Anti-Union Unions Still Recruiting

If there's anything true about teachers in unions, it's that some folks wish they weren't. And right now, yet another group is trying to sell the idea. But looking at some of the players in this anti-teacher-union space seems like a fine way to celebrate Labor day. 

In some states, the tactic has been to simply strip unions of power so that A) they can't really do anything and B) teachers leave them because they can't really do anything.

But in other states, the tactic has to try to sell teachers directly on the idea of getting out. We've seen a variety of these outfits. 

Leave your evil union!

Early entry into the field included Free To Teach, an operation of Americans for fair Treatment, a shell group for Pennsylvania's right wing Commonwealth Foundation. 

There's the Freedom Foundation, which once bragged that it "has a proven plan for bankrupting and defeating government unions through education, litigation, legislation and community activation ... we won’t be satisfied with anything short of total victory against the government union thugs." Freedom Foundation was founded by the Bradley Foundation, the Koch Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust. 

Then there's the Speak Out For Teachers outfit, brought to us by the Center for Union Facts, an anti-union group that was part of the constellation of dark money groups run by Richard Berman, who has long been a down and dirty fighter against unions. (They appear to have gone dark themselves a couple years ago)

There's For Kids and Country, the enterprise of former teacher Rebecca Friedrichs, who was the face of a big anti-teacher-union lawsuit almost a decade ago and has since launched a career as a talking head on the Fox-Breitbart circuit. They have a whole guide on how to talk a teacher into leaving the union. 

Or you could have My Pay My Say, the "don't you want to quit the union" initiative of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a right wing pressure group based in Michigan and so, as you might expect funded with a bunch of DeVos money as well as Walton, Koch and dark money.

The Janus decision, which invented the right of teachers to be free riders in unions, collecting benefits but paying no dues, gave rise to plenty of these groups. They will argue teachers should drop union dues because then they would get more money (spoiler alert: none of these groups or their backers have ever advocated for higher teacher salaries). 

And we're going to skip over the various state-level versions of these groups.

There are also anti-union teachers who make arguments like "I could negotiate a better contract for myself if I weren't tied to this union," and they are just so cute. Nobody tell them about Santa, either. The anti-union outfits love to cheer these folks on, and they might even get to leave teaching for a cushy thinky tank gig. 

But when these groups are not trying to coax teacher away from the union, their purposes are more clear.

The teachers unions (well, all unions, but the teachers have the biggest ones these days) give a whole bunch of money to Democratic politicians, so, the reasoning goes, defund the unions and defund the Democrats. Plus, as a bonus, depower the unions and then teachers don't get all uppity about decent contracts and working conditions and just generally getting in the way of The People In Charge. 

Some of this is just realpolitik gamesmanship, but there are anti-union folks who feel pretty mouth-frothy about this. The narrative for some is that public schools are a scam, a way to funnel money to teachers who in turn funnel it to Democrats and liberals. (In return these "teachers" get a pretend job in which they don't actually try to educate anyone.) You'll hear language about how union leaders are "corrupt," and that Venn diagram shows some overlap with diagram of people who think elections are rigged because those elections allow people to vote who shouldn't have a say. If you're of the opinion that society is supposed to have tiers, then teachers unions represent an attempt to exercise power by people who shouldn't have any, people who refuse to know their place.

Another wing of these anti-union efforts are the anti-union unions, groups that are set up to provide a alternative organization for people who don't want to go it alone. We've had teacher collectives a decade or so ago that were created for the purpose of supporting Common Core and high stakes testing ("See? Teachers think this stuff is great!") like Educators 4 Excellence et al. 

But nowadays the big names are about giving teachers an alternative to AFT and NEA.

There's the Christian Educators Association. 

I've written about them before--here are some of the highlights. 

The Christian Educators Association is not a new player (you may have heard the name before--we'll get to that shortly). They were founded as the National Educators Fellowship in 1953 by Dr. Clyde Narramore, an author of over 100 books, most focusing on psychology. He even had a syndicated radio show with his wife Ruth. His shtick was psychology steeped in Christian belief, and he eventually launched and led the Rosemead School of Psychology which has since been folded into Biola University, a private evangelical Christian university in La Mirada, California. Biola was founded as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles by the president of the Union Oil Company of California, based on the model of the Moody Bible Institute, later broadening their programs (including an education department).

In 1984 they changed the name to Christian Educators Association International, and in 1991, then-leader Forrest Turpen continued restructuring the group to be "an alternative to teachers' unions, at a time when unions were embracing values more and more hostile to the Biblical worldview." I was teaching then; I'm not sure what exactly they were upset about (Outcome based education?) Turpen led the group from 1983 till 2003, expanded membership, and went after the secular unions. As always, the mission was unequivocally evangelical; when he died, friends noted his "dogged determination to see the gospel proclaimed to the children of this nation."

CEAI became increasingly aggressive. Under new leader (and former Ohio public school teacher) Finn Laursen, CEAI launched the Daniel Project to provide schools with modern day Daniels:

Christ-centered teachers are nominated, selected and funded to participate in Daniel Weekends to help them rekindle their passion, calling and courage to transform their schools with God’s love and truth.

Totally cool because, as Laursen explains here, the founders totally wanted religion in schools. He also makes the claim that in the past, the US schools were first in math and literacy and "the envy of the world" (not actually true), but then in the sixties the Supreme Court took prayer out of school. And as another CEAI writer puts it, "By not honoring God in our schools, We have allowed unbelief to be sown into the lives of our children. And when a nation sows unbelief it reaps a harvest Of brokenness, division and moral decay."

In 2013, CEAI joined in a lawsuit being brought by a photogenic California teacher to challenge California's fair share rule that says non-members must still pay the union a share of dues to cover some costs of the union activities from which they benefit. The teacher was Rebecca Friedrichs, who was a CEAI member, and the case was rightly seen as an attack on unionism, especially because Friedrichs was willing to get in front of any camera to talk about how bad the union was.

