Exceptional exposé of agenda-driven public/government schools

Columbia University Law Professor Philip Hamburger has written a stellar assessment of America’s public school system, titled “Is the Public School System Constitutional?” It was posted as a commentary in the Wall Street Journal.

His summery includes these words: “Education consists mostly in speech, and parents have a right under the First Amendment to exercise authority over what their children hear.”

The WSJ requires a subscription, so the link may not work. Tap “Read Article” in the WSJ’s pop-up box. It’s important reading. If the first paragraph link doesn’t work, SRAZ located the commentary on the Fry Electronics site, which advertises itself as “an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media.” The paragraphs are oddly spaced, but the content remains. One way or another, this is a must read.

Sham scheme to “eliminate racism” dumbs down math students

Who knew math was “capitalist, imperialist, and racist”?

Today we’re taking our readers directly to a head-spinning example of the lunacy that leftist billionaire Bill Gates is funding through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Washington Examiner tops its crucial exposé with these words: “Gates Foundation behind effort to end white supremacy in math instruction by eliminating need for students to show work.”

No kidding.

This opinion piece by Jeremy Beaman explains The “Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” which is best described as racist.

The actual guidelines to the Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction uses these descriptive words, claiming to facilitate an ”Integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and Multilingual students in grades 6-8, addresses barriers to math equity, and aligns instruction to grade-level priority standards.” The site includes “5 Strides on the Path to Math Equality,” each with its own download

Rather than focusing on one correct answer, the program encourages math teachers to “come up with at least two answers that might solve a problem.”

It continues with this indecipherable jargon: “Challenge standardized test questions by getting the ‘right’ answer, and justify other answers by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem.”

The scheme also encourages teachers to “center ethnomathematics,” which includes a variety of guidelines. One of them instructs educators to “identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”

The consequences of this radicalism passing as education can’t be overstated. A catastrophe is first invading America’s far left, educrat-run classrooms* and will then envelop our nation unless we expose and eradicate it now.

* Center for Responsive Politics displays shocking charts showing the $multi-millions teachers unions give to democrat candidates and their own lobbying “clients” who push their educrat agenda in the halls of congress.

AZ’s flush public schools closed due to deceit, not COVID

It appears that all it takes to reopen Arizona schools is more money. According to the Arizona Education Association, the educrat union, everything is hinged on more money. The union, which partners with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers,  blandly refers to itself is the largest professional association for public school employees in Arizona, dodging the word “union.”

This is its message to its members under the banner, ‘Advocating for Change‘: “All across Arizona, we are with you. We are right there next to you fighting for our students. Fighting for our future.

We need to dismantle unjust systems. We need to fully fund public schools. We need to hold our elected leaders accountable to our communities. And we need your help to make it happen.” The “fighting” message would not be complete without tossing in the trendy leftist word, “equity,” which reliably shows up.  Equity is meant to induce shame for ‘white privilege,’ another favorite term.

“Fully fund” definitely falls under the heading of subjective. A recent news report was headlined, “Ariz. schools to receive $1 billion in federal funds.”  Arizona Superintendent of Education, Kathy Hoffman released this ludicrous statement in response:

“While this significant infusion of federal recovery dollars is good news for Arizona’s schools, it’s not a substitute for sustainable funding from the state as they move through and beyond the crisis of this pandemic.”

Hoffman’s memory is too short for the position she holds. Either that or she’s become a comedian. In 2018 as teachers abandoned over 840,000 students and shut down over 1,000 Arizona schools as they followed an avowed 23-year-old socialist and uncredentialed hip-hop music teacher as they protested for 20% raises, SRAZ posted, #REDS for ED: Union thugs demand more $ for less. It contained these two paragraphs:

Teachers unions* have steadily amped up their political involvement: From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high. Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990 when Center for Responsive Politics initially began collecting data.

Passage of ballot propositions — 301 in 2000 increasing the state sales tax and 123 in 2016 a grab from the state land trust — guaranteed more money for education, which apparently is never enough. School districts routinely hold budget overrides and bond elections to “get more money into the classroom” —- eduspeak for bolstering teacher’s salaries. A major premise of passing the Arizona Lottery in 1980 was that money from ticket sales would fund schools.

In 2020 an irrevocable $5 Billion tax increase for education was passed on the fallacious premise of “taxing the rich,” aka those who create jobs.

This was in addition to these State & Federal Grants displayed by the Arizona Department of Education.

Teachers who aren’t teaching are still getting paid as students are falling further behind, suffering academically, emotionally and socially after missing a year of actual instruction, ultimately rendering them less able to compete in the global economy.

