RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/transgender-secrecy-policies-at-public-schools

More than 10 million American children attend public school in districts that require employees to hide students’ gender transitions from their parents. The revelation of how widespread secrecy polices are comes thanks to a list compiled by the parental-rights advocacy organization Parents Defending Education. While the prevalence of these policies is alarming in itself, the philosophy underlying them is what parents should be most concerned about.

Districts are using legal theories pushed by activist groups like the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Among the most important are that children have a federally guaranteed right to privacy from their parents in school, that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes children’s right to transition without the consent or knowledge of their parents, and that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects transgender students from the “harassment” of school districts “outing” them to non-compliant parents. The Title IX theory, the most chilling, is supported by the radically progressive notion that parents represent a danger to the welfare of transgender children until they prove otherwise by providing “affirmation.”

School districts that buy into these theories are not merely embracing the idea that hiding children’s gender transitions from their parents is legal, but that divulging the information without the child’s consent is illegal and possibly perilous to the student’s safety. In Dover, Pennsylvania, for example, a mother of a middle school student castigated a local school board after discovering that school staff had been addressing her 12-year-old daughter with male pronouns for a year. School officials even sent the child to a hospital for an evaluation without informing the parents. When the mother confronted the school board, she was told that there was a law against informing her. School boards in Chico, California, New Castle, Maine, and beyond have said the same.

No such law exists, however—and the legal theories pushed by activist groups to legitimize secrecy policies are baseless.

The law that districts most commonly cite is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). That’s likely due to boilerplate policy language promulgated by GLSEN that claims FERPA establishes a child’s right to privacy from their parents. This interpretation of the law is also pushed by public education groups like the Pennsylvania School Counselors Association, which told a local media outlet that “Transgender and nonbinary students have a FERPA-protected right to privacy.”

Teresa R. Manning is Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars, Vice-President of the Virginia Association of Scholars, and a former law professor at Scalia Law School, George Mason University. 

Last month, two conservative groups made court filings to oppose Florida’s anti-woke law: The Academic Freedom Alliance (“AFA”) joined the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”) challenging the statute’s constitutionality.

The Florida law bans promotion of divisive concepts, based on race or sex, in the educational setting. Its language is similar to President Trump’s Executive Order 13950 which applied to the federal workforce but was withdrawn when Biden took office.

Challengers claim that the Florida law chills the free speech rights of professors and therefore violates both the First Amendment and what is called “academic freedom,” a term that is variously defined but here refers to the right of professors to teach as they see fit.

The law is actually a laudable and constitutionally sound measure to rein in the political radicalism and race-baiting that are so rampant in American schools and especially in universities. Most have heard of anti-American teaching materials such as the New York Times 1619 Project, which says that America is inherently racist, or the concepts of “white privilege,” which teach that Americans of European descent (“whites”) are “oppressors,” and even “race shaming” where teachers separate students by race, calling some groups “permanent oppressors” and others “permanently oppressed,” recently exposed and denounced by Moms in Duvall County, Florida.

The legal arguments against Florida’s law are misguided and lack merit. In fact, those committed to Martin Luther King Jr.’s principle – that we be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character – should be thanking Florida officials for this legislation, not suing them.

One irony here is that the law actually forbids attempts at thought control, notwithstanding press reports to the contrary. Obviously, fighting thought control is a good thing. The law therefore secures greater freedom of inquiry and expression, not less.

For example, the law’s first provision reads in relevant part:

Subjecting any individual …. to required activity that … compels such individual to believe any of the following [racist] concepts constitutes discrimination based on race ….

The law therefore forbids compelling individuals to believe or parrot something. What’s objectionable here?

The law then gives examples of bigoted, divisive concepts that cannot be imposed. The list includes: 1) that one race is superior to another; 2) that individuals of one race, by virtue of that race, suffer from “unconscious bias;” 3) that one’s moral character is determined by race; and 4) that individuals can be held responsible, or punished, for actions committed in the past by other members of their race.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/07/english-a-discipline-in-search-of-a-purpose/

Only in the world of English teaching could you leave an industry conference feeling more confused about the purpose of your discipline than when you arrived. This conference was held in February by VATE (the Victorian Association of Teaching English) bringing secondary English teachers and department leaders from across Victoria to Deakin University. The dark cloud hanging over the industry, in the form of a national teacher shortage, did not dissuade the typical good-natured banter and cheerful complaining between the mutually fatigued.

