The American Prospect, DeSantis and the College Board were “enabling each others corruption.”

On Wednesday, after a threat from Gov. Ron DeSantis to ban the new Advanced Placement curriculum on African American studies in the state of Florida, the College Board released a watered-down version. The new curriculum is mainly historical. It deletes critical race theory and expunges or minimizes references to Black Lives Matter and the issues of reparations and Black incarceration. Some issues are removed from the AP curriculum entirely; others are left as optional topics for papers. The course still covers the slave trade and the civil rights movement but excises the work of several Black radical scholars.

Talk about following the money!

Like most Americans, I had previously been unaware that the AP courses offered to high school students capable of engaging with a more challenging curriculum are a branded product of the College Board.

As Kuttner explained,

The College Board is a classic case of a large nonprofit that behaves exactly like a profit-maximizing business. Its annual budget is about a billion dollars a year, and according to its most recent tax filings, Coleman, its CEO, was paid $2.849 million in total compensation in 2020, which included $1.6 million in bonus and incentive compensation.

It turns out that the College Board’s income comes almost entirely from two sources: the fees it collects from SAT exams, and the money it makes from AP classes–licensing fees for use of the curricula and charges for the AP tests that allow students to earn early college credits.

But the SATs are on the ropes. Thanks to a long-standing campaign against the overuse of standardized testing by FairTest and other critics, at least 1,835 colleges and universities, a majority of all higher-education institutions, now either don’t use the SAT or make it optional. Its total revenue dropped from $1.1 billion in 2019 to $779 million in 2020, the year of its most recent tax filing. So the College Board is now even more reliant on AP curricula and tests.

That reliance explains a lot. According to Kuttner, there are currently 38 AP courses, including human geography, psychology, art history, and Japanese culture and language. The AP African American studies curriculum was new, poised to be launched in the 2023-2024 school year.

I had also been unaware of a growing movement to replace the College Board’s AP classes with “home-grown” curricula; the article quoted one principal explaining that having his own advanced courses allows his school to be creative in curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and to respond to student interests.

Parents opposed to substituting local curricula worry about college acceptances in the absence of the familiar College Board classes. Kuttner notes that their worry “is fomented by that other famously corrupted institution, the U.S. News rankings. In ranking high schools, one major U.S. News weighting factor is how many kids take AP courses—”a perfect symbiosis between two unsavory education players.”

This “backstory” goes a long way to explain the College Board’s craven capitulation to the censors of the far right. It also strips away any belief that the Board’s mission is education.

It’s profit.

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The White Supremacy Party

In a recent newsletter, Robert Hubbell summed up the path Ron DeSantis is pursuing–the path he clearly believes will garner him the GOP’s Presidential nomination.

Amid the torrent of reporting on Ron DeSantis’s attack on critical race theory and intersectionality, the quiet part is often left unsaid. So let me say it: DeSantis’s educational agenda is code for racism and white supremacy. (Other parts of his agenda seek to erase the dignity and humanity of LGBTQ people.) DeSantis’s invocation of “Western tradition” is meant to suppress knowledge regarding the people (and contributions) of Asia, Africa, South America, Oceania, and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. See Talking Points Memo, DeSantis Makes 2024 Ambitions Clear As He Pours Gasoline On His ‘Woke’ Education Fire.

Given DeSantis’s generalized ignorance, his call to focus on “Western tradition” is a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to the discussion of unpleasant truths about America. For example, the enslavement of Black people was a “tradition” in North America for 246 years—and the abolition of that evil practice is relatively recent (155 years ago). So, a college course that honestly addresses the Western “traditions” of North America should include an examination that the role of slavery played in the economic, social, and political development of America.

The New York Times, among other outlets, has covered DeSantis’ various attacks on “woke” instruction, noting that it is part of “An unrelenting assault on truth and freedom of expression in the form of laws that censor and suppress the viewpoints, histories and experiences of historically marginalized groups, especially Black and L.G.B.T.Q. communities.”

The Times didn’t mince words.

Under Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE” law — which would limit students and teachers from learning and talking about issues related to race and gender — Florida is at the forefront of a nationwide campaign to silence Black voices and erase the full and accurate history and contemporary experiences of Black people….

The same reasons that the “Stop WOKE” law is blocked from enforcement in university settings hold for elementary and secondary schools. As a federal judge ruled in November, the law strikes “at the heart of ‘open-mindedness and critical inquiry,’” such that “the State of Florida has taken over the ‘marketplace of ideas’ to suppress disfavored viewpoints.”

