Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed All-Star Panelist Roger Simon in studio to discuss the familial ties to Merrick Garland and CRT curriculum publisher as FBI targets parents.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Mayor Andy Ogles of Maury County in studio to weigh in on the media’s attempt to infiltrate local news and create misdirection.
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A North Carolina county school board has passed a policy that will discipline or fire teachers who undermine the U.S. Constitution, tell students that American historical figures weren’t heroes or portray racism as systemic in America.
The vote Friday by the Johnston County school board is part of a larger campaign to stamp out critical race theory from American schools.
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The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) adopted a resolution at their 89th annual meeting last month encouraging the implementation of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public schools. However, when asked how they felt about it by The Arizona Sun Times, most of Arizona’s mayors who were asked ducked the question. Not one Arizona mayor — mayors of cities with more than 30,000 people are eligible to be members — voted against it. Mesa Mayor John Giles is a trustee with UCSM.
Prescott Mayor Greg Mengarelli told The Arizona Sun Times he had no comment because he is not a member of UCSM. A staffer from Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega’s office said they would attempt to see if he had a response but were very busy.
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In the wake of the U.S. Conference of Mayors adopting a resolution backing the use of critical race theory (CRT) in public schools, Savannah, GA Mayor Van R. Johnson II (D) has affirmed his support for the measure.
The mayors of Georgia’s four other largest cities have yet to declare their stand on the issue.
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Members of the Metro Nashville School (MNPS) Board this week passed a resolution that they said promotes multi-cultural education. One local media outlet described the resolution as pushback against Critical Race Theory (CRT).
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Southeastern Legal’s Braden Boucek to the newsmakers line to explain the CRT lawsuit against the Springfield, Missouri public school board requiring equity training of its teachers.
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School board recall efforts are sweeping the country, with many driven by parents claiming Critical Race Theory (CRT) is infecting schools, demanding schools reopen in person, and arguing that boards are consumed by virtue signaling.
According to Ballotpedia, 58 such efforts against 144 board members have taken place in 2021. Those are both all-time highs since it started tracking school board recall efforts in 2006, and far above the next highest year, 2010.
Only one school board member has been removed in 2021, however, while three resigned and seven were retained in elections. One is scheduled for a November recall vote in Kansas for upholding a mask mandate.
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If stagflation, rising urban crime, and a weak Democratic president did not remind us enough of the 1970s, we now have our very own fall of Saigon.
To the astonishment of many naïve observers, especially those among the polite and orderly caretakers of America’s decline (for whom I suggest the acronym “POCAD”) now so foul misplaced atop our discredited foreign policy establishment, Afghanistan’s Taliban shrewdly—and predictably—waited until U.S. forces had nearly completed their withdrawal from the country before launching a massive offensive that has conquered almost all before it.
Outside Kabul’s precariously held airport, the capital has fallen. Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani fled the country and was within a matter of hours replaced by a Taliban mullah. U.S. diplomats destroyed the secret papers (and, reportedly, images of the American flag) while pusillanimously begging the new regime not to attack the embassy, over which the colors no longer fly. Taliban fighters are joyfully lounging in captured bases where they have won huge caches of American military hardware for use against their doomed countrymen, or to supply whatever other terrorist groups take refuge with them.
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While critical race theory has rightfully garnered much attention of late, it is simply the latest step in advancing what is known as cultural Marxism. Many people lay the origins of America’s left turn to the 1960s, but in fact, it actually dates back to the Progressive Era, a time of social and political reform that started over a hundred years ago. While eliminating some government corruption and granting suffrage for women were positive steps, the early 20th century movement ushered in an era of radical thought that has never left us. What follows are a few stand-out points of the far-left’s invasion into education.
“The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible.” These radical words were uttered in 1909 by Woodrow Wilson as president of Princeton, four years before he became the 28th president of the U.S. (When Wilson won his election in 2012, socialist Eugene Debs received 6 percent of the vote.)
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Bridgeway Academy’s CEO Jessica Parnell to the newsmakers line to discuss the boom in homeschooling and information about their curriculum and services that help homeschool parents.
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A group of Michigan parents was asked to fork over approximately $400,000 by the Forest Hills Public Schools before the district would comply with a Freedom of Information Act request they had submitted. The district later lowered the cost to about $2,200.
