Why Is Inclusion Political

One more anti-banner ideological censorship law is under legal attack, this time in Idaho. And there is something we can learn about the defense.

This is fallout from the case of Sarah Inama, the Idaho teacher who got in trouble for a classroom poster that showed "Everyone is Welcome Here" with cartoon hands of different skin tones. Her administrators were sure this would violate the state's anti-ideology poster ban. Here it is--

If you are an ordinary human, you may wonder how the heck this poster is ideological or political. Lucky for you, you ordinary human, the attorney general of Idaho, Raul Labrador, wrote a whole op-ed (One state’s bold fight against classroom indoctrination targets woke ‘welcome’ signs) to explain why, and it's illuminating.

On its face, the message appears neutral — simple, positive words that seem apolitical. But the design reveals its true purpose: colorful letters above imagery designed to signal adherence to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The rainbow colors and progressive symbols accompanying these messages make their political purpose unmistakable.

Do they? What political purpose is that? This, I think, is leads to an important idea that isn't always mentioned--

These classroom displays reflect a broader ecosystem of political resistance groups launched in protest of the political rise of President Donald Trump.

There's aplenty to unpack there.

For one, if you've been looking for a working definition of "woke" or "ideological," here's one for you-- anything opposing Donald Trump. This, really, makes a certain kind of sense. If the regime is going to value first and foremost loyalty to Dear Leader over all else (competence, ethics, adherence to the rule of law, religious principles), then anything that is disloyal to Dear Leader would be Very Bad. When your primary ideology is Loyalty to Dear Leader, then anything that is not loyalty is by definition a bad ideology. Woke. 

For another, there is the underlying notion that people like Sarah Inama do not put up "Everyone is Welcome Here" signs or otherwise promote diversity, equity, or inclusion because they have some sort of ethical or moral beliefs about the value of human beings and diversity in a pluralistic society. No, the assumption is that people are only pretending to care about those things in order to oppose Dear Leader. The assumption is that these folks are not operating out of principled ethical values, but out of their desire to oppose those in power. 

This is not a new Trumpian thing; scratch opposition to movements like Black Lives Matter and you get some version of "Race problems were totally solved around 1964, and everything Black folks have done since then is simply political posturing in order to get some sort of unearned advantage." But now we have upped the ante by viewing even this idea through the lens of loyalty to Dear Leader.

People keep tearing hair out over what appears to them to be hypocrisy. I will continue to argue that when you encounter what seems to be hypocrisy, you're just failing to see the true underlying value. Looking at the seeming contradictory positions of Trumpers through a lens in which the main, even only value, is loyalty to Dear Leader, and it doesn't seem so hypocritical at all. 

Everyone really is welcome here-- as long as they demonstrate their loyalty to Dear Leader. 

Sarah Inama Takes Idaho To Court

Sarah Inama is the Idaho middle school teacher who was told to get rid of her "Everyone is Welcome Here" poster. 

The boneheads at West Ada School District decided that the sentiment, combined with an image of hands of different skin colors, was just too political to be tolerated, citing Idaho's House Bill 41, yet another bill designed to censor any double-plus-ungood ideas that teachers tried to express. 

So now Inama is going after that bill.

There's a whole lot of racism involved in the law and its enforcement, and the state Attorney General Raul Labrador went the extra mile to clarify that, in fact, everyone is not welcome in Idaho classrooms (no, he didn't use those exact words, but the sentiment was clear). Labrador issued a press release/op-ed (picked up by Fox, of course) that framed the whole flap as "One state's bold fight against classroom indoctrination targets woke 'welcome" signs." 

I have written a whole separate post on how this "woke" message is "political," rather than digress wildly here. Suffice it to say that the anti-inclusiveness in West Ada ran all the way from local parents all the way up to the state capital.

After battling her district, Inama got out of West Ada and immediately found a new home in the Boise school district, where she can put up her scary woke signs in her classroom. And she could be forgiven for just shaking the dust off her shoes and getting back to work. 