Teachers became students as the day was divided into several sessions broken by recess and lunch. Those from the independent schools made comparisons between who had done a better job of gaming their median study score the previous year through tactical enrolments and expulsions, while those from state schools looked over in envy before turning to each other with tall tales of wrangling delinquents and plucking gems from the great unwashed masses. Scattered throughout the room were a few fearful whispers of ChatGPT. As a teacher two years into his career, I was here to learn how to better teach English—but what is teaching English?

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/19/the-latest-in-teacher-union-ugly/

Earlier this month, the National Education Association held its yearly “Representative Assembly” in Orlando, Florida. A visitor from another planet might think that a gathering of teachers would find them concentrating on the tragic learning loss caused by the devastating COVID-related shutdowns, the shockingly high rates of violence against teachers or ways to improve the profession.

Hardly. This year’s theme centered around the “freedom to learn.” No, not learn the ABCs, but rather the debauched material that has become all the rage in public schools in recent years. And, of course, Florida and its feisty governor, Ron DeSantis, were the focal points of much of the unionistas’ scorn and outrage.

According to the NEA, the mood at the convention was “sober, but also defiant.” But at least one person was not at all sober. “You look magnificent!” shrieked NEA President Becky Pringle at a rally of teachers waving signs and rainbow flags. “Florida is our ground zero for shameful, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic rhetoric and dangerous actions. You are showing what it means to fight against out-of-touch politicians like Ron DeSantis.”

As shown by this year’s New Business Items (messages of concern from the hoi-polloi to the NEA aristocracy), the union faithful were certainly in sync with Pringle. For instance, NBI 4 asserts, “The NEA will inform states and locals of the following sample language that may be put in contracts and policies that is LGBTQIA+ inclusive. The language will be as follows: ‘Parental leave’ instead of ‘maternity leave,’ ‘parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father,’ ‘birthing parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father,’ and ‘non-birthing parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father.’”

NBI 88 wants the NEA to declare a national educator day of action whose purpose is to rally – among other things – to “protect LGBTQIA+ students and educators including the right to gender-affirming care…and stop book bans.”

And speaking of “banned” books, the union’s “Great Summer Reads for Educators” includes kiddie porn like Gender Queer, which graphically depicts young people indulging in various kinds of sex. (It’s interesting that this “banned book” is on a reading list for teachers and is available on Amazon and in local public libraries. The union’s snit is over the fact that Florida does not want the book in school libraries – just as Playboy and Penthouse do not grace their shelves).

Another book on the NEA’s suggested reading list is Ready Player One, which explicitly describes blow-up sex dolls, online brothels and masturbation.

While sex is featured in many of the selections, other over-the-edge books are on the list. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism is suggested reading.

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2023/07/18/nyu-law-exposed-courses-teach-human-reproduction-is-oppression-n1711744

This is part seven of PJ Media’s jaunt through the courses taught at the nation’s top ten law schools: “Do They Teach Law Anymore?”

Hans von Spakovsky and I are marching through the top ten ranked law schools by U.S. News and World Report and sharing with you what is being taught inside. The militancy and uselessness of the curriculum may astound many of you.

I already exposed the top-ranked law school,Yale, then Chicago and Harvard. Hans covered number two, Stanford, and also Columbia and Penn.

We have arrived at #7 — New York University School of Law, a school so obsessed with its image that it publishes a “branding guide” if you want to write about it.

We’ve shown that the radicalized course offerings at the previous six schools demonstrate that these elite law schools have become training academies not so much for effective and competent lawyers, but instead for militant and transformational radicals with a law degree.

It affects the nation as well as your lives. These graduates from elite law schools have outsized influence in government, on the courts, and in academia and corporate America.  They have enjoyed an elevated brand, free from scrutiny from mainstream Americans.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/college-racism/

The Left is angry because the Supreme Court ruled race-based affirmative action unconstitutional. President Joe Biden says he “strongly disagrees.”