The FOIA was sent to FHPS on May 11. The request sought “any and all writings” that used such words as equity, diversity and inclusion.
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A memo obtained by Campus Reform reveals that the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media considered “diversity of thought” to be in conflict with its efforts to achieve social justice objectives.
Hussman Dean Susan King wrote the August 1, 2020 memo to university Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. She stated, “There is a fundamental conflict between efforts to promote racial equity and understandings of structural racism, and efforts to promote diversity of thought. These two things cannot sit side by side without coming into conflict.”
King wrote the memo in anticipation of Nikole Hannah-Jones joining the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty and teaching a class based on the “1619 Project.”
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If there is a public policy silver lining to this past year, it is the increased support for school choice. Most public schools went online during lockdowns and parents, dissatisfied with the results, sought out other solutions, including private schools, pods, charter schools, online learning, and homeschooling. The last more than doubled with 11.1 percent of households homeschooling, up from 5.4 percent the year before.
Many state legislatures improved school choice options in their states. This is to be celebrated and continued.
School choice by itself, however, will not save students from a failing education if charter and private schools adopt the same curriculum and practices as the most woke schools. Without a focus on the right subjects and lessons, students will be unprepared for personal or professional success.
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As the controversy over Critical Race Theory rages across the country, several prominent teacher preparation programs are training future teachers to use Critical Race Theory in the classroom. Several of the nation’s largest teacher preparation programs are training future teachers to use Critical Race Theory in the classroom.
Campus Reform reviewed course descriptions for upcoming classes in college teacher training programs at several major universities. Many intentionally prepare students to use progressive ideology in their own classrooms. Several use Critical Race Theory and social justice as a starting point for learning how to teach.
Among those courses are the University of North Carolina education department’s class, “”Critical Race Theory: History, Research, and Practice.” The course will cover how Critical Race Theory connects to “LatCrit Theory, AsianCrit, QueerCrit, TribalCrit, and Critical Race Feminism,” those terms being more recent areas of study that draw heavily from Critical Race Theory.
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It has been revealed that the Fairfax County Public School district (FCPS) is encouraging second-graders to be anti-police, with a “Summer Learning Guide” that includes the phrase “I feel safe when there are no police,” according to an exclusive report by Breitbart.
The stunningly radical content was revealed by a document leaked to the nonprofit group Parents Defending Education (PDE). Fairfax is the most populous school district in the state of Virginia, and has widely been viewed as the epicenter of the battle over “Critical Race Theory” – the notion that all White people are automatically racist, and that America is a fundamentally racist nation – and other far-left ideas with which children are being indoctrinated.
The summer curriculum requires students to watch a far-left YouTube channel called “Woke Kindergarten,” and one video in particular called “Safe by Ki.” The video says, in part: “I feel safe when there are no police. And it’s no one’s job to tell me how I feel. But it’s everyone’s job to make sure that people who are being treated unfairly…feel safe too.” The “lesson” ends with several loaded questions, including “Why do some people feel safe with police and others don’t,” as well as “What can you do to make sure other people feel safe?”
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Over the last few months, the U.S. has engaged in intense discussion over “critical race theory.” As Americans have debated the impact of CRT, several states have banned CRT from the public school curriculum, while other states are using it as part of that curriculum. The debate over CRT’s merits or dangers has prompted ideological battles in school board elections. This article looks at the increased activism around school board elections and its broader ramifications.
Past politicization of school board elections
Though school board elections may not seem as exciting as a presidential or even congressional race, they have taken on greater importance in recent years. In 2005, the city of Dover, Pennsylvania faced a contentious court case known as Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, which ruled that the school district’s teaching of intelligent design violated the separation of church and state. Shortly after the trial concluded, the district held its school board elections, and all the school board members who favored the teaching of intelligent design lost their reelection bids, at least in part due to their position on the issue. The election generated much discussion.
In the early 2010s, school board races saw partisan involvement through the Tea Party movement. Generally, candidates affiliated with the Tea Party ran on platforms of greater political accountability and lower property taxes. Carl Paladino, a former Republican nominee for governor in New York, won a race for the Buffalo school board on a Tea Party-type platform. The school board later ousted Paladino for making offensive comments about former First Lady Michelle Obama.
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The Rhode Island mother who turned to public records law to learn what the school district was teaching her daughter is now a defendant in a lawsuit by the state and local teachers union.
