Education Heading Downward

President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment fame and wife of Vince, testified Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. NPR noted

Several senators asked McMahon about her position on whether families should be allowed to use public dollars to send their children to any school they choose, including private and religious schools. Currently, the federal government can do very little to encourage this kind of private school choice, but Trump wants to change that.

During the hearing, McMahon favored an expansive view of school choice.

"Parents look at their children and say, 'I want that for my child. My school is failing my child.' " In that situation, McMahon said, parents deserve a multitude of options, from education savings accounts to vouchers, charter schools and even access to multiple public schools. "I know that if I could get my child to that next school, they would be better off. Every parent wants that opportunity for their child."

They have options in Louisiana. So how is that working out?

The private schools that get about $6,800 per voucher student face scant oversight. Unlike public schools, most don’t receive state ratings because they enroll too few voucher students. But 30 private schools were graded last year, and nearly 80% earned Ds or Fs.

State regulations forbid F-rated private schools from enrolling new voucher students. (Superintendent of Education Cade) Brumley waived that rule in recent years, allowing even the worst-performing schools to take in more students and tax dollars.

Now, Louisiana is set to pump more public money into private schools — an approach that President Donald Trump urged more states to adopt in a recent executive order.

In March, the state will launch the LA GATOR Scholarship Program, which will cover students’ tuition and other private education expenses. State officials expect it to cost nearly $94 million next school year, more than double the annual price of vouchers.

Test scores are very much an imperfect means to evaluate student achievement. Nonetheless, it is not comforting that "while the scholarship program will replace vouchers, many of the same private schools already have signed up- including over 20 with D or F ratings." 

"Oh, the games people play now," wrote Joe South. The game here is fairly simple. Take money out of the public schools in order to fund charters, private schools, and whatever else can be done in support of the holy grail of "school choice. Meanwhile, profits are padded for potential donors to the campaigns of public officials promoting school "reform."   Students at traditional public schools suffer, enabling school "reformers" claim that the traditional schools have failed students. Pour more money into  alternative schools; lather, rinse, repeat.  Private profit is the means to an end, and the opportunity for corruption proliferates.

   

Vouchers, charter schools, and funding for religious and other private schools undermine traditional public education, thereby eroding community and connection among individuals. American society degenerates into warring camps whose members are increasingly deprived of the shared norms and values previously taught for generations in the neighborhood school.

Meanwhile, most measures of educational performance have shown no improvement or deterioration even as the impact upon society is disregarded. Last month, President Trump signed an Executive Order entitled "Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families," even as he is moving to close down the Department of Education. And that, even more than the nomination of mediocre right-winger Linda McMahon, clarifies the intentions of the "school choice" activists.

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Illegal Aliens. Illegal Aliens. Illegal Aliens. Illegal....

In something which could have been posted by the satirical and conservative Babylon Bee, Carolina Journal reported 3-4 weeks ago that a

16-year-old student at Central Davidson High School in Lexington, North Carolina was suspended for three days last week after using the term ‘illegal alien’ during a vocabulary assignment in his English class. 

Leah McGhee’s son has a teacher who assigned vocabulary words during class last Tuesday, including the word ‘alien.’ McGhee says her son made an effort to understand the assignment and responded to his teacher, asking, “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?

This kid is smart. Whenever hearing "illegal aliens," I  think of those skinny, gray guys with big eyes, small noses, and birth certificates from another solar system. It was, thus, a question even wiser than the student probably believed it was. The Carolina Journal continued

According to an email describing the incident, sent to local officials and shared with Carolina Journal, a young man in class took offense to his question and reportedly threatened to fight him, prompting the teacher to call in the assistant principal. Ultimately, his words were deemed by administrative staff to be offensive and disrespectful to classmates who are Hispanic.

So according to those local officials himself, a student (now identified as Christian McGhee) said something another student believed (erroneously) was offensive, was threatened with being beaten up, and, oh yea, it was the student who could have been pulverized who is at fault. The "administrative staff," born yesterday, must be too young to remember when bullying was considered a bad thing. Continuing:

“I didn’t make a statement directed towards anyone; I asked a question,” said the student in response to his suspension. “I wasn’t speaking of Hispanics because everyone from other countries needs green cards, and the term “illegal alien” is an actual term that I hear on the news and can find in the dictionary.”

However, though he finds the phrase in the news and the dictionary, at least it doesn't in on official documents. Oops:

8 U.S. Code § 1325 - Improper entry by alien

(a) ".... Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States (improperly)..."

(b) Any alien who is apprehended while entering (or attempting to enter) the United States at (an undesignated place)"....

Just a guess: lawmakers were not referring to little green men, sometimes referred to as "greys," when they composed the U.S. Code.

Filling out the story

In addition to the three-day suspension, his record could be damaged as he aims to secure an athletic scholarship for college. He is actively involved in school clubs, track, and cross country.

“Because of his question, our son was disciplined and given THREE days OUT of school suspension for ‘racism,’” wrote his mother in the email. “He is devastated and concerned that the racism label on his school record will harm his future goal of receiving a track scholarship. We are concerned that he will fall behind in his classes due to being absent for three consecutive days.”