Instead, she has filed a lawsuit in federal court looking for a declaration that the state's flag and banner law is unconstitutional. 

The defendants in the in the lawsuit, filed February 3--

The Idaho State Board of Education
The Idaho Department of Education
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador
The West Ada School District
West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub
Monty Hyde, principal of West Ada’s Lewis and Clark Middle School

The suit points out Inama's distinguished career, and puts her posters in the context of a district attempt to make its schools, already struggling with some racism issues, more welcoming. The suit also points out that administration admitted, as they forced her to remove the posters, that no actual complaints had been lodged against them. 

Then all hell broke loose. Inama became a national story, and the administration and school board scrambled to make it go away (a crisis management technique familiar to teachers in districts across the nation). This included meetings with admins, including one at which the superintendent told Inama that he wanted to protect her from a smear campaign, but if she wouldn't let up on the issue, he would not be able to protect her. And then state decided to pipe up.

The lawsuit argues that the Speech law is vague and inconsistently applied. Inama is asking for damages, attorney fees, a jury trial and an injunction against the law.

Inama is represented by attorneys from Dorsey & Whitney, a large, high-powered firm, with the team including Elijah Watkins (a partner at the firm), Aaron Bell (an associate), Latonia Haney Keith (Dean of Graduate Studies at the College of Idaho, with a law degree from Harvard) and McKay Cunningham, a Constitutional law professor. The state has its work cut out for it. Here's hoping they lose big. 

Kristoff Loves That Asian Bootstrapping

Nicholas Kristoff is part of the New York Times stable of amateurs with high-profile unfounded opinions about education, and last week he decided that maybe we should be more like Taiwan or Vietnam. 

He waves vaguely in the direction of societal commitment to education (the headline is "What if the Valedictorians in America's Schools Were the Cool Kids," which, in assuming that they aren't already the cool kids, reveals its own biases). He talks about visiting schools in Asia since the 1980s. "Every time I visit, I feel a pang of envy for societies that seem to value education more than America does."

Okay, I feel his pain here. Our country's attitude toward education mirrors our attitude toward young humans-- we make a lot of noise about valuing them, but when the rubber meets the road, it turns out there are plenty of other things we value way more. 

Kristoff, however, is not so much focused on what society can do to live up to educational value as he is on how such a value will inspire students to bootstrap the hell out of themselves. He focuses on stories like the girl who works full time and studies full time so that she can go to college (she sleeps for two AM hours at her workplace if things are slow). Or the student who eschews dating because in these countries "respect for education is so deep that it can even overwhelm youthful hormones."

He nods to the idea that such obsession stifles creativity and robs children of fun and youth. He also nods to the fact that some nations devote huge amounts of money to education (Taiwan mandates 22.5% of net budget revenues go to education). He notes these things with a "Yes, but" and swings right back to promoting a culture obsessed with education so that young humans will feel moved to grab those bootstraps. He Yesbuts his way past poverty, inequity, and injustice without examining how this A) restricts access to both education and bootstraps and B) how education obsession doesn't seem to have mitigated the issues.

Most of all, he doesn't examine the Rugged American biases that lead him to center this story about education valuation on students rather than, say, political leaders and other adults who throw society's weight behind education. This is the Rugged Individualist dream-- students who rise up and doggedly pursue education without any powerful adults doggedly working to make that pursuit of education more doable. It is an Asian version of a familiar story-- the heartwarming portrait of a young human overcoming obstacles without ever questioning why those obstacles are requiring overcoming in the first place.

Kristoff might want to take a look at the work of Yong Zhao, the China-born scholar who has plenty to say about the Asian brand of education obsession.

But mostly he might want to look at his vision (and it's a vision shared by many) that a more education-valuing society would look pretty much exactly like our society right now, except that students would work harder.

