Republican Assault on Public Education (1 Viewer)

[MT15]

This probably needs its own thread. It ties in with a lot of different R culture wars: Attacks on universities, attacks on CRT and “woke”. Classifying teachers and librarians as “groomers”. Pushing vouchers to send tax money to private, often religious, schools. Betsy DeVos was an advocate for all these policies that will weaken public education, and there are several billionaires who also want to dismantle public education. Public education may have its faults, but it is responsible for an amazing amount of upward mobility. Kids from poor areas can still get a college prep education in a public school.

Vouchers (sometimes disguised as “school choice”) are a particular peeve of mine. Public money is diverted from poor schools to wealthy private schools, which aren’t required to offer accommodations for special needs or challenged students. Families with special needs kids are left out. Rural areas often suffer disproportionately because there are no private schools to attend, but their public schools still see the reduction in funding. Often the families who take advantage of the voucher money are upper class and the private schools simply raise tuition knowing the families are getting taxpayer money now.

Greg Abbot is being particularly vile in this area. No surprise. Voters will have to make a statement about public education. If we want to halt the growing divide in this country between the “haves” and “have-nots”, we need to pay attention to public education.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Wasn’t sure where to put this, here or SCOTUS thread
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Aug 21 (Reuters) - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's incoming freshman class this year dropped to just 16% Black, Hispanic, Native American or Pacific Islander students compared to 31% in previous years after the U.S. Supreme Court banned colleges from using race as a factor in admissions in 2023, the elite engineering school said.

The proportion of Asian American students in the incoming class rose from 41% to 47%, while white students made up about the same share of the class as in recent years.

MIT administrators said the statistics are the result of the Supreme Court's decision last year to ban affirmative action, a practice that many selective U.S. colleges and universities used for decades to boost enrollment of underrepresented minority groups.

Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the defendants in the Supreme Court case, argued that they wanted to promote diversity to offer educational opportunities broadly and bring a range of perspectives to their campuses.

The conservative-leaning Court ruled that their race-conscious admissions practices violated the U.S. Constitution's promise of equal protection under the law……

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/mits-enrollment-black-latino-students-drops-after-supreme-court-affirmative-2024-08-21/

Enrollment for Black students fell at two elite US colleges in the first class since the supreme court’s decision last year to strike down affirmative action in college admissions and upend the nation’s academic landscape.

Amherst College and Tufts University, both in Massachusetts, reported a drop in the share of Black first-year students, an early sign that the high court’s ruling could negatively affect racial diversity in the US’s more selective colleges and universities, according to the New York Times.

In June 2023, the US supreme court, driven by its conservative supermajority, ended race-conscious admissions at universities across the country in a move that dealt a substantial blow to the cause of greater student diversity on campuses, which critics warned would have far-reaching effects throughout society.


The share of Black students at Amherst College for the incoming freshman class decreased by eight percentage points, from 11% last year to 3% this year, the data showed. The percentage of Hispanic students dropped from 12% to 8%……

Elite colleges see Black enrollment drop after affirmative action strike-down

Amherst College and Tufts University report lower number of Black students this year as white enrollment increases

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

guess this can go here
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A federal judge in Indiana dismissed a lawsuit filed by parents of five public school children who argued the school should be banned from teaching evolution because it amounts to the state coercing students into accepting atheism.

Jason and Jennifer Reinoehl sued the Penn-Harris-Madison School corporation, the Indiana State board of Education, and the Indiana Secretary of Education in May 2023. They alleged that the defendants were equally blameworthy in causing their family pain and suffering by “forcing” the children, “to learn and cite as truth religious origin stories that were different from those in which they believe in.”

Throughout the 35-page complaint in which the plaintiffs represented themselves as pro se litigants, the Reinoehls referred to evolution as “religious teaching” and a “religious myth of evolution.” Their argument appeared to be that evolution has not been proven to accepted scientific standards, and is — on that basis — religious in nature.