The Rhode Island and South Kingstown chapters of the National Education Association sued Nicole Solas and the school district this week to stop the latter from releasing records sought by Solas, including curriculum and policies related to critical race theory, antiracism, gender theory and children’s sexuality.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed The Epoch Times Senior Editor Roger Simon in studio to address his latest piece calling for citizens to take back America by running for their local school boards.
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We know the nature of mass hysterias in history, and how they can overwhelm and paralyze what seem to be stable societies.
We know the roots and origins of the cult of wokeness.
And we know, too, how such insanity—from the Salem witch trials to Jacobinism to McCarthyism—can spread, despite alienating most of the population, through fear and the threat of personal ruin or worse. These are the dark sides of the tulip, hula-hoop, and pet-rock fads, the mass obsessions so suited to past affluent Western societies.
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Minneapolis Public Schools explicitly lists critical race theory as a “framework” for its new ethnic studies graduation requirement.
According to left-wing critics, critical race theory is strictly a legal theory developed 40 years ago and since it isn’t explicitly referenced in some K-12 course catalogs, it therefore isn’t taught in the classroom at all.
But “ethnic studies” courses seem to be a popular vehicle for delivering CRT-inspired ideas to young students.
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The University of North Carolina’s decision on June 30 to offer tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones came about through a torrent of threats (often tweeted), profanities, doxxings, and assaults—tactics that have become increasingly commonplace among professional activists and racial grievance-mongers.
Hannah-Jones, of course, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion writer and architect of the New York Times’ notorious “1619 Project,” which claims that America’s true founding was not in 1776 but rather in 1619, when 20 or so African slaves arrived in Virginia. Hannah-Jones contends, moreover, that the American War of Independence was fought solely to preserve slavery.
More than two-dozen credible historians, many of them political liberals and leftists, have debunked Hannah-Jones’ claims. Though, as we’ll see, some are less firm in their convictions than others. What’s clear, however, is that peer review is passé in the era of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Forget a stellar record of scholarly accomplishment—that’s a relic of “Eurocentrism.” Far more important these days is a candidate’s enthusiasm for social justice. It was Hannah-Jones’ celebrity activism and her “journalism,” not her scholarship, that formed the basis for the university’s initial offer of tenure earlier in the spring.
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In a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper that aired in June, Barack Obama weighed in on perceived GOP anxieties. Instead of worrying about the economy and climate change, worries he thought appropriate for Republicans, “Lo and behold,” he told Cooper, “the single most important issue to them apparently right now is critical race theory. Who knew that that was the threat to our republic?”
I would argue that critical race theory, CRT for short, is not only a threat to the republic but also a threat to our families. Obama has already shown the damage that race can inflict on family, starting with this own. In March 2008, with his campaign floundering after the toxic Rev. Wright tapes surfaced, Obama played the CRT card to salvage his candidacy.
During a critical speech in Philadelphia, Obama reminded his audience that “so many of the disparities that exist between the African-American community and the larger American community today can be traced directly to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.” This was pure CRT. The fact that none of Obama’s relatives descended from slaves went unmentioned.
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White privilege is a myth. A relic of a time that no longer exists and that none of us living and raising kids today have ever really experienced. There was once a time when legal and cultural advantages were offered to whites, but those days are gone and pretending otherwise is causing great damage to children and our society.
White Privilege Talk Harms Children Psychologically
White privilege is a concept which hurts both white and non-white children, albeit in different ways. For white children, you steal from them the ability to feel pride in who they are, their ancestors, and in their cultural inheritance. Certainly every nation and people can find stains in its history. The past was a violent and merciless place in which all sides are implicated.
White privilege requires that children of European descent are never allowed to feel deserving of what they, their parents, or their ancestors have achieved. They are never allowed to believe that they have rightfully earned anything. Consequently, they are pressured to actively give up what is theirs in penitence. This is obviously damaging and abusive for a child to endure.
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The Biden administration called it an “error” to promote a critical race theory (CRT) activist group’s guide in a Department of Education (DOE) handbook meant for use in over 13,000 public school districts on reopening recommendations and policies, Fox News reported.
The activist group, Abolitionist Teaching Network (ATN) has connections to at least two high-ranking officials in the Biden administration’s DOE, Fox News reported. It is unclear why ATN was mentioned in the April 2021 handbook and who added the link.