CEAI got a new chief in 2017--David Schmus, who has a BA in Political Science from Pepperdine and a MA in Biblical Studies and Theology, as well as a CTEL/CLAD Cross-Cultural Language teaching certificate, from Biola University, where he taught for 13 years and was a computer tech for 6. Schmus was in charge when the Janus verdict came down to cheer that "Our teachers...are now free."

In 2022 they went through a rebrand aimed at trying "to reach the next generation of Ambassadors for Christ in our schools." The "leave your union" message, though still there, has been toned down considerably. There continues to be some question about how many actual members they have--maybe not even 10,000.

Association of American Educators

AAE was founded in California in 1994 by Gary Beckner who was a community college instructor and textbook author who also liked to fish and sing, but mostly he was an insurance salesman with a BS in marketing. He appears to have been religious, but there's little on line to indicate what exactly moved him to create AAE. He got a handful of former Teachers of the Year to start it with him. In 1997 he told David Kirkpatrick:

Many teachers who contact us are aware of some of the independent groups...but express dissatisfaction that these groups sometimes don't seem much different than the NEA—especially regarding reform issues such as school choice, tenure, standards, or competency testing. They also express concern that these organizations shy away from taking stands on controversial issues such as multiculturalism, Goals 2000 funding, OBE [outcome-based education], etc.

On their webpage touting the new(er) Pennsylvania branch, AAE says

AAE is committed to a teaching profession that is student oriented, well respected, and personally fulfilling. AAE is dedicated to restoring the true teacher voice to policy debates and implementation.

AAE remains on the reformiy side of many issues. Their blog includes pieces about how school choice is great, and Lucy Culkins is terrible. Their Advisory Board includes right-tilted reformsters such as Jay Greene (Heritage Foundation), Mike Petrilli (Fordham Institute), and Rick Hess (American Enterprise Institute), plus some charter school folks. 

The Center for Media and Democracy found that AAE scored a hefty grant from the right wing Bradley Foundation; in their grant proposal, they said "AAE thinks it is well-positioned to help further weaken the unions and their political goals."

Three years ago, AAE became quite visible in Wisconsin in the middle of the blustery public discourse about Act 10, during which (Kristi) Lacroix herself and the group’s small number of members were helpful. AAE and Lacroix have admirably struggled, in the face of severe challenges, to increase that number and decrease the unions’ hold on teachers’ money, and thus their power. Therefore, staff recommends a $200,000 investment in AAEF for the Wisconsin activities.

Ultimately, says CMD, Bradley pumped $1.7 million into AAE. 

AAE talks about a lot of things that other unions talk about, like dealing with covid, self care, increasing teacher diversity. They offer a sort of stripped down version of liability and certificate protection. Collectiove bargaining and workplace clout? Not so much. But folks like the Bradleys love to see unions with less money and power, and AAE certainly helps with that.

Union busting never goes out of style

I have been the president of a local teachers union (and through a strike, no less). I have also been that local member who got ahold of state leadership to give them hell. I will be the last person to tell you that PSEA and NEA should be trusted and followed every time without question. Unions are imperfect organizations, sometimes infuriatingly so. Always have been.

But they're still necessary.

You know what the most effective anti-union measure is? I saw it in action at a local business-- you treat your employees with such care and respect, and you make their working conditions so good and their pay and benefit so attractive that when the union tries to come in, the employees say, "What do we need you for?"

But in education, as in many fields, the desire is to figure out how the least you can get away with spending on the whole enterprise, and since teachers are the major expense at most districts, that means the pressure will always be to pay them the least, and give them the fewest benefits that you can and still manage to fill positions. And these days, most districts are actually offering less than that, as witness by the teacher exodus. 

On top of that, teachers need a minimal amount of protection just to do their jobs without constant fear of reprisal or obstruction. 

The point of joining a real teachers union is not to get rich or to be protected from being incompetent (a union does neither), but to get the elbow room to do your damn job. In Pennsylvania, the union has to do that for you whether you join it or some other pretend union, unless, of course, so many people ditch the union that its power is too diminished to help them. Which is, for some folks, the dream.

Happy Labor Day. 

ICYMI: Another Labor Day Edition (9/3)

Take a moment or two this weekend to remember that it's the labor movement that brought us the 40 hour work week and a host of other features that we now take for granted, Then hug your loved ones. Do that. And here's some reading to pass the time in between.

Pennsylvania's education funding should be rebuilt

A Tribune-Review editorial pointing out for the gazzillionth time that Pennsylvania's school funding system sucks. Maybe gazzillionth times a charm.

How I Got Censored by a Southern California School District

Many layers to this one. Wayne Au was invited to talk to a district, but then the administration got cold feet because he might use the word "gay." So could he just go ahead and give them total editorial control over his presentation. Here's how intimidation by the few plays out. From rethinking schools.

Arizona attorney general warns parents that school voucher program is ‘buyer-beware situation’

Use a voucher, give up your federal discrimination protections. Also, "My concern is that it has expanded so quickly and it has so few controls over it compared to public schools, and charter schools even, that it is open for abuse." From KTAR News.

Federal, state law permit disability discrimination in Wisconsin voucher schools

Yeah, that whole give up your rights thing is not just an Arizona feature of vouchers.

Houston Schools Feeling the Chaos of Mike Miles.

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at the Houston takeover by educational amateur and tight-fisted micromanager Mike Miles. 

Can ‘Parents Matter’ actually improve K-12 education? Of course not

In Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has some blistering insights about Glenn Youngkin's all-purpose "Parents Matter" movement. 

It’s just difficult, if not impossible, to see how altering history standards, removing sexually explicit books and focusing on who gets to use what bathrooms are going to help any student or school improve academically. If you feel empowered thanks to a sudden rush of “parental rights,” good for you. But don’t think for a second that “Parents Matter” will lead to sound public policy or improved K-12 schools. It hasn’t. And it won’t.

It’s time to defend our public schools

In Oklahoma, Kyle Reynolds takes to The Oklahoman to defend the beleagured system.

