These are trenchant ideas that deserve a wide audience in Democratic circles. And, you might even go deeper into the problems with Progressive education that go back at least 60 years. Starting in the late 1960’s there was a clear effort to make schooling easier and more fun for students by diminishing the importance of learning content, or facts about the world.
For example, most elementary and middle school classrooms today do not have maps on the wall which were a mainstay of classrooms in the 1960’s. Many of today’s teachers don’t know basic geography and therefore don’t think it’s important for their students to learn the geography of the United States or the world. Yet geography forms an important basis for understanding history, science and politics.
There was also the Whole Language phenomenon, which was set against the teaching of phonics the old fashioned way, and which is still with us in the form of Blended Literacy. This resulted in children and adults who don’t read well, and therefore don’t read. The last few years have seen a change in philosophy of some of the loudest exponents of Whole Language, notably Lucy Caulkins acolytes, but the damage has been done.
The way math is taught has also been degraded and we find many students, and teachers!, who are innumerate. Part of this problem is our state teachers’ colleges that have become diploma mills and don’t teach future teachers math, science or politics, only giving them “education” classes.
Most teachers are well-meaning and caring but have been fed a diet of Progressive education ideas that have ultimately harmed children. Until we address the flawed philosophies of education that emanate from Columbia U. Teachers College and the University of Chicago graduation school of education, we will see little progress. Most American’s like their children’s teachers and blame the school administration for education shortfalls. But the problem is much deeper and it comes from those education leaders.
Even geography doesn't escape the progressives. Here is part of an article about the different types of maps used in Omaha Public Schools. This is a State Legislator ENACTING a law about it -- mind you the students are about 20-25% proficient in anything, but lets make a law regarding maps..
LINCOLN — The world may look different for K-12 students returning to Nebraska classrooms this month because of a new state law.
The law, passed earlier this year, bans public schools from using Mercator projection maps, a common type of world map that distorts the sizes of continents and countries. The law allows exceptions for previously purchased materials and for lessons involving multiple types of maps.
State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha proposed the legislation, arguing that Mercator projection maps, widely used in schools, have given generations of students a misleading understanding of the world.
Here are a few observations I've seen as a 5th grade teacher in a public school.
1. The concern about those who want kids taught that only white Christians are true Americans is, I believe, very overblown. I live and teach in predominantly white, middle class, church-going Christian communities. I've never met anyone who wants this. Perhaps they are out there, but I've never met any. They certainly don't have the clout, influence, nor numbers of those who want the extreme anti-racist or pro-trans ideologies in school. It is, I believe, a false equivalence.
2. It cannot be overstated how badly the school closures hurt kids. My current students were in K and 1st grade when it happened, and I've never seen so many otherwise ordinary kids struggle with reading so much. I invite anyone to talk to parents who have felt stuck watching their children struggle and get no help. That more haven't fled public schools over this betrayal is surprising to me.
3. I'm also frustrated with how many teachers don't do anything to help the kids who are struggling. I've just had several talks with parents whose kids are struggling with reading, and the only thing previous teachers have done is say: "Just keep reading. They'll get it." The reality is that many teachers don't know how to help kids who are struggling. They aren't magical experts. They just present the curriculum given by districts. It's a massive problem. There's a reason the educational results in this country have tanked.
A good friend is also a 5th grade teacher and she says the same thing. She's stressing herself big time trying to do a good job for her kids and to make up for the learning losses but I'm afraid it's a losing battle for some kids.
Man, what a great take by Ruy. I do not expect one single Democrat in office to accept these, but they are critical points.
I am a former teacher--7th grade reading to Graduate School at the U. of Dayton, OH. I have taught every grade from 7-16 and beyond. When you say remove ideology, a) this is impossible. As I taught in my historiography classes, every choice of "this fact" over "that fact" is a value judgment, and thus a form of ideology. They cannot be removed. They can only be used fairly and honestly. If the facts say John Chivington basically murdered the Cheyenne at Sand Creek, so be it. However, if the facts show that LBJ's welfare state destroyed the black family, that also must be taught.
I wrote a book called "48 Liberal Lies About American History" and I looked at the top 20 US History high-school/college level books. They ALL contained the most egregious lies (the Rosenbergs really weren't guilty, or the transcontinental RRs couldn't have been built without government assistance---er, the Great Northern). But the most stunning thing was the general acceptamce of bigger government being better. Even worse, and this may stun you, in the 20th century sections, look at the pictures. Most common? FDR. Fine, no problem there. Second most common? The a-bomb. OK, again fitting. But the 3rd most common picture in the 20th century (!!) was not Reagan, not JFK, not the moon landing, not MLK but . . . the Ku Klux Klan. This alone told me how far out of touch these "scholars" were that they thought that the third most common illustration of life in the 20th century in America was the KKK.
