With each passing day, California’s political and educational establishments dramatize the importance of school choice. Even for those without children in public schools, supporting parental authority would help produce better-educated youths to enter the workforce and participate in a prosperous, and evolving, economy.
Traditional public schools get guaranteed funding and have a captive customer base – laws require youths to attend school. That isn’t lost on the teachers unions, which dominate such schools and steer curriculum and policy. They collect enormous sums of money in dues, using it to push legislative allies to eliminate competition like charters, which aren’t as heavily unionized.
And since the government-imposed coronavirus lockdown, which closed most public schools, legislators and unions have shown just how willing they are to pursue that objective.
The public is starting to get wise. Waiting lists for charters are swelling nationwide, including in Southern California. Gradually people are realizing student performance at alternative schools historically surpasses – often by magnitudes – that in traditional public schools.
The differences are stark even though most schools have some problems in common – such as gangs, drugs, bullies, bad teachers, bad administrators and such mental and emotional issues as have recently caught the attention of the popular media.
Three big differences between public and alternative schools: 1) how each handles those problems; 2) unions have a monopoly in traditional public schools; 3) in public schools, politicians and unions are dictating curriculum.
A Southern California educator, Rebecca Friedrichs, spent nearly 30 years in the classroom and has since founded For Kids & Country, dedicated to improving educational prospects for all children. She spoke recently at the Republican National Convention, putting the spotlight on unions that have “intentionally rewritten American history to perpetuate division.”
Speaking of which, the revisionist history in the “1619” New York Times project will soon will be taught in public schools. But that’s by no means the extent of indoctrination efforts in public schools. The “California Healthy Youth Act,” for example, was pushed by unions and radicals ostensibly to normalize children’s views of LGBTQ people, but to do so, lawmakers require schools to teach children about sex.
They also are pushing “ethnic studies.” A bill embraced by the Slick Sophists of Sacramento pushes a 200-page guidance that calls for students to engage in political activism and lists issues that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen one major party’s homepage.
The law envisions building “new possibilities for post-imperial life that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance.” Post-imperial life, they say.
A common theme among unions and lawmakers everywhere is that nosy parents aren’t welcome. Parents in Rutherford County (Tennessee) schools must agree not to monitor their child’s online classroom sessions. A teacher in Pennsylvania says it’s best that parents not see “our ‘equity/inclusion’ work” and “honest conversations about gender/sexuality.”
All of this prompted the former-prosecutor-turned-commentator Andrew McCarthy to recently observe, “Modern-era education has supplanted critical thinking with tribalism, grievance-mongering, and hostility to the free exchange of ideas and viewpoints.”
This, possibly as much as gangs, bullies and incompetence, could explain the new interest in alternatives.
Those alternatives are getting attention. Charters have huge waiting lists. Some parents in Redlands formed a homeschooling co-op through a group called Celebration Education. Californians in 2022 will vote on “educational savings accounts,” under which per-student money would follow the student. A proposed federal law from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, follows a similar track.
For now, California has cleverly frozen school funding at last February’s pre-lockdown apportionment, keeping cash flowing to unions and closed traditional schools but denying funds to alternatives like charters – at least those the unions and districts allow to open.Speaking of opening, almost everyone is ready to return to school – except unions and lawmakers. Some couch their hesitation in health terms. But the litany of political demands make you wonder how much union resistance has to do with coronavirus – big federal cash; no campus cops; cancel rents and mortgages; Medicare for all; a wealth tax; a moratorium on vouchers and testing – and naturally, a ban on charters.
“The only way to keep a free republic,” Friedrichs said in her RNC speech, “is with a well-educated, moral citizenry that can self-govern.” So true. Such an education would also prepare youths for the work world. But traditional public schools are pushing identity politics and victimhood instead. Alternatives are looking better all the time.
Reach Roger Ruvolo at rruvolo@att.net
Posted by: https://anaheimsigns.com
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