Policymakers Err Time and Again about Classroom Teaching

I probably don't recommend Larry Cuban often enough here, but here's a great piece on the distinction between good teaching and successful teaching.

Keeping Banned Books on the Shelves

TuftsNow profiles a pair of former Tufts roommates who are now working for PEN America and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, and spending as lot of time standing up for reading rights.

A PAC vilifying Central Bucks Dems is warning voters about sexually explicit images by mailing out explicit images

An extremist group in Bucks County has decided to combat the spread of sexually explicit images by spreading sexually explicit images. Also, lots of lies. Unfortunately, this is behind the paywall at the Philadelphia Inquirer, but if you can get to it, read it.

Fighting For Students’ And Teachers’ Rights In Central Bucks School District, With ACLU’s Witold Walczak

Central Bucks is the scene of some jaw-dropping retaliation against a teacher who stood up for students who couldn't get help from the district. Cyril Mychalejko of the Bucks County Beacon talks to the ACLU about what happened, and what's next (spoiler: federal investigation).

Roll-Back Advanced Placement

Thomas Ultican has some thoughts about Advanced Placement courses and why they should go away.

This Summer, I Became the Book-Banning Monster of Iowa

At the New York Times, a piece from Bridgette Exman, the Iowa school administrator who found herself in the news  for using ChatGPT to locate law-violating books. Turns out she's not a fan of the law at all. 

Teachers Say Those Ubiquitous, Every-Few-Months Tests Don’t Always Capture What’s Taught

EdWeek offers something for the Things That Come As No Surprise But At Least Now It's In Print file. Also the At Least Someone Finally Asked Actual Teachers file.

More than Half of Philadelphia’s Charter Schools Are Under-Enrolled

While Pennsylvania choice supporters are complaining that families need more choice, data show that a whole lot of the available choice isn't being used.

Never A Good Time For Vermilion Education And Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum In Pennridge, Or Any Bucks County School District

Pennridge schools (in Bucks County) have decided to inflict a whitewashed version of history on their students. Kevin Leven at Bucks County Beacon explains why it's a lousy idea. 

Documents detail Florida’s objections to African American Studies course

Why did Florida reject the AP African American studies course? Well, for one, it fails to present both sides of slavery. And some other great reasons.

Jacksonville Van Winkle

Gregory Sampson reflects on the Jacksonville murders and how Florida's anti-woke policies leave schools unequipped to respond to student concerns.

10 Years Later: The Continuing Intentional Unraveling of America’s Public Schools

Nancy Bailey takes a look at the past decade of efforts to dismantle public education in this country. 

Wisconsin private schools object to their finances being made public

Now that they can hoover up lots of taxpayer money via vouchers, Wisconsin private schools would like to keep that money in a secret black box that no taxpayers can actually look into. 

Tax Funded LEGOS, “Hamilton” tickets, Skateboards, and Disney admissions – Money Well Spent?

Speaking of the question of how voucher dollars are spent, Sue Kingery Woltanski has some questions about Florida's allowable expenses.

Moms for Liberty Is Riding High. It Should Beware What Comes Next.

In Slate (sorry--it's a big week for paywalls), an Adam Laats piece. Laats is a historian who has followed the intersection of religious conservatism and education, and he says history tells us that Moms For Liberty are headed for some trouble.

The Christian home-schooler who made ‘parental rights’ a GOP rallying cry

A Washington Post piece looks at one of the rich guys behind the movement to dismantle and defund public education under the cover of "parents rights."

Objects in the Mirror May Be Closer Then They Appear

Nobody outdoes TC Weber at tracking the many mutual backscratching relationships behind Tennessee, even as those many scratchers are reaching in and out of other states. Lots to track in this episode.

Ron DeSantis Is Afraid of Questions From a 15-Year-Old

There's a politics wonk in New Hampshire, and he's fifteen years old. He's seen at least 35 Presidential candidates, but Ron DeSantis has turned out to be unlike any other. This piece from the Daily Beast is a real window on how DeSantis relates to A) young people and B) opponents.

Meet the Kiwibots, UMaine Dining’s new food delivery robots

Huh. What could possibly go wrong?

Elsewhere this week-- My piece from the Progressive print edition is now available on line, looking at some of the features of our new normal in education. 

And at Forbes, I looked at the pushback against the Texas move to put chaplains in schools. The pushback comes from actual professional chaplains. Also, let's talk about how the Big Standardized Test has hurt the teaching of reading and literature. 

You're invited to subscribe to my substack and get all of the usual posts straight to your email. It's reliable and absolutely free. 

Bloomberg: Just Pack Those Kids In There

Michael Bloomberg, the very prototype of the wealthy public ed dismantler, took to the pages of the Washington Post last week to complain about class size reduction mandates.

"Historic learning deficits!" he cries, which is a variety of baloney brands. Sure, students have lost a few steps thanks to the pandemic, but when we start throwing the words "deficit" and "historic" around, well-- history tells us that in the not-too-distant past a considerably smaller percentage of children attended or finished school. 

But he's bringing that up only so he can poo-poo elected officials who have created "a policy that will aid their re-election efforts without helping kids: mandating smaller classes."

Class size mandates, he says, are "a favorite policy of the teachers’ unions, not least because they often require districts to hire more unionized teachers." Just a political ploy, not an educational one.

Smaller classes would be worth the enormous new expenditures on staff and facilities if they produced the results that supporters tout — but, as experience and data show, they don’t.

Bloomberg is going to wave hands in the general direction of research that suggests that smaller class sizes don't raise test scores. We could also wave hands in the direction of a mountain of research detailing the benefits of class size. But the class size argument is mostly a silly argument to throw data at.

If you want to pull up some data to impress me, show me the data on how many parents say, "I want my kid in a class that's more crowded!" Yes, there's research that supposedly shows that parents will choose larger classes--but the choice given in those surveys is "Would you rather have a bad teacher and a small class, or a good teacher and a big class." Find me a parent who wouldn't choose "good teacher and small class."