Leah said the assistant principal has so far refused to remove the infraction from her son’s record. The family is working with an attorney to remedy the situation so it doesn’t harm his future, and they expect more developments in the days ahead.

Meanwhile, State Senator Steve Jarvis, R-Davidson, said he contacted the school district’s superintendent to make him aware of the situation. Jarvis told the Carolina Journal that while he informed top officials of the issue and urged officials to look for the best outcome, he did not take a stance on what they should do because he wasn’t there to understand all sides of the story. 

“I do not see that that would be an offensive statement, just in getting clarification,” said Jarvis. “But there again, I don’t know. I don’t know the situation of this particular incident.”

An official at Davidson County Schools said the district could not provide details on a student matter. The student handbook says that “schools may place restrictions on a student’s right to free speech when the speech is obscene, abusive, promoting illegal drug use, or is reasonably expected to cause a substantial disruption to the school day.”

This case involves speech codes, but also immigration. In April of 2019, before conditions at the border and at the workplace had deteriorated to such a disturbing degree, David Frum recognized

Without immigration restrictions, there are no national borders. Without national borders, there are no nation-states. Without nation-states, there are no electorates. Without electorates, there is no democracy. If liberals insist that only fascists will enforce borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals refuse to do.

The parallel would be that if liberals insist on policing speech in schools, then conservatives who want the public sector to wither to "the size where we can drown it in the bathtub"  (except, of course, when it comes to policing the uterus). will be invigorated. And so

State legislators have propelled school choice forward in North Carolina to give parents and students alternative education options. More than 72,000 applications flooded the Opportunity Scholarship program this February in record-breaking demand, and additional funds will likely expand the program’s budget due to the surging demand. 

School choice, fundamentally a handout to the wealthy at the expense of the working class and the poor, is a terrible idea. Yet it gains steam, especially where an unforced error of enforcing extreme wokeism blinds administrators and some officials to common sense.

 

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Reid's Skewed Perspective

In the video below, Joy-Ann Reid can be seen answering (at 14:04) a question (at 13:33) about "the ways that black people through time have been treated." In the following lengthy portion of the extremely lengthy response, she advocates reparations (a truly bad idea) for blacks while properly speaking in the third person rather than the first person. Daughter of two professionals, a father from the Democratic Republic of Congo and a mother from British Guiana, Reid comes from a reasonably privileged background. Presumably, she understands that any rationale for reparations does not apply to someone of her ancestral background as she remarks

I mean, to be a black person in- you know, in 2024 in America is to be a state of complete perplexed confusion about what is wrong with a country that hates your history to this day can't admit even the basics of what was done to your ancestors, won't accept any responsibility for the fact that has carried throughout the entirely of the existence of you in this country and thins 60 years of relative freedom is enough.

Now blacks who can't get into Harvard, now blacks who can't get any more loans, you can't even give each other loans of $20,000 unless white men who get 99% of funding for their businesses. We want a hundred.

                     .

The "loans of $20,000 appears to be a reference to President Biden's student loan forgiveness program, although it's unclear, understandable because the MSNBC host evidently is not in a field in which she is expected to speak clearly and cogently. The program, now suspended by the courts, was not sold as racial preference tool and whites (and others) were eligible for it. If there has been racial bias- uh, er- preference- Reid should have explained it. And if banks are giving all white men 99% of the loans requested for their businesses- and rejecting all black applicants- she needs to expose this extreme racial discrimination. She is, after all, a journalist (supposedly).

Reid employs the general term "blacks" rather than of the smaller universe of "African-Americans. This is especially significant as pertains to individuals being refused admission to Harvard, whose affirmative action program was struck down by the US Supreme Court last June. Three years earlier, the Harvard Crimson explored the changing demographics at the university, which prompted creation of the Harvard College Generational African American Student Association. The writer noted that generational African-American is "a label for the community of Black folk who trace their lineage in the United States back for centuries." Therefore

Within Black communities at Harvard, there’s an overarching belief that GAA representation is disproportionately low, that “we’re in the minority,” as (then-student Samantha C.) O’Sullivan explains. Every Black student I interviewed — GAA or not — expressed this as common knowledge.

As a first-year, I once heard from a teaching fellow of the Introduction to African American Studies course that GAA students make up 10 percent of Harvard’s Black population. For the Class of 2022, that would mean roughly 17 students.

Brown used to joke “that there were only a few of us on campus.”

Within Harvard’s GAA population today, O’Sullivan has noticed a seemingly large percentage of biracial students and students who come from socioeconomically-privileged backgrounds. “If we were to count the number of GAA students at Harvard who were descended from enslaved people, came from low income backgrounds, first generation, four grandparents descended from enslaved people, I feel like that number would be so low — like, maybe one person. It’s just so, so, so low,” she says.