Despite the fact that far-left teachers’ unions wield tremendous influence in terms of donations and votes, Center for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky. M.D. has repeatedly confirmed that schools can open without teachers being vaccinated since children are less prone to contracting or transmitting the virus. Her assertion is substantiated by the official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“I also want to be clear that there is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely,” Dr. Walensky confirmed.

* Center for Responsive Politics

AZ unionist teachers threaten another walkout

Scare tactics continue despite wage hikes

Educrats in Gilbert and Chandler Unified School Districts are threatening sickouts when school resumes January 5, 2021. It’s what they do best, as evidenced by the fact that Arizona students are woefully under-educated, though they are authorities on global warming and recycling while being propagandized — both subtly and overtly, with leftism, and short-shrifted on the foundations of our democracy, history, math, geography  and other basics. They won’t be able to sign their names since cursive is deemed unessential.

This Dec. 30, 2020 statement from the Chandler Education Association, which proudly declares its affiliations* with the AEA (AZ Education Association) and NEA (National Education Association unions) exemplifies the fact that too much is never enough for the teachers who walked out on over 840,000 students for nearly two weeks as they demanded a 20 percent wage increase for their part-time jobs. Gov. Doug Ducey foolishly capitulated, but even that wasn’t enough. This past November their allies put the unconscionable Proposition 208, deceptively titled, ”Invest in Education Act,” that incorporated an irrevocable tax “on the rich” which includes small business owners already struggling during the COVID-19 virus. It passed.

The Federalist headlines its excellent exposé, “Government Teachers’ Unions Unveil New COVID-19 Demand: Pay Us For Doing Nothing.” It exemplifies the demands of the Gilbert and Chandler educrats.

Arizona students are doing even worse on tests than their previously low scores. More than half who took the 2019 AzMERIT tests failed — for the FIFTH year in a row! This is the educrats’ highly touted program that measures what should be proficiency in student ability to comprehend basic math and reading skills. To conceal the unfathomable failure rate, though prepping specifically for the test, they simply changed the test name to AzM2.

Passage of ballot propositions — 301 in 2000 increasing the state sales tax and 123 in 2016 a grab from the state land trust — guaranteed more money for education. School districts routinely hold budget overrides and bond elections to “get more money into the classroom” —- eduspeak for bolstering teacher’s salaries. A major premise of passing the Arizona Lottery in 1980 was that money from ticket sales would fund schools. The Goldwater Institute joined the Arizona Chamber of Commerce in opposing slippery Prop. 208. These are  the lengthy lists of organization and elected leaders who stood in opposition to Prop. 208.

* Open Secrets/The Center for Responsive Politics shows the $millions the NEA and the AFT lobbying arms give to the most left-wing elected officials. The AFT gave not one thin dime to Republicans.

Chandler AZ teachers boycott, show fake commitment to kids

Following a 20 percent shakedown pay increase after a 2018 debilitating strike and recent passage of an absurd ballot measure giving Arizona’s  part-time teachers (do you get a three-month summer vacation and lengthy holidays from your job?) even more money, 349 teachers in Chandler Arizona participated in  a “sick out” Friday, demanding the district return to virtual learning after winter break. Read the demand letter sent to board members and district officials. Parents who want their students back in school, were not treated to this missive.

The district’s website grandly states its mission, “To empower all students with the knowledge, skills and attitude necessary to excel in college, career and life.” Achieving the basic goal of knowledge and skills is an impossibility when the far left Biden supporting union member teachers,* exemplifying an “attitude” of hostility, walk off their jobs demanding to implement “virtual learning” from home, a system which has been proven an abysmal failure.

On Friday, December 12, 349 educrats were out of their classrooms, compared to 244 one week ago. The district claimed it filled the vacancies with a substitute pool consisting of “deans, assistant principals, teacher specialists.” Students’ learning consisted of being taught by example that not doing your job in violation of a contractual agreement is acceptable.

Proposition 208, implementing an education funding farce incorporating an irreversible and massive tax increase dedicated to additional school funding as student achievement continues to plummet, was passed on the November 2020 ballot. The Goldwater Institute exposes its detrimental effects on our state and economy. Arizona is now among the top 10 states with highest income tax along with California and New York. It will negatively affect small businesses, harming our already struggling economy in a COVID-19 era.