Find me the parents demanding that Phillips Exeter get rid of those Harkness Tables and squeeze more students in. Heck, find me an account of that time that Michael Bloomberg complained to the folks at The Spence School that his daughter's tuition was being wasted because their school only had class sizes of 13-14 students in upper grades.

Or find me a teacher who says, "I can definitely do better work with more students in the class. "Nope. In fact, there's research out there that says teachers would give up salary to have a smaller class. It's not complicated. Every teacher understands that the fewer students there are, the more assignments can be handled, the more feedback can be given, the more attention individual students can get. 

The Super Sardinemaster teaching model is a reformster fave because it would be cheaper and easier for management. But it has never caught on anywhere because nobody actually wants it, at least not anybody directly connected to a classroom. 

Bloomberg is correct is saying that New York's mandate will have less effect on higher poverty schools because those schools already have better class sizes. His argument that the mandate will sap funding from higher-poverty schools--well, that's a nicer face on "My taxes might go up to fund this!" And his argument that this will drain staff from high poverty schools by making small class jobs in wealthy schools which will have drawing power for staff--well, that's another way to say that teaching in an overcrowded classroom is as unattractive as teaching in a high-poverty classroom, which could only be true if overcrowded classrooms are bad.

Bloomberg says spend the money in better ways, like tutoring or summer school (you know--where a student gets a class of a really small size). Don't hire more teachers-- do merit pay (which never works) or more pay for underserved areas (which helps...somehow). 

About eight paragraphs in, we get a hint of what Bloomberg's real beef may be. This year, he sputters, the teachers' union sued to prevent Success Academy from occupying some unused classrooms in a public school building (charters are not subject to the class size mandate). This "outrageous attack" failed. But now I'm thinking that besides needing more teachers, the class size mandate would also require more classrooms, and charter schools would lose a lot of that cheap real estate they get to commandeer from public schools. And that would be a real pain for charter-loving Michael Bloomberg.

This "analysis" is silly. Smaller class sizes are a win for everyone except for people who want public education to stay as cheap as possible by providing the minimum necessary service, and for NYC charter investors who don't want to lose taxpayer funded real estate. Bloomberg can chicken little all day about Learning Loss, but he doesn't have a thing to offer as a solution, nor does it seem to be what he's really concerned about. 

Slow Down And Breathe

Parents offering advice to other parents can be tedious and even awful. I'm going to do it anyway.

My perspective on parenting is informed by the advantages of my spot in life's travels. I'm retired after a long teaching career. My older children are in their thirties, which means I've had plenty of time to reflect on how well I did (or didn't) do as a parent. And because I'm now parenting another pair of very young humans, I can be both the old fart sharing parenting advice and the parent of littles getting it.

Childhood whips by both faster and slower than it seems to at the time. Every day brings a new Last Time (except that, of course, you don't know it was the Last Time until later), and yet the milestones ahead can seem like Sir Lancelot's attack on the Swamp Castle--always racing toward you, yet seeming to never arrive. 

It's a too-natural response to try to race forward to meet the future, to try to grab what's coming quickly in fear that you might somehow miss it entirely. 

It's the impulse that leads to all those parental worries that "My child hasn't done [insert feared accomplishment here] yet." Shouldn't my child be speaking in complete sentences by now? Shouldn't she be reading complete Shakespeare plays by now? Shouldn't he be able to run a five-minute mile by now? Shouldn't my child be able to write a complete novel by now? 

Schools feel and feed this push. Common Core in particularly pushed learning goals into lower grades. The very structure of "grade levels" as essentially median achievement levels for grades insures that a huge number of parents will be led to believe that their child is "behind." 

This race to the finish shows up in other ways, like serious sports leagues for five year olds and sixth grade proms and third graders with boyfriends and girlfriends and a hundred extracurricular activities because you want to be sure your child doesn't miss out on something. Sign Pat up for t-ball and have a coaching session at home every day, because how else can we be sure that Pat will get into Harvard?

I'm not arguing that we should ignore what lies ahead and indulge in a sole focus on the present. If you have no goals or directions, you end up wandering in a lazy aimless circle, spinning halfhearted cookies in the parking lot of life.

But pushing ahead in a race to meet the future before it gets here too often means that you miss what is happening right now. Not only that, but by pushing things before their time, your child ends up jaded or uninterested in what might have turned out to be a great part of their life.

I suspect that many parents are extra anxious, that a pervasive fear (which I noticed years and years ago trickling down to students) seeps into so much, a fear that we live in a world of scarcity and that the gulf between haves and have-nots is so wide and impossible to cross that we bring great urgency to our hope that our children grow up to be haves. I'm just not convinced that forcing them to race ahead is particularly helpful. 

I believe that mostly people get to their place in the world in their own way and in their own time. As teachers and parents, we can support and aid that journey, and we can also impede, disrupt and exacerbate the difficulties that naturally occur in that journey. 

So my self-administered parenting advice is to slow down and breathe. I fretted terribly about my two older children, feared that my mistakes had created real problems for them, worried that they would pay a price for my bad choices, and now my least favorite memories of their lives so far are the times I fretted, feared and worried my way into another sub-optimal parenting moment. My best memories are when I slowed down and just enjoyed who they were. And now, lo and behold, they found places in the world and become really excellent versions of themselves in their own way and they own time. Which I should have expected, because I've seen versions of that same story--finding your own way to your own place--play out a zillion times in students.

Slow down and breathe. Tomorrow will get here when it gets here and you can't force it to come sooner, and in the meantime you can enjoy and support the child who is right here in front of you today. Doesn't mean you aren't working steadily and earnestly to grow and build and move with purpose into the future. But what is here now is also precious, and like the future, entirely temporary. 

Slow down. Breathe. They will get there in their own way and their own time, and you can't force it, but you can appreciate it, assist it, and enjoy it. 

MI: Parental Leave Is Vacation?

The United States is literally the worst industrialized nation in the world when it comes to parental leave, and some folks are determined to keep it that way.

