US education

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      What is affirmative action designed to do – and what has it achieved?

      by

      The US supreme court could be poised to ban the use of affirmative action policies in college admissions as soon as Thursday. The court, which is expected to deliver its ruling either this week or next, will determine whether race-conscious admissions violate the equal-protection clause under the US constitution.Envisioned as a tool to help remedy historical discrimination and create more diverse student bodies, affirmative action policies have permitted hundreds of colleges and universities to factor in students’ racial backgrounds during the admissions process. That consideration is supplementary, and taken in tandem with other factors such as applicants’ test scores, grades and extracurricular activities.Even with race-conscious admissions, however, many selective public and private colleges and universities struggle to enroll diverse student populations that accurately reflect society. At the University of North Carolina, for example, in a state where 21% of people are Black, just 8% of the school’s undergraduates are Black.Opponents of affirmative action, such as the advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, argue that considering race as a factor in the admissions process amounts to racial discrimination – particularly against Asian Americans. SFA has brought cases against Harvard University, the nation’s oldest private university, and UNC, the nation’s first public university, to challenge their affirmative action policies, which the group contends favors Black and Latino students. Ultimately, it hopes that race considerations will be nixed from the admissions process entirely, and replaced by race-neutral or “color-blind” policies.What is affirmative action designed to do?The concept of affirmative action originated in 1961 when President John F Kennedy issued an executive order directing government agencies to ensure that all Americans get an equal opportunity in employment. President Lyndon Johnson took it one step further in 1965, barring public and private organizations that had a federal contract from discriminating based on race, color, religion and national origin. The prohibition was added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.In 1969, President Richard Nixon’s assistant labor secretary, Arthur Fletcher, who would eventually be known as the “father of affirmative action”, pushed for requiring employers to set “goals and timetables” to hire more Black workers. That effort, known as the Revised Philadelphia Plan, would later influence how many schools approached their own race-conscious admissions programs.The practice was challenged when Allan Bakke, a white man who was twice denied entry to the medical school at the University of California at Davis, sued the university, arguing that its policies, which included allocating seats for “qualified” students of color, discriminated against him. In 1978, the supreme court narrowly rejected the use of “racial quotas”, but noted that colleges and universities could use race as a factor in the admissions process. Justice Lewis Powell noted that achieving diversity represented a “compelling government interest”.What has affirmative action in college admissions actually achieved?After generations of near total exclusion of Black students and other students of color, colleges and universities began admitting more diverse groups in the 1960s and 70s, and soon thereafter incorporated race-consciousness into their admissions policies.Data shows that the rise of affirmative action policies in higher education has bolstered diversity on college campuses. In 1965, Black students accounted for roughly 5% of all undergraduates. And between 1965 and 2001, the percentage of Black undergraduates doubled. The number of Latino undergraduates also rose during that time. Still, the practice of factoring race into the admissions process faced repeated attacks. In 1998, during an era of conservatism, California voters approved Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action in any state or government agency, including its university system. Since then, eight more states have eliminated such race-conscious policies.What could happen next?The end of affirmative action at those state levels shows just how impactful the consideration of race in admissions has been: a UC Berkeley study found that after the ban in California, the number of applicants of color in the UC system “sharply shifted away from UC’s most selective Berkeley and UCLA campuses, causing a cascade of students to enroll at lower-quality public institutions and some private universities”. Specifically, the number of Black freshmen admitted to UC Berkeley dropped to 3.6% between 2006 and 2010 – almost half of its population before the ban.In an amicus brief in the Harvard case, attorneys for the University of Michigan, which had to stop considering race in admissions in 2006, argued that despite “persistent, vigorous and varied efforts” to achieve diversity, it has struggled to do so without race-consciousness. The number of Black and Native American students has “dramatically” dropped since the end of affirmative action in the state.Though students of color remain underrepresented at selective colleges and universities today, institutions argue that their presence helps shape students’ on-campus experiences. The possible removal of race consideration from college admissions would set a precedent for a less diverse school system, which stands in stark contrast to an increasingly diverse world. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Missouri student loan provider baffled by inclusion in supreme court debt relief challenge

