Dear Colleagues:

FoxNews featured Jay Greene last week talking about how the National School Boards Association is backtracking from its letter saying parents are dangerous. Jay explained that the NSBA’s governing board issued a letter of apology letter for the association’s earlier missive saying parents’ comments at local school board meetings amounted to “an immediate threat.” Jay said, “This shows the power of parents when they mobilize.”

 

“The truth is that CRT and other discriminatory practices are very unpopular. Parents don’t like them and they are organizing very effectively against them,” Jay says. Jay talked about his latest report, “Equity Elementary: ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staff in Public Schools,” where Jay and James Paul found that “employing a chief diversity officer (CDO) in K–12 school districts does not contribute to closing achievement gaps and is even likely to exacerbate those gaps.”

 

You can watch the FoxNews clip here and read the new report here.

Elevator Pitch: “Nothing motivates people more than their own children, and politics is really driven by people caring about things that are immediately close to them. The education of their own children is top on that list,” Jay said.

 

Speaking of the NSBA. Lindsey Burke joined the Problematic Women podcast to discuss the ongoing effort by the Biden Department of Justice to chill the free speech of parents at school board meetings. As she explained:

 
“…at the end of the day, the National School Boards Association receives taxpayer funding because these are public school districts that pay $15,000 a year or so, depending on the number of students, to be a member of the National School Boards Association. Well, where does that local district money come from? At the end of the day, it’s taxpayers.
 
So it’s just one additional layer of concern then to see the National School Boards Association work, honestly, hand-in-glove with the White House to put out this letter to potentially label parents as domestic terrorists, the fact that they are effectively taxpayer-funded makes it that much worse.”

  

You can listen to the full interview here.

 

What Else We’re Working on

My taxes are paying for what now? “It’s no secret that state universities and K-12 schools are teaching critical race theory. And if public schools are teaching it, that means your taxes are paying for it,” I explained for the Detroit News last week. Whistleblowers have uncovered lessons based on critical race theory that educators in Michigan’s K-12 districts such as Grand Haven and Grand Ledge.  

 

“No parent wants their children to face prejudice and discrimination—not at play and certainly not in the classroom. Yet critical race theory encourages students to see themselves and others through a racial lens—one that separates them into categories of victim and oppressor,” I wrote.   

 

“Such teachings leave no room for discussion and create division and animosity, not civil discourse and civic responsibility. Michigan lawmakers should consider proposals from states nearby to help them prevent taxpayers from bankrolling coercion and bigotry,” I said. Read on.  

 

Children’s books spreading bigotry. I talked with the Daily Mail this week about the ways in which critical race theorists are using children’s literature to spread racially discriminatory ideas. “These days bedtime is all about getting woke,” wrote Laura Collins for the Mail.  

 

What's more, I explained, “the notion of 'anti-racism,' promoted by Kendi is 'the perfect trap.'” I said, “Everyone's a racist unless they're an anti-racist, it's not enough to say you think racism is evil, you're a racist unless you're an anti-racist. There's no way out. It's an infinite loop.”  

 

“We need to prepare students to reject the idea that discrimination has any viable place in school or culture,” I said. You can read the article here.   

 

Podcast on the new education savings account research. reimaginED executive editor Matthew Ladner, who has researched and written on education savings accounts since Arizona lawmakers made the first accounts available to children in 2011, spoke with me on the latest episode of his podcast. I talked about my research on North Carolina’s accounts where I found significantly more families were using their child’s account for more than one education product or service than the families who used education savings accounts in the first years of Arizona and Florida’s programs.  

 

“As long as these entrenched systems and interest groups remain committed to limiting the choices that parents have, we will always have tension between those that want students to be successful and those that want a system to provide what they consider to be the same outcomes for everyone – and that’s not what anyone should want,” I said. Listen to the podcast here.  

 

Free community college isn’t free. In the Daily Signal, my colleague John Schoof and his coauthor AnnaGrace Ziebarth discuss how community college is already free for many students subsidized by taxpayers. For all the free community college we already have, all we have to show are abysmal completion rates. The free community college provision in the Build Back Better agenda, which thankfully seems be off the table, would be very costly to society.  

 

Coming soon: My book Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth is available for pre-order! You can place an order here.

Warmly,

Jonathan Butcher

 
Will Skillman Fellow in Education
Center for Education Policy

Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity

The Heritage Foundation