According to the plaintiffs, evolution is a “highly flawed scientific theory” that does not meet the proper criteria for scientific hypothesis and has been “scientifically disproven.” Over multiple pages, they argued that there is no way to test the theory of evolution just as there is no way to test the “Big Bang Theory.” Scientists, they said, subscribe to evolutionary theory because they, “have been indoctrinated with it while attending public schools and universities,” and they are “reluctant to abandon this religious teaching.”..........

Judge dismisses lawsuit that said teaching evolution was 'forcing' kids to accept atheism

A federal judge in Indiana dismissed a lawsuit filed by parents who argued the school should be banned from teaching evolution because it amounts to the state coercing students into accepting atheism.

lawandcrime.com

DocumentCloud

www.documentcloud.org

 

[Optimus Prime]

……..The situation is structurally the same in the United States – would-be authoritarians and one-party states centrally target universities with the aim of restricting dissent.

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, is an aspiring autocrat who has used the myth of widespread voter fraud to severely restrict minority voting. (Voter fraud practically never happens in the United States; rigorous investigation estimated it as between 0.0003 and 0.0025%.)

DeSantis also created an office of election crimes and security, to pursue supposed cases of voter fraud.

Besides minority voting populations, DeSantis has focused on public and higher education as central targets.

According to an AAUP report by the special committee on political interference and academic freedom in Florida’s public education system in May 2023, “academic freedom, tenure and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history.”

The committee’s final report reveals an atmosphere of intimidation and indeed terror, as the administrative threat to public university professors has been shown to be very real.

Even more so than Florida, Tennessee is a one-party state, with a Republican governor and a Republican supermajority in the legislature.

The Tennessee house and senate passed a resolution to honor the Danube Institute; on the floor of the Tennessee house, the state representative Justin Jones questioned why the state was honoring the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán’s thinktank. Tennessee

has a state ban on the teaching of “divisive concepts”, one that includes public universities. To report a professor for teaching such a concept (such as intersectionality), Tennessee provides an online form.

Attacks on voting, and democratic systems generally, almost invariably center on universities, and vice versa. The Yale Law School graduate and current Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has claimed that the 2020 election should not have been certified because of suspicion of voter fraud.

In a speech to the National Conservatism Conference, Vance also proclaimed, echoing Richard Nixon: “The professors are the enemy.”…..

Why fascists hate universities | Jason Stanley

Authoritarians and would-be authoritarians are only too aware that universities are primary sites of critique and dissent

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Some Florida school districts are rolling back a more comprehensive approach to sex education in favor of abstinence-focused lessons under pressure from state officials who have labeled certain instruction on contraception, anatomy and consent as inappropriate for students.

Officials from the Florida Department of Education, led by an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, have been directing some of the state’s largest school districts to scale back their lesson plans not only on sexual activity, but on contraceptives, human development, abuse and domestic violence, as first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.

The shift reflects a nationwide push in conservative states to restrict what kids can learn about themselves and their bodies. Advocates are concerned that young people won’t reliably be taught about adolescence, safe sex or relationship violence at a time when sexually transmitted infections have been on the rise and access to abortion is being increasingly restricted.

Under recent changes to state law, it’s now up to the Florida Department of Education to sign off on school districts’ curriculum on reproductive health and disease education if they use teaching materials other than the state’s designated textbook.…..

Florida officials pressure schools to roll back sex ed lessons on contraception and consent

Some Florida school districts are rolling back a more comprehensive approach to sex education in favor of abstinence-focused lessons.

apnews.com

 

[MT15]

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Some Florida school districts are rolling back a more comprehensive approach to sex education in favor of abstinence-focused lessons under pressure from state officials who have labeled certain instruction on contraception, anatomy and consent as inappropriate for students.

Officials from the Florida Department of Education, led by an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, have been directing some of the state’s largest school districts to scale back their lesson plans not only on sexual activity, but on contraceptives, human development, abuse and domestic violence, as first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.

The shift reflects a nationwide push in conservative states to restrict what kids can learn about themselves and their bodies. Advocates are concerned that young people won’t reliably be taught about adolescence, safe sex or relationship violence at a time when sexually transmitted infections have been on the rise and access to abortion is being increasingly restricted.