As a society, we make an awful lot of noise about the value of family, and lord knows we have plenty of people making noise about how important babies are and how women who get pregnant should give birth no matter what.

But once the woman has given birth, well, she'd better brush the dust from her sandals and get the hell back to work. Especially if she wants to have the money to deal with her new expenses. 

In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has proposed a paid family leave.

Paid leave “helps workers be there for their families,” she said, giving them “breathing room to get better when you're sick, to bond with your baby or care for a family member.

A little bundle of vacation,
or a Chamber of Commerce member?

The pushback came from the usual places. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce said this would just mean more taxes. We'd also love to build population (aka available meat widgets for employment) says the Chamber, but our "economic competitiveness" rests on being open and ready for business, which we can't do if Ethel isn't here because she's home doing some infant care thing, and then costing us money to do it. Also, think of the small businesses (which are somehow more compelling than small human beings). Also, the "Michiganders living paycheck-to-paycheck" and we really care about them, although we can't think of anything that would help them survive on those paychecks that we cut for them. Nope. We are concerned about their struggle with their meager pay, but we can't think of a single solution to that problem.

I'm paraphrasing.

Also, the Michigan GOP has some public words to offer, including tweeting, "Aspiring tyrants never tire of grand plans of telling YOU how to live!!!" Which doesn't actually make sense. I mean, if Ethel doesn't want to take maternity leave, she can always just go back to work right away. Maybe the "telling you how to live" part refers to putting taxpayer money where politician's mouths have been.

But according to The Messenger, the GOP has another plan-- a messaging memo for GOP House members recommends that GOP lawmakers refer to the family leave as a vacation. 

A vacation.

Because as every parent knows, there's nothing so restful as those first few weeks with an infant. Restfully feeding every couple of hours. Restfully catching occasional naps to make up for not sleeping at night. Or maybe you luck out and you get to spend most of the time simply bonding with the new miraculous human life that you just brought into the world. Yes, I can see it now. Thousands of couples saying, "You know, I'd really like a vacation next summer. Let's try to get pregnant." 

Nor does the idea that caring for an ailing family member is some kind of vacation-- 

Never mind. These are not serious people. But I'm bringing all this up in an education blog because if this is the response and attitude of the politicians who are all about family and birth treat the issue of family leave, how could we possibly expect them to be serious about educating those young humans. How do they even say that baloney about how public schools put the interests of adults ahead of the interests of children when they have made it clear that the interests of children rank far below the interests of business owners. 

I can only hope that these people try to run with this talking point and tell all those Michigan parents that they were on some kind of vacation when their children were born, that they're called on it, and that this baloney keeps them from regaining any power in Lansing.

Questions for Voucher Supporters

In Pennsylvania, the GOP is still pursuing the voucher program that Governor Shapiro just vetoed. Their dismay over his veto is understandable-- it's a version of the long-pitched voucher program that was tooled to meet his requirements. So the GOP can be forgiven for feeling as if they're victims of a bait and switch from someone who said "This is what I want," and then, presented with that, said, "No, not that."

So the full court press is on. And it has the same problem as other voucher bills. I'm going to skip over the philosophical issues, like the fundamental question of whether we should have education as a shared responsibility and public good or as a market-based good, or the basic efficiency of running multiple education systems. Those are important questions, but the various players already have their position staked out, and sometimes I fear that discussions of broad philosophical issues let us skip past some major practical matters.

So I want to ask some questions that address practical concerns that should be concerns even for conservative supporters of vouchers, and which have to be addressed one way or another in order to create a voucher system.

Here's a basic set of questions that every voucher advocate should be asked.

1) What regulations you support to keep private schools from denying voucher students? 

What good does it do to give a family a voucher if the school they choose will not admit the student? Most recent voucher bills include a "hands off" clause that says the state will not be allowed to interfere in how the school operates, but if the private schools can pick and choose which students to admit, what good is a voucher to a student who is not a desirable "get" for a private school?  If this is about putting kids above "special interests," why put the special interests of the school operators ahead of the needs or desires of the students?

2) Do you support allowing private schools to discriminate on the basis of religion?

In most voucher states, vouchers are used for private religious schools, including those that discriminate against LGBTQ students or families and others that require a family be born-again Christians. It's not an answer to say, "Well, why would non-religious people want to attend such a school?" They might. The religious school might have an attractive location or academic program. Should be schools be allowed to discriminate against them, and should the taxpayers foot the bill in such cases?

3) What kind of oversight and accountability do you support?

It's not going to help if students escape a failing public school and end up in a failing private school. Voucher programs tend to lead to "pop-up" schools created simply to take advantage of the voucher program, and these "sub-prime" schools tend to be not good. Of course families can "vote with their feet," but by the time they are exiting the school, damage has already been done.

4) What kind of taxpayer accountability and oversight do you support?

Taxpayers have a right to know how their dollars are spent. How will you insure that voucher dollars are transparently and accountably spent? In particular, who will protect or represent the interests of taxpayers without children, who will foot the bill but have no say in how the money is spent?

5) Do you support regulating or mitigating private school tuition costs? 

Cost is another barrier to choice that vouchers don't fully address. Vouchers will not cover the cost of the more expensive private schools (especially if costs like uniforms and transportation are factored in). In several voucher states, private schools have increased their tuition costs specifically because of vouchers. Families could of course borrow money to attend private schools still financially out of their reach, but we've seen how that can work out on the college level. Should a voucher system be one that provides choice to families with a certain amount of wealth?

6) Where do you see voucher levels long term?

In ten years, will voucher amounts be the same as the current proposed level? Do you anticipate raising the dollar value of the voucher over the years, or will the real value of the voucher shrink? 

7) What about the students left behind?

For a variety of reasons (many of which are suggested above), only a small percentage of the students at the failing public schools will be able to use vouchers to "escape." What solutions do you propose for the other students who are left behind at those schools? 

8) How will you manage the impact of the voucher program on taxpayers?