The demographics seem to have shifted from what they were decades ago. Professor Cornel R. West ’74 says that, when he was the co-president of the Black Students Association in the early 1970s, “about 95 percent of the Black folk in the association were Black people from the United States who had been enslaved in Jim and Jane Crow.”

He continues, “So you [have] a fascinating expansion of what we mean by Black people, what we mean by African Americans"....

“I don’t have the statistics and the University doesn’t release them, but a large percent of the Black students in the College are descendants of recent Africans as opposed to being descended from African-Americans who were enslaved in North America,” says African and African American Studies professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In such a context, "black" takes on a slightly, but significant, meaning than "generational African-American."  Harvard fought hard at the Supreme Court, with Reid and the similarly ideologically inclined, cheering it on. Unable to trace her lineage in the USA over a long period of time- and thus not GAA- Reid would be particularly partial to the program at Harvard, which did not broadly embrace black applicants. 

The university enthusiastically accepted blacks who do not trace their lineage in the USA back for centuries. Individuals whose descendants were brought to this land as slaves and whose progeny faced segregation, lynching, and other atrocities in this country need not apply. Harvard still would boast of its racial diversity while largely shutting out the victims of what has been termed "America's original sin." 

Consciously or not, Reid did not explicitly place herself within the cultural group which has endured what she described as "a state of complete perplexed confusion about what is wrong with" the USA. However, she descends into- as she would put it- "a state of complete"- ignorance or bigotry when she claims

And to find out literally Barack Obama's two terms as President are your reparations and Juneteenth, which you already celebrate anyway, is your reparation. And yet, you built this country. You literally, physically, built this country and yet the attitude toward you from a lot of your peers and your fellow citizens is just "shut up" and be grateful.

Whites either accept Juneteenth as appropriate recognition as an historical event or don't consider it important in any way.  And the whites whom Reid believes consider Obama's two terms as President as reparations don't see Obama's election as payback or righting a wrong. Rather, they think of it as vindication, as hard evidence that the USA isn't the land of bigotry and racism which many individuals such as Reid believe it is.

Those conservatives, similar to many on the left, fooled themselves into thinking that the election (finally) of a black individual to the presidency was more significant than it was. Ironically, they bought into the myth of the left- and of the center- that electing Obama was historic in a pertinent way. Election of a black man did not concretely change anything in this country, and was due to events particular to the time. They included his long-time opposition to an unpopular war coupled with opposition from a candidate apparently quite comfortable with a permanent wartime footing- and who put onto his ticket a truly ridiculous first-term governor. Race was less of a factor than commonly believed and revealed little about the fundamental character of the nation. Sometimes an election is just an election.

Far worse is Reid's contention that "you"- by which she means blacks and only blacks- built this country.

It was blacks. It also was whites, with contributions from other ethnic groups. We built this- all of us. One wishes Reid would take the more inclusive and expansive view Tom Paxton recognized several decades ago:

                    : 

 

 

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Some People Are Never Satisfied

After the indictment of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey and subsequent calls for his resignation- including from a majority of his colleagues- I recognized that Menendez had no chance of being re-nominated by Democratic primary voters for a new term. The Senator did properly step down as chairperson of the Foreign Relations Committee but resignation from the body would have had little practical effect. I cynically suggested that Democrats instead should have demanded Justice Clarence Thomas' scalp in return for that of Menendez and wrote

Turning the tables on Republican wrongdoing when they can more easily adopt virtue signaling would be against their religion of turning on one of their currently disfavored own. Fingers held in air, they have determined which way the wind blows, just as they did when they gave full-throated support to their colleague in his last re-election bid. Wind direction has shifted, and so have their principles.

While conservatives typically resist calls to resign in response to personal scandal, liberals and progressives typically do the honorable thing and resign. That can backfire. After Claudine Gay resigned as President of Harvard University, her chief inquisitor at the figuratively fatal hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), responded in a statement

I will always deliver results. The resignation of Harvard’s anti-Semitic plagiarist president is long overdue. Claudine Gay’s morally bankrupt answers to my questions made history as the most viewed Congressional testimony in the history of the U.S. Congress. Her answers were absolutely pathetic and devoid of the moral leadership and academic integrity required of the President of Harvard. This is just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history. 

Our robust Congressional investigation will continue to move forward to expose the rot in our most “prestigious” higher education institutions and deliver accountability to the American people.

This was self-congratulatory ("I will always deliver results"), unappreciative ("long overdue"), self-righteous ("morally bankrupt"), grandiose ("the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history"), and pompous ("to expose the rot in our most 'prestigious' higher education institutions"). It was quintessential Elise Stefanik.  And on Wednesday billionaire hedgefund manager and Harvard alumnus

Bill Ackman wrote in a lengthy post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that members of the Harvard Corporation, the board for the university, should leave if they supported former President Claudine Gay.

“The Corporation Board should not remain in their seats protected by the unusual governance structure which enabled them to obtain their seats,” said Ackman, billionaire and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management.

Ackman specifically called on Penny Pritzker, the board chair, and others on the board who supported Gay before her departure, to resign. 

He said those members “orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done.”