* Center for Responsive Politics

Los Angeles typifies the horror of dems in control

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has issued an edict that should make us all glad we don’t live in democrat controlled California. The open borders proponent, reacting to the COVID-19 virus has now banned bicycle riding and walking outdoors, telling residents of the city, “It’s time to cancel everything.”

Read Garcetti’s newly revised 12-page list of mandates and restrictions.

Garcetti’s election mandate was underwhelming. Though he was re-elected with 81.4% of the vote in 2017, voter turnout was only 20%. A democrat, he carried the endorsement of the radical United Teachers Los Angeles union (UTLA) which donates exclusively to leftists* and supports defunding the police, Medicare for all, increased taxation, redistribution of wealth, including allocating unspecified $billions to illegal aliens and placing a moratorium on charter schools, which provide parents an educational alternative to the failing public schools.

The union, which is currently fighting reopening schools, includes 35,000 teachers who represent more than 1,000 schools, which includes most of the city of Los Angeles. The second-largest teachers union in the nation, it now declares they are “grieving and outraged and have an obligation to act” incorporating a BLM curriculum in K-12 schools to eradicate what UTLA refers to as “deeply ingrained racism.”

Schools have become a fertile ground for indoctrinating and propagandizing school children with extremist views, when they need to learn to read, write, be proficient in math, learn geography and revere the magnificent history of America’s founding that uniquely sets us apart, making the USA the dream destination for so many.

*Center for Responsive Politics.

AZ teachers abandon students again

AZ Gov. Ducey should emulate Pres. Reagan’s handling of union strikers 

Mass resignations of teachers are occurring in two East Valley public school districts in the wake of schools reopening during the COVID-19 virus. 

Although the majority of parents and health officials want students back in school, the teachers are not only objecting, but are taking a permanent hike. According to news reports, other teachers plan to abandon classes in a solidarity protest with those who have resigned. That’s what they do best since U.S. education standards have been falling for years.

Pew Research Center 2017 data show U.S. students’ dismal academic achievement on science, math and reading scores significantly lag behind those of their peers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Estonia and Taiwan — to name a few

This April 27, 2018 report, “#REDS for ED: Union thugs demand more $ for less,” is worthy of review bringing relevant background to today’s topic.

Gov. Doug Ducey, a McCain protégé, created this monster scenario when he caved to the far-left unionist teacher’s* demands after they walked out for over a week following 24-year-old uncredentialed hip hop music teacher and avowed Socialist Noah Karvelis.

Taxpayers are the teacher’s employers and have a right to expect classes resume. Imagine if necessary government and utility company employees or hospital personnel unilaterally decided they would walk off their jobs due to concerns over conditions over which they had no control. They would be fired and replaced, as the teachers should be.

In 1981 President Ronald Reagan handled the 11,359 PATCO union strikers who walked off their Air Traffic Controller jobs in violation of his order for them to return to work in this instructive manner:

 

In addition, Reagan declared a lifetime ban on the rehiring of the strikers by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). On August 17, the FAA began accepting applications for new air-traffic controllers. On October 22, the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified PATCO.

 * Center for Responsive Politics

Calif. teachers union’s outrageous politically-based demands

There was a time when Arizonans were confident all rain “came from California.” More sophisticated today, we’re no longer focused on the weather, from which there is no summer relief. However, we do know with certainty that political nuttiness has its inception just across the state line.

A case in point, the Los Angeles teacher’s union has declared it won’t reopen schools unless police are defunded, Medicare for all is implemented, along with the imposition of a “wealth tax,”— as if wealthiest Americans didn’t already pay the highest taxes — the closures of charter schools, and a federal bailout. United Teachers of Los Angeles’ scheme is laid out in a crazed, leftist, race-based report bearing the catchy title, “The Same Storm, but Different Boats: The Safe and Equitable Conditions for Starting LAUSD in 2020-21.” To get the gist of the slant of the publication, this description of students explains why schools can‘t reopen: [They are] “more likely to live in high-density housing (making social distancing difficult), because of decades of residential housing segregation caused by institutional racism.”

When the Los Angeles City Council recently voted to cut the LAPD budget by $150 million, it declared the money will be earmarked for “disadvantaged communities,” actually most in need of police protection. Meanwhile, those “underpaid” California teachers, who work part-time jobs and will be paid not to teach have found enough ready cash to generously donate $246,528,592 to Democrats over the past two decades.  According to the Center for Responsive Politics:

“Teachers unions have steadily amped up their political involvement: From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high. Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties.