So, "reforming" ed will require a purging---a total purging---of THIS ideology Second, it will require a MORE honest look at American exceptionalism. In "A Patriot's History of the United States," we diligently compared world systems to see what in fact made the U.S. "exceptional." NO TEXTBOOK does this. It is not "liberty" or "equality" or any of that. Many countries have those. It is not a written constitution. Cameroon has one and has a dictator. It was the "four pillars" that we outlined that no other nation had from its birth: 1) A Christian, mostly Protestant religious tradition that stressed congregational governance (bottom up); 2) common law (bottom up, vs every other government on earth at the time which was top down; 3) private property with written titles and deeds (the latter still missing in any country with a so-called "oral tradition") and 4) a free market. All of this started at PLYMOUTH, not Jamestown, which negates the whole "1619 Project" nonsense. No slavery at Plymouth.
These would be a few good places to start---but agree with most of your points. Right on.
I hear from my friends with kids in blue state public schools that the amount of transgender ideology coming at the kids starting in elementary school is annoying and sometimes disturbing. I know one family who left the New york city public school due to this. Girls were being called AFABs ( assigned female at birth) and boys were being called AMABs. There was also a lot of other leftwing ideology coming at the children. Climate change catastrophe cult, oppression, etc. Its no wonder so many adolescents have crippling anxiety.
During covid, thanks to on line "learning", a lot of parents started to see what a waste of time much of their children's school day was. They saw very boring teachers taking up an hour to teach something that could have been taught in 15 minutes. A lot of what school do is to play the role of babysitter. When the schools abandoned that during covid and broke the social contract , many parents decided to walk away.
I know parents whose children are still in public school but they haven't forgotten or forgiven what happened during covid. They know that perfectly healthy teachers refused to go in to teach for a year or more . Yet private schools were back in session, the essential workers and healthcare professionals never closed down. But teachers got 18 months at home. The trust was broken.
A friend was a new realtor in Fremont, CA maybe 8 years ago. The SV school district is very highly rated. Her first client, a newly immigrated Indian family, with a computer engineer father and a stay at home, chemist mother, ended up buying a house, near her.
3 months later, at 11:00 pm, her client pounded on her front door, screaming in Hindi and waving papers. When my friend calmed her, she thrust the papers at my friend, and demanded to know why she lied about the public school. Her 14 year old Freshman son brought home a health class handout, that contained among other things, explicit instructions for hetro, homo and masturbatory sex, for maximum pleasure. When my friend got to the section, recommending different types of lube for different orifices, and utilizing household appliances, in self pleasure, she assumed it was a Senior prank. She promised to accompany the woman to school and straighten out the situation.
They arrived, the next morning, to hundreds of luxury cars, parked everywhere. Mostly immigrants, highly educated and compensated, and prone to not making waves, were mad as hornets. A meeting, explained a 26 year old health teacher had produced the handout, without review. Someone would speak to her, but it wasn't a big deal.
Parents threatened to pull their kids, unless they previewed every lesson. The school, eventually, agreed and promised to assign a mentor, to the young teacher. The handouts ended, but no one was fired. No one ever is.
Maybe all of this is part of a program to prepare Americans to work in the omnipresent bureaucratic state. Part of what defines a bureaucracy is that no one ever gets fired.
The refusal of teachers to teach probably would not have mattered so much were it not for the influence of the teachers' unions on state governments. The past two governors of my state have been wholly owned subsidiaries of the teachers' unions. Both governors have been notoriously unpopular, but the teachers' unions got them through elections with endorsements and campaign contributions. The same unions and state governments are aligned with the Social and Emotional Learning racket that pushes woke ideology into every facet of the curriculum.
My friends who home school say they get through a year's curriculum by November-December (teaching half days). The rest of the time is for enrichment, arts, music lessons, travel, etc. Hybrids are becoming very popular -- 3 days home school/2 days in a classroom.
Ruy Teixeira's editorial is an exemplar of a well reasoned essay and, as a conservative, I commend you for publishing it. I couldn't find a better example of why I continue to enjoy the Liberal Patriot.
This is brilliant, unfortunately it is antithetical to most Dem views of public education. Change will com,, thru school choice, because when parents have options, public schools will no longer be able to survive, if they marinate students in politics, rather than educating them.
