https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/the-biden-administration-declares-war-on-charter-schools/PackFansXL said:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/yes-teacher-prep-programs-are-that-woke/Unfortunately, our future teachers are not learning how to teach but are spending their college careers getting their worldviews redirected to progressive politics. Why do we wonder about the negative slide in test scores of American students? Oh, wait, I keep forgetting that actual test scores are racist. If we have any hope of restoring our education system, it must begin with giving parents the choice to send their kids to schools that aren't dominated by this woke blather. Next, we must get very involved in our local school board elections and monitor school board meetings closely. Finally, review everything our kids bring home and question them about the details of what they are hearing from their teachers. I do not envy those of you who still have kids in public schools.Quote:
My teacher training featured Black Lives Matter friendship bracelets, lectures on acupuncture and essential oils, acrostic poems as final projects, and a solid grounding in critical race theory. Notably lacking was a robust emphasis on teaching, learning, cognitive science, child psychology, behavior management, curriculum, or any other practicalities of the classroom. They were present but secondary to progressive politics.
One such review from the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal solicited syllabi from three of the most prestigious schools of education in the country to determine the most assigned readings at each. Lo and behold, the syllabi are replete with critical race theory, political activism, and even outright Marxism.
The Martin Center review isn't an outlier either. Another paper by David Steiner, the executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, found a similar state of affairs after reviewing 15 different university teacher-prep programs a mixture of both elite and non-elite campuses. Radicals such as Freire and romantics such as Dewey dominate the curricula.
Steiner makes special mention of what does not make an appearance on these lists: educational conservatives, essays older than 30 years, authors outside of America, and courses on the history or philosophy of education. He notes how few programs asked their teachers to demonstrate competence on the methods of reading instruction, going so far as to call most of the syllabi "intellectually barren." It is, he concludes, a "serious effort to shape the fundamental worldview of future teachers," not an effort to form effective teachers.
While I want to stymie the flow of politics into our classrooms, the real fallout of our woke-ified teacher-prep programs is simply mediocrity. Teachers who can't teach create students who don't learn. It's time that schools of education receive the evaluation, due criticism, and reformation that they deserve.
There are more rules included in this stealthy announcement, but the reason for posting this is to show the larger agenda is bad for the very folks it is purportedly designed to help. I suppose democrats believe teacher's unions are more important than the students they serve.Quote:
But now, with Democrats going woke and a new president in town, the U.S. Department of Education has declared war on charter schools, using obscure bureaucratic rulemaking to kill the federal charter-school program without having to explain why.
On March 11, a Friday when media attention was focused on Ukraine and the Senate's Thursday-night passage of the $1.5 trillion bill to fund federal-government agencies for the rest of the fiscal year, the Biden administration's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education issued 13 pages of rules designed to cut off charter schools from federal support, and that will likely serve as a model for state regulations limiting charters.
The administration's proposals clearly took months to prepare, and their publication less than 24 hours after the key funding vote cleared the Senate, and coming after important House and Senate votes gave charter supporters in both parties less clout to bargain for changes, was timed to get as little notice as possible.
The administration is also employing a truncated comment process. That may sound arcane, but here's why it matters for democratic governance. In accord with the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act, to ensure transparency, proposed new regulations are published in the Federal Register, with lengthy public-comment periods before rules are finalized. This gives time for experts, interest groups, and the public to offer input, making government regulations both more legitimate and more realistic.
Charters must also prepare a "community impact analysis" demonstrating "unmet demand for the charter school, including any over-enrollment of traditional public schools" (p. 14201). Of course, the worst traditional public schools are under-enrolled because parents of means left long ago. That means this regulation could remove options from low-income parents all in the name of equity.
Likewise, the proposed rules require reporting on the "racial and socio-economic diversity of students and teachers in the charter school, and the impact of the charter school on racial and socio-economic diversity in the public school district" (p. 14201). In the real world, many charter schools exist to serve low-income students, so their demographics differ from those of the surrounding school district. Again in the name of "equity," this change would slash funding to charter schools and encourage their opponents to attack as "racist" charter schools that provide education options to the (overwhelmingly minority) parents who need them most.
