We’ve been taking it a bit easy this summer at Yokel headquarters. But now it’s time for us to step back into the fray! Lots of big news going on! First of all, we finally have a chance to have a woman president!
We also want to share with you this meme that pretty much sums up the last few years of American politics:
What we want to focus on today is the assault that the American educational system is under AND what that means for us locally. We are going to concentrate on two recent publications in particular.
First on our list is a column that the Frederick News Post ran on July 5th by a member of the Heritage Foundation with the seemingly innocuous title, “America’s teachers are unhappy. Here’s how we can turn that around.” Except there is nothing in this article that would make any teachers we know happy. Case in point:
Imagine Uber or Airbnb for education: An online platform that allows educators to offer their services to as many families as are willing to pay. One teacher could offer Advanced Placement English to hundreds of students at a time, and be compensated based on the popularity of their course, instead of a flat district salary schedule.
So, teachers would be happier if they had to piecemeal their existence together? And what about healthcare and retirement? Or is that just the radical agenda of those evil teacher unions? Didn’t most people hate online learning for their kids? Here’s another jewel:
It’s no wonder. Teacher preparation programs can be money makers for colleges, but they offer little practical guidance on how to manage a classroom or deliver a lesson.
There’s been a bit of research on this so you can look for yourself, however we will share the conclusions of an analysis of student outcomes comparing Teach for America teachers to traditionally certificated teachers in the Houston School District:
Again we found that uncertified teachers and those with less than standard certification—whether TFA or non-TFA—exert negative effects on student achievement relative to teachers with standard certification.
AND…..
Raymond and colleagues reported that across the four years of their study, TFA teachers had left teaching in Houston by their third year at rates of between 60% and 100%. We found similar attrition rates: Between 57% and 90% of TFA recruits had left teaching in Houston after their second year, and between 72% and 100% of recruits had left after their third year.
No Heritage Foundation word salad on education would be complete without some accusation of indoctrination:
Those who persist are forced to take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to sit through hours of abstract theorizing and ideological indoctrination — only to walk into class on day 1 of their first year ill-equipped to handle the student who won’t take his seat.
Of course this writer offers up no research to back her claims. So, let’s move onto the next piece we want to focus on, which is the deservedly maligned Project 2025.
There’s so much to unpack in that document, so for today we are going to just comment on the “Education Policy” section of this hot mess. First of all can we guess for whom the author of this piece works for?
If you guessed The Heritage Foundation, then…
So let’s go and break down some of these suggestions, shall we?
First of all, the overall tone of the article is that local school boards and local control is the best thing this country ever did, and all the problems in education would magically disappear if state and local governments had complete and total control.( We should mention that most other developed countries have a centralized education system) So, we set out to find some examples to refute that notion! Here’s a excerpt of an article from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education:
Daily stories abound of controversies related to school boards. In Clark County, public debates lasted all night over the boards’ deliberations over revamping sex education. Making national news, students chained themselves to the dais amidst the board’s deliberations to eliminate Mexican American Studies in Tucson while one board member was featured on the Daily Show making inaccurate and discriminatory remarks about the program. In Salt Lake City, the only board member of color showed up to the board meeting dressed as “Frito Bandito” (a cartoon character depicting a stereotype of Mexicans as thieves) in response to presumed racial discrimination. School board meeting attendees in South Carolina started singing “Jesus Loves Me” to silence advocates of transgender bathrooms, which translates to a villanization of transgender students. These are just a few of the existing examples.
You can also read stories about some coal mining towns in which the executives of the mines sat on school boards and wouldn’t allow advanced classes into the curriculum, mostly because they needed those students to work in the mines one day. And everyone remembers this, right?!
Here’s a real eye-opener from Project 2025:
Safeguarding civil rights. Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.
These people really know how to pull out their dog whistles don’t they? Their suggestions continue along this same route:
The next Administration should abandon this change redefining
“sex” to mean “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX
immediately across all departments.
On its first day in office, the next Administration should signal
its intent to enter the rulemaking process to restore the Trump
Administration’s Title IX regulation, with the additional insistence
that “sex” is properly understood as a fixed biological fact. Official
notice-and-comment should be posted immediately.
lAt the same time, the political appointees in the Office for Civil
Rights should begin a full review of all Title IX investigations that
were conducted on the understanding that “sex” referred to gender
identity and/or sexual orientation.
Is this idea put forth to make sure Trump can get his followers jobs in the Federal Government? Just asking questions!
Minimize bachelor’s degree requirements. The President should issue
an executive order stating that a college degree shall not be required for any federal job unless the requirements of the job specifically demand it.
And of course the main idea here is to destroy the public education system so they and all their buddies can make education into a business that they can profit off of:
Advancing education freedom. Empowering families to choose among
a diverse set of education options is key to reform and improved outcomes, and it can be achieved without establishing a new federal program. For example, portability of existing federal education spending to fund families directly or allowing federal tax credits to encourage voluntary contributions to K–12 education savings accounts managed by charitable nonprofits, could significantly advance education choice.
Freedom they call it.
So, we know this has been a long post, but we do need to circle back to what this means around these here parts. We have a few candidates (cough, cough-Jaime Brennan and Colt Black!) who have espoused some of these same viewpoints. Jaime Brennan is a member of Moms For Liberty who also has a relationship with the Heritage Foundation. From the Heritage Foundation’s own website:
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project filed a lawsuit yesterday on behalf of Moms for Liberty against the Biden Administration, demanding the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Federal Bureau of Investigation produce all records concerning the parental rights organization and the Biden Administration’s coordination with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
This lawsuit comes after the agencies refused to comply with the Oversight Project’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the same documents.
Prior to requesting these documents, the SPLC produced a report which listed Moms for Liberty as an “extremist” coalition of “far-right antigovernment parents” who are known for “intimidating and harassing teachers and school officials.” It also claimed that Moms for Liberty is “one of the most recognized names in the anti-student inclusion movement,” citing the group’s opposition to critical race theory.
Therefore we need to be smart about our vote this Fall. We need to consolidate our votes behind 3 candidates in order to make sure that our board doesn’t become overrun by people who want to destroy our schools. It’s just as important as your vote for President! And we don’t want the writer of the LTE that ran in yesterday’s paper to set the tone for our next election!:
We don’t need any more taxes.
Haven’t the politicians heard of not spending when you don’t have the money? I guess not. It doesn’t matter if it’s national or local.
To help with the spending, we need some conservatives on the school board. We need people who won’t cater to the teachers union.
Nothing is wrong with unions if they concern themselves with the employees’ well being only.
Don’t worry about critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion, as they are anti-common sense anyway.
Oh, well. The county doesn’t care about the older people who live here.
frederick local yokel 