Tag: public schools

Oregon Suspends High School Graduation Standards To Make ‘Equitable’ Rules For ‘Students Of Color’

Oregon Governor Kate Brown (D) signed a bill last month suspending proficiency requirements for high school graduates for the next five years.

Brown quietly signed into a law a bill suspending her state’s proficiency requirements on July 14. Oregon is expected to go without proficiency standards for high school graduates until new rules are crafted and implemented in 2024. Those new rules will likely not apply to high school graduates until 2027; however, as Oregon education officials are reluctant to change standards for students that have already entered high school, according to The Oregonian.

The governor’s office did not announce her signing of the bill in a signing ceremony nor in a press release. The signed bill did not appear in the legislative database as signed until July 29, an uncommon occurrence for a bill that was signed over two weeks prior. A spokesman for the governor said that suspending proficiency requirements would aid the state’s minority students.

“Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color” stand to benefit from the legislation, Brown’s deputy communications director Charles Boyle told The Oregonian in a statement. “Leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports.”

Oregon’s proficiency requirements mandate that all high school graduates demonstrate a roughly 10th grade level competence in reading, writing, and math. Those standards were first suspended last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic as students were taken out of classrooms and school was moved almost entirely online.

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Meet the CDC-Backed Groups That Want To Teach Trans Ideology to Kindergartners

Justin Thiel, 31, was ready to send his oldest daughter to kindergarten at the public school in his rural Nebraska town. He made a sudden change of plans once he read the new sex education standards adopted by the state.

“I signed her up for a Christian school the day I read the standards,” Thiel told the Washington Free Beacon.

The National Sex Education Standards, which provided a roadmap for Nebraska Department of Education, teach kindergartners the names of reproductive body parts and define gender identity and reproduction. Children in Grades 3-5 are taught about masturbation, hormone blockers used to transition pre-pubescent children, STDs, and the differences between cisgender, transgender, nonbinary, and “gender expansive.” Grades 6-8 are taught about abortion, contraception, and differences between vaginal, oral, and anal sex. Grades 9-10 must teach “reproductive justice,” which entails unlimited abortion access.

Dr. Susan Greenwald, a retired pediatrician in Nebraska who worked with childhood victims of sexual abuse for 35 years, said the standards are closer to “grooming” than age-appropriate education.

“The first thing out of my mouth was, ‘holy s***—what pedophile wrote this?'” Greenwald told the Free Beacon. “This is grooming 101. If you were a pedophile and wanted to teach your kid to be a victim, this would be what you use.”

The Nebraska curriculum takes a number of exact phrases and guidelines from the National Sex Education Standards’ Second Edition, which was released in 2020 by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Advocates for Youth, and Answer. The three groups rake in millions of dollars each year from the federal government and abortion-focused charities. State and local education departments from Nebraska to New York have adopted the curriculum, but parents, doctors, and government officials are starting to push back against lesson plans that focus on hormone therapy, abortion, and gender transition.

Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts (R.) is publicly feuding with the state’s department of education. The governor calls the curriculum unworkable and is hosting town halls across the state for hundreds of parents to voice their concerns about the sex education standards.

“The people pushing this are not the parents—they’re advocates,” Ricketts told the Free Beacon. “I tell parents, ‘Don’t settle’—there’s no fixing these standards. They have to be scrapped.”

The Nebraska Department of Education, which consists of elected members separate from the governor, defended the process for drafting the curriculum as “transparent.”

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Biden Admin Linked Radical Handbook Instructing Teachers To ‘Disrupt Whiteness’ As Part Of School Reopening Guidance, Admits ‘Error’

The Biden administration has admitted the Department of Education made an “error” after Fox News revealed that the DOE promoted a radical handbook from the Abolitionist Teaching Network as part of its COVID-19 school reopening guidance. The Fox News report added that the ATN instructs teachers to “disrupt whiteness” and that an ATN founder sees it as her mission to “trouble [white teachers’] internalized White supremacy and anti-Blackness.”

The ATN handbook, titled “Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning,” is linked in the Biden administration’s Department of Education “Ed COVID-19 Handbook” which is designed to guide teachers in “reopening safely and meeting all students’ needs.”

The guide promotes the “historic American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP),” and provides “resources” to schools looking to spend the $122 billion in ARPA funds earmarked for public schools to help correct the “disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, English learners, students who are migratory, students experiencing homelessness, students in correctional facilities, and students in foster care”

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This is The Left’s Handbook to Deal With Parent-Pushback on Critical Race Theory

A coalition of 300 groups and 20 foundations lead by the National Education Association have produced a guidebook. It provides messaging on how to address pushback against Critical Race Theory.

Maybe it’s just coincidence, but shortly before the mid-June frenzy, a large coalition of over 300 progressive educational and union groups, over a dozen major left-leaning foundations, and a parade of affiliated “influencers,” rolled out a CRT Messaging Guide with talking points identical to those repeated almost daily by teachers unions, in major newspapers, on MSNBC and CNN, and in digital media.

Whether the Message Guide was a script being read from, or simply reflected a coalescing of tactics and talking points, its appearance reflects how organized the messaging against parents has become.

I saved (screengrabbed and converted) a local PDF copy of the guide here. Please read it, follow the links, download a copy, and share it. This is the establishment plan for pushing back against opposition to CRT by parents, concerned taxpayers, even legislators, and the media.

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Outrageous! Here’s a Look at the Shocking White Privilege, Gender Equity Lesson Plans Used To Indoctrinate Your Kids

Parents may not be able to vet or opt out of the social justice, ideologically skewed educational regimen being taught nationwide in K-12 classrooms.

But thousands of lesson plans designed to instill students with a gender-fluid, racist, anti-American ideology are available for review at TeachersPayTeachers.com,  a site allowing teachers to sell and share educational programs.

According to the Teachers Pay Teachers website, TpT “is the go-to place for over 85% of U.S. educators to find teacher-created, teacher-tested classroom resources” and “has grown to reach over 5 million educators.”

The site contains 5,552 lesson plans to nurture students on the tenets of Black Lives Matter, 3,712 on critical race, 166 on white privilege, and dozens of gender equity lesson plans.

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Amazon Funding Distribution of Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Antiracist’ Books in Public Schools

Amazon spent $5,000 to distribute hundreds of copies of “antiracist” writer Ibram X. Kendi’s book to Virginia public school students as part of a program to promote black authors, according to emails between Amazon and school district officials.

The emails show Amazon employees reached out to Arlington Public Schools as part of “NeighborGood,” a program to donate $100,000 to schools and other institutions that “empower black voices and serve black communities.” Despite Amazon’s offer to purchase Kindles or other equipment, Arlington Public Schools director of diversity and inclusion Arron Gregory requested copies of Kendi’s Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. Amazon donated between 500-600 copies of the book to Wakefield High School and paid $10,000 to have Kendi’s coauthor Jason Reynolds address students.

Asra Nomani, vice president of Parents Defending Education, the watchdog group that obtained the emails through a public records request, called Amazon’s prioritization of “antiracism” efforts during a pandemic “shortsighted” in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon.

“Instead of donating Kindles and hot spots to students in Arlington Public Schools, Amazon chose to spread the controversial ideology of critical race theory,” Nomani said. “The shortsighted decisions during a pandemic, with so many students vulnerable, reflect the national crisis of school districts circumventing parents to indoctrinate students—in this case, with the help of corporate America.”

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