Tag: Public Schools

Counselor in Texas School District Shares List of Marxist Literature as ‘Tool’

Sam Medley

A lengthy email from a counselor in Plano Independent School District (PISD) sent to colleagues contained three attachments including, among other things, a list of overtly Marxist media for use in classrooms, and a study guide for those “trying to become better allies.”

The attachments highlight materials like The 1619 Project (which claims America’s history is based on racism and slavery), talking points concerning the deaths of George Floyd; Breonna Taylor; and Ahmaud Arbery; and suggested reading lists including Marxist and Communist literature.

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Majority of Minnesota Parents Say They Are Comfortable Sending Children Back to School in Fall

Anthony Gockowski

A survey conducted by the Minnesota Department of Education found that the majority of parents would feel comfortable sending their children back to school this fall.

Between June 15 and July 6, the agency collected more than 130,000 responses to the informal survey, which was offered in English, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali. A total of 64 percent of respondents said they would feel comfortable sending their children back to school in September. Of that 64 percent, 94 percent said they would send their children back to school full time.

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Crom Carmichael: If You Are a Black or Hispanic Person That Cares About Children’s Education Then Donald Trump is the Clear Choice for President

Julie Carr

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio.

During the second hour, Carmichael weighed in on Joe Biden’s recent advocacy for teachers and not students in his endorsement of the National Education Association (NEA) during a virtual assembly last Friday. He stated that Donald Trump is the clear choice for Blacks, Hispanics, and other people of color that care about their children’s education.

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DeWine Signs Student Religious Liberties Act Into Law

Anthony Gockowski

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed the Student Religious Liberties Act into law Friday, a bill that protects prayer and religious expression in public schools.

“No student should have to hide their faith just because they enter a public school. The Student Religious Liberties Act is carefully crafted to ensure school administrators can’t unfairly penalize students of all faiths, or no faith,” said Aaron Baer, president of Citizens for Community Values, one of twelve groups that testified in support of the bill.

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Governor DeWine Says Ohio Schools Could Remain Closed for Rest of Academic Year, Orders All Restaurants to Close

Anthony Gockowski

Gov. Mike DeWine said Sunday morning that Ohio’s public schools could remain closed for the rest of the academic year.

DeWine ordered all K-12 public schools to close for three weeks beginning at the end of the day Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), however, said that closing for eight weeks or more would have a greater impact on mitigating the spread of the virus.

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Analysis: Contrary to Popular Belief, Schools Are Not Becoming More Segregated

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by James D. Agresti   A new frequent allegation of progressive politicians and media outlets is that America’s schools are becoming more racially segregated. They then argue that government must do something about it, like for example, go back to the forced busing policies of the 1970s. According to Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, Politico, etc., America’s schools have grown increasingly segregated since the 1990s. They all base this claim on a report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project. However, buried 21 pages deep in that report is the fact that “the share of intensely segregated white schools, that is, schools that enroll 90–100% white students, has declined from 38.9% in 1988 to 16% in 2016.” In plain language, “white” schools have become more integrated. Yet, the report begins by claiming that “intense levels of segregation” are “on the rise once again.” The basis for this is its finding that “the share of intensely segregated minority schools” has increased from 6% in 1988 to 18% in 2016. What explains these divergent trends? As the report states, “the driving force” is “an enormous increase in the Latino…

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Commentary: K-12 Education Has Become Progressive Sunday School

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by Hezekiah Kantor   As an adolescent, just beginning my education as a Catholic, I had Catechism classes. There, for usually an hour, we learned some of the basic tenets of the Roman Catholic faith. In other denominations, this is known as Sunday School. I suppose the true purpose of Sunday School is edification and the equipping of the pupils with a solid foundation in religious faith. Progressive Liberals have their own Sunday School. Of course, given that they tout a Trojan Horse religion, they get away with not calling it what it is. As a teacher and a former public school student, I have become intimately acquainted with the inner workings of the Progressive Liberal Sunday School catechizing the youth of America. Over 50 million young people attend the public schools every year where—to an overwhelming extent—their minds are prepared to accept and think uncritically about basic Progressive Liberal doctrines by the priests and priestesses who teach their classes. Within the schools that teach the teachers, Social Sciences—which the University Schools of Education fall under—registered Democrats outnumber Republican Professors by a margin of over 10 to 1. Even in my Jesuit School of Education, we were heavy on social justice…

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Ohio Bill Would End ‘Right of First Refusal’ for Schools of Choice