“Then new Corporation board members should be identified who bring true diversity, viewpoint and otherwise, to the board,” Ackman added. 

Ackman has been vocal in calling for Gay’s removal since her congressional testimony. Gay resigned from her position Tuesday, after her antisemitism testimony and plagiarism controversies. 

In his post, Ackman said he believed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at Harvard were the cause for its recent troubles, and a new board should reflect differing views on the subject. 

Ackman is very hostile to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on college campuses and would sincerely like to see them ended, and up to a point he has a point. Ackman, a huge contributor to the college, now is calling on the board of Harvard University to resign. That would be the same board which accepted Gay's resignation and may even have pressured the President to step down. One scalp down, several more to go.

Notwithstanding her thinly veiled glee, Elise Stefanik is a creature of another sort.  When Liz Magill, who with MIT President and Gay failed in the House committee hearing, Stefanik responded "one down, two to go." Representative Jamie Raskin then explained on MSNBC

.... where does Elise Stefanik get off of lecturing anybody about anti-Semitism when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump who traffics in anti-Semitism all the time? She didn’t utter a peep of protest when he had Kanye West and Nick Fuentes over for dinner. Nick Fuentes, who doubts whether October 7th even took place because he thinks it was some kind of suspicious propaganda move by the Israelis.

And the Republican Party is filled with people who are entangled with antisemitism like that.  And yet somehow she gets on her high horse and lectures a Jewish college president from MIT.

It's unlikely that Stefanik, whatever her claims to the contrary, is sensitive to the free speech issues which underlie the DEI movement and practices at many colleges. No doubt she is fund-raising prodigiously and with her behavior pleasuring her man, Donald J. Trump, who sometime later this year will be deciding upon a running mate.

The DEI approach will continue to some extent, perhaps under a different expression or slogan, while in her transcendent opportunism Stefanik will find a different right-wing battle to fight.   And Democrats and liberals will still be bending to pressure, seemingly unaware that it is self-defeating to bow to the will of thugs.

 

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Foes of Higher Education

In the wake of the politically disastrous appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce by presidents of three elite universities and the resignation of one of the leaders FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) is alarmed (pun intended). It notes

New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul sent a letter warning the presidents of colleges and universities in New York that failing to discipline students for “calling for the genocide of any group of people” would violate both state and federal law. The governor promised “aggressive enforcement action” against any institution failing to prohibit and punish such speech.

Colleges and universities can and should punish “calls for genocide” when such speech falls into one of the narrowly defined categories of unprotected speech, including true threats, incitement, and discriminatory harassment. But broad, vague bans on “calls for genocide,” absent more, would result in the censorship of protected expression.

That's an accurate understanding of the Constitution, corroborating testimony of those three presidents, each of whom cited the legal importance of "context." It was also irrelevant to Elise Stefanik, who got a great soundbite out of her questioning. Characteristically succumbing to the temptation to slam Israel and to invoke race, Will Bunch remarked

How much of this is about antisemitism, and how much of this is about something else? — such as the fact that the college presidents who testified on Capitol Hill don’t look like the 300 years of school leaders who came before them. Bill Ackman, billionaire hedge fund manager and deeply disgruntled Harvard alum and donor, said the quiet part out loud last week when he made the repulsive allegation in a tweet that his alma mater’s first Black president — a child of Haitian immigrants, an award-winning scholar — was only hired to satisfy diversity goals.

Stefanik's sincerity is questionable when

her passion as an anti-antisemitism crusader was nowhere to be seen recently when her conservative allies were out in the schools banning books like The Diary of Anne Frank. Far worse, Stefanik, in 2022 campaign ads, seemed to be endorsing the racist “great replacement theory” that mass immigration is a liberal plot, using inflammatory rhetoric about a scheme to “overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”

Only Lisa McGill of the University of Pennsylvania- one of the two administrators who is white- has been forced into retirement as of the time of this post (minutes after the end of Sunday Night Football). Race may have played a role but Bunch is closer to discerning the motivation of GOP members of Congress when he notes

And the likes of Ackman, Stefanik and their allies won’t stop at reversing a half-century of diversity on campus — not when their bigger strategic goal of weakening the already tottering American way of higher education suddenly seems within reach. Last week, Sen. J.D. Vance, the billionaire-backed Ohioan, tweeted that “if universities keep pushing racial hatred, euphemistically called DEI, we need to look at their funding.” In the swirling vortex that led to Magill’s resignation, these calls for financial retribution will accelerate — and students will suffer.

We need to look at their funding. Republicans aren't fond of diversity, equity, and inclusion and the tolerance of major universities toward anti-Semitism on campus compared to the the slightest affront to groups designated as "marginalized" is striking. However, prominent Republicans are not primarily interested in ending DEI or antagonism to Jews. For the most part, these issues are subterfuges, intended to divert attention from the GOP's goal to undermine and weaken colleges, especially the most eminent institutions of higher education.

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A Sorry Episode

The controversy engendered by the adoption by the Florida Board of Education of new standards for teaching African-American history in schools has exposed ugliness, obvious and hidden, about race in the USA.