      by

      Newly released emails obtained by the Student Borrower Protection Center reveal employees at a student loan service provider in Missouri expressed confusion over the state’s attorney general placing the provider at the center of a lawsuit filed to block the Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.The United States supreme court is expected to issue a ruling on a legal challenge to the president’s student debt forgiveness of up to $20,000 in the coming weeks. That challenge – filed by the Missouri attorney general and five other Republican-led states – and another challenge filed by the conservative advocacy organization, Job Creators Network, made it to the supreme court.The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority – or Mohela – is at the center of the challenge by the GOP-led states, claiming the loan service provider would lose revenue and face negative impacts over its financial obligations to Missouri. Consumer advocates, meanwhile, have pointed out that Mohela stands to gain revenue from Biden’s cancellation plan.In court hearings on the challenges earlier this year, US supreme court justices questioned why Mohela did not bring its own legal challenges to Biden’s debt cancellation plan and how the Republican-led states could claim harm on their behalf.Emails released since establish that Mohela employees expressed similar confusion.“The [Missouri] state AG needed to claim that our borrowers were harmed for standing, so they’re making us look bad by filing this not only with [Missouri] on it, but especially bad because they filed it in [Missouri],” wrote a Mohela employee in September 2022.Another Mohela employee asked in an October 2022 email: “just out of curiosity, is MOHELA apart of the lawsuit going on to prevent the loan forgiveness? Are we the bad guys?”A fellow employee responded, “Mohela isn’t technically a part of that lawsuit, the Missouri AG is suing on their behalf. However, it’s all about the [Family Federal Education Loans] stuff, and since they changed the rules, that lawsuit should be ruled as lacking standing.”Ella Azoulay, a Student Borrower Protection Center research and policy analyst, argued the emails confirmed the “partisan hack job” of Missouri’s lawsuit to block student debt relief.The legal challenges have paused Biden’s student debt relief plan announced in August 2022. The relief plan would grant up to $20,000 in student debt relief for Pell grant recipients and up to $10,000 in student debt forgiveness for all other borrowers with annual incomes under $125,000. Nearly 26 million Americans had applied for relief under the plan by November 2022. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican senator says ‘I don’t want reality’ in hearing on race and education

      by

      Questioning a witness about childcare and the teaching of race, the Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin said: “I don’t want reality.”The remark prompted laughter in the hearing room.Mullin said he “misspoke” and returned to hectoring his witness about whether a book meant to teach children about racism was appropriate for early learning classes.Mullin is an election denier, former cage fighter and plumbing company owner who sat in the US House before being elected to the Senate last year.His confrontational style has caused comment before. In March, for example, he told a Teamsters leader to “shut your mouth” during a fiery exchange.Mullin’s remark about reality and its uses came on Wednesday in a hearing held by the Senate health, education, labour and pensions committee.The panel is chaired by Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described democratic socialist, a belief system Mullin vociferously opposes.The hearing took place under the title “Solving the Child Care Crisis: Meeting the Needs of Working Families and Child Care Workers”.The five witnesses included the the New Mexico secretary for early childhood education and care and the president of the Independent Women’s Forum of Washington DC.Taking his turn for questions, Mullin held a book called Our Skin and said: “I’m going to read exactly what this book says. You guys might find it interesting.“‘A long time ago, way before you were born, a group of white people made up an idea called race. They sorted people by skin colour and said that white people were better, smarter, prettier, and they deserved more than everybody else.’“This would be taught if we socialise our pre-K system, this would be.”Asked by Sanders if he disagreed with the book, Mullin said: “One thousand percent. How about we teach Jesus Loves Me? … and teaching Jesus loves and loves the little children. The lyrics go, ‘Red and yellow, black and white. They’re all precious in our sight.’”The hymn Mullin was referring to, Jesus Loves the Little Children, was written by C Herbert Woolston.Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race, by Jessica Ralli and Megan Madison, has been seized upon by rightwingers in the ongoing battle over the teaching of race.Saying he was “Cherokee Native American” and adding: “I think we have experienced a little bit of racism before in my life”, Mullin continued: “I’ll ask everybody on the panel. Which is better to teach?”Two witnesses attempted to answer. The senator talked over them.Turning to Cheryl Morman, president of the Virginia Alliance for Family Child Care Associations, Mullin asked: “So which one is better?”Morman said: “I disagree. First, it is important that we teach Jesus and Jesus is what we teach.”Mullin interjected: “So which one is better?”Morman said: “But the reality is –”Mullin cut her off: “I don’t want reality, I’m asking the question, which one is better?”Amid laughter – and with Mullin the recipient of a sideways look from the Republican next to him, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama – an unidentified senator said: “Got it on tape.”“Misspoke,” said Mullin, before returning to the attack. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      DeSantis appears to back woman who led Amanda Gorman poem school ban