Maggie Leigh Thurber

  For nearly eight years, charter and community schools in Ohio have had an advantage: first dibs on any public school property that was for sale. It’s a process called a right of first refusal. House Bill 43 will eliminate that advantage. Right now, if a school district wants to sell or lease unused real property, like a school building that hasn’t been used in at least two years, it has to first offer that property to schools of choice in the district. Community or charter schools, STEM schools, and college preparatory boarding schools are schools of choice in Ohio. The school district is required to let all the schools know that the property is available and then give them 60 days to respond. If no school of choice is interested, the district can sell the property at a public auction and anyone can bid on it. The law was created in 2011 in order to give educational entities first priority in the sale of educational buildings, something public school districts had been reluctant to do. But even with the law, schools of choice encountered problems. In a 2016 study of Ohio’s top-performing charter schools, “about half (49 percent) report that local…

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New Jersey Parents to Rally Against LGBT Education Law

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by Rachel del Guidice   A rally this weekend will give New Jersey parents an opportunity to oppose a new state law requiring public schools to teach children about the “political, economic, and social contributions” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. The new law also requires schools to stress such contributions made by disabled persons, but it’s the LGBT education component that prompted organizers to plan the rally. “When you teach about George Washington, you don’t teach that George Washington had sex with his wife and what he did; we teach what George Washington did as a president,” Victoria Jakelsky, a political consultant and parental rights activist in New Jersey, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “But they are twisting it around to say that anyone who is LGBT, they’re going to explain what they did, who their relationships were [with], and incorporate it as gay and lesbian and bisexual people are the history-makers,” Jakelsky, a paralegal by training, said. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed the legislation into law Jan. 31, and it is set to go into effect for the 2020-2021 school year. Jakelsky is among those organizing the rally Saturday from 11…

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Minnesota Bills Would Create Grant Program to Make ‘School Climate and Curriculum More Inclusive’

Anthony Gockowski

A set of companion bills were introduced in the Minnesota House and Senate last week that would establish “Inclusive School Enhancement Grants” to make “schools’ curriculum and learning and work environments more inclusive.” House File (HF) 824 and Senate File (SF) 1012 were introduced Feb. 7, and referred to their respective education policy committees. Of the four sponsors of the Senate version of the bill, just one is a Republican, while three of the 20 sponsors of the House bill are Republicans. Under the bills, the commissioner for the Minnesota Department of Education would be required to “establish a grant program” to support “collaborative efforts to make school climate and curriculum more inclusive and respectful toward all students, families, and employees, especially those of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.” “The grant program must provide funding that supports collaborative efforts to make schools’ curriculum, and learning and work environments more inclusive and respectful of students’ racial and ethnic diversity and to address issues of structural inequities in schools that create opportunity and achievement gaps for students, families, and staff who are of color or who are American Indian,” the bills state. Grant recipients would be required to submit an annual report…

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David Fowler Commentary: Is This the Beginning of the End for Public Schools?

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by David Fowler   Have public schools run their course? Just asking that question will irritate a lot of people, Christians included. But I think we have to ask the question, given an announcement last week by the Nashville Chamber of Commerce relative to what it wants from public education. Those who don’t ask and answer the question may not like what becomes of their children as adults. Last week the headline to a front-page story in The Tennessean said the Nashville Chamber of Commerce “wants to focus on social emotional learning.” Of course, the Haslam administration has been dabbling in developing content for social emotional learning for the last few years in-between toothless barks from some legislators. But what is it? Here’s how The Tennessean described it and the Nashville Chamber’s push for it: Framed by the question of what students need to be successful in the classroom, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce in its annual education report card is throwing its collective influence behind a growing push for schools to provide students with social emotional learning. SEL, as it is known, is a method to teach students the skills to regulate emotions and to provide them with…

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MSM’s Exaggeration of School Shootings Not in Line With Reality

Julie Carr
Steve Gill

On Monday’s Gill Report – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 1510 WLAC weekdays at 7:30 am – Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill explained how the media’s overblown commentary and emotional stirring of paranoia regarding school shootings is unrealistic in comparison to the death of children in common day bike, helmet, and car wrecks.  Gill goes on to comment that “ten times more kids are killed each year walking to school than are killed in these school shootings.” He continued: A new US Department of Education study is not getting a lot of media attention. But it did get a little bit of attention from NPR. Not exactly a bastion of conservative news media. Now they examined the US Department of Education’s study and discovered that over sixty six percent of reported school shootings for the 2015 and 2016 school year, never occurred. Yet the education department claims there were nearly two hundered and forty schools which reported at least one incident involving a school reported, or school related shooting. But when NPR contacted the schools in the districts, they were able to substantiate that one hundred and sixty-one, of the  two hundred and forty incidents quote, ‘never happened’. NEVER…

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