The most important point made by the Times–and confirmed by DeSantis’ obvious belief about the most effective path to the Republican nomination–is that it is nakedly racist and homophobic.

It is no longer plausible to maintain that the GOP base is composed of anything other than White Christian Supremacists.

DeSantis is currently the most shameless panderer to that base, but the evidence is nation-wide–and public education is currently the favored target. After all, if children are taught that all people are human and that America hasn’t always treated “others” that way, they might grow up to be “woke.”

DeSantis is simply doing publicly what GOP officials in other states are doing somewhat more circumspectly. Examples abound.

Think the voucher movement is about giving children educational options? Think again. There’s a reason that so many of these programs lack accountability–here in Indiana, SB 305 vastly extends the availability of vouchers–but places the program under the “oversight” of the State Treasurer–not the Department of Education. It has no mechanism for assessing educational value.

In Ohio, laws presumably governing home schooling failed to shut down a Nazi home schooling curriculum.

Antifascist researchers known as the Anonymous Comrades Collective first identified the couple, who participated in a neo-Nazi podcast under the names Mr. and Mrs. Saxon, as Logan and Katja Lawrence of Upper Sandusky in Wyandot County. The group’s work was the nexus for a story about the couple in Vice News.

Their Telegram channel, started on Oct. 23, 2021, is called Dissident-Homeschool. It features suggested content that is racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, as well as factually inaccurate. It includes cursive practice sheets with quotes from Adolf Hitler, suggested content about Confederate General Robert E. Lee and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which included an unfounded conspiracy about Jewish people. The Telegram channel offers a suggested math lesson with a story problem attributing crime to different races.

There’s no way to tell how many other “home schoolers” use that channel or similar materials. I see nothing in Indiana’s voucher proposal that would allow the state to monitor for such use–or for that matter, educational value of any kind.

Well-meaning Americans tend to look at the various movements of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and others as outliers, a few twisted individuals who have succumbed to ignorance and hatreds that nice people largely relegate to the past.

DeSantis recognizes what those well-meaning folks don’t: ignorance and racism elected Donald Trump, and–if enough votes can be suppressed– may well lift him into the Oval Office too.

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Well, Give Them Points For Honesty

Readers of this blog may be tired of hearing my periodic rants about the GOP’s war on public education. If so, they need to skip today’s meditation.

I have my own suspicions about the real reasons for their animus. As political scientists and educators have repeatedly pointed out, public schools are constitutive of a public; in a rapidly diversifying population, public education is one of the few remaining “street corners” where differences in background, religion and ethnicity can be honored under an over-riding philosophy of governance. Public schools are where we can at least make a stab at attaining e pluribus unum–out of the many, one.

That lofty goal is what the war on public education is really about.

Granted, some of the GOP’s privatizers see voucher programs as a way of killing off the hated teachers’ union, and others evidently just despise anything government does–convinced by arguments from ALEC and the Koch’s network that the private sector does absolutely everything better than government, despite decades of research confirming that voucher schools fail to improve educational outcomes.

But at its base, the war on public schooling is a war on the way most of us understand America’s Constitutional philosophy and aspirations.

Living up to those aspirations requires knowing about the country’s past successes and failures. It requires civics education that emphasizes an important element of citizenship–the American principle that the law should treat citizens based upon their behavior and not their skin color or religion.

Those principles– and others that flow from them–are currently considered “woke” by America’s White Christian Nationalists. That’s the real basis of their attacks on the institutions supporting them, and sometimes, in unguarded moments, they admit it.

The New Republic recently reported on “School Choice Week.”

It’s National School Choice Week, that annual right-wing P.R. campaign to defund public schools that pretends to really just care about the children. But this year’s NSCW comes with a twist: Amid conservatives’ outcry over history lessons on race and LGBTQ rights and awareness in schools, some proponents of the “educational freedom” movement are pitching it as an antidote to the supposed indoctrination of students by leftie teachers and administrators.

In an interview on Tuesday with Fox News host Harris Faulkner, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott framed “school choice” as a way for parents to give their children a proper education free of woke lessons. “ABC, not CRT—it’s that simple,” said Scott, referring to “critical race theory.” “We need to teach the basics of education. We don’t need to teach people that, because of the color of your skin, you’re an oppressor or a victim.” (Scott introduced a resolution on Monday to officially recognize National School Choice Week. He was joined by many Republican senators, including Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Rick Scott—and a lone Democrat, Dianne Feinstein.)