The Biden administration DOE backtracked on the promotion and its link to the group in a statement to Fox News Wednesday which said, “The Department does not endorse the recommendations of this group, nor do they reflect our policy positions. It was an error in a lengthy document to include this citation.”
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Critical race theory has now taken hold in the U.S. military. And I have to say, I find it perplexing. My father served for three decades in the U.S. Army. I grew up understanding that the military is about forming a bond, a unit, a team working toward the same goals and protecting each other while achieving them.
So, you can imagine my shock when I started to learn how seriously the leaders at the Pentagon were starting to integrate critical race theory (CRT) in their curriculua. In fact, a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lynne Chandler Garcia, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “I teach critical race theories to our nation’s future military leaders because it is vital that cadets understand the history of racism that has shaped both foreign and domestic policy.”
As Mark Davis opined in Newsweek, “Finding such warped content in today’s liberal college classrooms is not surprising. But finding it at the U.S. Air Force Academy is unacceptable.” I couldn’t agree more.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Mayor Andy Ogles to the studio to reexamine his successful stifling of the well-being initiative that was instigated by Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn.
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A year ago, “defund the police” activists were having quite a time. Outlets like CNN and Vox were publishing fawning profiles. Social media sensations like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar were leading the parade. Cities like Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Austin even approved partial defundings. It was a juggernaut.
Now? A tough-on-crime former cop just won the Democratic mayoral nomination in Bill de Blasio’s New York. Former President Barack Obama is warning fellow Democrats, “You lost a big audience the minute you say [‘defund the police’].” Sen. Bernie Sanders has rejected calls for “no more policing.” And White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, a few weeks ago, bizarrely claimed that it was not Democrats but Republicans who wanted to defund the police (because they opposed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill).
What happened? Intoxicated by a few policy wins in deep blue cities, enthusiasm in the left-leaning Twitter echo chamber, and their viselike grip on the national media, “defund” activists overlooked one important detail: Their agenda was deeply unpopular with most Americans. A summer 2020 YouGov poll found that just 16 percent of adults wanted to cut police funding — much less “defund” the police. Indeed, 81 percent of black Americans wanted police to spend as much or more time in their communities. During a year when major American cities saw an unnerving increase in homicides, after years of declines, that reaction was not just understandable, it was wholly predictable.
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Ohio school districts are about ready to pull the trigger on a lawsuit against the state over the expansion of Ohio’s school choice voucher program.
The Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding is an association of over 500 Ohio school districts. Through its sister organization Vouchers Hurt Ohio, it has reportedly retained the law firm of Walter Haverfield, though the firm has not yet filed a legal challenge.
The coalition opposes Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship program. That program currently provides vouchers to students who reside in school districts that meet certain conditions of poor academic performance and also to students in families whose income is at or below 250% of the federal poverty guidelines, according to the Ohio Legislative Service Commission.
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A highschool in Owatonna has introduced an elective class about critical race theory. The course is applicable for college credit. The course description says that taking Introduction to Education is strongly encouraged as a prerequisite. The description says that students will be taught the five tenets of critical race theory (CRT) and will be shown how to “isolate race.”
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Late last month, Montana ended its participation in the extended federal unemployment benefits program. No surprise this event was little noted in the national press, since Montana’s decision to exit the program had a direct effect on fewer than 20,000 people (the total unemployed population of Montana). Yet Montana’s decision had an enormous effect on the country as a whole.
Particularly for those inside the Beltway, it is easy to focus on Washington, D.C. as the only place where policymaking matters. And with an administration desperate to centralize power as it prints ever-growing piles of money with which it hopes to bribe or threaten states and localities, such an attitude is understandable. Recent developments in states like Montana far outside the beltway, however, show how national political innovations can be driven by states with smaller populations far from the beltway swamp and present conservatives with a path for political success.
While elections in Montana often are driven by local and idiosyncratic issues as well as personal relationships (understandable in a state with some of America’s least populated state house and senate districts), Montana is and has long been a very red state. The only Democratic presidential candidate since 1948 to win a majority here was Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 landslide win over Barry Goldwater. It is much easier to convince and move 1 million people in Montana than 332 million Americans. And yet by moving 1 million Montanans (or 800,000 South Dakotans) or 1.8 million Idahoans, the Right can often exercise an outsized influence on the national debate.
