Republican Assault on Public Education (3 Viewers)

[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]

long but good article
================


“Those who control the present, control the past; and those who control the past control the future.” —George Orwell, 1984

From outlawing the polio vaccine to ignoring the scientific consensus on gender dysphoria to refusing to wear masks in hospitals to trying to strip evolution and science from our schools, stupid has become fashionable in today’s GOP.

When Republican politicians want to score points, they criticize their opponents as having had “elite” educations; the GOP’s war against Ivy League colleges was particularly evident during the student protests of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. Congressional Republican inquisitors voices' dripped with scorn and contempt as they grilled university presidents.

It wasn’t always this way.

I remember when the USSR launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth. It was the fall of 1957, I was six years old, and my dad and I watched it arc over our house from our back yard one clear October night. My best friend’s father, a ham radio operator, let us listen on his shortwave radio to the “beep beep beep” it was emitting when it was over North America. I’d never seen my dad so rattled.

That dramatic technological achievement lit a major fire under the Eisenhower administration and Congress. In his January 27, 1958 State of the Union address, Republican President Eisenhower pointed to Sputnik and demanded Congress fund a dramatic transformation of America’s educational system:

“With this kind of all-inclusive campaign, I have no doubt that we can create the intellectual capital we need for the years ahead, invest it in the right places--and do all this, not as regimented pawns, but as free men and women!”

In less than a year Congress wrote and passed the National Defense Education Act that poured piles of money into our public schools and rolled out programs for gifted kids.

I was lucky enough to be enrolled in one of those in 1959: by the time I left elementary school I was functioning at high school and college levels in math, science, and English. I’d had two years of foreign language and two years of experimental music instruction. IQ tests were all the rage: mine was 141 and my best friend, Terry, was 142, something he never let me forget.

Most all of those programs died over the following decades as a result of Reagan’s war on public education, which began with his bringing private religious school moguls like Jerry Falwell and bigots like Bill Bennett into the White House.

Repudiating Eisenhower’s embrace of public education, Reagan put Bennett in charge of the Department of Education, which Reagan had campaigned on shutting down altogether. Bennett is probably best known for defending his proclamation that:

“If you wanted to reduce crime you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every Black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”

Much like Bennett back in the day, the catch phrase among white supremacists and their fellow travelers today is that “Western Civilization” is either under attack or at risk because we teach history, tolerance, and critical thinking skills in our public schools, which are often racially integrated. The answer, Republicans will tell you, is to defund our public schools.
When Reagan was elected in 1980, the federal share of total education spending in America was 12 percent; when he left office in disgrace in 1989 amid “Iran/Contra” rumors he’d cut a deal with the Iranians to keep the American hostages to screw Jimmy Carter, that share had collapsed to a mere 6 percent. (It’s 3 percent today.)

Reagan also wanted to amend the Constitution to allow mandatory school prayer, and unsuccessfully proposed a national tax credit — a sort of tax-system-based national voucher system — that parents could use to send their kids to religious schools like Falwell’s.

Reagan made anti-intellectualism a political weapon, repeatedly criticizing colleges and professors throughout his political career. When asked why he’d taken a meat-axe to higher education and was pricing college out of the reach of most Americans, he said that college students were “too liberal” and America “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.”


Four days before the Kent State Massacre of May 5, 1970, Governor Reagan called students protesting the Vietnam war across America “brats,” “freaks” and “cowardly fascists,” adding, as The New York Times noted at the time, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement!”

Before Reagan became president, states paid 65 percent of the costs of colleges, and federal aid covered another 15 or so percent, leaving students to cover the remaining 20 percent with their tuition payments.

That’s how it works in many developed nations; in most northern European countries college is not only free, but the government pays students a stipend to cover books and rent.

Here in America, though, the numbers are pretty much reversed from pre-1980, with students now covering about 80 percent of the costs. Thus the need for student loans here in the USA.