During Covid, schools stayed closed, in some cases, for nearly 2 years, because there was no down side for employees, to do so. Unions demanded the US pretend teachers were software engineers, the consequences to children, be damned. It is impossible to name one person who lost their job for Covid school debacle, because no one did. Some children will never recover, academically or emotionally. Some turned to drugs, alcohol or suicide, unable to cope with the continued isolation, and not one school employed adult, lost so much as a paycheck.
What kind of quality would anyone expect from a doctor, dentist, a mechanic or dry cleaner, if they knew you had to patronize them, regardless of outcome? Schools will change, because the days of failing up, in education, are ending. Soon 1/2 the US will enjoy school choice, and the Blue States that refuse to offer the educational options, like the children of Dem politicians enjoy, will continue to bleed families and their tax revenues.
For the sons and daughters of immigrant parents competing to get into the most selective colleges is near impossible. If you are Asian. Lack of English at home, parents who work in assembly or other low wage jobs, doesn't help at all. There is an Asia quota and it's full.
Every parent I know, and mostly they are Asian immigrants, would forgo any class accommodation in a heartbeat to simply be judged on merit. If the son of a wealthy heart surgeon has higher scores, good for him, he did better and deserves his place. Much better than to be tossed in the discard pile due to an Asian surname.
I agree with every single one of the points made in this article, but there is zero chance that the Democrats will adopt any of them. And, I hope they don't try, not that we don't desperately need to restore education to what it was before the Dems destroyed it, but because if the Dems do say anything about fixing education to get elected, it will all be lies to make people vote for them, and they will continue to make things worse when they get or stay in power. The Dems have been lying to get elected for decades, and their docile, uneducated constituents keep voting for them. The rest of us have to live with the fallout. It is encouraging that the public seems to be less inclined to believe the Dem's lies now and are more skeptical about their hypocrisy.
Mr. Teixeira has been doing a great job in this substack pointing out all the things the Dems have done wrong for America and its citizens and how they could do better, but he seems to think that it's actually possible to reform them. It's not, the time when that could have happened is long gone. The Democrat party has been wholly corrupted by the hard Left. Is it possible to build something new? don't know. The "normie" Democrats have been almost completely excluded from any sort of power in the party. I am not and have never been a Democrat nor have I supported their policies or ideas, but in past decades they at least didn't hate America and want to destroy it. I don't think the party in its present configuration can be saved, or is even worth saving.
I agree! The current level of corruption seems to me to have arrived quite recently, however. It was not many years ago that my Dem friends were all quite rational people who disagreed about a lot of political issues. They all recognized there was a lunatic fringe on the left, but everybody knew who those individuals were and rolled their eyes when they spoke of them. My same friends have become part of the lunatic fringe themselves, and they can no longer acknowledge that there even IS a lunatic fringe to the Democratic Party, let alone acknowledge that there is little else remaining.
Minority parents are the biggest supporters of school choice, and the biggest supporters of Democrats who are virulently anti-school choice. Perplexing.
You've diagnosed the problem and provided the solutions. This is the best article I've read about our education problem. Make no mistake, it is a huge problem.
Less special ed and testing, more tracking. By definition half the kids will be below average, but that does not mean that they all need IEPs. Track kids by ability instead, and leave the IEPs to the kids that really need them. And keep the standardized testing to once a year. My kids take four! standardized tests a year, which are multiday endeavors that take away from class time and incentivize teachers to only teach to the test.
One of the twists on the "grades are racist" theme is "no harm grading." The argument is that getting bad grades "makes kids feel bad about themselves," therefore "grading is harmful." There is an implied racial dimension to this argument, because it seems to be only black kids whose self-esteem matters. I don't hear much about "no harm grading" from teachers in poor white schools, but maybe it is happening there as well.
Fully agree with all your points here on such an important issue. I attended public school years ago when it was certainly more meritocratic, and wish it were so today. I see more and more parents who, witnessing the decline of public schooling with the means to opt for private schools, move to private schools for their children. I think this will continue until only those families who can’t afford it (or without school choice) remaining in public schools. Here’s hoping this prompts the kind of reform you describe. I fear it will be a long road. In the mean time those who can least afford it, suffer.
Giving parents a choice of another public school or a public charter school is no choice at all.
Quit focusing on the Ivies, focus instead on K-12. What percentages of kids even care about the Ivies, especially when it’s been shown that these are just super expensive “everyone gets an A” activist incubators.