He ends the piece with some questions: "Maybe we could acknowledge the inequity of local school finance that results in sending rich kids to good schools and poor kids to weak schools? Perhaps politicians could stop demonizing universities and taxing their endowments? What if we respected human capital as much as financial capital?"

Those are not bad questions. But they need to come at the beginning of a piece, not as a sort of post-script of a piece that is mostly about something else entirely.

Will School Choice Kill Athletics?

Nancy Bailey, a retired teacher and longtime blogger, asked a good question this week-- Will school choice destroy athletics as we know it?

Let me provide the answer from Pennsylvania-- the shape of high school athletics "as we know it" is already deeply influenced by school choice.

It's worth remembering that we have always had school choice-- what we're talking about these days is really taxpayer-subsidized school choice. But the school choice we already have in Pennsylvania is more than enough to shape the athletic landscape.

Right now, the top rankings of high school basketball are dominated by Catholic high schools, with a few private schools thrown in for good measure. Flip back through the years on sports site MaxPreps, and you'll see the same names year after year. Same thing for girls' basketball. You can see the same thing in football, though not quite as pronounced. 

But if you are a Pennsylvania high school enjoying a really good year in sports, you will almost certainly meet one of the usual private Catholic schools on your path through the playoffs. 

The secret is recruiting, and it works just like college. Woo the family, promise a good spot on a successful team, and throw in a hefty scholarship. Plus, perhaps, some help in relocating the student or even the family to the location. In my state, Catholic and other private schools recruit-- and they recruit hard. We think of "school's choice" as gatekeeping-- the school just sits there and sifts through the applications that come in. But for high stakes operations like these, recruitment is a big deal. Schools actively choose students without passively waiting for them to show up.

Pennsylvania privates enjoy an extra advantage. We classify school sports through A rankings (Single A all the way up through 6A) based on enrollment size-- not the size of the population the district serves. So 2A public schools with small student bodies get to compete with 2A Catholic schools that also have small student bodies--but which can draw from students anywhere in the state. (And if you call them out on this in, say, a local newspaper column, their athletic director will send you a cranky letter filled with non-denial denials.)

Recruitment is a feature of choice, and always has been (it was used by the "miracle" T.M. Landry school). Because schools need to be able to do marketing, they will go after students who can help them with that marketing, whether it's by strengthening a sports program or helping a high-profile marching band or keeping test numbers up. Turning school choice into taxpayer-subsidized school choice just supercharges the whole business, putting more money into the recruitment kitty. 

Nancy Bailey's piece covers other states and has some excellent references-- you should read it and keep in mind that in some states, the transformation of school sports by school choice athletics began years ago, much to the frustration of many public school programs. 

The Feds Push School Prayer

Last week the U.S. Department of Education offered some "guidance" on prayer and religious expression in public school. 

“The Trump Administration is proud to stand with students, parents, and faculty who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights in schools across our great nation,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Our Constitution safeguards the free exercise of religion as one of the guiding principles of our republic, and we will vigorously protect that right in America's public schools.”

To be clear, the rights of students to freely exercise their religion has never been in question. Well, okay-- the right of Christian students to freely exercise their religion has never been in question. What has been "in question" is the rights of school-adjacent adults to practice their religion in ways that pressure students to follow along. 

The guidance still recognizes some restrictions. They point out "Public schools may not sponsor prayer nor coerce or pressure students to pray. For example, a school principal may not lead a prayer at a mandatory school assembly." Also, you're allowed to shut down a student whose prayer disrupts class (as long as you are consistent in restricting other forms of class-disrupting speech). 

But there is still plenty of baloney here. Schools should not "favor secular views over religious ones or one religion over another." This follows the religious conservative view that secularism is just another religion (albeit a naughty anti-god one). That's incorrect (I get to it in greater lengths here and here) much like saying that the plate a meal is served on is one more food item. If I never talk to my students about what person they should marry when they grow up, that is not suggesting that they shouldn't get married at all-- it simply leaves that conversation for a more appropriate person to have at a more appropriate time in a more appropriate place. 