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Few notice what is taught in school until it is too late. Today’s push for Critical Race Theory (CRT) is extraordinarily ambitious, and it is hard for defenders of traditional education to imagine anything more toxic than this theory that has seemingly burst on the scene.
But, as bad as it may seem, CRT is not thene plus ultra of pernicious radical ideology. It can get worse, and it is delusional to believe that just because a given idea is incredibly stupid and destructive, it is therefore impossible for something worse to come along. If that were true, today’s PC madness would have died out decades ago.
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Critical Race Theory continues to permeate our classrooms and infect our children’s minds with outrageous ideas about their nation’s history. But a growing number of Americans are standing up to fight back against its false tenets and demand its removal from K-12 education. At the forefront of this patriotic effort is 1776 Action, an advocacy group committed to the vital work of restoring honest and unifying education in public schools throughout the nation.
The group’s Candidate Pledge has garnered national attention in recent weeks for its emphasis on America’s values and its vow to eradicate divisive race- and gender-based ideologies such as CRT from America’s schools. Political candidates who sign the pledge commit to restoring “honest, patriotic education that cultivates in our children a profound love for our country” and to promoting a curriculum that “teaches that all children are created equal, have equal moral value under God, our Constitution, and the law, and are members of a national community united by our founding principles.” The pledge also seeks to prohibit any curriculum that divides students by race and sex – or sets out to infuse harmful ideologies into course material.
In May, Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) became the first candidate to sign the pledge, declaring that CRT and similarly divisive theories are “shameful [and] must be stopped.” Other high-profile conservatives running for office, such as Republican nominee for Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin, also vowed to replace CRT with “a high-quality civics curriculum.” The two Republican candidates for Governor of Kansas, former Gov. Dr. Jeff Colyer and Kansas Atty. Gen. Derek Schmidt, have also signed the pledge. As more candidates sign this pledge, it will put pressure on teachers, principals, and school boards to declare their stances on CRT and other key educational matters. It will also hold them accountable for the materials they teach and ensure our children are not indoctrinated with malicious theories that seek to denigrate our country and reduce students to their sex or skin color.
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The Biden administration signaled its support for the teaching of “anti-racism” curriculum in public schools Friday, wading into an ongoing culture war over critical race theory playing out on cable news and in school board meetings across the nation.
Asked about a recent decision by the National Education Association to throw its weight behind controversial progressive teachings about race, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told RealClearPolitics that President Biden believes “kids should learn about our history” including the view that “there is systemic racism that is still impacting society today.”
Psaki continued that the president and the First Lady, who is also a life-long educator, believe that “there are many dark moments, and there is not just slavery and racism in our history.”
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Both meek “aw shucks” conservatives and “chest thumpers” conservatives are handing America over to woke activists, author Abigail Shrier claimed in a Monday Substack.
The journalist and author highlighted the successful work of anti-Critical Race Theory writer Christopher Rufo, who Shrier praised for speaking not to elites, but to Americans, by “gathering evidence and pointing out the glaring harm in clear, unapologetic (but never crass or rude) language.”
“Rufo is out there identifying the problem, alerting the public, and sounding all available alarms,” Shrier wrote. “If he hasn’t yet slain the beast, he has at least awakened American parents from their coma, convinced them that they cannot trust the teachers and administrators and school boards who treat children, not as students, but as recruits for their revolution.”
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Arizona State Rep. Martin Quezada (D-Maryvale), who is also the campaign manager for Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, tweeted on July 9 that fellow legislator, Vietnamese-American Quang Nguyen (R-Prescott), is a “white nationalist” for tweeting Governor Doug Ducey’s announcement of Arizona’s new law banning critical race theory. Nguyen, who is Vietnamese, fled Vietnam with his brother during the Vietnam War as a refugee, living in refugee camps until they were reunited with their parents four months later.
Nguyen tweeted a news release from the governor’s website, “Governor Ducey, Legislature Take Strong Action to Stop Critical Race Theory” with a link. Quezada copied the tweet and wrote, “This is what #WhiteNationalism looks like,” with an arrow pointing at Nguyen’s tweet.
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Democratic Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Gavin Newsom of California, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan shatter everything they touch. Ron DeSantis, conversely, seems to get everything right. The Florida Republican has emerged as America’s governor.
“We’re standing with our folks. We’re going to do the right thing. We leaned into it, and we stood strong,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently.