These are trenchant ideas that deserve a wide audience in Democratic circles. And, you might even go deeper into the problems with Progressive education that go back at least 60 years. Starting in the late 1960’s there was a clear effort to make schooling easier and more fun for students by diminishing the importance of learning content, or facts about the world.
For example, most elementary and middle school classrooms today do not have maps on the wall which were a mainstay of classrooms in the 1960’s. Many of today’s teachers don’t know basic geography and therefore don’t think it’s important for their students to learn the geography of the United States or the world. Yet geography forms an important basis for understanding history, science and politics.
There was also the Whole Language phenomenon, which was set against the teaching of phonics the old fashioned way, and which is still with us in the form of Blended Literacy. This resulted in children and adults who don’t read well, and therefore don’t read. The last few years have seen a change in philosophy of some of the loudest exponents of Whole Language, notably Lucy Caulkins acolytes, but the damage has been done.
The way math is taught has also been degraded and we find many students, and teachers!, who are innumerate. Part of this problem is our state teachers’ colleges that have become diploma mills and don’t teach future teachers math, science or politics, only giving them “education” classes.
Most teachers are well-meaning and caring but have been fed a diet of Progressive education ideas that have ultimately harmed children. Until we address the flawed philosophies of education that emanate from Columbia U. Teachers College and the University of Chicago graduation school of education, we will see little progress. Most American’s like their children’s teachers and blame the school administration for education shortfalls. But the problem is much deeper and it comes from those education leaders.
Even geography doesn't escape the progressives. Here is part of an article about the different types of maps used in Omaha Public Schools. This is a State Legislator ENACTING a law about it -- mind you the students are about 20-25% proficient in anything, but lets make a law regarding maps..
LINCOLN — The world may look different for K-12 students returning to Nebraska classrooms this month because of a new state law.
The law, passed earlier this year, bans public schools from using Mercator projection maps, a common type of world map that distorts the sizes of continents and countries. The law allows exceptions for previously purchased materials and for lessons involving multiple types of maps.
State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha proposed the legislation, arguing that Mercator projection maps, widely used in schools, have given generations of students a misleading understanding of the world.
and so on
Here are a few observations I've seen as a 5th grade teacher in a public school.
1. The concern about those who want kids taught that only white Christians are true Americans is, I believe, very overblown. I live and teach in predominantly white, middle class, church-going Christian communities. I've never met anyone who wants this. Perhaps they are out there, but I've never met any. They certainly don't have the clout, influence, nor numbers of those who want the extreme anti-racist or pro-trans ideologies in school. It is, I believe, a false equivalence.
2. It cannot be overstated how badly the school closures hurt kids. My current students were in K and 1st grade when it happened, and I've never seen so many otherwise ordinary kids struggle with reading so much. I invite anyone to talk to parents who have felt stuck watching their children struggle and get no help. That more haven't fled public schools over this betrayal is surprising to me.
3. I'm also frustrated with how many teachers don't do anything to help the kids who are struggling. I've just had several talks with parents whose kids are struggling with reading, and the only thing previous teachers have done is say: "Just keep reading. They'll get it." The reality is that many teachers don't know how to help kids who are struggling. They aren't magical experts. They just present the curriculum given by districts. It's a massive problem. There's a reason the educational results in this country have tanked.
A good friend is also a 5th grade teacher and she says the same thing. She's stressing herself big time trying to do a good job for her kids and to make up for the learning losses but I'm afraid it's a losing battle for some kids.
Man, what a great take by Ruy. I do not expect one single Democrat in office to accept these, but they are critical points.
I am a former teacher--7th grade reading to Graduate School at the U. of Dayton, OH. I have taught every grade from 7-16 and beyond. When you say remove ideology, a) this is impossible. As I taught in my historiography classes, every choice of "this fact" over "that fact" is a value judgment, and thus a form of ideology. They cannot be removed. They can only be used fairly and honestly. If the facts say John Chivington basically murdered the Cheyenne at Sand Creek, so be it. However, if the facts show that LBJ's welfare state destroyed the black family, that also must be taught.
I wrote a book called "48 Liberal Lies About American History" and I looked at the top 20 US History high-school/college level books. They ALL contained the most egregious lies (the Rosenbergs really weren't guilty, or the transcontinental RRs couldn't have been built without government assistance---er, the Great Northern). But the most stunning thing was the general acceptamce of bigger government being better. Even worse, and this may stun you, in the 20th century sections, look at the pictures. Most common? FDR. Fine, no problem there. Second most common? The a-bomb. OK, again fitting. But the 3rd most common picture in the 20th century (!!) was not Reagan, not JFK, not the moon landing, not MLK but . . . the Ku Klux Klan. This alone told me how far out of touch these "scholars" were that they thought that the third most common illustration of life in the 20th century in America was the KKK.