Ever since Reagan’s presidency, the core of Republican positions on public education have been five-fold:

1. Let white students attend schools that are islands of white privilege where they don’t have to confront the true racial history of America,

2. Use public money to support private, for-profit, and religious schools that can accomplish this (and cycle some of that money back to Republican politicians),

3. Destroy public schools’ teachers’ unions,

4. End the teaching of science, critical thinking, evolution, and sex ed, and,

5. Bring fundamentalist Christianity into the classroom.

Earlier this year, Republican Senator Marco Rubio called America’s public school system a “cesspool of Marxist indoctrination.”

“Dangerous academic constructs like critical race theory and radical gender theory are being forced on elementary school children,” Rubio wrote for the American Conservative magazine, adding, “We need to ensure no federal funding is ever used to promote these radical ideas in schools.”

Instead, multiple Republican-controlled states are now actively gutting their public schools with statewide voucher programs, and instituting mandatory bible instruction or posting of the Ten Commandments. Book bans and panics around queer kids using bathrooms or playing sports are the new wedge issues.

There is no more powerful urge we humans can experience than to protect and defend our children. For most people it beats hunger, sex, and money. So if you’re a politician looking for an issue to motivate voters, just tell them their children are under attack. It’s cynical, but effective.

In an interview for Semafor, Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid it out:

“I tell the story often — I get asked ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is [American Federation of Teachers President] Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids…”

Just a few months ago, Donald Trump laid out his plan to deal with the “major problem” America is facing. That problem, he said, is:

“[W]e have ‘pink-haired communists teaching our kids.’”

Turning the Constitution upside down and arguing the Founders intended to protect teaching schoolchildren religion, Trump elaborated, arguing that mixing religion, politics, and education was the intention of that document:

“The Marxism being preached in our schools is also totally hostile to Judeo-Christian teachings, and in many ways it’s resembling an established new religion. We can’t let that happen. For this reason, my administration will aggressively pursue intentional violations to the establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the Constitution.”

The devastating truth about the GOP's war on education

“Those who control the present, control the past; and those whocontrol the past control the future.” —George Orwell, 1984From outlawing the polio vaccine to ignoring the scientific consensus on gender dysphoria to refusing to wear masks in hospitals to trying to strip evolution and science from...

www.alternet.org

MSN

 

[Optimus Prime]

At first it seemed that Ryan Walters might have found issues of lasting appeal to the Oklahoma voters who swept him into office as state schools superintendent in 2022.

Walters had defeated Democrat Jena Nelson by a 57% to 43% margin by campaigning against what he called "left-wing indoctrination” in the schools, and in the early months of his term few pushed back against his assertions about inappropriate books in school libraries and ultra-liberal teachers injecting bias into their daily lesson plans.

But as time went on, Oklahomans began to realize that in the words of Gertude Stein, "there wasn't much 'there' there," an expression that has come to mean "an utter lack of substance or veracity as it pertains to the subject under discussion.”

Only a scattering of books that parents wouldn't have wanted their children to see were ever actually found. Teachers and school superintendents spoke up to defend the process by which books were chosen and the right of local schools to make that decision. The Oklahoma Supreme Court later ruled that the law was on their side.

Nevertheless, Walters doubled down, announcing support for a state-supported Catholic charter school, a notion that many, including the state's Republican attorney general, called unconstitutional, and proposing to require teaching the Bible in state schools. He put in an order for hundreds of classroom Bibles.

Walters defended an Oklahoma law that required school restrooms to be used according to a person’s biological sex, not their gender identity, saying, “Oklahomans strongly oppose the radical left trying to force young girls to share bathrooms with boys, and I will always fight to protect our students.” He also pushed for a new rule for school districts to prevent students from retroactively changing prior school records to match their gender identity. Both the law and the rule have been challenged in court.

Some began to wonder whether Walters' actions were aimed at improving Oklahoma schools or winning a spot in the Cabinet of presidential candidate Donald Trump ― maybe even becoming his education secretary. Using his state expense account, Walters hired a public relations firm to help him get bookings on conservative television programs...........

Has Ryan Walters missed the boat on what needs to be done for Oklahoma schools? | Opinion

Oklahoma's school superintendent seems stuck on issues that now seem less important than real and significant student performance improvement

www.oklahoman.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

For many students of color, access to an equitable education is dependent on the initiatives and programs provided by the Department of Education. Among its various functions, the department provides targeted funding for low-income students, collects data on educational outcomes and investigates potential bias – essential functions that help underserved students. But such services stand to be disrupted or ended entirely as Donald Trump plans to dismantle the department during his second tenure.