      by

      Ron DeSantis on Friday appeared to defend a woman who got Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem The Hill We Climb removed from a Miami school, even though she has attended events alongside white supremacist and far-right groups.The Republican Florida governor, who entered the race for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination with a botched launch on Twitter on Wednesday, said parents such as Daily Salinas were saving children from political ideology “the left [is] trying to jam in” to schools.“They don’t want the parents involved in education because they view you as an impediment to their ideological agenda,” DeSantis told the Florida parent educators association homeschool convention in Orlando.“They view you as an impediment to their ability to indoctrinate kids with their beliefs and their agendas. I’m sorry, I choose our beliefs as parents over the beliefs of the ideological left.“We want parents to be armed with the ability to make sure their kids are in a safe environment, and yet you have narrative, and you have the left trying to jam this in.”Salinas, a parent of two children at the Bob Graham education center in Miami Lakes, who has been photographed attending rallies by the neo-fascist Proud Boys group, admitted she had read only “snippets” of several books she sought to have banned from the campus.They include the ABCs of Black History, poetry by Langston Hughes and books on Cuba, all of which she has criticized for “indirect hate messages”, references to critical race theory and gender indoctrination.Salinas also posted antisemitic memes on Facebook – for which she later apologized.“I’m not an expert. I’m not a reader. I’m not a book person. I’m a mom involved in my children’s education,” Salinas told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement.Salinas is also aligned with Moms for Liberty, a rightwing activist group committed to the removal from the nation’s classrooms of books relating to sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.In his speech on Friday, DeSantis alluded to coverage of the removal of Gorman’s work from the school’s elementary school library, a decision made by the Miami-Dade school district following a single complaint, from Salinas, as a “ridiculous poem hoax” fomented by what he called the leftwing “legacy media”.“This is some book of poems, I never heard of it, I had nothing to do with any of this, that was in an elementary school library and the school or the school district determined that was more appropriate to be in the middle school library. So they moved it,” he said.“These legacy media outlets are … trying to create a political narrative that is totally divorced from the facts and if they’re going to do something like this ridiculous poem hoax and actually put that out there and think that you’re going to believe it, they’re insulting your intelligence and our country.”DeSantis, who is trailing far behind former president Donald Trump in the race for the Republican 2024 nomination, repeated the falsehood that no books had been banned from Florida’s schools.“The media, when they talk about ‘book ban’, understand that is a hoax. They are creating a false narrative,” he said.Yet in April, the writers’ organization PEN America that has been tracking public school book bans for two years, produced a report showing Florida was one of the most prolific states for educational book bans, with 357 separate bans across 12 school districts in the first half of the current school year.Nationwide, the group recorded 1,477 book bans, with 20% attributed to complaints from Moms for Liberty.“These groups pressured districts to remove books without following their own policies, even in some cases, removing books without reading them,” the report said.“That trend has continued in the 2022-23 school year, but it has also been supercharged by a new source of pressure: state legislation.”This month the Guardian reported on the harmful impact on Florida’s teachers of a range of new education laws introduced by DeSantis, including vague legislation without defined criteria that requires school districts to remove “inappropriate” material from campus libraries. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Is Ron DeSantis failing before he’s even started? – podcast

      by

      This week, Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that would exempt him from Florida’s ‘resign-to-run’ law, so he won’t have to give up his office in order to run for president. He also continued his attack on teachers, signing into law a ban on the state’s public colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
      Jonathan Freedland speaks to Democratic state senator Shevrin Jones, the first LGBTQ+ black person to serve in the Florida legislature about the likelihood of a DeSantis run in 2024. Plus, teacher Don Falls explains why he’s suing the governor over the Stop-Woke Act