So, "reforming" ed will require a purging---a total purging---of THIS ideology Second, it will require a MORE honest look at American exceptionalism. In "A Patriot's History of the United States," we diligently compared world systems to see what in fact made the U.S. "exceptional." NO TEXTBOOK does this. It is not "liberty" or "equality" or any of that. Many countries have those. It is not a written constitution. Cameroon has one and has a dictator. It was the "four pillars" that we outlined that no other nation had from its birth: 1) A Christian, mostly Protestant religious tradition that stressed congregational governance (bottom up); 2) common law (bottom up, vs every other government on earth at the time which was top down; 3) private property with written titles and deeds (the latter still missing in any country with a so-called "oral tradition") and 4) a free market. All of this started at PLYMOUTH, not Jamestown, which negates the whole "1619 Project" nonsense. No slavery at Plymouth.
These would be a few good places to start---but agree with most of your points. Right on.
I hear from my friends with kids in blue state public schools that the amount of transgender ideology coming at the kids starting in elementary school is annoying and sometimes disturbing. I know one family who left the New york city public school due to this. Girls were being called AFABs ( assigned female at birth) and boys were being called AMABs. There was also a lot of other leftwing ideology coming at the children. Climate change catastrophe cult, oppression, etc. Its no wonder so many adolescents have crippling anxiety.
During covid, thanks to on line "learning", a lot of parents started to see what a waste of time much of their children's school day was. They saw very boring teachers taking up an hour to teach something that could have been taught in 15 minutes. A lot of what school do is to play the role of babysitter. When the schools abandoned that during covid and broke the social contract , many parents decided to walk away.
I know parents whose children are still in public school but they haven't forgotten or forgiven what happened during covid. They know that perfectly healthy teachers refused to go in to teach for a year or more . Yet private schools were back in session, the essential workers and healthcare professionals never closed down. But teachers got 18 months at home. The trust was broken.
A friend was a new realtor in Fremont, CA maybe 8 years ago. The SV school district is very highly rated. Her first client, a newly immigrated Indian family, with a computer engineer father and a stay at home, chemist mother, ended up buying a house, near her.
3 months later, at 11:00 pm, her client pounded on her front door, screaming in Hindi and waving papers. When my friend calmed her, she thrust the papers at my friend, and demanded to know why she lied about the public school. Her 14 year old Freshman son brought home a health class handout, that contained among other things, explicit instructions for hetro, homo and masturbatory sex, for maximum pleasure. When my friend got to the section, recommending different types of lube for different orifices, and utilizing household appliances, in self pleasure, she assumed it was a Senior prank. She promised to accompany the woman to school and straighten out the situation.
They arrived, the next morning, to hundreds of luxury cars, parked everywhere. Mostly immigrants, highly educated and compensated, and prone to not making waves, were mad as hornets. A meeting, explained a 26 year old health teacher had produced the handout, without review. Someone would speak to her, but it wasn't a big deal.
Parents threatened to pull their kids, unless they previewed every lesson. The school, eventually, agreed and promised to assign a mentor, to the young teacher. The handouts ended, but no one was fired. No one ever is.
Maybe all of this is part of a program to prepare Americans to work in the omnipresent bureaucratic state. Part of what defines a bureaucracy is that no one ever gets fired.
The refusal of teachers to teach probably would not have mattered so much were it not for the influence of the teachers' unions on state governments. The past two governors of my state have been wholly owned subsidiaries of the teachers' unions. Both governors have been notoriously unpopular, but the teachers' unions got them through elections with endorsements and campaign contributions. The same unions and state governments are aligned with the Social and Emotional Learning racket that pushes woke ideology into every facet of the curriculum.
My friends who home school say they get through a year's curriculum by November-December (teaching half days). The rest of the time is for enrichment, arts, music lessons, travel, etc. Hybrids are becoming very popular -- 3 days home school/2 days in a classroom.
Ruy Teixeira's editorial is an exemplar of a well reasoned essay and, as a conservative, I commend you for publishing it. I couldn't find a better example of why I continue to enjoy the Liberal Patriot.
This is brilliant, unfortunately it is antithetical to most Dem views of public education. Change will com,, thru school choice, because when parents have options, public schools will no longer be able to survive, if they marinate students in politics, rather than educating them.