In addition to nominating for education secretary the former WWE executive Linda McMahon, who served on Connecticut’s state board of education for one year and has no other notable education experience, Trump has pledged to “[close] up” the department and “return” education rights to the states. Though Trump alone cannot eliminate the federal agency, as such an act requires congressional approval beyond a simple majority, experts have warned that any type of overhaul could disrupt the department’s critical roles, especially for marginalized students.

The education department dates back to 1867; the agency was founded to collect data on schools as states crafted their education systems (Congress abolished the department a year later, fearing federal overreach). In 1980, under former president Jimmy Carter, the department was reconceived as an executive agency with the purpose of ensuring equal education access in primary, secondary and higher education across all states. Historically, the department has overseen the implementation of federal civil rights laws in local school districts, such as the desegregation of schools following the supreme court’s Brown v Board of Education decision..........

Eighteen percent of complaints dealt with race and national origin discrimination, including bullying and racist harassment from school officials. In one high-profile example, the OCR investigated the Jefferson county school district, Kentucky’s largest public school district, and found that Black students were punished more often and more severely than white students. As a result, the district is mandated to amend their disciplinary policies by March 2025.

Following an OCR investigation, the department can force a school to make changes by threatening schools in violation of civil rights. “Funding and enforcement go hand-in-hand,” said Rachel Perera, a fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute. “The threat of violating civil rights law is that you will lose federal funding.” Absent these checks, schools would have less incentive to comply with the law.

Statistics from the department’s civil rights data collection not only provide insight into potential education disparities, including discipline rates by race, but they also determine what funding a school district is eligible for. Title I and Title III initiatives, which provide funding for high-poverty schools and English learners, respectively, are both dependent on enrollment statistics.

Eliminating the department all together is an unlikely outcome, experts argue, especially as many of the offices within the department are themselves enshrined into federal law. Prominent Republicans, including former president Ronald Reagan, have attempted to eliminate the department, all to no avail.

But the Trump administration could change key guidance within the department, including how it investigates civil rights complaints to “reshape civil rights enforcement towards their ideological purposes”. said Pereira. Trump previously promised to task the department with investigating “anti-white” civil rights violations, which could include targeting race discrimination investigations, Perera warned.

While the Biden administration attempted to expand Title IX, a federal civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination to include transgender students, Trump is expected to rework Title IX guidance to be “very explicitly anti-trans”, she added.

“I really worry about school districts who comply in advance, rather than resisting what are clearly out of bound changes to the regulations,” said Perera.............

Trump’s plans to axe US education department put marginalized students most at risk, experts warn

The president can’t fully eliminate the federal agency, but an overhaul could disrupt critical services for students who are of color, low-income or LGBTQ+

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

 

[superchuck500]

New Trump order requires schools to show “how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout history”

 

[MT15]

New Trump order requires schools to show “how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout history”

First Amendment protections mean anything?

 

[superchuck500]

 

[superchuck500]

 

[fooferdoggie]

First Amendment protections mean anything?

no

 

[coldseat]

New Trump order requires schools to show “how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout history”

That's more communist, Russia, China, North Korea like. Basically the authoritarian people Trump admires.

 

[Optimus Prime]

When I got the chance to attend a conservative, evangelical high school in rural Iowa, I was ecstatic. My early education had been in a similar school – where creationism was the one true science, and evolution was satanic propaganda – and I’d spent the interim as a frightened pilgrim in the unholy land of public school. I was a teenage zealot and longed to be among my people.

Throughout those years, my church leaders urged me to proselytize to the public school students, to debate teachers about the age of Earth or the founding of our Christian nation, to be a spiritual exhibitionist, praying loudly at my locker or the flagpole. The apocalypse was at hand, so who had time for algebra?

I viewed my enrollment at Forest City Christian school in my junior year as being honorably discharged from my duty of “reclaiming our schools for Christ”.