The not favoring one religion over another is also problematic. Exactly who gets to decide A) what counts as a legitimate religion and B) what counts as favoritism? 

The guidance calls for judging religious speech with same standards as secular speech, for exampling "a paper with religious content," which I think can assume refers to the bullshit case of the Oklahoma student who trolled her trans professor with a terrible religious content, just so she could make a fuss about it. 

The department cites the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the case of the football coach who wanted to pray on the fifty yard line and made it to the Supreme Court, where the justices decided in his favor by using a legal technique known as Making Shit Up (the scripture you're thinking of is Matthew 6:1-- Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them). Coach Kennedy promptly quit his job and went on the conservative speaker circuit.

In that vein, the regime's new guidance declares that "visible, personal prayer, even if there is voluntary student participation in such prayer, does not itself constitute coercion." As long as the teacher doesn't say, "Come pray with me" or "Points off for anyone who doesn't pray with me" or "I will think less of those of you who don't pray with me" it's okay. Even if it is obvious to the students that these are on the table. "Voluntary" is doing some real heavy lifting here.

Like the Kennedy case, this pretends that if a teacher isn't directly commanding students to join in, there is no coercion or endorsement going on. And it is certainly true that some students are pretty well inoculated against any such pressure (I am thinking of a Jewish student of mine whose elementary teacher tried to nudge her toward Jesus). 

But at the same time, these are the folks who are sure that students should not be exposed to any mention of sex or LGBTQ persons. If we were using a similar approach to religion, the rule would be that teachers can't even mention that any religions exist and any books that include characters who pray would be pulled from the library. 

Look, this is a tricky issue, with schools landing all over the place and finding a variety of ways to be wrong, from the school that forbid a student to pray in his graduation speech to the school where the superintendent opened an elementary choir concert with a Jedsus prayer. And just wait till some teacher decides to open class with an Islamic prayer or starts Transcendental Meditation club during the school day. Or when teachers start praying in front of the class for God to support a particular politician. 

If only there were a way to accommodate a variety of deeply held personal religious beliefs in a space shared by many members of a pluralistic society. It would be so important we could attach it to the Constitution, like an amendment. I think it would be important enough that we could put it first.

Seriously-- the framers covered this. Make a government-run institution like public schools a religion-free zone, in which no religions are required, practiced, or endorsed. Let people of all ages pursue their religious beliefs on their own time (particularly if they are adults in position of authority).

It will be messy and difficult at times, but certainly more valuable and useful for the health of society than, say, letting each group of believers hide together in their own silo, or allowing one group to dominate the school. It would require balance and negotiation and occasional pauses to think about where lines should be drawn and to reel in overzealous folks on one side or another, but all that would be good practice for living as an adult human in a pluralistic society. Yes, I realize that some folks are very anti-pluralism these days, but I don't think that's very American of them, and I look forward to the day when we can replace this not-very-helpful guidance. 

ICYMI: Tech Sunday Edition (2/8)

I'm directing a community theater production of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, a show you probably don't know but should. 4 actors play 52 characters in 20 vignettes about love and connection. The show starts with getting ready for a first date, conducts a wedding before intermission, and finishes up in a funeral home. It is warm and tuneful and captures a lot of the beauty and hilarity of ordinary moments. The cast has worked hard, and this is the week we do the final work of getting ready before opening next Friday night. If you're in the neighborhood, by all means, stop by. 

This is part of how I stay charged up, because if you gaze into the contentious abyss that is our current national state of debate about every damn thing, you can forget what is great about being human in the world.                          

And now, this week's reading list.

Legislative Extortion bill would withhold more than $4.3 billion from 700,000 Ohio public school students

Stephen Dyer has been on a tear lately, but so has the Ohio legislature. I wrote about this extortion bill this week, but this post gives more details on just how much damage this would do.