Rather than snip a tax, kill a regulation, and then doze off, as too many Republicans have done, DeSantis is a tireless, full-spectrum conservative. He has authorized a host of economic, cultural, and law enforcement initiatives that are buoying Florida and transforming him into the Great Right Hope.
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Nicole Solas was surprised to find her name listed on the meeting agenda of her local school board, especially since it said the board was considering taking legal action against her in response to her many requests for public records.
The Rhode Island mother of two began filing records requests with the South Kingstown School District several months ago, when she learned that teachers were incorporating critical race theory and gender ideology in the curriculum.
But she didn’t expect the school board to talk about suing her.
“I was shocked,” Solas, 37, told The Daily Signal in a recent phone interview. The school board, she said, “did not tell me that [the requests were] a problem.”
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U.S. Representative Byron Donalds, from Florida’s 19th congressional district, recently slammed Critical Race Theory in an opinion article from a very personal perspective. Donalds, who is African-American, has a White wife and biracial children. Donalds, like many other critics of CRT, views the movement as tool of the left used to divide the country. Donalds wrote, “If the issue were that American schools aren’t teaching the complete and accurate history to our school children, then I’d agree wholeheartedly, but that is not what CRT peddlers are saying. The Marxist race hustlers and charlatans at the New York Times and in the Democrat Party aren’t in the business of pushing for equity; they are in the business of division.” The National Education Association recently decided to take a strong position supporting CRT and other controversial positions. Donalds also sees CRT as opposed to the views promoted by Martin Luther King. Donalds said those “proposing this wicked curriculum would like to live in an America where every American is judged based on the color of their skin and not the content of their character, which, if I remember my history correctly, is the complete opposite of the teachings of Dr. King…
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Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed HB 2906 on Friday, banning government agencies from requiring critical race theory, known as CRT. The budget bill he signed last week, HB 2898, banned critical race theory in schools. Ducey also signed 22 other bills, including one restricting sex education in schools, HB 2035. He has until Monday to sign or veto 11 remaining bills.
“I am not going to waste public dollars on lessons that imply the superiority of any race and hinder free speech,” Ducey declared. The law prohibits the state, cities and counties from requiring employees to participate in orientation, training or therapy that suggests an employee is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
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The University of Memphis (UofM) Benjamin L. Hooks Institute recently hosted a lecture on the importance of critical race theory. The speakers maintained that critical race theory was a vital, necessary part of all levels of education because it offers the true history and understanding of this country.
The virtual discussion streamed June 22 with panelists Dr. Kami Anderson, a communications professor; Dr. Wallis Baxter III, a pastor and professor of African American literature at Gettysburg College; Dr. Le’Trice Donaldson, University of Wisconsin-Stout assistant history professor in applied social sciences; and Daniel Kiel, a constitutional, education, and civil rights and property law professor at Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law.
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School groups throughout Ohio and around the nation have praised the recently signed Ohio state budget that expands education choice opportunities for parents and students.
The budget, signed late Wednesday night by Gov. Mike DeWine, increased the state’s voucher system, created a new tax-credit scholarship program and established the state’s first education savings accounts.
“Governor Mike DeWine has signed a budget that expands existing school choice options and creates Ohio’s first-ever education savings account program helping parents afford desperately-needed resources and giving them the flexibility necessary to improve their children’s educational outcomes,” said Rea Hederman Jr., executive director of the Economic Research Center at The Buckeye Institute and vice president of policy. “These bold reforms are some of the most significant that Ohio’s families have seen in a decade.”
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Happily, the spirit of American liberty seems to be awaking from its decades-long slumber.
Unless you’ve been living in an underground bunker for the past two years (I wouldn’t blame you too much if you had), you know there’s quite a lot of controversy over critical race theory (CRT). You also know that just as those who oppose it have started to gain some momentum in pushing back against it (like parents in Loudoun County, Virginia), legacy media shills all leaped into action, concern trolling about ordinary Americans’ alarm over this racist theory’s presence in their children’s schools. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for 11 articles in two weeks on the RealClearPolitics homepage doing exactly that.)