The Educational Freedom Institute, and the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation argue that “school choice” can “help level the playing field” in the struggle between “conservative families” and “progressive teachers” who want to “proselytize” in the classroom

Attacks on public education are getting a second wind from reactionary resistance to the progress of Black, Brown and female Americans.

“Families should not be stuck in an education system that actively undermines parental rights and ideologically grooms children,” argued Kaylee McGhee, a deputy editor at the Washington Examiner, on Monday. “They deserve the freedom to yank their students out of a school that disrespects their values and send them to one that better fits their needs.”

But McGhee gave the game away later in her piece—that “school choice” is really about forcing school districts to align with right-wing ideas of education, or otherwise wither away from a lack of resources.

Ironically, the great majority of people who embrace Ms. McGhee’s “values” are largely rural–and as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, most rural areas are too thinly populated to support private or religious alternatives to those “woke” public schools. In their zeal to fight accurate history instruction that they inaccurately label CRT, and to ban books of which they disapprove, GOP lawmakers are draining resources from existing schools in rural areas–rural folks only option other than home schooling.

As the linked article notes, what’s missing in these diatribes from McGhee, Scott, and others is any actual concern for the nation’s children– the 90% of students who remain in public schools whose funds are being diverted in the name of “educational freedom” as well as the children whose parents believed the marketing and put their kids in a fly-by-night voucher school that went out of business.

This fight has never been about the quality of education. At least now, some voucher proponents are admitting it.

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Homophobes’ New Focus

A 2022 Grinnell College Poll found that 74% of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be a guaranteed right .Only 13% disagreed (the remaining13% were uncertain.) Also last year, Gallup announced that approval of same-sex marriage had hit a new high.

Faced with numbers like that, what are Republican homophobes to do?

Not that they aren’t trying. Daily Kos recently reported that

Conservatives are working hard to ostracize and delegitimize marginalized folks and are attacking the LGBTQ+ community wherever they can, ranging from sports bans to health care barriers to criminalizing drag shows.

Given current American attitudes toward more “run-of-the-mill” gay folks, trans children have been taking the brunt of the GOP’s attacks.

As the ACLU has recently reminded us, even before this year’s start of state legislative sessions, the organization had pinpointed over 25 pre-filed bills that “would strip away young transgender people’s ability to access necessary and life-saving health care.” Over 100 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced so far, and the majority target trans rights.

As the ACLU noted, the same politicians that don’t want women to control their own bodies also oppose allowing trans people to make decisions around their own gender identity and medical care.

I realize that Americans have had less time to become accustomed to–or even familiar with– the issues raised by transitioning. I can even understand the concerns around athletic performance and the possibility that trans women might have an unfair advantage, although medical science tells us those concerns are unwarranted.

It is much harder to understand the animus that leads GOP lawmakers to propose bills punishing supportive parents and doctors who provide medical care to transgender minors. It’s especially hard for me to understand why those legislators think they have a right to interfere in such profoundly personal matters.

South Dakota lawmakers have introduced a bill they call “Help Not Harm;” it would ban physicians from prescribing hormonal therapy and from performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors (something I’m told doesn’t occur). Physicians who provide such care would be subject to review by a medical board, and potential loss of their licenses.

Utah lawmakers have introduced several anti-trans bills. One would prevent trans youth from updating their birth certificates until they turn 18. A far more harmful bill would–in addition to banning that non-occurring surgery for minors — would also bar the puberty blockers and hormonal therapies that are prescribed.

Nebraska Republicans have introduced “Sports and Spaces”– banning youth from participating in sports teams that don’t align with their sex as assigned at birth. The bill would also bar trans youth from using locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

More than a dozen states have introduced anti-trans health care legislation. Dailly Kos lists Virginia, Utah, Texas, Tennessee, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Kansas, and Kentucky–and a friend of mine who lobbies Indiana’s General Assembly on behalf of several medical associations tells me they expect a similar attempt in Indiana.

Evidently, it isn’t enough to pick on women and trans children. The GOP knows how terribly dangerous librarians are. As the linked article reports,

Over in North Dakota, Republicans are racing to ban even more books. As reported by the Associated Press, Mike Lefor, who serves as House Majority Leader, introduced HB 1205 seeking to ban books with “sexually explicit” content from all public libraries in the state. Not just keep them out of young adult sections. Not just exclude them from certain programming. Not just from school libraries. Ban them from public libraries, period.

And yes, that “sexually explicit” includes depictions of gender identity and sexual orientation. The measure proposes up to 30 days imprisonment for librarians who don’t remove such books from libraries if the bill becomes law. Folks could also face a $1,500 fine and a Class B misdemeanor.

