Regarding your recent Op-Ed about Michele Morrow, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but you made several troubling statements which I would like to address:
"Morrow's only experience with the public school system is her enrollment in it as a child."
Throughout her campaign, Michele has been criss-crossing the state talking to NC public school teachers and administrators in many school districts to understand what are the challenges facing them and what are their greatest needs. Even prior to her campaign for NC Superintendent, she has spent many years at school board meetings and at the NC General Assembly educating herself on the laws and curriculum. There's no reason to believe that as NC Superintendent Michele would stop meeting with teachers and administrators to continue hearing from the classroom perspective.
Public schools in NC are not succeeding by anyone's standards, and it has been that way for decades. At this point, we should not recruit a leader from within this failing system; we need an outsider's perspective with new ideas.
"As a supporter of the Parents' Bill of Rights, Morrow is in favor of rules that remove the autonomy of the school system." & "...by allowing parents to influence what schools can and can not teach, they are undermining the purpose of educational institutions themselves."
These are perhaps your most troubling statements. NC public schools are not autonomous but are a function of the government of we the people. All NC citizens have a vested interest in the success of our schools and a right to direct how they are run. Attitudes like this are fueling the growth of the homeschooling movement.
Who gave the public school system the right to override parental authority over their own children? If a teacher decides to assign my son or daughter to read a description of incest between two minors (as recently happened in Wake County: https://www.youtube.com/live/VV4e_klmYsg?si=H-578fgBmrXUrC6W&t=6100), shouldn't I as a parent have a right to complain and opt my child out of that assignment?
There is an epidemic of pornography being supplied by public school media centers; just look at the many extreme examples at https://www.pavementeducationproject.com/.
I'm talking about books with hundreds of instances of four-letter words, books with pictures of sexual acts, and books with graphic descriptions of violence and sexual acts. Should parents just "trust the experts," or do they have a right and a duty to protect their children's innocence?
"Michele also believes schools should not teach America's history as a 'racist and oppressive nation,' a notion that is incredibly flawed." & "...it seems that she would rather protect the sanctity of the American image and brush the mistakes of the past under the rug."
Michele has said that we need to be teaching kids U.S. and world history, both the bad and the good (https://youtu.be/2eorxZTtK3c?feature=shared&t=2044).
She has never said that we can't teach the history of the transatlantic slave trade or Jim Crow laws. However, these lessons should not be taught in such a way that students with lighter skin feel like they need to apologize for being oppressors and students with darker skin feel like the system is rigged against them.
These feelings of guilt and victimhood are the outcome of "anti-racist" curriculum such as the 1619 Project. Students never hear the stories of the people with light skin and dark skin who fought side-by-side for American independence, or the difficult compromises that the founders had to make regarding the evil institution of slavery , or the abolitionists with light skin and dark skin who fought to end slavery and institute civil rights. Students only learn to hate America, capitalism, and their neighbors, and that is a quick way for a civilization to end its own existence.
"Morrow deems social-emotional learning, an aspect of K-12 education that stresses the building of interpersonal relationship-building skills and emotional self-management, as 'non-academic' and a 'waste [of] money.'"
I urge you to take a look at the way in which SEL has been integrated into NC curriculum: https://www.dpi.nc.gov/districts-schools/districts-schools-support/nc-social-emotional-learning/ncscos-sel-alignment#NCDPISELMathK-5-5492
For example, for Kindergarten Math it recommends that teachers give lessons on vocabulary words for feelings, set up small group discussions about emotions, and read literature to identify when they may have had the same feelings as a character. All of this takes away valuable classroom time from actual math. It's no wonder that only 25% of NC 8th grade students are proficient at math and 26% at reading (https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/overview/NC?cti=PgTab_Findings&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=NC&fs=SubjectLabel&st=MN&year=2019R3&sg=Gender:%20Male%20vs.%20Female&sgv=Difference&ts=Single%20Year&tss=-2019R3&sfj=NP).
I have heard firsthand from NC public school teachers about how kids are encouraged to go around in a circle and share a time when each of them has experienced a negative emotion. The mandate for SEL is "trauma-informed care," so they have to keep digging until they uncover trauma, often through invasive surveys.
Their mandate is to teach students how to regulate their emotions, so they have to ignore positive emotions and focus on negative ones. Even if this approach didn't violate parental rights and even if it didn't amplify negative feelings and fuel anxiety, the schools simply do not have funding for this when teachers have to pay for their own school supplies. Schools simply don't have time for this when students can't even meet grade-level standards in math and reading.
A major tenet of SEL is "restorative justice," which is based upon the belief that "our Black and Brown students and our [economically disadvantaged] students are more likely to be suspended because of bias in educational systems and bias within educators themselves" (https://www.wral.com/sponsored/university-of-north-carolina-chapel-hill-school-of-social-work-behavioral-health-springboard/mental-health-first-aid-and-restorative-justice-a-powerful-partnership-for-healthy-schools/).
Because of this presupposition, SEL "aims to reform systemic inequities, fostering a more equitable educational environment." In other words, when a student misbehaves, it's not the students fault, but rather society's fault. The misbehaving student is merely a victim of circumstance, and the other students in the classroom need to take collective ownership of the misbehavior through democratic dialogue.
Where does all of this "soft on crime" approach lead? Crime in NC schools are at record levels (https://www.carolinajournal.com/crime-suspensions-continue-to-worsen-in-nc-public-schools/), a crisis which Michele Morrow has put at the forefront of her campaign.
"Morrow has publicly stated that students with intellectual and developmental disabilities will 'never be able to compete' with the 'gifted and talented' students." & "This broad generalization by Morrow shows not only that she is largely uneducated on the issue but also that she does not care for a large portion of students within North Carolina."
If you could plot all students on a line from most academically challenged to most intellectually gifted, you would come up with a statistical bell curve. What Michele is describing is that the classroom approach may work for the middle 70% of students, but the top 15% and bottom 15% will benefit from more specialized instruction in addition to classroom time.
This is not about segregating students, but rather ensuring that all students are receiving the proper focus to help them to maximize their capabilities. Michele knows this firsthand because one of her children had a learning disability and the public school system was not providing the necessary level of specialized instruction which led her to opt for homeschooling instead.
Thank you for taking an interest in politics and in NC public schools. We may still disagree on the best candidate for NC Superintendent, but I hope my response has at least provided you with a new perspective on Michele.
