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
, 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
, 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 this week. You can
read Jonathan’s analysis of the proposal here.
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
.
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.
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.
Are More Highly Educated Individuals More Antisemitic?
With coauthors Albert Cheng and Ian Kingsbury, Jay Greene published a
recent study
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.”