But Chief Justice John Roberts was right to say, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

It’s a victory for Students for Fair Admissions, the group that sued, thereby forcing Harvard to admit that Asians had to score 22 points higher on the SAT than whites, 63 points higher than Blacks.

How did Harvard justify that? They said Americans of Asian descent score lower in personal attributes, like “likability.”

“Asian Americans are boring little grade grubbers,” complains the Asian American Legal Foundation’s Lee Cheng, in my video on race-based admissions. “That’s bulls–t,” he adds.

Economist Harry Holzer, who defended Harvard, says the school did the right thing.

“Asians are not interesting?” I ask. “They don’t have interesting qualities?”

“Personal ratings reflect a wide range of characteristics,” Holzer responds. “It’s possible that some of that is anti-Asian bias, but you certainly can’t prove that. … When you have a long history of discrimination based on race, you have to take race into account.”

“There are many, many, different ways to achieve diversity without discriminating against Asian Americans,” Cheng responds. “Race-focused affirmative action helps rich people. Seventy percent of the students of every ethnic group at Harvard come from the top 20 percent of family income.”

But Asians already do well in America, earning more money, on average, than other ethnic groups. Blacks have faced more discrimination. “Isn’t it Harvard’s job to try to make up for some of that?” I ask Cheng.

“The right path out of the history of discrimination based on race is not more discrimination,” he replies.

Cheng is right. Affirmative action is racist, and therefore wrong.

I once tried to make that point by holding a racist bake sale. I called it an “affirmative action bake sale.” I sold cupcakes at a mall. My sign read:

Asians — $1.50

Whites — $1.00

Blacks/Latinos — 50 cents

https://www.city-journal.org/article/vanishing-families-shrinking-schools

Public school districts in large cities, many facing budget squeezes from plunging enrollments driven by parental discontent over Covid-19 policies, are unlikely to find relief anytime soon. The latest census data show that families with the preschool-age children who would form the next generation of students are abandoning cities, especially big ones, at unprecedented levels. The combination of outmigration and a slowdown in births is thus accelerating a trend that emerged even before Covid: cities with fewer and fewer children as a percentage of the overall population. Though the trend is most pronounced in states where population growth has lagged, like New York and Illinois, it’s also happening in growing places like Texas, suggesting a broad retrenchment by families with young children, especially to so-called “exurban” areas beyond cities and suburbs. Struggling school districts from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles have seen “massive” hemorrhaging of students, in the words of New York City mayor Eric Adams.

The population of young children, from newborns to age four, has been declining nationally because of a shrinking birth rate, but the losses are most pronounced in big cities, according to a new study by the Economic Innovation Group. Since the pandemic began, the under-five population of large urban areas has shrunk at about 6.1 percent, nearly twice the national rate. Declines in suburban counties are much smaller—about 1.6 percent since April 2020. And in the exurbs, the youthful population has grown modestly since the pandemic began.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/racial-preferences-charter-schools-and-the-teachers-unions/

On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a university’s consideration of race in accepting students violates the U.S. Constitution. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, explains that the admissions processes at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The 6-3 decision saw the three liberal justices dissent.

In addition to being unconstitutional, affirmative action has not worked out well in the real world. Only 42% of black students nationally graduate college within six years, which is far below the 66% rate for white students.

As Jason Riley writes in City Journal, racial preferences are counterproductive. “They mismatch students with schools that recruit minorities for window dressing and then fail to graduate them in a timely manner or in the majors they initially wanted to pursue. Many bright black students who could have graduated from Xavier with a degree in engineering were instead lured to Duke, where they struggled academically, perhaps switched to a softer discipline, or simply flunked out. The upshot has been fewer black mathematicians, lawyers, and physicians than we would have had in the absence of race-based admissions.”