Mobile Co. Public Schools request US Education Secretary McMahon visit rescheduled

McMahon's right wing history tour hits yet another snag. What a shame.

"A deliberate effort to circumvent the law"

Steve Nuzum reports from South Carolina about some voucher-loving senators who are sad that home schoolers are getting in on their pile of money.

I Can't Learn It For You

Matt Brady with some words that most teachers will recognize in reaction to too many familiar student claims.

Unanimous committee vote halts wide-ranging education overhaul

Mississippi was thinking about a big fat voucher bill, but after the House passed it, the Senate has (as promised) shot it down.

Ramaswamy’s proposed rule for public schools highlights Ohio’s lack of rules for private schools

Vivek Ramaswamy is running for Ohio governor, and he has a bunch of dumb ideas about education. But Denis Smith points out that at least some of his pronouncements have a different side effect.

Teens should read great (but hard) books: 'Macbeth' is better than 'Hunger Games'

Joanna Jacobs weighs in on and aptly summarizes last week's online discussion of the place for "hard books" in the classroom.

Stop trying to make the humanities 'relevant'

I missed this essay by Thomas Chatterton Williams when it first ran in The Atlantic a month ago, but here it is on MSN out from behind the paywall, and worth a read as he considers teaching the humanities in the rise of ChatGPT. 

NYS: Why Are Authoritarian Entities Needed to Create Charter Schools if They Are So Popular?

Shawgi Tell asks the million dollar question-- if the public really really wants charter schools, why don't leaders use democratic means to create them?

Why some Texas private schools are not accepting school choice vouchers

Texas has kicked off its taxpayer-funded school voucher program, but not all private schools have signed on. Lacey Beasley at CBS News interviews a private school head who explains why she's not on board. Short, but you'll recognize some of the issues. 

Debunking the latest The74 miracle charter school story

Gary Rubinstein checks out the latest miracle school headline and finds, once again, no actual miracle in evidence.

How to Teach Authentic Christianity in Public Schools

Nancy Bailey has the answer (hint: it doesn't involve throwing immigrants in detention centers).

When "Parental Rights" Become a Shield for Child Abuse

"Parental rights" are headed for several courtrooms. Bruce Lesley breaks down the implications and problems connected to the Texas case and the problems of child abuse.

What Are “Parental Rights”?

Steve Nuzum takes a deeper dive into the legal and ethical aspects of parental rights and "parental rights." 

Rent-a-Human, When AI Becomes (Almost) Everyone’s Boss

Julian Vasquez Heilig warns that AI is not just stealing your job-- it's stealing your boss's job, and that means work is getting lousier for you.

I used AI chatbots as a source of news for a month, and they were unreliable and erroneous

From the file of things that are so obvious nobody should have to say them, except that I know too many people who need to hear it. Jean Hugues-Roy ran a little French experiment.

This week at Forbes.com I looked at an exceptional new book about the "miraculous" T.M. Landry private school in Louisiana. Great work by journalists Katie Brenner and Erica L. Green. 

Why tenors like to gather in groups of three I do not do, but thank heaven they do.

The Administrative Plague

In the last year, Commonwealth Charter Academy (the 800 pound gorilla of cyber schooling in PA) has poached an assortment of teachers from the public schools in my area. I'm not a fan of the choice, and I fear they may live to regret it, but I understand why they did it.

Why would excellent public school teachers leave for a profiteering edu-flavored business. You may think the answer is money, and money was certainly involved, but the answer seems to be much simpler; it was respect. Many of those teachers felt disrespected, and not just once, but systematically and repeatedly over time; CCA treated them like valued professionals, and that made a huge impression.

It reminds me that teacher exodus is largely fueled by local issues, and that old saying that people don't quit jobs--they quit bosses. 