Two organizations account for practically all of the contributions made by teachers unions: The National Education Association (about $20 million in 2016) and the American Federation of Teachers (almost $12 million). Both groups — which compete for members, but also collaborate with each other through the NEA-AFT Partnership — are consistently among the organizations that contribute the most money to candidates and political groups.“

Major school districts such as Los Angeles and San Diego will stay closed this fall, despite pressure from the White House to reopen. Randi Weingarten, the leftist president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the country’s largest teachers unions, gives the federal government an “F” grade.  Weingarten, married to another woman, draws an annual salary of more than $540,000. The unionist introduced Hillary Clinton at the Democrat National Convention, while blasting Donald Trump.

As if on cue, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) exhibiting delusions of grandeur, recently announced plans to introduce an amendment to a bill that would withhold federal assistance payments to states that do not require face masks to be worn.

This comes as survival of businesses grow increasingly uncertain amid another shutdown. When the economy shrinks, the tax base will, as well.

It’s clear from reading the report that the people who spend more time with America’s children than their parents often do, are political radicals who have propagandized so many youngsters with tenets of Marxism, that it’s no wonder within a few years they hold cities hostage, loot, terrorize and destroy what previous generations proudly built and those who followed honored and gratefully held in esteem.

Chandler Unified School Dist. defends radical educrat

Public school district emblematic of why charter schools are top rated

This report is so outrageous, it made national news with Breitbart News carrying the details, “Arizona High School Teacher Accused of Associating Conservative Values with ‘Fascism’“

Radical left-wing indoctrination is alive and well in our taxpayer funded public schools.

A history teacher at Casteel High School in Queen Creek, Arizona, has been accused by students and parents of equating conservative values with fascism during a recent history class.

The unnamed female teacher emerges unscathed by the deceit and unconscionable historical revisionism she perpetrated by comparing Hitler to the modern-day Republican party.

The high school, which graduated its first class in 2019, allows this dishonest indoctrination to be propagandized to its students. Principal Jayson Phillips shows himself to be a weak administrator, giving a pass to the educrat.

U.S. News and World Report published its yearly list of top schools across the nation. Once again Arizona Charter Schools topped the list earning the Top Ten slots.

Arizona #REDSforEd public school teachers abandoned over 840,000 students statewide for nearly two weeks while following socialist Noah Karvelis, a 24-year-old unaccredited hip hop music teacher, as they went on strike in violation of their contractual agreements, demanding a 20% pay hike for their part-time jobs. They are now supporting a “tax the rich” socialist ballot scheme to receive ever more money for spewing radical indoctrination.

An important reminder: This is where the supposedly underpaid teachers choose to put their union dues money.* Be sure to scroll down to the ‘Party Split’ graph. 

Then take a moment to tune in to their longstanding agenda (brief video) clearly articulated as far back as 2009, that unequivocally spells out the views of the National Education Association regarding the children they are charged with educating. The words are spoken by Bob Chanin, the NEA legal counsel in a brief excerpt from his revealing retirement speech.

*Center for Responsive Politics

Educrats team with Planned Parenthood to sexualize children

Cave Creek School District disguises kiddie porn as education

Wednesday’s post, “May Day: Significant day for teachers to abandon students,” focused attention on the parallel between Arizona’s #REDSforEd* educrats who walked off their jobs last spring in violation of their contractual agreements  —  and their North and South Carolinian counterparts, who staged walkouts yesterday. 

The May Day timing of the strike was anything but coincidental, as noted by the World Socialist website, which specializes in incendiary and skewed rhetoric to fit its radically leftist agenda, evident by examining other articles on the site.

The report irrationally links American teachers to those in the countries of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Morocco and the Netherlands where teachers have “struck against the non-payment of wages.” Here, the extortionist teachers, members of far left unions, get paid for abandoning their students and Gov. Ducey, after momentarily playing hardliner, eventually gifted them with a 20% salary hike — which they decided is not nearly enough for their part-time jobs.

All of their antics are infuriating, but the biggest inciter of parental and community rage should be reserved for the “Comprehensive Sex Education” in the process of being implemented in the Cave Creek School District in Arizona. SRAZ commenter “JCF” brought it to our attention, for which we are grateful. Exposing the truth about this insidiously provocative curriculum assists parents in shining a disinfecting dose of sunlight on the shocking agenda that the district and its partner, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider — are attempting to peddle to young children in grades 4 – 8.

It’s critically important to take time to read, “Not In Our Schools: Stop the Planned Parenthood Invasion,” and pass it along to others. The graphic imagery being presented to young children is pornographic and normalizes deviancy. In no way is it educational.

* SRAZ adds the “S” to Red for clarity.