It’s worth noting that affirmative action was never meant to last forever. When the policy was first implemented in the 1960s, it was assumed that gaps in educational achievement between black and white Americans would eventually shrink, thereby rendering racial preferences unnecessary. Along these lines, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in 2003: “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”

Needless to say, the left was delirious and then some over the SCOTUS decision. Leading the wackadoodle parade was union boss Randi Weingarten, who has never been shy about wearing hysteria on her sleeve. “Make no mistake: Today’s draconian ruling by the Supreme Court is a catastrophic decision that will have dire outcomes for millions of Americans for decades to come. This decision ignores the original sin of this country—it’s a throwback to a cruel, racist past that admissions policies like this tried to repair. This decision doesn’t simply end affirmative action, it has huge consequences for public life far beyond higher education. Ignoring the facts before them, the majority pretends that both discrimination and the effects of discrimination simply do not exist and do not need to be tackled.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/07/15/california-approves-new-math-guidelines-that-emphasize-social-justice-n1710863

“Those poor kids. They’ve become “warriors for social justice” without being asked. And the price they pay will prove to be far more damaging to their futures than anything any white person will ever do to them.”

For nearly two years, California has been fiddling with new guidelines for teaching math that “de-emphasizes calculus, and applies social justice principles to math lessons.” Now those guidelines have been finalized, and the state board of education is thrilled to announce that math is no longer “racist.”

“This framework provides strategies to challenge, engage, and support all students in deep and relevant math learning by building on successful approaches used in nations that produce high and equitable achievement in math,” State Board President Linda Darling-Hammond said in a statement.

“High standards” are desirable. But “equitable achievement”? Which nations produce both?

Darling-Hammond added, “It also draws on the experiences of educators who have worked for a decade to develop successful strategies for teaching California’s rigorous standards, carrying those lessons to others across the state. This framework provides teachers and schools with a path to greater excellence with greater equity.”

The 1,000-page document is a triumph of idiocy. The idea is to make math instruction “culturally relevant” and “empowering” and to “instill confidence in learners by dispelling myths about who can and cannot learn math.”

“Cultural and personal relevance is important for learning and also for creating mathematical communities that reflect California’s diversity. Educators can learn to notice, utilize, and value students’ identities, assets, and cultural resources to support learning for all students. Additionally, because culture and language can be intertwined, attending to cultural relevance may also enable teachers to attend to linguistic diversity – a key feature of California and relevant to the teaching and learning of mathematics,” the document reads.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/07/16/christopher_rufo_examines_crts_roots_and_reach_149500.html

Following the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd and amid the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, controversy erupted over the teaching of critical race theory in the nation’s K-12 schools. The mainstream media adopted a contradictory approach. Journalists reported that American schools generally did not teach critical race theory; at the same time, the prestige press contended that opponents of CRT’s presence in the curriculum obstructed students’ encounter with the harsh realities of race in America. The journalists’ conflicting denial of its presence and endorsement of its radical ideas reflect CRT’s extensive influence. A perverse mixture of doctrines deriving from Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, CRT undergirds much of the hard-left agenda that has burrowed deep into America, not least the mainstream media.

Consider two 2021 articles that appeared less than two weeks apart.

On July 1 of that year, NBC News journalist Phil McCausland reported that according to a survey, “Teachers nationwide said K-12 schools are not requiring or pushing them to teach critical race theory, and most said they were opposed to adding the academic approach to their course instruction.” 

McCausland lacked curiosity. He did not ask whether the ideas teachers were presenting could reasonably be understood as reflecting CRT’s central tenets. And he did not consider whether parents’ concerns about critical race theory stemmed from the shift to online instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With children learning onscreen at home, parents could look over their kids’ shoulders and see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears as teachers explained that America was systemically racist, that white people were of necessity oppressors and African Americans were of necessity oppressed, and that group identities and group rights superseded personal achievement and individual rights. Instead, NBC News  implied that parents objected to CRT to suppress the cruel facts about race in America.

Several days earlier, Washington Post reporters Laura Meckler and Josh Dawsey published a 3,000-word article tracing much of the furor over critical race theory – “a decades-old academic framework that most people had never heard of” – to the belligerent activism of Christopher Rufo, “a young conservative from Seattle.” The reporters sought to refute Rufo’s claim that critical race theory “has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people” by suggesting that Rufo used “questionable evidence” to gin up CRT as “the latest cultural wedge issue.”