Disrespect has always been endemic in education. Teachers are too often treated like children. Teachers are too often treated as a management problem to be solved rather than valued professionals to be supported. Teachers can feed into the dynamic themselves. Teachers tend to be rules-followers, especially compliant in buildings that can be built, top to bottom, on compliance culture. But that doesn't absolve those administrators who are bad managers. And bad management, I'm quite certain, is at the heart of many teacher shortages around the nation.

Administration's main job in school is to A) hire the best people they can find and B) provide the conditions that allow those people to do the best teaching they can. Failing to do so leads to many of the problems facing schools.

You can look through stories about our knowledge of why teachers leave or why they stay (try here, here, here, and here). Let's take a look at the list.

Low pay looms large, particularly in some states. I'll give administration a pass on that one. 

Lack of support from administration and the community. Yes, there is a steady background hum of accusations ranging "teachers stink" all the way to claims that, somehow, vast numbers of teachers are secretly engaged in criminal activities. Administrators don't create that buzz (mostly), but they are the folks who should be dealing with it. 

We don't need more cowardly admins who fold every time a cranky community member complains. Should admins be responsive to the public? Absolutely. Should they base district policy on the goal of avoiding any conflict with any parent ever? No. If admins policy is "Don't ever mention anything in any way related to gender or race or sex, because if you do, I will throw you under the bus so fast you won't have time to cover your face," they are part of the problem.

There are plenty of lists that talk about "empowering teachers" or "elevating teacher voices," but it can all be simplified to "Treat teachers with respect. Treat them like trusted professionals." 

Working conditions: other staff. You know who hates that one terrible teacher in the building almost as the parents of that teacher's students? The teachers who have to work with her--particularly those who have to clean up after her the following year. 

That terrible teacher is not a union-caused problem. It's an administration problem. It may be that the hiring process is broken. It may be that the admins have failed to support that teacher into a better place. Edward Deming had a saying to the effect that if there is dead wood in your organization, then either A) it was dead when you hired it or B) you killed it. Behind every teacher who's failing at her job, there's an administrator who isn't doing his. 

Working conditions: student behavior. Blame the parents if you wish, but the front office has so much to do with this. Students know whether "getting in trouble" means minor inconvenience, free break time, or an actual reason to make better choices. The employment of empathy and understanding does not mean there shouldn't be consequences. 

And if the teacher is botching the job, then an admin should be right there helping her do better.

Long, long hours and heavy workload. Yeah, a problem forever, but admins have the power to help. Cut administrative burden on teachers (does that new computer program save work, or transfer the work from your secretary to the classroom teacher). Cut class size. Cut timewasting baloney (do you really want to pay someone with a Masters degree professional level money to watch children eat). Reject the notion that teachers are only doing Important Work if they are in front of students.

Respect, respect, respect. This drives everything else. Do not subject your teachers to treatment that you would not tolerate were it directed at you. And do not let them be subject to treatment by others that you would not tolerate for yourself. 

And that includes listening to them when they have something to say about how the school is run, how classrooms are managed, or how education will be delivered. And when they run into the bumps of life happen, you can step up with empathy, or you can treat the teacher's problem as if it is an inconvenience for you ("Why did your father's funeral have to be held on a busy Friday at the end of the grading period!")

Nor can we blame individual weaknesses for all of it. There are systemic contributors to bad school management. The reform movement of the past few decades has dumped a ton of responsibility on administrators while stripping them of ability to deal with it. Our regime of bad high stakes testing created an almost impossible challenge, hog tying many better administrators and chasing others out of the building, to be replaced by people whose grasp of the job is, well, limited. 

I'm not saying a great administrator cures all ills and solve all problems. And, like teachers, there are administrators who may be great at one part of their job and terrible at others (there are so many ways to be a bad administrator). But bad management is grievously under-discussed as a contributing factor in education problems in general and teacher retention in particular. State leaders aren't having the discussion, and the feds certainly aren't going to, but that doesn't mean you couldn't be talking about it in your local district.