[Political Analysis]
Back under Trump the Secretary of Education made major reforms in educations. Chalkbeat writes…
One of the Republicans long term goals is to ax the Department of Education. The New Republic (A progressive website) wrote…
The voucher program was designed to fail, to cut middle income public support for schools. First private schools can cherry pick the brightest student and toss back to public schools, second this leads to a downward spiral of public schools from more dropouts and less students going on to college. And third, less funding for public schools.
Why else to be pushing something that you know doesn’t work except to cripple public schools. It is not just K-12 that they are going after but also stopping the proletariat from getting educated!
During these hearing the House Republicans seem to ignore the First Amendment, they hammered the college presidents for not stopping the peaceful anti-Israeli protests. The Republicans shredded the First Amendment.
We don’t want any of those liberal college!
We don’t want those liberal professors teaching the students to think for themselves!
The same thing is happening with OB/GYN and trans healthcare providers are fleeing the states, med students are not going to colleges in those states with abortion and trans healthcare bans.
Back under Trump the Secretary of Education made major reforms in educations. Chalkbeat writes…
Days earlier, she had struggled to answer basic education policy questions during her confirmation hearing. Her confusion, the evocative details — in response to one question, she said schools may need guns to protect against grizzly bears — and a surge in protest and civic activism against President Trump turned DeVos into a household name.
She has held onto that symbolic power. To many educators, her name remains a shorthand for feelings of frustration and disrespect. Her face became a staple of Democrats’ political ads nationwide, even though education policy was rarely central to the races. And when it became clear that Joe Biden would win the presidential election, the responses from many teachers came quickly: bye, Betsy.
[…]
The Republican Party believes in doing away entirely with federal loans. College tuition, and its consequential debt, is rising uncontrollably. At this point, it is rising far above the rate of inflation. College debt in America, as of 2012, had exceeded the amount of credit card debt. Republicans believe federal loans exacerbate this problem by their lack of transparency, and the fact that they are often more expensive than private loans. For these reasons, republicans believe that the federal government should no longer issue student loans. Greater private sector participation in loans would drive tuition costs down. The party believes that the federal government should, however, serve as an insurance guarantor for private sector loans.
The Republican Plan To Devastate Public Education in AmericaLet’s face it, the Republicans don’t want an educated proletariat, they believe that only the bourgeoisie should be educated.
Conservatives talk about “school choice.” What they really want, though, will result in the end of public education for the poor, and disfavored minorities like LGBT people.
By Brynn Tannehill
August 11, 2022
Republicans, and white conservatives, have long been hostile to public schools. School desegregation drove white evangelicals to become the strongest Republican demographic. Ronald Reagan promised to end the Department of Education in 1980. Trump put Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education, precisely because she was a leading proponent (and funder) of defunding public schools, and funneling it to religious schools. During her confirmation hearings it became clear that she knew nothing about education, and provided plagiarized and laughably bad answers to questions, asserting that teachers need guns to ward off grizzly bear attacks.
Republican candidates talk about “school choice” and putting God and prayer back in schools. What they really want, though, will result in the end of public education for the poor, and disfavored minorities like LGBT people.
Their plan looks like this: Parents are given a voucher for several thousand dollars that comes out of the state education budget. The money can be spent on tuition for charter or private schools, microschools (collective homeschooling), or regular homeschooling. Republicans say the “money goes to the kids.”
In reality, it reduces money going to public schools to a point where the schools will be dramatically underfunded.
That is exactly what the Republicans have hoped to archive and they knew that would happen.In recent months, state legislatures across the country have broadened efforts to subsidize private school tuition with taxpayer dollars. New proposals for these programs—collectively called school vouchers—have appeared in more than a dozen states and passed as major priorities for Republican governors like Kim Reynolds in Iowa and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas. Since 2021, Arizona, Florida, Utah and West Virginia have also created or expanded voucher plans. Meanwhile, a handful states like Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have run voucher programs for years. But do school vouchers actually work? We need to focus on what research shows, and what that means for kids moving forward.
As an analyst who has studied these and other forms of school choice for nearly two decades, I’m in a good position to give an answer. And based on data from existing voucher programs, the answer is almost unambiguously negative.
Let’s start with who benefits. First and foremost, the answer is: existing private school students. Small, pilot voucher programs with income limits have been around since the early 1990s, but over the last decade they have expanded to larger statewide initiatives with few if any income-eligibility requirements. Florida just passed its version of such a universal voucher program, following Arizona’s passage in the fall of 2022. In Arizona, more than 75% of initial voucher applicants had never been in public school—either because they were new kindergartners or already in private school before getting a voucher. That’s a problem because many voucher advocates market these plans as ways to improve educational opportunities for public school children.