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Florida teacher defends showing Disney movie: ‘I’m just being accepting’

      by

      A Florida teacher under investigation because she showed her class the Disney animated movie Strange World which features a gay character has defended herself on social media, insisting the film related to the curriculum and warning that state investigators were traumatizing her 10- and 11-year-old students.Jenna Barbee, a teacher at Winding Waters school in Hernando county, Florida, released a six-minute TikTok video in which she gave her side of the story. She said she had been reported to the local school board by one of her students’ mother, who sits on the board and was on a “rampage to get rid of every form of representation out of our schools”, Barbee alleged.Barbee, who is in her first year as a teacher, said she was reported to Florida’s state education department for “indoctrination” before anyone had even spoken to her. She is now under official investigation for possible violations of the Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed the “don’t say gay” law, which was introduced by Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis last year and which bans teaching about gender and sexual identity to school students at all ages.In her TikTok statement, Barbee said she had decided to show Strange World to her fifth grade class to give them a break after a morning of exams. She saw the film as directly relevant to the curriculum they were studying on earth science and ecosystems.She had signed permission slips from the parents of all pupils in the class, giving their approval for showing PG movies.Disney released Strange World last year. The fictional plot centers on a team of explorers searching for a rare plant that provides energy for their society.A central character in the animated film, Ethan Clade, who is played by the comic Jaboukie Young-White, is gay. He has a brief crush on another male character.Barbee said that the sexual orientation of the character had nothing to do with her choice of film: “I have a lot of fifth grade students who have come to me this year, long before showing this movie, talking about how they’re part of [the LGBTQ] community. It’s not a big deal to me. So I just said, OK, awesome, I’m not pushing anything, just being accepting. That’s what I do.”Barbee said that as part of the investigation by the state’s education department, her pupils were now being hauled out of class one by one to be interrogated by officials. Ironically, she added, no parental permission was required.“Do you know the trauma that is going to cause to some of my students?” Barbee said. “Some of them can barely come and have a conversation with me, and are just getting comfortable with me, and now an investigator is allowed to come and interrogate them. Are you kidding me? What is that showing them?”Barbee emphasized that she would never indoctrinate anyone to follow her beliefs. Her aim was to spread “the message of kindness, positivity and compassion for everyone”, she said. “That is the key to the safety of our children.”On Sunday, the Tallahassee Democrat named the parent and board member who had reported Barbee as Shannon Rodriguez. A member of the rightwing group Moms for Liberty, Rodriguez has been a leader of demands to have books she describes as “smut” and “porn” taken off library and school shelves.At a school board meeting last week, Rodriguez reportedly accused Barbee of breaking school policy. “It is not a teacher’s job to impose their beliefs upon a child,” she said. “Allowing movies such as this assist teachers in opening a door for conversations that have no place in our classroom.”Barbee’s predicament left her in the crosshairs of Florida’s culture wars. DeSantis, who is expected to run for the White House in 2024, has put teachers at the centre of his attack on “wokeness”.He has also made Disney a prime target after the entertainment giant opposed his “don’t say gay” legislation. He has tried to strip Disney of its self-governing status in Florida, while the company has countered with a federal lawsuit arguing that their first amendment right to free speech has been violated. More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Moms for Liberty, meet John Birch: the roots of US rightwing book bans