Under recent changes to state law, it’s now up to the Florida Department of Education to sign off on school districts’ curriculum on reproductive health and disease education if they use teaching materials other than the state’s designated textbook.…..

Florida officials pressure schools to roll back sex ed lessons on contraception and consent

Some Florida school districts are rolling back a more comprehensive approach to sex education in favor of abstinence-focused lessons.

apnews.com

This is exactly how you will get a sharp increase in teen pregnancies. So good job, assuming that’s what they are trying to do.

 

[Huntn]

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Some Florida school districts are rolling back a more comprehensive approach to sex education in favor of abstinence-focused lessons under pressure from state officials who have labeled certain instruction on contraception, anatomy and consent as inappropriate for students.

Officials from the Florida Department of Education, led by an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, have been directing some of the state’s largest school districts to scale back their lesson plans not only on sexual activity, but on contraceptives, human development, abuse and domestic violence, as first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.

The shift reflects a nationwide push in conservative states to restrict what kids can learn about themselves and their bodies. Advocates are concerned that young people won’t reliably be taught about adolescence, safe sex or relationship violence at a time when sexually transmitted infections have been on the rise and access to abortion is being increasingly restricted.

Under recent changes to state law, it’s now up to the Florida Department of Education to sign off on school districts’ curriculum on reproductive health and disease education if they use teaching materials other than the state’s designated textbook.…..

Florida officials pressure schools to roll back sex ed lessons on contraception and consent

Some Florida school districts are rolling back a more comprehensive approach to sex education in favor of abstinence-focused lessons.

apnews.com

It’s the Ignorance Agenda which covers a wide spectrum. Maybe they’ll roll back history and science in public schools too, to keep a pliable serf working class until automation can take over.

 

[Optimus Prime]

This could have gone in a number of threads
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New College of Florida (NCF) will host the extremist writer Steve Sailer, who has been described as a “white supremacist” and a “proponent of scientific racism”, at a college-branded public event next month.

New College has made headlines since January 2023, when the rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, vowed to transform it from a university known for liberal values into a conservative institution, and installed a new board of trustees including the rightwing culture warrior Christopher Rufo.

That board in turn appointed DeSantis’s “close ally” Richard Corcoran as the new college president, in which role he makes a $699,000 salary.

DeSantis’s lieutenants’ actions at New College – like abolishing disciplines, removing bathroom signage and denying professors tenure – have seen the departure of more than a third of the faculty, and given rise to myriad legal actions.

But the moves have been lauded by the so-called “new right”, many of whom see US higher education as a bastion of liberalism that needs to be subject to a rightwing “reconquista”. JD Vance, for his part, has pledged to “aggressively attack the universities in this country”.

Even so, Sailer’s invitation to speak is likely to stir controversy for his extremist views, especially on race.

In Sailer’s newly published anthology, Noticing, one essay claims that an “African population explosion” is related to a “primal African cult of fertility”. Another associates “young woman-of-color journalists” with “Haitian voodoo and Southern hoodoo magic”.

Many offer variations on the claim that “Blacks have higher average levels of violent crime and lower average levels of intelligence”………

Sailer’s interlocutor, Wilfred Reilly, is the author of the books Hate Crime Hoax and Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me, and assistant professor of political science at Kentucky State University. The Guardian emailed Reilly asking him about the upside of sharing a stage with Sailer, given his views. There was no response.

Sailer, meanwhile, has repeatedly denied in recent months that he is a white supremacist in response to reporting in the Atlantic. The Guardian asked Sailer to characterize his political position on race in a detailed request for comment that also sought clarity on matters of fact, his beliefs and criticisms leveled at him.

In a 3,000-word emailed response, Sailer described his views on race as “realistic” and “moderate”.……..

Florida university to host extremist after DeSantis-led lurch to right

Next month, New College of Florida will welcome activist and writer Steve Sailer, a ‘proponent of scientific racism’

www.theguardian.com