Noting the numerous sections which evidently aim to highlight the horrors of slavery and the contribution of African-Americans to the USA, the National Review's Charles W. Cooke argues "there is simply no way of perusing this course and concluding that it 'gaslights' people or whitewashes slavery." 

Yet, the "clarification" reading "instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans" suggests that violence committed by black slaves was in some way comparable to violence inflicted upon them.  Another clarification, "instruction includes how slaves developed skills which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit," implies that there may have been a positive side to slavery.  Don't go there. These are bad.

Perhaps there was nothing nefarious in inclusion of these two "clarifications." Preferable would have been something akin to "acts of violence perpetrated against African Americans and the victims' response" and "how slaves developed skills which were coincidentally comparable to those needed in a market economy." Or just drop it altogether.

We'll probably never know whether architects of the curriculum were unaware of the misleading nature of those standards, pleased that they were proposing history be taught inaccurately, or expressing themselves very badly.

By contrast, we can more clearly assess the motives of Vice President Kamala Harris who, blasting the new academic standards, stated in Jacksonville

Extremists here in Florida pass a law "don't say gay" trying to instill fear in our teachers that they should not live their full life and love who they love. And now, on top of all that they want to replace history with lies.

Middle school students in Florida to be told that enslaved people benefitted from slavery. High schoolers may be taught that victims of violence of massacres were also perpetrators. I said it yesterday- they insult us in an attempt to gaslight us. And we will not have it. And we will not have it.

The "Parental Rights in Education" bill is also known as the "Don't Say Gay" bill and was signed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis in March of 2022. It reads "classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards."

The legislation has nothing to do with curtailing adult same-sex relationships or what the vice-president described as "that they should not live their full life and love who they love." But she might have been confused. This is, after all, Kamala Harris.

Nor is it particularly significant that Harris evidently finds something offensive about the term "slaves." In a rebuke to the axiom "keep it simple, stupid" (KISS), she substitutes the new-age "enslaved people" for "slaves." It is quite simple- as ordinary Americans realize, people who are enslaved are slaves. The evil of slavery is not reversed with a change in terminology.

But who is this "us" of which Ms. Harris speaks? The portion at issue of the State's Academic Standards is not entitled "Black History" or "Black American History."  It is not called "African-American and West Indies History." 

The West Indies is "an unofficial grouping of island countries and territories in the Atlantic Ocean." The group includes such territories as Martinique, Aruba, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands and such countries as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica.

Kamala Harris' mother is from India. The vice-president's father was born in Jamaica, studied in England, and became a naturalized USA citizen. His parents were of Afro-Jamaican and Irish-Jamaican heritage.

Thus, as with many Americans, Kamala Harris has a mixed ancestry, apparently Indian, Jamaican, and more. But she is not predominantly African-American, nor in any way generational African-American. She is not descended from individuals brought to the shores of the USA by white Europeans (who have traditionally comprised this country's power elite), held in bondage, and after emancipation held back by generations of discrimination oppressing their descendants.

There is a difference. The California task force which has recommended reparations be made to African-Americans requires recipients

to be able to trace their lineage directly to a person who had been enslaved in the United States, or to African Americans who lived in the U.S. prior to 1900. This presumes “that such persons are descendants of enslaved ancestors or free persons who ran the risk of being enslaved during the 246 years that the institution of slavery existed in America,” (task force member Don Tamaki) said.

Whatever the recommended remedies- and I'm skeptical of them- the task force understands the special circumstances of generational African-Americans. When and if Kamala Harris returns to California, she will not be eligible.

That is only fitting, given the vice-president's ancestry and cultural background. Yet somehow, when Harris addressed a group in Florida about that state's curriculum on African-Americans, she referred at least twice to "us" as if said curriculum applied to her own ancestors.

The Vice President is entitled to be dishonest and as a politician, it is almost expected. However, if the Administration denounces a deceptive educational curriculum as characterized by "lies," a better messenger would be someone without a significant history of dishonesty and who chooses not to be deceptive in the present.

 

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Tweet of the Day- Arming the Schools

On CNN's State of the Union, U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas was asked by Dana Bash about school shootings and replied

... because it's so random and unexpected, it's hard to prevent.

And because -- and they seem like they happen a lot, but they're still anomalous events, and they're very difficult to build a pattern behind. It's not like criminal activity, which you can target and prevent through law enforcement. This is harder. It doesn't mean there's nothing we can do.

The truth of the matter is, if we had a minimum of two armed guards or police officers at every single school in America, you would probably prevent these from here on out.

There are good responses, very good responses, and then there is this:

How much are you going to pay for ongoing firearms and tactical training?

A $40k salary (lowball, but hey it’s just our kids) alone costs $10.4 BILLION. https://t.co/qvLgp2wmUM

— Pete Strzok (@petestrzok) April 2, 2023

To give Crenshaw his due, he adds the qualifier "probably"- but that still does a lot of work here. We know only that the percentage of shootings which would be prevented with a minimum of two armed guards or police officers in every school is somewhere between 0 and 100.