      by

      Moms for Liberty is a Florida-based pressure group which campaigns for book bans in US public schools, an issue at the heart of the national debate as Republican-run states seek to control or eliminate teaching of sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.But rightwing calls for school book bans are by no means a new phenomenon – and a look at the Moms for Liberty website indicates why.Moms for Liberty seeks to organise “Madison Meetups”, events it describes as “like a book club for the constitution!”, featuring discussion of “liberty, freedom and the foundation of our government”. Under “resources that we have found helpful”, the only resource offered is The Making of America, a book by W Cleon Skousen.In the early 1960s, Skousen was a hero to and a defender of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that campaigned against what it claimed was the communist threat to America.Matthew Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, is the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. He points out that though the Birchers were not the only ones promoting book bans in the 60s, “they were likely the most visible group promoting book bans or promoting the policing of content in schools, libraries, movie theaters, even on newsstands”.The Birchers, Dallek adds, focused on “the so-called erosion of the moral fiber of the United States, but also the struggle to rid the country of what they regarded as really the socialist left wing”.The society still exists but its influence is greater than its presence, most obviously through a resurgence of Bircher-esque thought and action in the Republican party of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.In the society’s heyday, Dallek says, book bans and school board elections, another current battlefield, “gave Birchers a way to take action in their community.“They looked at where their kids went to school and their local library and the movie theater they would pass by. Part of their agenda was to insert what they considered Americanist publications, as opposed to communist propaganda.“What’s frightening now is that I don’t recall a time where those efforts were so often successful. Moms for Liberty and the other successors to the John Birch Society, they’re having a lot more success at actually implementing their vision.”Last month, the writers’ organisation Pen America reported a 28% rise in public school book bans in just six months. As the 2024 election approaches, attacks on the place of race in history classes and teaching on LGBTQ+ issues seem certain to feature in Republican debates and town halls.Dallek considers the Birchers’ influence on the Republican party over more than 60 years. But he can’t recall the society inspiring “any sweeping legislation like Florida has now passed, through three major bills. And one in particular, it’s very Orwellian. They have these education minders who have to approve all texts in school libraries. That was certainly a dream of the Birch Society.”Tactics are familiar too. Birchers often protested against what they called pornography in books and teaching, as a vehicle for communistic thought. Now, the hard right sees pornography in books on LGBTQ+ rights, in drag queen story hours, or in the casting of children’s plays.Dallek says: “Whatever the language is, whether it’s ‘woke’, or ‘progressive’, or ‘pornographic’, or ‘communistic’, in a way the brilliance of the Birchers and other groups is in the way they use language. They’re able to distill ideas and aspects of the culture they find offensive and brand them as something evil, something un-American, something that will twist and pollute the minds of kids.“I don’t know that they meant that it was literally communistic to teach sex ed in schools but it was a kind of brilliant shorthand, because they were able to mobilise a lot of supporters by saying this was a civilizational battle. A battle for whether your children will grow up being moral or not, whether they’ll have a decent life.“And if we want to bring it back to today, Ron DeSantis is out there claiming, ‘We’re only banning books that are pornographic or that kids should not be exposed to.’ But then when you’re talking about banning Toni Morrison? I mean, come on. It’s ridiculous.”But it’s real. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, and her masterpiece Beloved have been removed from some Florida libraries.Dallek notes other echoes. For instance, the role of rightwing women.“Historically, schools have been in terms of teaching jobs often reserved for women. And so, ironically, in the 1960s and 70s, as feminism becomes a major force in the culture and many women expect to work outside the home and be active politically, conservative, really far-right women take an element of that and get active in their communities.“Women have been on the frontlines of many of these fights to ban books, to police what kids are learning. Parental rights, the whole idea … is I think focused at the moms and … imposing their version of Christian morals on public education and many public spaces.“To go back to the W Cleon Skousen thing” on the Moms for Liberty website, “it does suggest a link to the past. Skousen continued to write in the 1980s and 90s. He was a defender of the John Birch Society and was held up as a hero.”Skousen died in 2006. Seventeen years later, to Dallek his recommendation from Moms for Liberty “suggests there really is a tradition in modern American politics, on the far right, that has become much more mainstream.“Groups like Moms for Liberty understand that. That there’s a set of ideas, and a literature, and a whole kind of subculture around this effort to police ideas and morality in schools. And they are tapping into that very effectively.”
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      The conservative scholar who lit a match to the US right’s education wars