But what I envisioned as a sanctuary of faith, community and “true” education not only left me more disillusioned and bullied but also robbed me of a high school diploma and set me on a path of crushing financial insecurity that would haunt me for years.

Twenty-five years later, Donald Trump and the Christian nationalist movement that put him in the White House (twice) are seeking to transform public education into something similar to what I was reared on, where science, history and even economics are taught through an evangelical conservative lens, while prayer and Bible reading are foundations of the curriculum.


These efforts test the boundaries of the constitution’s establishment clause, reversing a century of civil rights victories in public schools, and have the potential to fundamentally alter the way American children learn – and what they learn about.

The push comes in two forms: injecting more Christian rhetoric and rituals into public school curriculum and for the first time in history, using tax dollars to subsidize private religious schools, generally via vouchers that cover student tuition.

Each has the potential to bolster the education of America’s most privileged students, while downgrading services for children of low-income families……

The first amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Thomas Jefferson later said the amendment created “a wall of separation between church and state”.

When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was often explained to me that this phrase was intended to keep the government out of religionand not the other way around. The issue of religion in public education muddies this divide.…..

Evangelical education nearly ruined me. Now the Christian right is coming for public schools

From Bible stories to the Ten Commandments, public schools are starting to look a lot like the fundamentalist system I escaped

www.theguardian.com

 

[Neworleansfan]

“
But more than a decade since the statewide voucher program began, after Louisiana has spent half a billion taxpayer dollars to send thousands of students to private schools, data show the state’s lofty promise has not panned out.

On average, voucher students at private schools fare worse on state tests than their public-school peers, according to scores examined by The Times-Picayune and The Advocate. In 2023, just 14% of voucher students in grades 3-8 met state achievement targets, compared with 23% of low-income students at public schools.”

Despite lofty promises, Louisiana’s private-school vouchers fall short

"If the goal was to improve achievement, then the program is not succeeding."

www.nola.com

 

[zztop]

'trust me, I am not going to do this thing that I am totally going to try to do'

5 Key Takeaways From Linda McMahon's Confirmation Hearing

President Trump's education secretary nominee pledged to maintain school funding even as she works to end the U.S. Department of Education.

www.edweek.org

 

[Optimus Prime]

Jo Boaler, a professor of mathematics education at Stanford University, is not new to criticism of her work turning ugly. Boaler champions a reformist approach to teaching maths, arguing that strategies that emphasise reasoning over memorisation lead to more equitable outcomes.

When she first moved to the US from Britain in the late 1990s, she was warned that her research would anger defenders of traditional methods. Backlash from some colleagues – including accusations of “scientific misconduct” that the university dismissed – grew so personal that she briefly moved back to the UK.

Back at Stanford two decades later, Boaler was tapped in 2019 by the California department of education with four other scholars to rewrite the state’s mathematics pedagogical framework, a non-binding guide seeking to help educators improve outcomes “for all students”.

That made Boaler a target once again. This time, the debate moved beyond the so-called “math wars” to become another battle in a newer conservative-led war over diversity and inclusion. Because her research focused on outcomes for students of all demographics and backgrounds, Boaler’s critics branded her as “woke” and attempted to delegitimise her work. Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz and Elon Musk came after her. Opponents of her research sought to ruin her career, she says.

The campaign against her harmed her reputation and took a personal toll. “The physical threats to my family were obviously the worst aspects, but erroneous and unfounded attacks on my work are physically and mentally draining,” she said.

But the campaign against Boaler was hardly an isolated incident. Instead, it followed a well-tested playbook, which, since the 2024 resignation of the former Harvard president Claudine Gay over plagiarism accusations, has been increasingly wielded against women, scholars of color and others perceived by the right as progressive.

“Most institutions, and even most individual scholars, aren’t fully aware of what’s been happening,” said Rebekah Tromble, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. “And how this is ratcheting up and what could come for them.”

Recent, organised attacks against scholars have often involved accusations of academic misconduct published in rightwing media, social media campaigns to make the allegations go viral and pressure on universities to disown their faculty.

These kinds of campaigns have been pioneered by Christopher Rufo, a conservative operative who first made a name for himself as a crusader against “critical race theory”, an academic approach examining the role of systemic racism in society.

