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A weekly report on education news and commentary you won’t find anywhere else — from the nation’s leading voice on education innovation and opportunity.

Cancel Math...and Shakespeare... CDC Insanity… No wonder parents trust parents to make decisions more than anyone else about where their kids should be educated, and how. It’s a long one this week, but if you’re concerned, read every word.

INSANITY: MATH IS RACIST. While the rest of the world continues to view 1 + 1 = 2, Oregon says [[link removed]]objective math is racist, so they are now using a program that demands that educators "identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views." It added that it is "unequivocally false" to assume math is an "objective" discipline. Excuse us but that is absolute, utter BS. And we won’t accept it.

SANITY: BLACK MINDS MATTER. Thank God for people who understand that parents of color continue to be victims of a system run amuck. It is their kids who suffer most with schools closed and when they fail to impart substantive education.

A powerful new voice has emerged — Black Minds Matter [[link removed]] — that will rectify both, celebrating black minds and supporting excellence. Its mission statement gets right to the point: “students should have free, high-quality, safe school options beyond the singular option the government assigns.” Started by dynamo Denisha Merriweather [[link removed]] it also publishes the first ever online directory of schools started by African Americans. [[link removed]]

REOPEN OR REDISTRIBUTE? Maybe rather than reopen we should redistribute — the funds that is — to parents. As we’ve said for months (and years), #FundFamilies. ( Watch our video here [[link removed]]) That, and only that, will result in the outcome

we all need and want — that our children be given the most important social and civil rights foundation — education — which is currently being abused, politicized and mismanaged from all sides. To wit:

UNIONS SCREAM WHILE MONEY STILL NOT SPENT? “While the $68 billion authorized in December [[link removed]]has been disbursed by the federal government, just $4.4 billion of that pot had been actually spent by school districts as of last month.” There’s only one reason for that — they want more.

INSANITY II: SHAKESPEARE CANCELED. The race to see who could cut Shakespeare out of English and literature curricula is on across the country. Teachers from Minnesota and New Jersey have once again turned their sights on William Shakespeare as the core target of their “cancel culture” efforts. Our view is why not blend in different voices, races and stories instead of denying children of all cultures Shakespeare’s work which has been the inspiration and foundation for much of the literature, verse and poetry that the world still enjoys today. Post editorialist Kathleen Parker agrees [[link removed]].

SANITY II: PANDEMIC PODS EXPLODING. More and more parents are stemming learning loss on their own by teaching children on their own in pods and homeschooling. [[link removed]] In North Carolina, more than 18,800 families filed to operate a home-school from July 1 to Jan. 22. In Connecticut, the number of students who left public schools to be home-schooled jumped fivefold this school year, to 3,500. In Nebraska, the number of home-schooled students jumped 56%, to 13,426. That’s just a slice of what’s happening, and what needs to happen until the world is turned right side up again.

PARENT OUTRAGE CONTINUES. From the WSJ Today [[link removed]] in response to Beaverton, OR staying closed as they continue to negotiate with unions:

“Is there a word beyond ‘frustrating’?” said Samantha Vembu, a Beaverton School District parent who may send her kindergartener struggling with isolation to an open private school across state lines in Vancouver, Wash. “It just makes you want to hit your head and cry.”

BIDEN: IT WAS A MISTAKE… Really? Or was it a miscalculation? From the CNN Town Hall last evening, when asked about school reopening… “I said open a majority of schools in K through eighth grade, because they’re the easiest to open, the most needed to be open in terms of the impact on children and families having to stay home.” And Biden said his press secretary made “a mistake in the communication” when she said they’d open one day a week...and just 50% of them.

“We’ve had a significant percentage of them being able to be open,” Biden added.

Yes, sir (we say)… but they opened way before you got involved. In fact, Florida’s 3 largest school districts, not to mention Texas, Arkansas, Iowa. Private and charter schools? Well, needless to say that those with no state keeping them closed, no union to deal with nor dependency on city transportation are mainly open.

“My guess is they’re going to be probably pushing to open all summer to continue like it’s a different semester,” he went on. So that’s the plan. Summer school. And the unions will no doubt extract a pretty penny for that, too.

INSANITY III: CDC GETS POLITICAL. The long awaited CDC guidance [[link removed]]repeats what effective school organizations already know and are doing. Last week it reiterated that in order to open, schools must follow a whole host of safety measures — to wild applause from the unions. But no one fact checked the announcement, which mirrors the same safety measures that national leaders have been talking about — and effective schools have been implementing — since summer 2020! [[link removed]]

SANITY III: WVA CHARTER PUSH. West Virginia lawmakers have had enough of the failing system — finally — and plan to improve their ailing and very weak charter school law. The proposed amendment would allow for charters to actually get opened rather than be controlled by the very bodies that want them to just go away. Read more. [[link removed]]

Can’t say we’re not amused at this new ad campaign starting in Times Square:

SPEAK OUT AND LET THE SUNSHINE IN. The only antidote to ignorance is sunshine. If you’re concerned, write, call, speak out, share and let the Sunshine In [[link removed]]. Take it away, Aquarius!

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