During Covid, schools stayed closed, in some cases, for nearly 2 years, because there was no down side for employees, to do so. Unions demanded the US pretend teachers were software engineers, the consequences to children, be damned. It is impossible to name one person who lost their job for Covid school debacle, because no one did. Some children will never recover, academically or emotionally. Some turned to drugs, alcohol or suicide, unable to cope with the continued isolation, and not one school employed adult, lost so much as a paycheck.
What kind of quality would anyone expect from a doctor, dentist, a mechanic or dry cleaner, if they knew you had to patronize them, regardless of outcome? Schools will change, because the days of failing up, in education, are ending. Soon 1/2 the US will enjoy school choice, and the Blue States that refuse to offer the educational options, like the children of Dem politicians enjoy, will continue to bleed families and their tax revenues.
For the sons and daughters of immigrant parents competing to get into the most selective colleges is near impossible. If you are Asian. Lack of English at home, parents who work in assembly or other low wage jobs, doesn't help at all. There is an Asia quota and it's full.
Every parent I know, and mostly they are Asian immigrants, would forgo any class accommodation in a heartbeat to simply be judged on merit. If the son of a wealthy heart surgeon has higher scores, good for him, he did better and deserves his place. Much better than to be tossed in the discard pile due to an Asian surname.
I agree with every single one of the points made in this article, but there is zero chance that the Democrats will adopt any of them. And, I hope they don't try, not that we don't desperately need to restore education to what it was before the Dems destroyed it, but because if the Dems do say anything about fixing education to get elected, it will all be lies to make people vote for them, and they will continue to make things worse when they get or stay in power. The Dems have been lying to get elected for decades, and their docile, uneducated constituents keep voting for them. The rest of us have to live with the fallout. It is encouraging that the public seems to be less inclined to believe the Dem's lies now and are more skeptical about their hypocrisy.
Mr. Teixeira has been doing a great job in this substack pointing out all the things the Dems have done wrong for America and its citizens and how they could do better, but he seems to think that it's actually possible to reform them. It's not, the time when that could have happened is long gone. The Democrat party has been wholly corrupted by the hard Left. Is it possible to build something new? don't know. The "normie" Democrats have been almost completely excluded from any sort of power in the party. I am not and have never been a Democrat nor have I supported their policies or ideas, but in past decades they at least didn't hate America and want to destroy it. I don't think the party in its present configuration can be saved, or is even worth saving.
I agree! The current level of corruption seems to me to have arrived quite recently, however. It was not many years ago that my Dem friends were all quite rational people who disagreed about a lot of political issues. They all recognized there was a lunatic fringe on the left, but everybody knew who those individuals were and rolled their eyes when they spoke of them. My same friends have become part of the lunatic fringe themselves, and they can no longer acknowledge that there even IS a lunatic fringe to the Democratic Party, let alone acknowledge that there is little else remaining.
Minority parents are the biggest supporters of school choice, and the biggest supporters of Democrats who are virulently anti-school choice. Perplexing.
You've diagnosed the problem and provided the solutions. This is the best article I've read about our education problem. Make no mistake, it is a huge problem.
Less special ed and testing, more tracking. By definition half the kids will be below average, but that does not mean that they all need IEPs. Track kids by ability instead, and leave the IEPs to the kids that really need them. And keep the standardized testing to once a year. My kids take four! standardized tests a year, which are multiday endeavors that take away from class time and incentivize teachers to only teach to the test.
One of the twists on the "grades are racist" theme is "no harm grading." The argument is that getting bad grades "makes kids feel bad about themselves," therefore "grading is harmful." There is an implied racial dimension to this argument, because it seems to be only black kids whose self-esteem matters. I don't hear much about "no harm grading" from teachers in poor white schools, but maybe it is happening there as well.
Fully agree with all your points here on such an important issue. I attended public school years ago when it was certainly more meritocratic, and wish it were so today. I see more and more parents who, witnessing the decline of public schooling with the means to opt for private schools, move to private schools for their children. I think this will continue until only those families who can’t afford it (or without school choice) remaining in public schools. Here’s hoping this prompts the kind of reform you describe. I fear it will be a long road. In the mean time those who can least afford it, suffer.
Giving parents a choice of another public school or a public charter school is no choice at all.
Quit focusing on the Ivies, focus instead on K-12. What percentages of kids even care about the Ivies, especially when it’s been shown that these are just super expensive “everyone gets an A” activist incubators.