Rufo first surfaced the plagiarism allegations against Gay just six months after she made history as Harvard’s first Black president, and shortly after she came under fire during highly charged congressional hearings on accusations of campus antisemitism. He called the campaign to force her out of her job a “successful strategy” and “team effort”.

While he gleefully took credit for Gay’s demise – when she quit, he posted the news with a comment, “scalped” – Rufo spoke of the campaign against her as a model he hoped others would emulate. It involved, he said, “varying degrees of coordination and communication” with media figures, conservative donors and politicians. (He was not involved in the campaign against Boaler.)

“I’ve run the same playbook on critical race theory, on gender ideology, on DEI bureaucracy,” he told Politico magazine. “This is a universal strategy that can be applied by the right to most issues.”

Rufo’s comments following Gay’s resignation were a candid acknowledgement of a growing phenomenon scholars have increasingly warned about, involving sustained campaigns by conservative activists seeking to undermine the legitimacy of higher learning institutions they view as the root of “woke”, or liberal, politics. It’s a movement that has been embraced by many in the Republican party, including Donald Trump, who has made diversity and equity initiatives a primary target and who has promised to end “the scourge of DEI”..................

‘We’re like sitting ducks’: the right’s ‘war on woke’ has a well-tested playbook to take down academics

The campaign against Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, has become a blueprint increasingly wielded against women and scholars of color

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

The Trump administration is giving the US’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money, raising the stakes in the president’s fight against “wokeness”.

In a memo on Friday, the education department gave an ultimatum to stop using “racial preferences” as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other areas. Schools are being given 14 days to end any practice that treats students or workers differently because of their race.

Educators at colleges nationwide were rushing to evaluate their risk and decide whether to stand up for practices they believe are legal. The sweeping demand threatens to upend all aspects of campus operations, from essays on college applications to classroom lessons and campus clubs.


It’s meant to correct what the memo described as rampant discrimination in education, often against white and Asian students.

“Schools have been operating on the pretext that selecting students for ‘diversity’ or similar euphemisms is not selecting them based on race,” said Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights. “No longer. Students should be assessed according to merit, accomplishment and character.”

The guidance drew sharp backlash from civil rights groups and university groups. Some believe its vague language is meant to have a chilling effect, pressuring schools to eliminate anything touching on the topic of race even if it may be defensible in court.

“Creating a sense of risk around doing work that might promote diverse and welcoming campuses is much more of the goal than a clear statement of existing law,” said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice-president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents.…….

Trump administration gives schools deadline to cut DEI or lose federal funds

Education department gives ultimatum to stop using ‘racial preferences’ as factors in admissions or risk losing money

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Feels like half the posts in this thread are about Oklahoma

And this also feels like they’re are going to be firing teachers next
===========


An Oklahoma lawmaker is concerned about “pink-haired” atheists teaching the Bible in classrooms.

Republican state Senator David Bullard sat down with American evangelical author David Barton and his co-hosts on the Wallsbuilders Show in an episode titled “Reviving Morality in Classrooms Through Faith Initiatives”.

Bullard said since taking office in November 2018, he has fought to see the U.S.’s Christian and constitutional heritage taught in schools – in particular, during history class.

The legislator first heaped praise onto Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s chief school officer and one-time educational secretary hopeful, after he lobbied to get thousands of Donald Trump’s Bibles in schools.

However, Bullard then issued a warning about the good book falling into the wrong hands inside the classroom.

“We need to be specific here,” he said on the podcast last Wednesday. “I don't want some pink-haired person who doesn't believe in God to start trying to teach the Bible.”

Bullard went on to mention a revived bill – that was killed last year but is currently in the Education Committee – that would require educators to teach the “original intent of the Founding Fathers while constructing the United States Constitution” and the “influence of the Ten Commandments and the Bible on the United States's founding documents.”

The legislation states that it should be “presented objectively as part of a secular program of education.”………

Oklahoma lawmaker doesn’t want ‘pink-haired atheists’ teaching the Bible in schools

‘I don't want some pink-haired person who doesn't believe in God to start trying to teach the Bible,’ says Republican state Senator David Bullard

www.independent.co.uk