In several states, the cost of the voucher program to the state treasury has ballooned hundreds of millions of dollars above original projections. Do you anticipate avoiding that scenario here? 

You can't install a voucher system without answering these questions, whether you do so openly and publicly or just quietly in the office. But every one of them has big implications for taxpayers and parents. 

What's In Hillsdale's 1776 Curriculum?

Hillsdale College, the little conservative college that has become a big player in the school culture wars, has tried to assert itself a variety of ways. There was the Barney Charter School Initiative, started in 2010 to help 20 charter schools based on classical curriculum. The Barney mission statement used to include the goal "to recover our public schools from the tide of a hundred years of progressivism that has corrupted our nation’s original faithfulness to the previous 24 centuries of teaching the young the liberal arts in the West.”

They also work to launch voucher-powered private schools se curriculum materials, which have most recently surface in Pennridge School District, where a Hillsdale product and his one man fledgling anti-woke consulting biz, has just overcome public opposition (well, not so much overcome as ignored) to have his curriculum ideas implemented by the conservative majority of the board.

Part of the proposal is to make Hillsdale's 1776 Curriculum a required resource, one more time that this free resource has cropped up. So I've taken some time to read through it so that you don't have to. I'm going to make some general observations, then dig into a couple of specific units. This will take a while, so strap in. 

Some basic takeaways

There's not as much jaw-dropping bias as you think. Just a regular grade right wing tilt. This matters because lots of civilians are going to look at this and think it doesn't seem so bad. It's so bad.

It's not really a curriculum. More like a guide. And it fails to deliver much of what it promises.

The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum is a complete collection of lesson plans for teaching American history, civics, and government to K-12 students.

It isn't. Not even sort of. There are no standards attached. Lesson objectives use language that anyone with teacher training would avoid ("Students learn about etc...")

It is undergirded with a belief in Truth, the notion that history is one single true narrative, a notion that bleeds through repeatedly, as when the guide refers to the "true story of history." For instance, in describing the "harmonious" nature of a history and civics classroom:

...sound history and civics classrooms will embrace an ordering and arranging of parts, just as the members of a symphony orchestra or athletic team move in complement to one another toward a common end, led by a director or captain or coach.

Emphasis mine. Or from the "Dear Teacher" message about the basis for the "curriculum," rooted in "truths which Hillsdale holds to be accessible to human reason, proven through the ages, and true of all people and all times."-

That truth is objective, according to the first law of logic, the law of contradiction: that something cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same way. The first object of the human mind and the first end of education is this objective truth about the world

The guide offers units, broken into "lessons" that some number of classes, lists of sources, some "enduring ideas," a list of stories to tell (but not the actual stories), questions to consider (Hillsdale's "classical" approach is fond of Socratic questioning, which is a curious approach to take when you only recognize one right answer to anything), some "keys," and some quizzes. Also carefully selected primary sources, because classical school people love those--as long as they're the right ones. 

In short, this curriculum is long on how, and short on what. If I were making my best guess, it would be that the "curriculum" here is what many teachers would recognize as the old "Take this textbook and follow it." 

For the littles, Hillsdale likes Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Young Readers Edition), by Wilfred McClay, Professor of History and the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. 

Land of Hope is published by Encounter Books, a conservative book company founded by the Bradley Foundation, a group excellent at funding the think tanks and university programs that provide this intellectual foundation for far right policy ideas. When the book came out in 2019, conservative outlets praised it as an alternative. Here's how National Review summed up the story of America conveyed in the book:

They fought a revolution to preserve an existing culture of self-government and further distinguished themselves by proclaiming their shared ideals. They governed themselves under a Constitution designed to put those ideals into action. When tested by slavery, expansion, immigration, and the challenges of democracy, Americans made the constitutional order work. When their brethren rebelled in order to create a government on a different basis, Americans preserved the system of ordered liberty as understood by the Founders. 

There's more, but you get the gist. 

These threads run through the "curriculum." American exceptionalism. The Constitution as holy writ. History as the story of individuals; social forces, systems, none of that stuff matters. The constant challenge of people who want to overthrow the Constitution with "modern" ideas. 

Nothing is really, truly up for discussion. Of course, traditional history texts also avoid any discussion topics by simply avoiding anything that is discussable and sticking to dates and simple accounts of events (which is why you remember high school history class as unspeakably dull). Hillsdale gets around the issue of discussion by operating on the belief that all history is settled, that there is one Truth, and that anyone who tells you otherwise is operating out of some sort of bias or attempt to push their unfounded agenda. 

Of all the problematic parts of the Hillsdale guide, this is probably the worst--the idea that history is settled and set in stone, and that any attempt to suggest that it could be seen differently is just wrong. This is not doing history; it's doing something else. History is a conversation, unending and always open to new discussion and insights. What Hillsdale is pushing is a completely other view of what history even is, a view that looks remarkably like indoctrination.

Okay-- so what does all this look like in a specific example?

Some K-2 Units: British Colonies

Since I'm daily contact with both someone who teaches 2nd graders and two small K-2 humans, I thought I'd look at what the guide offers. Turns out that this level is particularly weak.

Unit 1 is the British Colonies of North America, broken into four lessons which are supposed to take up 35-39 lessons. One of the threads of Hillsdale's program is a belief that geography is really important, so Lesson 1 focuses on that, on the advantages of the "virgin territory," America's excellent and untouched soil, though the indigenous tribes get a mention as well. "Explain how Americas is and has always been a land of immigrants," it advises, noting that even the "native" people (the guide puts "native" in quotes) had probably immigrated from Asia. And also talk about Columbus "discovering" this "New World."

Lesson 2 is exploration and settlement is heavy on the economic and spiritual freedom aspect of settlement, while getting Winthrop's City on a Hill in there top cue the exceptionalism. Teachers could ask students to compare current life to life prior to the 1600s, and not for the last time I'm wondering how many littles the writers know.