But DeVos has acknowledged the poor track record for vouchers—at least when it comes to academic impacts. Asked about the dismal results of the Louisiana voucher plan while she was a public official, DeVos avoided detailed comment, but her answer back then was as good a summary as any that a voucher expert like me could provide. That program, she said, was “not very well-conceived.”
That goes for school voucher plans today, currently spreading across the country.
Hearings, subpoenas, crackdowns: Inside House Republicans’ long-term plan to ‘defund’ elite universitiesCNBC
- House Republicans have a long-term plan to strip elite universities of government funding and federal student loan dollars, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., told a group of business leaders during a private Zoom call last Friday.
- “The hearing was the first step,” said Banks. “The second step is the investigation, the subpoenas, gathering all of the documents and the records,” he said. “Third, that’s when we defund these universities.”
By Brian Schwartz
December 18 2023
House Republicans have a long-term plan to strip elite universities of government funding and federal student loan dollars, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., told a group of business leaders during a private Zoom call Friday.
Banks, an ally of former President Donald Trump, sits on the House Education Committee. The panel recently launched investigations into Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania. The probe announcements followed a Dec. 5 hearing at which leaders of Harvard, MIT and Penn struggled to clarify their positions on antisemitic speech on campus.
Banks told the business leaders the hearing was the first step in a larger effort to take on Ivy League schools. An audio recording of the call was provided to CNBC by an attendee who requested anonymity in order to share a private conversation.
“The second step is the investigation, the subpoenas, gathering all of the documents and the records from these universities to prove the point,” said Banks. “That they’re not just allowing this behavior to occur, they’re fostering it and creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students on their campus because of it,” he said.
During these hearing the House Republicans seem to ignore the First Amendment, they hammered the college presidents for not stopping the peaceful anti-Israeli protests. The Republicans shredded the First Amendment.
Banks’ frank description of lawmakers’ plans offers a previously unreported window into at least some members of Congress’ long-term goals with regard to at least two Ivy League universities and MIT, another elite university. The House Education Committee chair, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said in an interview on NewsNation that the committee is also looking at Columbia University and Cornell University.
Why are these bills being passed? The answer fits right in with the right-wing propaganda!Restrictions on tenure and academic freedom have college professors eyeing the exits
Center for Public Integrity via USA Today
By Matt Krupnick
December 19, 2023College professors once regarded Wisconsin as one of the safest places to work, with the right to be tenured baked into state law. Then, in 2015, the state removed that right and sent dozens of instructors running toward the exits.
Karma Chávez was among those departures from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Like her, many of the people who left were people of color or queer. After the change, Chávez said she started looking for a new job in another state immediately and landed at the University of Texas, Austin, where she chairs the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies.
Now, as she watches Texas politicians chip away at tenure protections and academic freedom in that state, Chávez has realized “there’s nowhere to run.”
“When it comes to higher education, I don’t know if there are any safe places,” she said. “If they can come after Wisconsin, they can come after anywhere.”
Texas, where a professor was suspended this year for criticizing the lieutenant governor in a lecture, is part of what many in the academic community say is an alarming, concerted attack on higher education spreading across the country.
State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican from the Houston suburbs who authored Texas laws banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices at Texas colleges and universities and watering down faculty tenure, declined to answer questions about the bills or their potential effects. One would ban diversity, equity and inclusion offices at Texas colleges and universities, while the other would water down faculty tenure.
Professors in Georgia said the 2021 policy making it easier to fire tenured faculty at the University System of Georgia has already altered the feel of the state’s campuses. Top talent has fled elsewhere, and some professors have avoided controversial topics, said Brian Magerko, a professor of digital media at Georgia Tech.
Just look at what the right-wing conservatives are pushing in the field of education, right out the John Birch Societies play book.
What got me started on this topic was an article on NBC Nightly News,
Mother Jones writes back in 2018,
So who are behind PragerU?
In other-words… Oligarchs.
So where are we now?
They are also going after the mainstream media.
They call us “Groomers” but who are the real groomers?
People turned to the New York Times and the Washington Post, Fox News, and even the Constitution for answers. But few sources were as widely consulted as “Do You Understand the Electoral College?” a five-minute video hosted by retired lawyer and television pundit Tara Ross. Her genial lecture, illustrated with colorful cartoons and pop-up text—”pure democracies do not work”—can be found at Prager University, an online video portal curated by the conservative talk-radio host Dennis Prager. The Electoral College video had about 850,000 views before the election, says Allen Estrin, Prager’s producer and consigliere. “Two weeks later, it had 50 million.”
