Weekend To-Do List
Discover more from Imbroglio
1. Student-Teacher Revolt in Florida
READ: Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman wrote about a growing movement to counter to Moms for Liberty and their ilk:
By now, it’s obvious that the reactionary culture warriors who want to reshape American education are inspiring a serious liberal counter-mobilization in response. Remarkably, this backlash to the backlash is gaining momentum in some of the reddest parts of the country.
A raucous school board meeting in Hernando County, Fla., on Tuesday night captured what’s striking about this new phenomenon. The scene featured teachers pointedly declaring that right-wing attacks are driving them to quit, even as parents and students forcefully stood up on their behalf, demanding a halt to the hysteria.
This is a county that DeSantis carried by 41 points in the last election. The scene from the meeting is riveting:
At the meeting, Shannon Rodriguez — a favorite of the right wing Moms for Liberty that led the attack on the Disney movie episode — kept robotically repeating phrases like "woke ideologies" and "woke agenda," not even slightly disturbed by any sense of obligation to define their meaning. She proudly brandished her solidarity with boycotts of Bud Light and Disney as a badge of anti-woke heroism. Another conservative parent practically shouted, "You have awakened the entire alpha male blood of this country!”
But the real story of the night was the response. Again and again, parents and students forcefully defended teachers. They cast the right’s attacks, the censoring of educators and the removal of books as the real threats to education.
Read more here.
2. Former Teacher Blasts Union
READ: A former Oakland teacher named Alex Gutentag took to the pages of Tablet to blast his former union. Among other issues, he has problems with the union’s “common goods” advocacy:
The district offered a substantial salary increase for teachers before the strike even began, but negotiations remained deadlocked for days over the union’s other demands. The Oakland Education Association (OEA) put forward several "common good" proposals that included drought-resistant shrubs, a Climate Justice Day, reparations for Black students, and converting unused school and office buildings into housing for homeless kids and their families.
But he saves his harshest criticism for the union’s handling of school closures:
As an Oakland public school teacher, I was a staunch supporter of the teachers union and was a union representative at my school for three years. In 2020, however, I began to disagree with the union when it prevented me from returning to my classroom long after studies proved that school reopening was safe, even without COVID-19 mitigation measures. In my experience, the union’s actions were not motivated by sincere fears, but rather by a desire to virtue-signal and maintain comfortable work-from-home conditions.
Although union bosses like Randi Weingarten continue to obfuscate their role in school closures, the historical record is clear: The union repeatedly pushed to keep schools closed, and areas with greater union influence kept schools closed longer. Politicians, public health officials, and the media certainly had a hand in this fiasco, but the union egged on dramatic news stories, framed school reopening as a partisan issue, and directly interfered in CDC recommendations. Teachers saw firsthand that virtual learning was a farce and that children were suffering. While there may be plenty of blame to go around, teachers’ abandonment of their own students was a special kind of betrayal.
Read more here.
3. Eliminating Honors Math Doesn’t Add Up
READ: Niraj Warikoo at the Detroit Free Press spoke with parents in Troy, Michigan, who are protesting the school board’s decision to cancel its 9th-grade honors English and 6th and 7th-grade honors math programs:
Parents said some students are actually not challenged enough and need even more rigorous classes. "Why are you stepping backwards and not challenging the kids?" Purinma Patel Gupta, a longtime math teacher in Troy, told the board. "We're competing globally with everybody on the Earth. So why are you telling the students who have the ability to learn ... we're going to set you back? What's wrong with you guys?"
Critics of the honors curriculum believe the board’s decision will promote diversity and inclusion. In a district where 39% of students are Asian American, not all agree:
Parents said the opposite is true, that it will actually hurt them and other minority groups by lowering expectations. By eliminating honors programs, "the fast learners get totally disengaged and the slow learners become discouraged or give up on the class," Troy parent Jing Xu said after the meeting, holding a placard that read "Choice promotes DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion)."
The only board member to vote against the decision is also the only Asian American board member. Read more here. (Side note: we plan to launch a podcast devoted to issues with Asian American communities in the U.S. (a broad subject, I admit). If you or anyone you know is interested in getting involved, let me know.)
4. We Have It All Wrong About Screens…Maybe
READ/LISTEN: Recent reporting from EdWeek and MIT suggests schools should embrace technology (sort of). Well-designed digital games can improve student motivation and skill mastery, but other studies suggest students better comprehend text on paper. Chris and I discuss what these studies mean for schools and screens on the latest episode of the Citizen Stewart Show.
5. Illinois Picks Unions, Not Kids
READ: More than 31,000 Illinois families applied for scholarships so their students could attend independent schools last year. Yet state lawmakers, led by Democrats Don Harmon and Emanuel Chris Welch, have chosen to sunset the Invest in Kids scholarship program. The WSJ Editorial Board decried the move as deference to teachers' unions:
Unions want to kill the program because its popularity showcases the failure of the public schools. Invest in Kids had more than 31,000 applications last year, roughly five students for every scholarship it could provide. Every family lined up for a place at a private school is an indictment of a union monopoly that continues to prioritize its power over student learning.
Nowhere is this more pronounced than in districts with low-income families. Black and Hispanic families support the scholarship program in large numbers because they often have children assigned to Illinois schools where less than a third of students are proficient at reading or math, according to data from Wirepoints and the Illinois State Board of Education.
Sen. Harmon and Rep. Welch’s children attend private schools in the state. Read more here.
6. Kindergarten Cash Kickstarts Savings
READ: Jill Tooker at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about the city’s universal Child Savings Account program. Founded in 2010, the initiative automatically opens an interest-bearing savings account when a child enrolls in kindergarten. The city deposits $50 to open the account and offers incentives for families to contribute to the fund to support educational expenses after high school:
Currently, there are 52,000 accounts in student names, with the city acting as custodian over the $15 million now on deposit. On average, members of the city’s high school graduating class of 2023 have a balance of $1,422 in their accounts, city officials said, or 28 times the original amount.
Read more here.
7. Ex-Homeschoolers Demand Change
READ: Peter Jamison penned a powerful profile of Christina and Aaron Beall as part of the Washington Post’s recent series on homeschooling’s rise in America. The piece describes their experience, first as students homeschooled in conservative Christian communities and now as parents who send their children to public school. The Bealls are part of a new era of former homeschoolers demanding greater oversight of the movement.
The Bealls knew that many home-schooling families didn’t share the religious doctrines that had so warped their own lives. But they also knew that the same laws that had failed to protect them would continue to fail other children.
“It’s specifically a system that is set up to hide the abuse, to make them invisible, to strip them of any capability of getting help. And not just in a physical way,” Christina said. “At some point, you become so mentally imprisoned you don’t even realize you need help.”
Read more here.
8. Florida Mandates Asian American History
READ/LISTEN: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1537 into law last month, a broad education bill that requires AAPI history to be included in K-12 instruction. Critics say the bill, which comes after a slew of controversial K-12 bills, is a cynical political move meant to drive a wedge between minority groups. But is this argument a misplaced sense of allyship? Chris Stewart and I debate this on the most recent episode of the Citizen Stewart Show.