When the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in Dobbs, it called into question an important principle of constitutional jurisprudence called substantive due process. That doctrine means that there are certain issues that government doesn’t get to decide. For over fifty years, the Court has recognized that “intimate personal decisions” not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights also must be protected against overreaching government– that the Bill of Rights requires respect for individual autonomy– that liberty means there are places in the lives of individuals where government doesn’t belong.

Only the individual involved can know who he or she or they really is. We can only hope that conflicted individuals are able to access the help of supportive parents and caring doctors–and even a librarian or two.

Certainly not a state legislature.

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Universal “Scholarships”

Both the IBJ and the Capital Chronicle have reported on the legislature’s current effort to totally privatize education in Indiana. If passed, Senate Bill 305 would allow any and all parents to get taxpayer money to enroll their children in a private school or home school them.

The legislation would dramatically expand Educational Scholarship Accounts (ESAs)–a more neutral term for the vouchers that–for very good reason– are no longer as popular as they once were.

In 2021, Indiana’s General Assembly approved ESA’s for special education students by burying the proposal in the budget, where it escaped much in the way of sustained scrutiny. SB305 would expand the program to all students, via a universal Education Scholarship Account.

The existing ESAs are limited to students who qualify for special education, and whose families meet income limits. (Not that those limits aren’t generous–a family of four can make up to $154,000 annually. That’s three times the amount required for a student to qualify for the federal free or reduced price lunch program.)

SB 305 would extend the ESA program to all students, regardless of a student’s educational needs or their family’s income level.

So what’s wrong with ESA’s?

As numerous observers point out, there’s a lot wrong. For one thing, the bill lacks any public oversight or measures ensuring accountability. The state would simply give tax dollars to parents who would be trusted to spend it on their children’s education (there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism to ensure that the dollars would actually be used for education) at any school of their choice, or for home schooling and/or educational materials.

Apparently, all a parent needs to do to get some $7500 per student is fill out an online application promising to spend “part of the money” for the study of “reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies or science.” No standards. No requirements for art, music, foreign language or–perish the thought–civics. Not even those pesky criminal background checks required of public school teachers and volunteers.

Interestingly, the program would be managed by the state’s treasurer–not the Department of Education.

Clearly, education isn’t the goal.

Researchers have exhaustively documented the results of current voucher programs, and repeatedly demonstrated that these programs have failed to improve educational outcomes. Over 90% of voucher recipients take them to religious schools that frequently substitute dogma for science and history. My own research confirms that–in Indiana at least– few, if any, include civics instruction. (My personal favorite among the history textbooks most widely used in these religious schools describes slave trade as “sometimes unwilling black immigration.” Ya think?)

As the Capital Chronicle reported,

Indiana has about 87,000 private school students, according to the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE). About 44,000 of those use the state’s Choice Scholarship program — which allows families to receive vouchers to attend private schools. But the remaining 43,000 would be eligible for the grant, which would average around $7,500 statewide.

That would add more than $300 million a year to what the state is already sending to private, mostly religious schools.

The voucher program started similarly with a cap of 7,500 students at a cost of $15 million. The cap doubled the next year and now there is no limit and a current annual cost of $240 million.

As I reminded readers a few days ago, Indiana’s current voucher program classifies families that earn up to $145,000 per year as “poor” enough to have the state pay for their kids to attend private schools. Qualification for state-funded childcare and/or pre-kindergarden is a different matter: families bringing home a mere $27,500 are “too rich” to qualify.

None of this makes sense unless the legislature’s actual goal is to encourage an exodus from the state’s public schools, a goal that furthers other longtime efforts: destroying the teacher’s union, and finding a “work-around” of the First Amendment’s prohibition against funneling tax dollars to religious organizations.

SB 305’s proposed expansion would cost a fortune and fail to deliver educational benefits. Worse, those dollars would come from our already under-resourced public schools. That would especially harm rural Hoosiers who live in areas too sparsely populated to support private alternatives.

Since it is no longer possible to defend vouchers on educational grounds, this misbegotten effort is being sold under the current MAGA banner of “parental choice.”

Whenever I hear these culture warriors utter the word “choice,” I expect a bolt of lightning to strike. They want the “choice” to avoid vaccinations, the “choice” not to have their children learn accurate history, the “choice” to keep “Heather Has Two Mommies” out of the library…

But other people’s choices? (The choice to support sound, secular public education, or terminate a pregnancy, for example?) Not so fast!

If SB 305 passes, it will certainly affect the choices of people who might otherwise be thinking of relocating to Indiana.

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