Strzok reminds us of the financial cost, which would be extremely high and is an underrated factor in the conversation. Acknowledging it is lowball, Strzok puts the salary cost at $40,000, which could not even be approximated if they were police officers.  

Crenshaw's idea is, admittedly, much better than the harebrained scheme of arming teachers. Still, whatever the effectiveness of armed guards/police officers, it would be extraordinarily expensive. 

Maybe Democrats should call the bluff of Republicans and submit a bill to arm schools as Representative Crenshaw and a few other conservatives have advocated.  Propose that the cost be borne by an increase in the capital gains tax and a surtax on income above a certain level, perhaps $1,000,000, more or less in consideration of how much revenue would be necessary to pay armed guards or police officers handsomely. 

In his interview with Bash, the Texas congressman stated "I think we should look at our school as a place that is precious and have the same kind of security that your corporate offices do, that we do in Congress."  Democrats can give Republicans a chance to prove that the life of children is as important to them as maintaining the wealth and influence of the very wealthy. It never has been, and I think we all know how that would turn out even now.

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A Step Forward

With clarity, Joseph Briggs and Alec Phillips of Goldman Sachs summarize the student loan policy changes announced by President Biden as

(1) federal student debt forgiveness up to $10k per borrower—and up to $20k per borrower in many cases—among households with income up to $250k; (2) a continuation of the pause on current student loan payments through year-end, after which payments will resume; and (3) an income-driven repayment plan that would cap monthly payments to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income (from 10% under an existing program).

As an investment bank and financial services company, Goldman Sachs is far less interested in moral hazard, closing the racial wealth gap, or other social implications of the policy than in its impact on the economy, including upon the national debt. The analysts conclude

While the program will ultimately increase the level of federal debt by roughly the amount it reduces student loan balances, the only near-term impact on Treasury cash flows will be a roughly $35bn annualized increase in student loan payments next year as payments resume, but at a level somewhat lower than the pre-pandemic trend due to debt relief.

This not being abortion, criminal justice, race, or religion and politics, about which I have original thoughts, I shall defer to experts and others for wisdom, and not  not only about the debt or inflationary impact of the President's policy.

Twitter liberals and the White House have been ridiculing Republican Representatives, among them insurrection-friendly Vern Buchanan, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the cruelly named Markwayne Mullen for criticizing Biden's college loan semi-forgiveness a couple of years after they themselves received Payment Protection Plan grants or loans. Under-appreciated are the poor design and administration of that program. Admittedly, individuals the likes of Kanye West, Tom Brady, Jared Kushner, Reese Witherspoon, Gores Vitech Holdings, and the more than 400 country clubs and golf resorts who profited are not complaining. I suppose I wouldn't, either.

Business professor, author, and impressive media personality:

This wasn't debt relief for the needy, but a bailout of universities that now have less pressure to lower costs.

Addresses symptom, not disease.

— Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) August 26, 2022

In a response Galloway applauded..... 

Well,that's the other half of this coin. Debt relief acknowledges that the drive to college has, to some degree, been predatory. Time to deal also with the predators.

— Marmalade (@Marmala20155062) August 25, 2022

Colleges now won't reduce costs, but they probably wouldn't have, anyway. As "Marmalade" and Galloway obviously realize, the main problem is not that individuals go into debt to attend college but that college is much too expensive. It simply costs too much, and doesn't have to.

The predators have gone largely unscathed not because of a bipartisan conspiracy of silence.  Democrats ignore the problem because the academic community is a core supporter, part of the loosely linked Hollywood- academe- legal community triad. Republicans will not ignore the problem once they find a way to exploit it politically.

If there is a parallel between this policy and the PPP, there is also a parallel to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Former insurance company executive Wendell Potter, who believed the reform would be a marginal improvement to the status quo, in early 2020

maintained that a public option plan would not ultimately “get us where we need to be,” arguing that the fundamental problem with the current health care system isn’t about access, but rather about cost.

“We all theoretically in this country have access to health care, so that’s not the main issue,” he said. “It’s that we can’t afford it — even those of us who have health insurance can’t afford to get the care that we need.”

We have access to health care and to higher education, if only we could afford them. Yet, as the constitutional republic we have, with its innumerable flaws, is superior to the alternative, so, too, was the ACA superior to its predecessor.  (There is a sale at Costco this month on commas.)  President Biden's response to the college debt crisis is inadequate, probably inefficient, and could have been improved, but is better than nothing.

 

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Tweet of the Day- Charter Schools

"It's about privatization. It has nothing to do with education," emphasizes a former charter school employee and current public school teacher.

Here it is folks, the truth told by someone who knows first hand, this is what is happening. Charters are typically run by venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, wonder why? https://t.co/rOMrYIo4XF

— Rep. Gloria Johnson (@VoteGloriaJ) July 29, 2022

 

Mr. Johnson maintains that once a charter school has been given its money but realizes a student has special needs, the child is sent back to a traditional public school. The charter school gets to keep the money.