This is a crystal clear example of what Michael Anton calls the “celebration parallax”: “a fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it.” Thus, when CRT fanatics indoctrinate your children to hate America and to hate one another on the basis of their skin color, it’s a much-needed dose of hard medicine for a racist people whose country’s “very DNA” is racist (according to the “1619 Project”). But when you—a patriotic, decent American mom or dad—point out how evil a thing that is to say unironically, let alone teach to children and force on Americans across the country via human resources departments, it’s either not happening, or we’re overreacting, or opposing it will hurt the Right “in the long run,” or it’s innocuous and really just about “teach[ing] children that slavery is bad and racism still exists.”
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Tennessee attorney Braden Boucek is representing a teacher in a newly-announced lawsuit against a school district for alleged egregious civil rights violations. Boucek is the director of litigation at the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), who filed on behalf of the teacher on Tuesday.
The school district, Evanston-Skokie School District 65 (District 65) in Illinois, reportedly requires teachers to undergo “antiracist training” within 2 years. As evidenced by the lawsuit, the training instructs teachers to accept that white individuals are “loud, authoritative, and controlling;” understand that being “less white” is “less racially oppressive;” acknowledge that “white identity is inherently racist;” denounce “white privilege;” and participate in “privilege walks” where they must stand in line and separate themselves according to statements relating to their race or color. After training, the district mandates teachers to relay this information to students. If teachers show any semblance of disagreement with these teachings or directives, then the district labels them as racist.
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A parent coalition is concerned that the Wit and Wisdom curriculum, approved for use in 33 counties, may violate Tennessee’s K-12 critical race theory ban. The coalition, Moms for Liberty of Williamson County, formed a parent-led deep dive team to examine the entire curriculum, including the accompanying teacher manuals. According to their findings, Moms for Liberty of Williamson County believes that one of the learning modules within the curriculum for second graders teaches content that was banned from K-12 education recently by the Tennessee legislature: that one race is inherently superior to another; that individuals should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress because of their race; that the U.S. is fundamentally or irredeemably racist; and the promotion of a division between or resentment of a race.
Wit and Wisdom incorporates a type of education called “social-emotional learning.” The curriculum tackles history and complex topics such as segregation, animal reproduction, and death through the English language arts.
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Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) informed The Tennessee Star that it doesn’t plan to implement critical race theory.
MNPS spokesperson Sean Braisted responded to inquiries from The Star about remarks from the district’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion executive officer, Ashford Hughes. We asked whether Hughes would implement any of the banned tenets in MNPS’s forthcoming “Equity Roadmap,” and if MNPS planned to implement critical race theory. This was Braisted’s response.
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As disruptive as the 2020/2021 academic year was, it led to many positive educational changes that will be transformative and long-lasting. Most notably, parents have been re-empowered to take back the reins of their children’s education from government bureaucrats and teachers unions. Frustrated by school closures and district “Zoom schooling,” families fled public schools in droves over the past year, and there are several signs that these families won’t be returning this fall.
According to an analysis by Chalkbeat and the Associated Press, public school enrollment fell by an average of 2.6 percent across 41 states last fall, with states such as Michigan, Maine, Vermont, and Mississippi dropping by more than 4 percent. These enrollment declines far exceeded any anticipated demographic changes that might typically alter public school enrollment.
How many of these students will be back in a public school classroom next year? Not as many as public school officials hoped.
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The Republican Study Committee is urging the GOP to “lean into the culture war” as a “winning” issue, according to an internal strategy memo obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
RSC Chairman Jim Banks sent the memo Thursday to approximately 154 Republicans urging his colleagues to fight back against the ideology of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the “racial essentialism” that it teaches. Banks wrote that Republicans believe “individuals should be judged based on the contents of their character, not their skin,” and that America’s institution should be “colorblind, just as our Constitution is colorblind.”
“Here’s the good news,” the RSC chairman told his colleagues. “We are winning.”
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Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said Thursday that opposition to Critical Race Theory is “rooted in racism.”
“Opposition to critical race theory is obviously rooted in racism and has just become the newest dog whistle for racists,” the Michigan Democrat tweeted Thursday, referring to a video in which Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley defended Critical Race Theory to the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.
CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based polici
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A majority of voters support school choice, a new poll from Echelon Insights shows.
Among more than 1,100 registered voters surveyed, 65% support school choice compared to 19% who oppose it, while 16% remain unsure.
The findings were consistent across party lines, with 75% of Republicans, 60% of independents, and 61% of Democrats saying they strongly or somewhat support school choice. Most voters in both parties agree parents should control all or some of the tax dollars they pay for education.
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