They would also like teachers to highlight that one motivation for founding Jamestown was "material opportunity for the lower classes." This is the lesson that includes the one quote you may have already seen:

Of particular note was Jamestown’s original experiment with a form of communism. This collectivism, plus rampant disease, helped produce a disastrous first year and a half for the fledgling settlement. John Smith’s requirement that settlers earn their bread by their work and his guarantee of private property ownership, along with some much-needed assistance from the local Native Americans, not only saved the settlement but also became quintessentially American traits, both in law and in the character of the people.

Let me remind you again that this is the lesson for K-2 students. This stuff, too.

Emphasize the English tradition of the rule of law and of forms of democratic expression traced back at least to the Magna Carta. Facing a lawless wilderness with families to protect and ex-convicts in their midst, the Pilgrims resorted to that English tradition of self-government under the rule of law—a social contract among themselves—with God as its ultimate judge.

And this:

Like the Pilgrims, these Puritans were fierce critics of the Church of England. Unlike the Pilgrims, however, the Puritans at Massachusetts Bay sought not to separate from the Church of England but to establish a community that would help purify and correct the Church of England while remaining a part of it. As evident in Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity,” New England would convert Old England by its example.

The writers are heavy on the self-governing part, and they also include other bits about religious dissent and "severe restrictions on religious belief," but fail to mention that these restrictions were part of a complete lack of separation between church and state, much like the Puritans who executed Quakers caught proselytizing in Massachusetts. Certainly no hint that someone might have drawn some lessons about church-state separation from these.

Lesson 3 is a look at colonies. Teachers are to emphasize that it was a Good Thing that the English government (the Dutch are left out of these accounts) stayed away and that neglect allowed colonies to be independence. Most colonies were private property ventures (you know--much better than government interference).

Spend time on what it meant to make a living and survive in the daunting wilderness and how such perseverance shaped the character and mind of the colonists. This would include looking at lifestyles and kinds of work done in the colonies and the type of self-reliance necessary for such lives.

No suggestions for addressing how such "self-reliance" might involve enslaved laborers helping you be self-reliant, but we are supposed to bring up the American character of "grit and determination." There is some mention elsewhere in the lesson of slavery, mostly in the context of pointing out that indentured servants had it just as bad, and also slavery has been around through the whole history of the world. Relationships with the Native Americans? These, we are told, "ran the gamut from friendly to violent, varying widely depending on the tribe involved." Apparently any problems were the fault of the natives.

And I know I already made this point, but I cannot get over the kind of instructions this guide provides for delivering lessons to 5-8 year olds. Seriously.

Emphasize with students the degree of self-government that the colonists exercised. Include in this discussion the meaning of self-government. In brief, the colonists largely governed their own internal affairs (rule over local matters, including taxation, as opposed to international trade and security) through local legislatures and governance structures chosen by the people. This was partly due to the English tradition of legislative authority and the rule of law, the loose and decentralized pattern of British colonial settlements and rule compared to other empires. Another factor at play here was the great distance between London and the American eastern seaboard, which led to long periods of “benign neglect” of the colonies and the further development of local institutions of self-government. While all of the colonies would eventually become official royal colonies with royal governors, colony-wide legislative bodies were prolific, as were local governments such as townships, counties, and cities.

Lesson 4 is major colonial events. More about how British government neglect was "healthy for the colonists." The lesson points out that the colonies weren't regulated by a government, but of course they all had their own government which somehow counts as self-government, except when they begged the British for more help in governing the colonies and protecting them and look, I'm not going to thrash this out here because the question of colonials ties to Britain was super-complicated and complex. But not in Hillsdale's stuff. 

And here's a new one-- The Great Awakening provided the colonies "with something they could hold in common," suggesting it helped pave the way for the Revolution. Except that it also happened in England, and many colonial churches split up over their feelings about this largely evangelical event. 

The Unit comes with assessments, sort of, both for those who can read and write and those who can't, though the reading and writing ones make some large demands. Some are very open-ended ("Tell me the story of the First Thanksgiving"), some are a little confusing ("What was daily life like for African colonists and African slaves?"), most assume the answer ("Why was it good that England did not pay the colonists much attention?"), and some are crazy wide open ("What were some of the lessons we can learn from the stories of the American colonists?")

All assume that there's just one correct way to view the events of history. If the classical education folks at Hillsdale want to foster critical thinking, this is surely not the way.

More K-2: Civil War

Look, I told you this would take a while. But I'll try to briefer this time. Here's one "enduring idea" from this unit.

 That slavery was the original contradiction in America, and that slavery is immoral, unjust, dehumanizing, and in violation of the inherent dignity and equal possession of natural rights of each person, as are any ways in which one person or group of people is favored over another due to the color of their skin.

Got that? Slavery was bad, and so is that affirmative action reverse racism stuff. 

Also, Lincoln was a great statesman who "ended the barbarous and tyrannical institution of slavery, and nevertheless abided by the rule of law in doing so." So imposing the income tax to fund the war, and imposing a draft that struck some people as so awful that there were riots, and just generally exercising federal authority to an extent never before witnessed (suspension of habeas corpus, etc). Nothing complicated there. 

Lesson 1 covers the expansion of slavery. Interesting twist--they talk about popular sovereignty defined not as the idea that power comes from the consent of the governed, but as the idea "that right and wrong are the mere will of the majority opinion." Lincoln, they assert, knew better. There's even an activity to drive home the point of majority tyranny. So remember, kids. Democracy is bad.

The outcome of the Civil War determined whether the nation would live according to the principles of liberty, equality under law, and self-government, or reject those truths in favor of slavery, inequality, and tyrannical rule.

Reconstruction is also covered. The Southern states, it turns out, were brought into the war through actions of their elite leaders, but two lessons later, Southern states are undoing civil rights for Blacks during Reconstruction. 

Also, the Founders were against slavery and thought it would die out on its own. Definitely no more complicated issues to be touched on there (though in later grades, the guide does note that some founders held slaves. 

Grades 9-12

While there is more ground to cover in the high school units, much of the language describing teacher focus and ideas and "keys to the lesson" are word for word the same as the K-2 units, almost as if this "curriculum" doesn't differentiate all that much between students at different developmental levels.