Especially insidious is the growth in virtual charter schools, which has outpaced that of brick-and-mortar charters and which

have a record of low academic achievement, high attrition, and low graduation rates. In addition, the sector has experienced massive scandals, like the A3 chain in California, whose founders pleaded guilty to phantom enrollments and are repaying the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Like ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) in Ohio, which collected $1 billion over 20 years, gave generously to politicians, then declared bankruptcy rather than comply with a court order to repay $67 million to the state for padded enrollments.

Privatization is a scourge throughout society and education is no exception.

 

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Destructive Agenda

Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, wants to decertify electors to restore Donald Trump to the White House, ban abortion completely, and establish Pennsylvania as "a Second Amendment sanctuary for unrestricted firearms ownership. Also

“I think instead of 19,000 [dollars], we fund each student around 9,000 or 10,000 and they can decide which school to go to, public school, private school, religious school, cyber school, or home school,” Mastriano said. “And the money goes to the kids. And I believe that would incentivize and drive down the costs of public education."

The driver of Mastriano’s scheme would be his push to eliminate, or at least radically reduce, the biggest source of school dollars in Pennsylvania: the property tax. He just wouldn’t replace this proposed massive loss of tax dollars. And the downsized government spending that still existed would be available to families in vouchers they could use to attend nonpublic schools, including religious schools or homeschooling — two pillars of Mastriano’s Christian nationalist movement....

According to a 2022 ranking by World Population Review, spending $9,000 per pupil would put Pennsylvania on a par with Mississippi ($8,935), a state that’s often criticized for the poor quality of its public education.....

Donna Cooper, executive director of the Children First schools advocacy group, says Mastriano’s plans are wildly out of touch with the realities of K-12 education in the state, including that even religious schools in the state’s more prosperous regions cost more than the $9,000 a year he’d give families. Added Cooper: “One of the reasons he’s advancing these proposals is his concern that teachers are paid too much. But we have an average teacher salary that is $70,000 — and Pennsylvania is facing a massive teacher shortage.”

Well, maybe that's Mastriano's point, wisely left unstated.  Fewer teachers yield more students per teacher and less discipline and learning.

On July 7, Fox News' Laura Ingraham hosted The John Locke Foundation's Terry Scoops, who blasted the National Education Association for supporting abortion choice and LGBQIA+ rights and claimed the union was promoting an "insane agenda." Then

Ingraham jumped in, calling for an end to public schools, and saying taxpayer funds should be diverted to private education....

“But what it’s not about is education and this is why I think, Terry, a lot of people are saying it’s time to defund government education or at least defund it by giving vouchers to parents so they can say, ‘No, we’re not doing this anymore.’ And I think that just has to happen. We have to stop funding this madness.”

This is nothing new. Thirteen months ago, Joy Ann-Reid interviewed Christopher Rufo, perhaps America's chief critic of what he calls "Critical Race Theory." It was interesting and informative, though the latter not because of the conflict over whether CRT is taught anywhere in law schools nor about its benefit or harm.

Rufo claims- probably truthfully- to have investigated the increasing interest in public schools of the study of the role of race in American culture past and present. Yet early in the video below, he can be seen citing Robin D'Angelo and Ibram X. Kendi as critical race theorists.

As Reid pointed out, neither D'Angelo nor Kendi is a critical race theorist. Kendi is arguably the most prominent advocate of "anti-racism," with D'Angelo's focus a melding of anti-racism and "whiteness" theory. They probably both are pleased critical race theory is taught in law schools and welcome (or would welcome) its presence in K-12 schools. However, neither is particularly a promoter of CRT, which they have left for others, such as Kimberle Crenshaw. 

The (inaccurate) selection Kendi and D'Angelo as representatives of critical race theory may be significant. It may have been because they are the best known, and thus most controversial, of the proponents of the broad field of race-conscious education.

More likely, though, Rufo threw out those two names because he doesn't care who comprise the intellectual core of this broad discipline. Ending this particular educational philosophy is not his goal.  A few days after the victory of Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial race, Michelle Goldberg had a discussion with Rufo in which

“I’ve unlocked a new terrain in the culture war, and demonstrated a successful strategy,” said Rufo, a documentary filmmaker-turned-conservative activist. With that done, he was getting ready for a new phase of his offensive.

“We are right now preparing a strategy of laying siege to the institutions,” he said. In practice, this means promoting the traditional Republican school choice agenda: private school vouchers, charter schools and home-schooling. “The public schools are waging war against American children and American families,” he said. Families, in turn, should have “a fundamental right to exit.”

Private school vouchers, charter schools, and home schooling. Now the partisan Supreme Court of John Roberts clearly is on board. That was unsurprising because destruction of the public school system and the common good is part of the GOP's overarching goal of privatization of the entire economy for the benefit of the privileged.  Democrats and progressives need to understand this and to take it seriously, but aside from a journalist here and they, they apparently are doing neither.

