Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.
This article was originally on For Kids and Country. In California, parents are abandoning the k-12 system, college enrollment is down, and now the state is trying to lure 4-year-olds to transitional kindergarten. According to just released data from the California Department of Education, the state has lost 110,000 students this school year, and has fewer...
By Larry Sand
California’s traditional public schools are not doing their job, and parents are opting out. With sky-high taxes, a sieve-like southern border, and an ongoing flow of nutty regulations – one law targets cow flatulence, for example – California really doesn’t need any more bad news. But according to a recent report, the state now leads the...
By Larry Sand
Guess who’s leading the drive to keep children masked? This article was originally featured in FrontPageMag. State officials announced last week that as of March 12, California will no longer require school children to wear masks, and thankfully most California school districts are going along with the decision. Also, the Los Angeles County Department of Public...
By Larry Sand
This article was originally posted on For Kids & Country. As states and school boards battle over school curricula, the least we can do is keep parents informed about what their kids are learning. Bologna. The FDA insists that every last ingredient of the heavily processed food is listed on the package label. No one has an issue with...
By Larry Sand
The article with originally on FrontPageMag. A remarkably dysfunctional year for the San Francisco Unified school board. It started in January 2021, when the school board in San Francisco decided to rename 44 public schools, claiming their namesakes were “unworthy of the honor.” The names of such American icons as Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere, Thomas...
By Larry Sand
Originally featured in For Kids & Country. America’s children are suffering greatly and teachers may be exiting the profession en masse. Just last week, the National Education Association released the results of a poll which finds that “55 percent of educators are thinking about leaving the profession earlier than they had planned.” The NEA claims this...
By Larry Sand
The governor of CA is about to go on a taxpayer-funded spending spree. Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his education spending plan, which comes to $119 billion including local, state and federal sources. This would raise per-pupil spending to $20,855, and make California one of the highest spending states in the country. (That...
By Larry Sand
The damaging “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” racket needs to be extinguished. Researchers extraordinaire Jay Greene and James Paul have released a series of three carefully crafted studies on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that detail many aspects of the harmful scheme. In a nutshell, the authors find DEI to be “counterproductive and politically radical.” The part...
By Larry Sand
Here’s hoping that 2022 will see a halt to the spread of Critical Race Theory. Originally posted on FrontPageMag. Watching teachers unions, government school honchos, the media, etc., deny that Critical Race Theory (which makes race the prism through which its proponents analyze all aspects of American life, categorizing individuals into groups of oppressors and victims) is taught...
By Larry Sand
This article was first published on FrontPageMag. “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.” The above caveat about government unions – usually known by the kinder and gentler...
By Larry Sand
The California Teachers Association fights parental choice with deeply flawed arguments. As this troubling year moves to a conclusion, there is certainly one thing worth celebrating: the great leap forward for educational freedom throughout the country. As I wrote last week, the countrywide union-mandated school shutdowns have had major consequences, and perhaps none more prominent...
By Larry Sand
School violence rises, mental health days proliferate, and thousands of kids are leaving government schools nationwide. Recently, a report compiled by Mike Antonucci for the Defense of Freedom Institute confirmed that the teachers unions had a heavy-handed role in the Covid-related shutdowns that consumed much of the country starting in March 2020. And the “never...
By Larry Sand
A new anti-parent diatribe is rife with condescension and a lack of logic. Christina Wyman is a writer and teacher, and most recently has become an inadvertent promoter of parental wrath. In an inflammatory piece for NBC News, Wyman insists that when it comes to the classroom, parents should know their place – just shut...
By Larry Sand
After school police are cut back, violence rises. In June 2020, the United Teachers of Los Angeles passed a motion to eliminate school police, and replace them with counselors and mental health programs. The union asserted, “Police presence in schools leads to negative outcomes for Black and Brown students, who are arrested and disciplined at...
By Larry Sand