[…]
Since 2012, PragerU has posted nearly 300 similarly digestible videos. Some of them dabble in topics like parenting or financial advice, but most cover core conservative doctrines. Delivering tidy arguments without the Limbaughesque acid reflux, they have accrued, collectively, just over 1 billion views—nearly 700 million in 2017 alone, according to marketing director
[…]
At PragerU, police are not biased against black men, and man-made climate change is debatable. You’ll find takes on animal rights (against), the $15 minimum wage (against), the gender wage gap (doesn’t exist), and why the South turned Republican (nothing to do with race). Prager has hosted a few dozen videos himself, including “Just Say ‘Merry Christmas,'” his take on the “war on Christmas” genre, and “He Wants You,” an apologia for men who ogle women. He personally approves every item, edits every script, and courts “faculty,” including heavy hitters such as Dinesh D’Souza, Steve Forbes, and former White House press secretary Dana Perino. Some presenters, like Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, are credentialed. Others, like comedian Adam Carolla, merely speak with the confidence of people who are.
So who are behind PragerU?
Among the major contributors are Dan and Farris Wilks, fracking billionaires who want to bring Christianity into public schools. (PragerU’s Educators Program encourages K-12 teachers and college professors to use “our curriculum as a teaching supplement.”) The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, another funder of right-leaning educational initiatives, has given a substantial sum, too.
So where are we now?
Education Week reports…Should Oklahoma teachers use PragerU content? Advocates weigh in on newly-announced partnership
Fox 25 KOKH
By TOM FERGUSONThu
September 7th 2023,A new partnership between Oklahoma schools and conservative nonprofit PragerU is sparking fierce debate.
PragerU is a media group that puts out digital content the organization describe as pro-American and an alternative to, “dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.”
The content includes educational videos meant for kids. While some are welcoming this coming to Oklahoma classrooms, others aren’t so happy.
Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R) shared his enthusiasm for the partnership in a video related to the announcement that, “we want them to know about American exceptionalism, want them to know about those founding documents, want them to understand what made this country great.”
[…]
However, one advocate for Muslims in Oklahoma argued PragerU's content is biased against members of his faith community and others.
“PragerU is definitely skewed towards a certain political, and Christian-nationalistic, white-savior message that is not beneficial for minorities of any background here in Oklahoma," asserted Adam Soltani, the executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
He added that, “as a Muslim and as a father here in Oklahoma, I would want Ryan Walters to know that he is really playing with the lives and the emotions of people in our state.”
And for the last word… Southern Poverty Law Center says, now I want you to remember these video are being shown to K-12.PragerU, Creator of Controversial Social Studies Videos, Now Has a Toehold in Schools
By Sarah Schwartz
August 31, 2023As the school year starts, a controversial set of social studies materials are making headlines: videos from the conservative media company PragerU.
The company, which describes itself as an “educational media platform dedicated to promoting pro-American values,” creates free, online videos for children that cover a range of history, civics, and science topics. Some have hundreds of thousands of views.
The materials came under fire after the Florida Department of Education approved them in July for use in classrooms as supplemental resources. PragerU leaders say that the channel provides an alternative perspective to what they see as liberal biases in schools and universities.
But historians and researchers who study right-wing media say that the videos spread misinformation—and are qualitatively different from other social studies materials that teachers might use in schools.
“PragerU is not a university,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. “It is a political propaganda machine, and it promotes mistruths about climate change, slavery, and a whole host of other things.”
More troubling, Tripodi discovered, are the connections some PragerU presenters have with white nationalist thinkers. In her report, Tripodi highlights Dave Rubin, host of an immensely popular (nearly 18 million views) PragerU video titled “Why I Left the Left.”
[…]
Tripodi writes, “the implications of creating a dense network of extremist thinkers allows for those who identify as mainline conservatives to gain easy access to white supremacist logic. Leveraging the thoughts of someone like Stefan Molyneux can have disastrous consequences considering that Molyneux regularly promotes ‘alt-right’ ‘scientific racism’ on his own YouTube shows. The fact that such rhetoric is ultimately connected to the presenter of one of PragerU’s most widely circulated videos is alarming since Molyneux’s ideas of ‘natural law’ were used by the founders of the US to justify the subordination of African slaves, Native Americans, and white women.”
Tripodi’s report also takes issue with a series of PragerU videos “aimed at discrediting mainstream media”: “Can You Trust the Press?,” “What is ‘Fake News’?” and “Why No One Trusts the Mainstream Media.” She writes, “By the end of the study the positions of PragerU and those I interviewed became indistinguishable. Time and again, I was told [by the study participants] that mainstream media are ‘fake’ because coverage is based on feelings instead of fact-based evidence.”
[/Political Analysis]
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