The Revolutionary War unit hits on the idea that language in various documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, were

consistent with the Christian tradition within which the American founding occurred. Other references to divine sources of truth in the Declaration include that men are “endowed by their Creator” and its appeals to “the Supreme Judge of the world” and to “the protection of divine Providence.”

When it comes to the Constitution, there's a lot of talk about the Founders and the Framers as if they are a unified whole and not a cantankerous bunch of folks with serious disagreements. Do make sure they understand that it's a Republic, not a Democracy, and point out early examples of majority tyranny, like debt cancellation by states. Also spend some time on the Electoral College and its purposeful creation to prevent fraudulent and tyrannical choices--but states "abandoned" that purpose when they tied the electoral college to popular votes. 

There's a lot about slavery and how the founders were really keen on getting rid of it eventually, because they were pretty sure that putting stuff in the Constitution would cause slavery to die out, which was better than losing the South. When we get to the Civil War, we'll address the fact that the Founders got that totally wrong by blaming the cotton gin, which changed the whole nature of slavery by making it more profitable. You might think that's an argument that the Constitution cannot simply be read by hewing to the Founders and ignoring the impact of changing times and contexts, but we're surely not going there. Instead, we'll argue that 

” Moral relativism, the idea that “might makes right,” and a belief in unfettered democracy through the vote of the majority were the slaveholders’ pillars in arguing to preserve slavery.

Abraham Lincoln was great because he realized that popular sovereignty (aka democracy) was bad, and so he stuck to the defense of objective standards of truth and justice, of good and evil.

This, as much as anything, is a critical piece of understanding the thinking on the right-- a government does not derive legitimacy by the votes and support of citizens, but by aligning itself with what is True and Right--even if the majority of citizens disagree. 

This, as much as anything in Hillsdale's 1776, is a reason not to put this in schools--because it is working hard to lay a foundation for a rejection of democracy, to be replaced by rule of those who are sure they know what is Right and True. 

And Federalist papers all day.

If you want more 9-12--how about civics?

There's also a set of units for American Civics. There's the Principles of America (liberty, equality, rights and self-government). 

There's a section about the Constitution and federalism that includes plenty about how limited a federal government is supposed to be, plus

The framers were very intentional about which level of government would have which powers based on a careful review of what each government’s purposes would be by nature.

Which is kind of nuts because the framers could not agree about much of anything about the Constitution, and that's on top of the fact that we say "framers" instead of "founders" because some of our founding fathers didn't even want a Constitution in the first place (looking at you, Patrick "Give me liberty or give me death" Henry).

There's a unit about Equality, and it's as close as the guide comes to admitting that history is complicated. There's this paragraph:

So when the truth that slavery was present when the United States was being founded is set side-by-side with the truth that America was founded on the idea that “all men are created equal,” judgements of hypocrisy at best and outright lying at worst are entirely expected. And such judgments were made at the time of the founding as they are made today. By themselves, these two facts can only lead to these two conclusions.

Oh, but then this line comes next:

And yet, these facts do not stand by themselves.

Everybody was doing it, in every country, since the dawn of time. But we at least argued about it and some of us felt bad about it and  eventually shot each other over it and meanwhile "peoples across the world turned to America and its founding principle of equality to end tyrannies, colonization, and other injustices." 

Nobody else in the world is founded on "all men are created equal." When MLK Jr talked about the "promissory note" that we didn't deliver on, that actually shows how exceptional and great we were to make the promise in the first place, even if we didn't keep it. But, the guide warns, be careful with "consider the times" as that might give the impression that truth and morality are relative to time and place and not immutable Truth. 

There's a unit about Progressivism. Spoiler alert: it was and is bad. It denies objective Truth. It supports government doing a bunch of stuff--the administrative state. Not saying that stuff is wrong, but it goes against the Constitution, which is codified to fit absolute Truth. So there are "philosophical differences" between Progressives and "the founding."

There's a unit about late-20th century that includes lessons about the civil rights movement which try very hard to parse the difference between demanding that the law treat all persons equally and demanding some larger levels of justice that involve noticing someone's race. The term "color blind" isn't much used, but it might as well be plastered all over the pages. 

There are lessons about other new philosophies like the New Left, but first a reminder for students:

Ask students to consider once more the claims to objective truth and objective morality on which the American regime rests. On one hand, thinkers in the West since ancient times had seen in nature and in human nature a basic objective reality that the human mind is capable of recognizing and understanding, and upon which government could be based. On the other hand, the founders also argued for the existence of an objective human good, something toward which all human actions should aim and in light of which human beings should act freely in the pursuit of their happiness, but which government had no power to control unless a pursuit violated the natural rights of an individual. It is important to review both of these facets to truth and morality as they relate to establishing self-government and to what a government may and may not do. Many critiques in the late 20th century challenged these presumptions.

In short, we've known what is True since ancient times, therefor anything new is probably wrong. New rights like privacy and self-expression? Liberation and social justice? Affirmative action? That's all looking pretty shady.

Are you still here?

God bless you. I'll try to wrap it up.

Again, if you're scanning the Hillsdale "curriculum" for the kind of jaw-dropping crazy-pants stuff you'd expect from a rogue MAGA tool, you won't find it. What you do find is a thorough laying out of the conservative view of US history, based on some premises that I would deem dubious.

There is objective and immutable truth, and wise people have reasoned it out since ancient times. Our founders and framers knew that Truth and wrote it into a Constitution. Our government gets its legitimacy from adherence to those Truths and not from any tyranny of the majority. In fact, every time this nation has ever messed up, it has been because too many voters and powerful people ignored those Truths. 

As an actual curriculum, 1776 is not particularly well-crafted, developmentally appropriate, thorough, complete or, well, good. As an attempt to create and transmit the right wing argument against democracy in general and our country's history in particular, it's coherent, consistent, and absolutely indoctrinaty. No public school in this country should be using it, or anything built on top of it.