“We acknowledge that we meet on stolen land.” The above quote kicks off a contemptible “White Privilege” PowerPoint presentation that the San Diego Unified School District is forcing its teachers to watch. Authored by Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, two high-profile race hustlers, all the usual victimology blather is in full bloom – you...
With a Biden presidency looming, charter schools are once again under attack. “I remember seeing a bumper sticker when the telephone company was all one…and it said ‘We don’t care. We don’t have to.’ And that’s what a monopoly is. That’s what IBM was in their day. And that’s certainly what the public school system...
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck hard back in April 2020, California’s teachers’ unions went into overdrive. The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) released a lengthy document outlining what they believed to be “Safe and Equitable Conditions for Starting LAUSD in 2020-21.” In a report published by the California Policy Center that same month, Larry Sand explained the deal...
Teacher union leader claims we should follow the science, but then she ignores it. When pressed about the reason for closing schools as a way to limit the spread of Covid-19, the comment you mostly hear from the teachers unions and other shutdown hawks is, “Follow the science!” Typical is American Federation of Teachers president...
If Joe Biden becomes president, will he go along with the teachers union wish list? As I wrote last week, charter school students, kids who are in other school choice programs, and taxpayers could be getting the short end of the stick if Joe Biden becomes president on January 20th. To assist Biden with policy...
On education issues, trouble looms if Biden becomes president. At the risk of stating the obvious, the country’s political future is murky. If Joe Biden withstands the onslaught of ballot fraud challenges and becomes POTUS 46, it’s anyone’s guess as to how he will govern. Or for how long. As a dementia-riddled man with no...
The education establishment is losing customers, and it isn’t happy. Teacher union honchos don’t like homeschoolers for obvious reasons. When kids learn at home, it means less control, money, and power for them. Over the years, the National Education Association has adopted resolutions at its yearly convention which stipulate that homeschooling families “cannot provide the...
As shown by the 2019 NAEP, most of our students are being badly shortchanged. The latest bad education news comes to us courtesy of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The most recent exam was administered to high school seniors in early 2019, a full year before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The so-called “Nation’s Report...
School lockdowns have little if anything to do with “science.” A working paper released this month by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform reveals that local politics – not the severity of COVID-19 – is the most important factor in determining whether k-12 public school districts opened for in-person learning in the fall. Political...
A recent guest editorial published by Bakersfield.com entitled “California’s defunding of public education” makes the case that a “pension contribution maneuver” has left school districts up and down the state with shrinking budgets. The author, Shaohua Yang, gets many of his facts right. For example, he writes that “California 2019 per-capita income tax ranks the fifth highest...
If cops are expected to wear body cameras, teachers’ lessons should be recorded. In Texas, a 9th grade English teacher adorns her virtual classroom with posters professing support for Black Lives Matter and the LGBT lifestyle. In southern California, a teacher regularly tells her students how stupid President Trump is, and that conservatives are destroying...
By now, this is a familiar story. California is a failed state. Thanks to years of progressive mismanagement and neglect, the cities are lawless and the forests are burning. Residents pay the highest prices in America for unreliable electricity. Water is rationed. Homes are unaffordable. The public schools are a joke. Freeways are congested and...
By Michael Davis This school year, my family will be joining the throng of Southern Californians making long commutes, but for us it will be for the sake of our children’s education. We live in Pasadena, but our kids will be going to Orange County Classical Academy, a new charter school in the City of...
While California’s ethnic studies mandate for k-12ers is dead for now, there is still much in the works to be concerned about. California governor Gavin Newsom is a force of nature. He leads a state which has record homelessness, rising crime and exploding pension debt. But wait, there is so much more! Ruling more like...