Dear Colleagues:
Just this week we welcomed a new addition to our team of education policy experts. Say hello to Jason Bedrick! Jason joins the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation as a Research Fellow after serving as Director of Policy for EdChoice, the namesake foundation of Milton and Rose Friedman dedicated to empowering families to choose the best schooling environment for their children.
The entire Heritage family is excited to have Jason on board. In a press release, Heritage President, Kevin Roberts, said, “Heritage has made it a priority to put power back in the hands of parents to make their own education choices, which is why we’re delighted to have Jason Bedrick join our education policy team.”
  
At Heritage, Bedrick will focus on policies that promote education choice, values-based education, religious liberty, and reduced government intervention in education, as well as efforts to combat antisemitism.
  
Check out the full press release here <[link removed]> and listen to Jason speak about education choice here <[link removed]>.
  
What’s Driving the Free Speech Crisis on College Campuses? Good question. Jonathan Butcher answered this in The Washington Times, writing, “Rioting students and their faculty supporters are not just expressing disagreement. They are vying for power in the name of critical race theory. Pay careful attention to their actions and the words they use.” In his book, Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth, that most if not all of the shout downs and examples of campus violence over the last decade have a common thread running through them that ties back to critical race theory. You can read the article here <[link removed]> and purchase Jonathan’s book here <[link removed]>.
Speaking of Splintered. Last month, C-SPAN2 and C-SPAN BookTV <[link removed]> aired the release event for Jonathan’s book, Splintered. You can watch the event, featuring special guests Mike Gonzalez and Ian Rowe from the American Enterprise Institute here <[link removed]>. You can also check out a review of the book <[link removed]> by Alex Nester of the Washington Free Beacon here <[link removed]>.
  
Parent Bill of Rights. Jonathan and Lindsey Burke write, “Lawmakers around the country are considering parents’ bills of rights that affirm that parents are their children’s primary caregivers, prevent schools from compelling students to affirm ideas that violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, require schools to receive parental permission before
administering health services to children, and authorize parents to view the list of books and instructional materials for K–12 classrooms.” In their Heritage Foundation Issue Brief, they outline some of the most important work being done by state policymakers—including work from Florida, Indiana, and Kansas—to protect parents’ rights to raise their children. Read the brief here <[link removed]>.
  
The Critical Classroom. Heritage’s latest volume on the prejudice caused by educators’ application of critical race theory in K-12 classrooms is now available. Edited by Lindsey, Jonathan, and Jay Greene and featuring work by Heritage colleagues Mike Gonzalez and Sarah Parshall Perry and others, along with contributing authors such as Ian Rowe and University of Texas scholar John Sibley Butler, the volume explains how critical race theory inevitably leads to racial discrimination and violates America’s founding ideals. You can download or order a copy of the book here <[link removed]>. You can read Jonathan’s summary of the volume in the Daily Signal here <[link removed]>.
The Danger of a Woke Duopoly. Over the past month, Jay Greene has written some phenomenal pieces on why we should worry about the charter school sector. In the Chalkboard Review <[link removed]>, he writes:
  
“As choice is beginning to gain some steam, opponents are redoubling their efforts to both curtail private school choice and over-regulate charter schools. If successful, they will morph the old monopoly into a Woke Duopoly.  To the extent that families are left with any choice at all, it will be between a traditional public school that promotes a progressive ideology that undermines the values many families are trying to teach at home and a charter school that promotes the same progressive ideology even more fervently. 
   
Rather than replacing the old monopolistic system with a Woke Duopoly, those who support empowering families to raise and educate their own children with their preferred values should push for a deregulated system of choice that offers a diverse set of options, including traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools
offering a variety of approaches.”
   
The Frankenstein Monster of Charter School Regulations. In the Washington Examiner <[link removed]>, Jay examined the Biden Administration’s proposed charter school regulations and explains why national charter school advocacy organizations “such as the National Association of
Charter School Authorizers and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools should not have been surprised at all.” He observes that:
   
“NACSA and NAPCS claim they favor heavy regulatory approaches to ensure school quality, but there is no evidence to support the claim that their preferred regulations improve student outcomes. Insisting that the key to ensuring quality is regulation, rather than an open market in which parents can choose from a variety of school options, opened the door to the Biden administration’s claim that its regulations were also required to protect quality.
   
School quality is strengthened by empowering parents to leave schools that fail to serve their children's needs. By taking the opposite approach, the national advocacy groups have created a Frankenstein’s monster. Now, the federal government wishes to ape their approach, and they are in no position to object.”
   
Helping K-12 Children in Tennessee. Writing in the Washington Examiner, Jonathan explains that Tennessee lawmakers are providing more transparency for taxpayers and streamlining the school funding formula for children with special needs as part of an overhaul of the state system. He writes, “State K-12 school spending formulas are notoriously complex, understood by a select few officials in each state, and the processes are rarely transparent to taxpayers.” But Tennessee lawmakers are adopting key improvements to this formula. Gov. Bill Lee signed the proposal <[link removed]> this week. You can read Jonathan’s analysis of the proposal here <[link removed]>.
  
New Jersey Schools Want to Talk to Kids about Sex--and Keep It a Secret. In commentary on FoxNews.com, Jonathan writes,
   
This fall, New Jersey’s department of education will be teaching young children in 2nd grade to ponder their "gender identity." True, young people can sometimes feel confused about their sexuality. But radical gender activists want children to believe that these emotions matter more than their biological sex and that their gender does not depend on biology.
   
Activists also want children and educators to know that parents’ opinions on this subject do not matter.
   
This separates children from their parents, Jonathan says. “Parents and family members are the most important people in a child’s life. They should be the first ones to whom teachers and school officials turn when educators spot depression in a child or that a minor is confused about their sexuality,” Jonathan says. You can read his oped here <[link removed]>.
  
Radical Strategies Block Parents’ Care for Their Schoolchildren. Writing in The Washington Times, Jonathan says, “Policies based on what are called “critical gender studies” remove parents from essential health care decisions concerning their children — including decisions made in a school setting.” These policies are moving families away from their students. “Critical race and gender theory corrupt these ideas while activists try to dissolve parents’ authority over their child’s schooling. Parents are the most important adults in a child’s life. Instead of marginalizing them, state officials should be empowering, encouraging and engaging them,” Jonathan says. Read on <[link removed]>.
 
Diversity Training Boondoggle Expensive and Counterproductive. The Goldwater Institute released an excerpt of Jonathan’s new book, Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth. In Goldwater’s blog, In Defense of Liberty, Jonathan writes that “research finds again and again that there is no evidence that antibias training has made any biased people less biased.” He explains, “Based on the research evidence alone, then, public officials should not use taxpayer resources to require the application of Critical Race Theory through mandatory
diversity trainings.” Read more <[link removed]>.
  
Are More Highly Educated Individuals More Antisemitic? With coauthors Albert Cheng and Ian Kingsbury, Jay Greene published a recent study <[link removed]> that “found evidence contrary to the conventional wisdom that antisemitism is
less prevalent among highly educated individuals. The study’s findings “indicate higher levels of antisemitic attitudes among individuals with more education.”
Sincerely,
John Schoof
 
Research Associate and Program Coordinator
Center for Education Policy
The Heritage Foundation

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