RUTHFULLY YOURS

Now that Betsy DeVos has been selected as secretary of education, it is important to consider the issue of charter schools in a reasoned and logical fashion.

Parents should have the ability to choose the school they deem best for their children. But how will this actually occur? Will students from an inner-city school opt to go to a wealthier school district, where scores are higher and education more intense? Will they be bused if they live too far? Who will be paying the taxes for the additional teaching staff and materials to accommodate the students?

There are mixed reviews about the success of charter schools. They hinge on the dichotomy between charter schools and district schools. David P. Magnani, who was the Senate chair of the Education Committee in Massachusetts, reminds readers that “most have forgotten that charter schools were created to serve as ‘laboratories of change,’ disseminating new ideas, not as competitors to existing district schools. To date, very little, if any, of this ‘dissemination’ agenda has been achieved, largely because neither charter nor district schools have any mandate and few resources, incentives or the regulatory environment for such dissemination.” In fact, Magnani maintains that “charter schools have increased inequality overall, contrary to initial intent.” He cites a 2009 UCLA study that confirms this finding. Moreover, in “suburban districts, charter schools hurt district schools in another way: by leaving children with the most severe physical or intellectual disabilities as district responsibilities.”

For those who would argue about the economics of charter schools, Magnani maintains that “in spite of temporary reimbursements from the commonwealth, over time, the district actually loses money for each student it sends to a charter school. This is because the average cost-per-student leaves the district and ‘follows the child,’ but the marginal district ‘savings’ are less than the amount the district is required to send to the charter school.”

But let us set aside the economic concerns for a moment. How have charter schools fared concerning the educational attainment of their students?

First and foremost, it is critical to understand the vital connection between parental interest and school achievement. Parental engagement has always produced more engaged students because the child has a back-up system that promotes student academic success. Moreover, as E.D. Hirsch has noted, “a systemic failure to teach all children the knowledge they need in order to understand what the next grade has to offer is the major source of avoidable injustice in our schools. … It is impossible for a teacher to reach all children when some of them lack the necessary building blocks of learning.”

In her 2016 piece, Kate Zernike of the New York Times writes that “Detroit now has a bigger share of students in charters than any American city except New Orleans, which turned almost all its schools into charters after Hurricane Katrina. But half the charters perform only as well, or worse than, Detroit’s traditional public schools.”

John Oliver at Business Insider asserts that “[s]ome charters are “so flawed, … that they don’t make it through the year. The most flawed are in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Charters have also had problems with misuse of funds, as they are supposed to be nonprofit but certain groups aim to make a profit, and there’s been lackadaisical attendance monitoring for online charters.”

We on the right have grown to expect bias in political journalism — but most of us probably thought that science literature would always be objective, and exempt from radical leftist opinion. If so, then our thoughts were mistaken.

Every once in a while, I receive emailed articles from science journals, for example, Scientific American. Most of these are of interest to science junkies like myself — but a disturbing and growing number of them have less to do with science than with left-wing political propaganda. Much of it is unashamedly anti-Trump. It seems (sarcasm here) that by questioning the (questionable) evidence of global warming, President Trump is seeking to inundate the entire world with rising oceans. In reality, thousands of government grants are at risk, billions of dollars of them, unless the scientists receiving the money can prove that global warming is manmade, and that human effort can reverse it.

Of course, the scientists can prove no such thing, which is why their journal articles increasingly give the impression of “hair-on-fire” panic.

More recently, I am beginning to notice an even more sinister trend, one which hints at anti-Semitism. In an article at Space.com, a site oriented toward NASA news, the authors seem to twist and turn through verbal contortions, straining to avoid any mention of the word, “Israel,” even though the science news therein was discovered by studying ancient Jewish records.

The article describes the geography of the featured discovery as being that of “Judah, an ancient kingdom situated around what is now Jerusalem.” This seems like an awful lot of words to substitute for the word, “Israel.”

The article credits Israeli scientist [quote], “Erez Ben-Yosef, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University,” with analyzing much of the information, but yet again, avoids mentioning that he is an Israeli scientist. In other articles, I find no shortage of phrases such as, a French scientist, or a scientist at Britain’s Oxford University, and so forth.

It is perhaps possible that I am being a bit overly sensitive in my appraisal of this one article, but I noticed its omissions largely because the piece fits the mold of many other science articles I have read over the past year, articles which in my view are ever more politically oriented toward leftist opinions.

“Aren’t you tired of writing your stupid articles?”

I recall Georgetown University’s Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization, Jonathan A. C. Brown, saying that to me on February 7 at Herndon, Virginia’s International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Brown’s brief angry remarks quickly led to my expulsion from his imminent lecture, “Islam and the Problem of Slavery”: an indication of how he and his fellow Islamism apologists handle opposing views.

I had entered IIIT’s conference room in a small office complex anxious to hear Brown, the director of Georgetown’s Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). Shortly before the lecture’s evening beginning, he and IIIT Director of Research and Academic Programs Ermin Sinanovićwere preparing at a speaker’s podium before empty chair rows while two veiled IIIT assistants readied for the lecture. After I had taken a seat in the back row, Brown became visibly irritated upon noticing this writer, who has covered his previous appearances.

