Dear Colleagues:
We’ve seen significant progress on a number of our issues over the past week.  Chief among these was the election in Virginia.  Our strategy has been to mobilize parents to regain control over the education of their own children.  That paid off wonderfully as voters judged candidates on whether they respected parental control or not.  In this past week we have also launched a new web site with information on Chief Diversity Officers in every school district with at least 15,000 students.  And we’ve seen significant progress on expanding school choice in South Carolina.
 
This letter offers more details and resources on each of these developments.
Major Implications for Education in Glenn Youngkin Gubernatorial Victory in Virginia. Lindsey Burke writes that governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s win “is an indisputable vindication of the values-based base for school choice and parental empowerment.” As she explains: 
 
"Last night, parents made their voices heard at a time when school boards in Virginia—with the backing of the National School Boards Association <[link removed]>, the threat of being labeled domestic terrorists, and the sanction of the Biden administration’s Department of Justice <[link removed]>—have continually tried to silence them. 
 
Now, Youngkin’s charge is to address the concerns he heard from parents through policy change. He has a mandate to do so." 
 
She outlines four pressing policy changes the Youngkin administration should pursue. First, he should reject critical race theory’s discrimination from being applied in Virginia’s public schools. Second, Youngkin should take the opportunity to work with the Virginia Legislature to eliminate teacher certification requirements, which would do wonders to limit the power of academia to spread the dangerous ideology of critical
race theory from colleges to the K-12 classroom. Third, Virginia should stop the administrative staffing surge in K-12 schools, which has enabled growth in chief diversity officers <[link removed]>—the K-12 brethren of diversity, equity, and
inclusion <[link removed]> staff in higher education. And finally, Virginia must embrace school choice. 
 



- Don’t miss AEI’s Max Eden’s piece on the Virginia race with UVA’s Brad Wilcox in the Wall Street Journal: Youngkin Makes the GOP the Parents’ Party <[link removed]>.
- Heritage’s Mike Gonzalez analyzes the Virginia outcomes <[link removed]>, writing that “The election of Glenn Youngkin as governor of
Virginia sends a strong message: Americans do not want critical race theory in classrooms.”



 
Related: “The concerns of parents need to be a tier 1 policy issue” for conservatives, writes Congressman Jim Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Committee. The RSC lays out several policy priorities in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia, including combatting critical race theory by prohibiting federal funds from being used in ways that violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, giving parents an exit option from schools that don’t align with their values through expanded 529 plans and Title I portability, and investigating the
origins of the letter penned by the National School Boards Association labeling parents “domestic terrorists” and associated White House involvement. 
Read the full plan here <[link removed]>.  
 
Irony Alert: A local teachers’ union in New Hampshire has signed an agreement with the National Education Association and the South Kingstown School Department, allowing union members to… wait for it… exercise school
choice! As the Daily Signal’s Virginia Allen reports <[link removed]>, “under the formal agreement, teachers who live outside the South Kingstown Public School district may send their children to schools there at no additional cost. Other parents outside the district, however, cannot do the same for their children.” 
 
“The union is saying – loudly – ‘Choice for me but not for thee’,” Lindsey Burke commented. “Apparently, the unions have finally come around to the notion that money should follow the child to the school that fits her needs!” she said.
New Inter-Active Data Visualization for Equity Elementary Study
 
Heritage recently published our study <[link removed]> examining how many public school districts have Chief Diversity Officers (CDO).  While it is not yet as common as it is in higher education, 39% of K-12 schools already have a CDO.  We also looked at achievement gaps on standardized math and reading tests between black and white, Hispanic and white, and poor and non-poor students to see if CDOs are achieving their ostensible purpose of closing achievement gaps.  We found that the gaps are larger and growing wider in districts with a CDO relative to districts without one.
 
Heritage has now developed a really cool inter-active web site <[link removed]> that allows people to look up any district in the US with at least 15,000 students to see if it has a CDO and how the achievement gaps for that district compare to national averages.  This web site empowers parents and community members around the country with information they could use to mobilize and make changes in their local school district.
 
South Carolina education market is good for teachers, but what about students? Writing for reimaginED this week, Jonathan Butcher says, “Educators are in such high demand in South Carolina that observers are calling it a ‘teacher’s market.’ While it’s reassuring that teachers have options, shouldn’t state officials make the education landscape a student’s market, too?”
 
“Some South Carolina lawmakers are designing an education savings account proposal that would allow children from low-income homes and students who struggle with reading, along with children facing other learning challenges, to choose how and where they learn,” Jonathan wrote. Read on <[link removed]>.
 
Leftist special interest groups having second thoughts. Jonathan wrote for the Washington Times <[link removed]> this week that some interest groups and politicos on the left have announced that they think parents of school children are dangerous. How are these talking points working out? Groups such as the National School Boards Association (NSBA) have walked back their comments, but some of their members have already revoked their membership, Jonathan explains.
 
And then there is political commentator Juan Williams’ defense of the NSBA, which strangely arrived just as the NSBA’s own governing board admitted they took a misstep with the associations’ letter saying parent actions are dangerous. All this and more, read on <[link removed]>.
Warmly,
Jay P. Greene
 
Senior Research Fellow 
Center for Education Policy


Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity
The Heritage Foundation

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