Dear Colleagues:

We have big news this month. I’m excited to share that one of my colleagues released a new book! If you care about truth and protecting children from discrimination in the classroom, you will definitely want to read it. Also check out how our team is having a direct impact on policies that empower parents over their child’s education! 

Splintered to Agency. Last week, Heritage was pleased the announce the release of Jonathan Butcher’s book Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth,  available for pre-order now and will ship on April 19. At the event, Jonathan was joined by scholar and author Ian Rowe. They discussed Splintered and teased Ian’s new book , which is coming in May. To view the event, click here . You can order Jonathan’s book here and Ian’s book here . 

  

Regulation stifles innovation.  Jay Greene co-authored a working paper with Ian Kingsbury and Corey DeAngelis titled, “The Relationship Between Regulation and Charter School Innovation.” The study analyzes how charter school regulations impact how innovative and pedagogically diverse charter schools are. Not surprisingly they find that high regulation stifles innovation in the charter school environment.

  

What’s happening in the states. Jonathan wrote for reimaginED online twice in March, first profiling an education savings account proposal in Oklahoma (“Offering Hope to Oklahoma Students, Families”) and then describing an account proposal in South Carolina. While Oklahoma students will have to wait another year for lawmakers to propose more quality learning options, as of this writing, South Carolina families are still hoping state officials will create more great education opportunities through education savings accounts. For more on Oklahoma, click here. For more on South Carolina, click here.  

  

Parent bill of rights.  In Kansas, state officials are considering a proposal that would create a parent bill of rights, similar to the proposal recently adopted in Florida. Jonathan explains in the Daily Signal that Kansas’s proposal is unique in that it not only affirms that parents are a child’s primary caregivers but includes language Heritage developed that protects teachers and children from critical race theory’s bigotry. Read on. 
 

Youth mental health crisis.  Writing alongside Heritage Foundation Young Leader Chloe Shoemaker, Jonathan describes the mental health crisis plaguing school aged children today and how lawmakers can help by giving families more choices in education.

  

"In the first six months of the pandemic alone, the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention   reported that hospital visits for mental health-related emergencies increased 24% for children ages 5 to 11 and 31% for adolescents ages 12 to 17. The agency found in a follow-up study that emergency room visits for attempted suicides also increased by 50.6% for teen girls and 39% for adolescents overall compared to the same period in 2019,” Chloe and Jonathan write. Read on.

  

Free to offend. Jonathan joined the Nevada Policy Institute podcast, “Free to Offend,” in March to discuss his book, Splintered. For more on what CRT is and why parents should care, you can listen to the podcast here.

Setting the record straight. Jonathan debated the head of the Ohio teacher union on the NPR Ohio show “All Sides with Ann Fisher.” Unions and others are claiming that proposals to protect teachers and children from critical race theory’s racial bias are merely interested in banning books. Jonathan explains that censorship is actually a key part of critical race theory, along with discrimination, which means the unions have the story backward. Those advocating for the theory should be explaining their actions that result in censorship. Click here to listen to the show.

  

Prestige and politics in higher education.  Along with Paul Peterson of Harvard University and the Hoover Institution, Jay Greene and I wrote about universities’ decisions on whether students were allowed to learn in-person or virtually was determined by politics and prestige, not community COVID-19 rates. The pandemic made clear that these institutions do not prioritize the education of their students, and taxpayers do not get their money’s worth. Read the whole thing in The Hill.

  

Coming Soon: We are excited to announce the forthcoming release of  The Critical Classroom,  a volume featuring Heritage experts and distinguished scholars and writers who explain the prejudice that critical race theory is injecting into the classroom. You can learn more about our volume and order copies  here . 

Sincerely,
John Schoof
 
Research Associate and Program Coordinator
Center for Education Policy
The Heritage Foundation