Before reiterating his previously tweeted disgust at my “stupid” articles, Brown began by asking if I intended to enjoy the IIIT’s food, after my appetite had impressed him at several Georgetown events (the IIIT lecture offered no refreshments). He then mused whether he should photograph me while visiting an Islamist, Muslim Brotherhood (MB)-affiliated institution, observations that most certainly came to him from my reporting on a previous IIIT lecture hosted by Sinanović. Brown then indicated a willingness to speak before most anyone, but felt incensed by my presence at IIIT after my having supposedly “insulted” this institution, whereupon Sinanović asked me to leave.

Given Brown’s background, I was particularly interested in hearing him address the contentious topics of Islam and slavery. A Washington, DC, area native, Brown, like me, is from an Anglican background, but converted to Islam under the strong influence of a Muslim professor his freshman year at Georgetown, as he explained in a2010 interview. She impressed him with “things that I had believed my whole life; the nature of God, the idea of reason, the idea that reason and religion are supposed to be compatible, religion should enhance your life, not make it difficult and not make you suffer.”

Brown’s admiration for Islam’s prophet Muhammad, who “was both idealistic and effective,” is puzzling to many non-Muslims. He

was the best person in every situation….Jesus is always kind and forgiving. But sometimes you can’t be forgiving. You shouldn’t be; sometimes you have to soft and sweet and sometimes you have to be direct and harsh; sometimes you have to be patient and at other times you have to act quickly. There isn’t always one rule that you can apply to your life that will tell you how to act. You have to be able to read the situation and act in the best way. The Prophet knew how to do that; that is inspirational.

What passes for education at many American public schools is too often closer to indoctrination. Consider the seminar day that New Trier High School, in Winnetka, Ill., on Chicago’s affluent North Shore, is planning for Feb. 28.

The title for the all-school seminar is “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights.” That very term, “racial civil rights,” is misleading, since civil rights protect Americans’ freedoms regardless of their race. Judging from the roster of scheduled events, the seminar might be more accurately titled “Inculcating a Progressive View of Social Justice.”

Here are a few of the offerings scheduled for presentation to New Trier’s roughly 4,000 students: “SPENT: A Simulation to See How Long You Can Survive on Minimum Wage”—which touches on race at best tangentially. “Developing a Positive, Accountable White Activism for Racial Civil Rights”—which promotes a divisive view of race as a primordial fact, the essence of identity, a bright line between oppressed and oppressor. “One Person One Vote: Can the Voting Rights Act Be Saved?”—which absurdly suggests that the Voting Rights Act is at risk of being repealed.

There are plenty of sessions on the connections that music, art and culture have with civil rights. Very little programming, however, is devoted to actually explaining to students what civil rights are and what their place is in this country’s political tradition.

Yet the continuing quest to fulfill America’s founding promise is unintelligible without a grasp of how civil rights are grounded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Or without an understanding of the often-heroic struggle for civil rights over the course of American history—the abolition movement, the Civil War, the great Reconstruction constitutional amendments, the grievous setback of Jim Crow, the modern civil-rights movement, the landmark Supreme Court cases like Brown v. Board of Education.

Instead of teaching, the school’s aim seems to be hammering home to students that racism plagues America and will persist until white people admit their unjust privilege, renounce their unearned power, and make amends for the entrenched oppression from which they continue to profit handsomely. This despite the school board’s written policy to provide a “balanced view” on “controversial issues,” and the seminar’s stated purpose “not to promote the philosophy of one political party or another.”

On Monday a group of concerned New Trier parents will make a final attempt to persuade the school board to alter the seminar’s programming to include a diversity of views about race and rights in America. The parents have proposed, for example, inviting black conservative intellectuals—such as my Hoover Institution colleague Shelby Steele and this newspaper’s Jason Riley—or people like Pastor Corey Brooks, the director of Project Hood, which seeks to end violence and build communities on Chicago’s South Side. CONTINUE AT SITE

An elite Upper East Side private school’s annual ice-skating party at Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park had to be canceled after parents refused to send their kids in protest of the president, sources said.

The Parents Association at The Dalton School sent a letter Thursday announcing the “Dalton on Ice” event was scrapped, saying “it would not be financially prudent” because of “significantly lower attendance.”

Dalton’s PA president, LaMae DeJongh, declined to comment — but sources said the low attendance was due to rampant anti-Trump sentiment at the elite prep school, which boasts alumni such as CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“I think it is completely insane,” said one Dalton parent who disagrees with the protest. “Like him or not, it feels like a strange place for New Yorkers to protest. And sad that kids now have no skating party.”

Trump renovated the rink in 1986 after the city fumbled the job for six years.

Another Dalton parent said a clique of Upper East Side “liberal moms” upset with Trump pressured the headmaster to call off the event, a source said.

Trump Wollman Rink had no immediate comment, and Headmaster ­Ellen Stein could not be reached for comment.