 

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Education During Covid-19

In an opinion piece entitled ''Math is Racist' Crowd Runs Rampant in Seattle, Portland," Jason Rantz condemns examples he gives of what should be characterized as Critical Race Theory-adjacent policies. In so doing, he makes about Oregon an error- intentional or otherwise- which exposes both a fundamental mistake governments made about Covid-19 and a strategic error commonly made by the Democratic Party.

Rantz writes

the Democrat-controlled Oregon legislature passed a law ending a high school graduation requirement that students demonstrate proficiency in math (along with reading and writing) after minority students failed at high rates.

In pertinent part, no, because 

From 2012 to 2019, in order to graduate with an Oregon diploma, students had to show proficiency in nine “Essential Skills” including reading, writing, math, critical thinking, technology usage, and civic and community engagement. Students showed that proficiency either by passing state standardized tests (mostly the Smarter Balanced assessment, or another approved test) or submitting work samples....

COVID-19 came to Oregon in March 2020, shutting down schools. Every state was permitted to skip standardized testing altogether in 2020 because of the pandemic. In 2021, testing returned, with Oregon receiving approval to scale back its standardized testing.

For both the Class of 2020 and the Class of 2021, the Oregon Department of Education suspended the Essential Skills requirement....

Senate Bill 744 was signed in July. Former special education teacher Zach) Hudson and his fellow lawmakers, including Rep. Teresa Alonso Leon, D-Woodburn, said the pandemic presented an opportunity to take a look at what Oregon students needed to do to graduate.

“If we’re going to look at our graduation requirements, this is the time,” Rep. Alonso Leon said. “This is the time to really make that assessment, and look at it from an equitable standpoint. I don’t know if that was the lens that was used back in 2007.”

And rather than requiring the Essential Skills proficiency while it’s under review, lawmakers decided to continue the suspension.

“I would not have supported just suspending it in order to study it, but since it was going to be suspended anyway, it seemed like this gave us a good opportunity,” Dembrow said....

Left unmentioned is that suspension of the Essential Skills requirement was a prudent response to Covid-19, especially because it probably resulted in fewer students being held back a grade and thus saved valuable financial resources. However

Hudson and the other legislators point to other states that don’t have testing requirements to graduate. According to the Education Commission of the States, Oregon is one of seventeen states with a non-course requirement to graduate.

Both lawmakers and ODE say rethinking graduation and diploma requirements is a matter of equity, and part of a broader effort to better support students from Oregon’s communities of color.

The state of Oregon therein has committed the classic Democratic error. It implemented reasonable fiscal and educational policy but couldn't resist the temptation to frame it in terms of social equity.  Thus

In an email to the media outlets, Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, said the new standards for graduation would help benefit the state’s "Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color."

A concern with social equity should not have precluded "black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, and tribal" for the redundant, heavily woke "Latinx," "Indigenous," and "students of color," the latter reminiscent of "colored students." Or perhaps Oregon could have referred to students of "disadvantaged groups."

However, that would have been a de facto admission that not all black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, or tribal students are disadvantaged. Nor would it have acknowledged that the economic/social status of, for instance, Americans of Asian or Pacific Island background typically differs from that of blacks or Latinos. Nor would the State have recognized that even some white (!) students suffered under the Essential Skills requirement.

But economic class can't be considered when color is considered so much more important- which, fittingly, brings us to the terrible response we've made in education to Covid-19, thereby returning us to May 2020 when

As the pandemic forced tens of thousands of Philadelphia students into online-only education, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. asked Comcast and other internet providers to open their WiFi networks so all students could learn through their laptops — but all refused, he said Wednesday.

Addressing City Council as it considers School District funding for next year, Hite said internet access remains a “critical infrastructure issue,” and if public schools require children to use the internet for educational purposes, that access should be free in the way that school meals are free to low-income families.

The School District has distributed more than 81,000 Chromebooks to students in an effort to keep them learning while schools are closed for face-to-face instruction. But just 57% of students are participating in some way, according to the most recent district data, and officials say a lack of wireless access is in part to blame.

“It becomes sort of futile to provide the Chromebooks if we’re not providing the internet access,” Councilmember Cindy Bass said. “We might as well give them a piece of paper and a pencil and sit them down at a table and tell them to figure it out.”

Comcast Corporation, a telecommunications conglomerate based in Philadelphia with revenues of 116,38 billion dollars in 2021. Providing free internet access while schools were closed would have been a boon to online education in a city with one of the highest poverty rates in the nation.  It also would have struck a blow, indirectly but powerfully, against the racial wealth gap in a city in which 90% of students (mostly black) are of minority groups.

Comcast wouldn't go there. But at least Philadelphia tried, while through this epidemic far too little attention has been paid by government to the role Internet providers can play in promoting educational progress. (Probing possible explanations is a subject for a later date.)

Progress- and standards.  If ISP's had done their share, education would have been vastly improved during this pandemic and public schools would have been able to accomplish far more than they have. That might not have satisfied- or even pleased- conservatives such as Jason Rantz, but millions of young people across the country would have benefitted.

 

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