      by

      When two US senators – a Texas Republican and a Delaware Democrat – introduced a bill in June 2022 to expand grants for civics education, most observers saw it as something of an olive branch between the parties.But despite initial momentum, three now-familiar letters stopped the bill in its tracks: CRT.A mostly unknown conservative scholar writing in the National Review claimed the bill would “allow the Biden administration to push Critical Race Theory (CRT) on every public school in the country”, calling the Republican co-sponsors “naive” victims of a hidden leftist agenda.Critical race theory, which posits that racism permeates American institutions, has become rightwing shorthand for any classroom discussion of race.Senator John Cornyn, who proposed the legislation and is the former GOP majority whip, dismissed the allegations, writing on Twitter that “the false, hysterical claims are untrue and worthy of a Russian active measures campaign, not a serious discussion of our bill”.But truthful or not, the criticisms spread like wildfire.The National Review op-ed racked up thousands of interactions on social media, far-right Breitbart News ran an article whose headline pulled word-for-word from the editorial and Florida governor Ron DeSantis released a press release warning the $1bn federal civics bill would “award grants to indoctrinate students with ideologies like critical race theory.” High-profile commentators urged their followers to call lawmakers opposing what they described as “Trojan horse garbage” sponsored by “Rinos”, or Republicans in name only.The senators’ “Civics Secures Democracy Act” went no further.But how did this firestorm start?The story begins years prior and revolves around Stanley Kurtz, the author of the op-ed that lit the match and a little-noticed power player shaping the right’s recent offensives in the education culture wars.A campaign against ‘woke civics’Though his writings are regularly shared by GOP heavy hitters including Fox News analysts, groups like Parents Defending Education and sitting US senators, Kurtz has flown mostly under the radar.A 69-year-old former university instructor and longtime conservative commentator, Kurtz has spearheaded a quiet but influential campaign to cleanse classrooms of what he calls “woke civics” – a term that extends to any hands-on civics lessons entailing student contact with elected officials.He declined a phone interview, saying he “prefer[s] to comment by email”. In written messages, the scholar explained he believes hands-on civics projects “tilt overwhelmingly to the left”.“Any sort of political protest or lobbying done by students is subject to undue pressure from the biases of teachers, peers and non-profits working with schools. Political protest and lobbying ought to be done by students outside of school hours, independently of any class projects or grades,” said Kurtz.Neal McCluskey, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, has documented over 3,400 ideological “battles” in public schooling – over issues like controversial books or sex education – for more than a decade and said he has yet to see “compelling evidence” that liberal bias in civics classes has become a widespread problem. A 74 review of McCluskey’s tracker revealed that only a handful of incidents concerned civics.The argument amounts to a fabricated “boogeyman”, University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black said.The idea that leftist teachers could “create little warrior bands of students to go out and fight their political wars for them has become a captivating concern for some on the right”, Black said.A national networkIn 2021, Kurtz penned model legislation stipulating that students should be banned from receiving class credit for “lobbying” or “advocacy” at the local, state or federal level.At least eight bills proposed in five states pulled from the document, according to a Pen America report. The conservative Manhattan Institute included the legislation’s anti-lobbying provisions in its own model bill presented at the American Legislative Exchange Council, an annual forum to swap rightwing law-making proposals.Linda Bennett, a recently retired GOP South Carolina state representative, introduced a 2021 bill by the exact same name as Kurtz’s “Partisanship Out of Civics Act”.“No need to reinvent the wheel if somebody’s got it right,” she told The 74.Bennett insisted that her office had become flooded with young students, coerced by their educators, demanding that she “please support allowing teachers to teach critical race theory”. But she could not name a specific school or teacher that had influenced students to take an activist stance.In Texas, a provision from Kurtz’s model bill found its way into the state’s 2021 anti-CRT law and resulted in an unprecedented restriction on students’ civic engagement. The legislation banned assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local lawmakers.In the two years since passage, Texas educators say they have been forced to abandon time-honored assignments such as having students attend a school board meeting or advocate for local causes like a stop sign at an intersection near campus.Sarai Paez, a recent high school graduate from a suburb outside Austin, said the new law is “a step backwards”. Students in her ninth-grade civics class passed a 2018 city ordinance calling for youth representation in their local government – advocacy that would now be outlawed.“There’s no need to take away something that has affected … a group of people in a positive way,” she said.Kurtz and the rightwing lawmakers and advocates who have helped translate his policy agenda into practice are linked by more than just shared philosophy. They’re also connected by money.His employer, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative thinktank “dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy”, has a dozen funders in common with the Manhattan Institute, tax filings reveal, including mega-donors like the Charles Koch Foundation.Texas state representative Steve Toth, co-sponsor of the 2021 legislation restricting civics assignments, also receives campaign funds from the Koch Foundation.Neither Toth nor the Ethics and Public Policy Center responded to requests for comment.Governor DeSantis, in Florida, also shares at least one donor, Fidelity Investments, in common with Kurtz’s think tank.The issues of interest to Kurtz have repeatedly found their way to DeSantis’s bully pulpit. The governor recently doubled down on civics education rooted in “patriotism” and his rejection earlier this year of the College Board’s AP African American Studies curriculum came just a few months after Kurtz began writing critically about the issue. Kurtz named two authors specifically in his September article, Robin Kelley and Kimberlé Crenshaw, who the Florida department of education later objected to.Education department press secretary Cassie Palelis said Florida’s concerns with the course were the “result of a thorough review” and its correspondence with the College Board had begun in early 2022. When asked whether officials referenced Kurtz’s work during that process and, if so, what role it played, Palelis did not address the question.As for the Kurtz model legislation, its influence continues to spread.In January, a district outside of Colorado Springs voted to adopt a new social studies curriculum that bans awarding course credit for service learning or action civics.“We are in it for the long haul,” said David Randall, research director at the National Association of Scholars, which published Kurtz’s model bill. “Our mission is to inspire as many Americans as possible to join this work.
      This report was first published by The 74, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site covering education in America More