Post-Lockdowns, There’s A Teacher Burnout Crisis In America’s Schools

Districts mismanage their budgets, cutting the core personnel who actually teach classes while maintaining bloated bureaucratic overhead.

It Could Soon Be Illegal For California Teachers To Tell Parents About Kids’ Trans Confusion

The proposal is a shocking attack on U.S. Supreme Court precedent and local school policies.

When A Mom Stood Up For Her Special-Needs Son, School Board Bullies Silenced Her In Person And Online

The First Amendment protects the right of parents to publicly criticize their school districts and officials without being targeted.
Joshua Lott/Washington Post/Getty Images

No, age-appropriate library restrictions are not ‘book bans’

A public, taxpayer-funded entity refusing to purchase and disseminate a book does not constitute a ‘ban,’ contrary to media reports.

On Survey, 1,168 Parents Report Their Kids Encountered Sexually Explicit Content In School

I wanted to know if the teachers introducing explicit material to children in social media viral videos are outliers. What I found was shocking.

Dumbing Down The SAT Perfectly Sums Up The State Of American Education

These pointless changes to the SAT will let schools off the hook, and allow College Board to make money and virtue signal at the same time.

It's a 'problem' when 'parents think they have the right to control teaching and learning because their children are the ones being educated': op-ed writer



A teacher and novelist made a rather eye-opening claim in an op-ed for NBC News — that it's a "problem" when "parents think they have the right to control teaching and learning because their children are the ones being educated."

What are the details?

Christina Wyman — author of the upcoming middle-school novel "Jawbreaker" — decried parents and politicians who've been "interfering with the curricula that public schools use to teach students" in her piece.

"State legislatures are passing laws to keep critical race theory out of schools, literary classics like Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye' are banned for sexual content, and school libraries are coming under attack for containing books about gender," Wyman added. "There are even parents who are trying to shield students from learning about mental health and suicide — as though helping children build emotional fortitude is a bad thing."

Then she observed the following: "Part of the problem is that parents think they have the right to control teaching and learning because their children are the ones being educated. But it actually (gasp!) doesn't work that way. It's sort of like entering a surgical unit thinking you can interfere with an operation simply because the patient is your child."

Wyman wasn't through, adding that "unless they're licensed and certified, parents aren't qualified to make decisions about curricula" and that when parents weigh in "with their personal opinions, ideologies and biases," they "hinder" teaching.

'Parents ... who aren't qualified to teach should keep their noses out of school curricula'

She went on to say that the latest moves by parents and politicians to control the content of curriculum "should be ignored."

"These distractions are nothing more than theater, and school boards and administrators should be protecting their teachers — and students — from it rather than bowing to it," Wyman added in her op-ed.

Interestingly, she conceded that parents should speak out when "they feel emotional harm results from the curriculum or student-teacher interactions," but that's as far as Wyman seemed to go, adding that "short of that, parents, community members, and politicians who aren't qualified to teach should keep their noses out of school curricula."

You can read Wyman's full op-ed here.

Virginia school board orders libraries to remove 'sexually explicit' books



A local school board in Fredericksburg, Virginia, has ordered school libraries in the district to begin removing books containing "sexually explicit" material from the shelves and to report the number of books that are removed at a special meeting next week.

The Spotsylvania County School Board issued the directive after a parent raised concerns at a board meeting on Monday about certain books available through a digital app for Riverbend High School's library, the Free Lance-Star reports.

During public comments at the meeting, a mother of a Riverbend student said she was alarmed by "LGBTQIA" fiction she said was immediately available through accessing the library app. After researching the selection, she came across a book she believed contained objectionable content.

The book, "33 Snowfish," by Adam Rapp, has mature themes involving sexual abuse, drug addiction, and child prostitution and features strong language.

A review for Publisher's Weekly described it as a "dark tale about three runaways who understand hatred and violence better than love." The reviewer warned that "Readers may have trouble stomaching the language ... as well as the horrors so flatly depicted and, in the end, so handily overcome."

The reviewer recommends the book for readers ages 15 and up.

After the parent raised her concerns, the school board voted 6-0 to pull "sexually explicit" books from the libraries and asked for a report on the process by which books are selected for inclusion in digital and hard copy collections at different school levels. The board also opened the door to a division-wide library audit.

Two school board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the sexually explicit books burned.

"I think we should throw those books in a fire," Abuismail said.

Twigg added he wants to "see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff."

Abuismail was adamant that there be an immediate audit of school libraries. He told the Free Lance-Star the inclusion of sexually explicit reading materials in school libraries shows how public schools "would rather have our kids reading gay pornography than about Christ."

School division Superintendent Scott Baker said he would take responsibility for any failures in the process for selecting library books.

"I would not have thought to do an audit because I have great faith and trust in our librarians," he said. "If we find something being missed in a process, then we do refine the process. There was no ill intent here. We don't have all the information."

Another school board member, Baron Braswell, observed that what some people find offensive others may not and said division staff should have time to examine their policies and procedures.

"We have to be clear on what is offensive and should not be in our schools and what should be," he said. "You can't do an audit of books without developing screening criteria and you have to have facts in order to do that."

At least two Florida school districts will ignore Gov. DeSantis and implement mask mandates



At least two Florida school districts will implement mask mandates in defiance of an executive order issued by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

The superintendents of Leon and Alachua counties said Monday that they will require all students and faculty in K-12 schools to wear face coverings indoors without giving parents the ability to opt their children out. Their actions directly defy an emergency rule issued Friday by the Florida Department of Health requiring schools to let parents choose what is best for their children — to mask or not, ABC News reported.

The consequences of defying the Department of Health could be the loss of state funding. DeSantis signed an executive order on July 30 empowering the state education commissioner to defund school districts that don't comply with the rules "protecting the rights of parents."

Speaking at a news conference Monday, Leon County school Superintendent Rocky Hanna said that mask mandates are needed to keep children safe as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations surge in Florida. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, Florida has the highest number of confirmed pediatric hospitalizations from the virus, with 32 hospitalizations per day between July 24 and July 30. There are 0.76 kids hospitalized per 100,000 residents, reportedly the highest rate in the country.

"If something happened and things went sideways for us this week and next week as we started school, and heaven forbid we lost a child to this virus, I can't just simply blame the governor of the state. I can't," Hanna said.

"If there's an out and I didn't take the out, and I didn't do what was best for the children here in Tallahassee and Leon County, that's on me," he added.

Parents of K-8 students in Leon County will be able to exempt their kids from the mask mandate if they submit a doctor's note giving a medical reason for doing so. Florida's Hope Scholarship is also available for parents who wish to transfer their kids to another school district to avoid "COVID-19 harassment."

Likewise, Alachua County school Superintendent Carlee Simon told ABC News that she will also violate the governor's order and prevent parents from opting their kids out of mask mandates without a medical reason.

"I'm going to listen to the experts and let them guide this, and I think that's what we need to do. The safety and the security and the quality of instructional hours are what matters right now," Simon said. "I know it appears I'm being combative and I don't want to be combative, but this is the responsibility I have in this position."

She said that in the last two weeks two school employees have died from the virus, 32 have tested positive, and 85 more have been placed in quarantine. Seven students have also tested positive for the virus.

In a statement to ABC News, DeSantis' office clarified that the state won't revoke funding for students from schools that violate the governor's executive order.

Instead, DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw explained, "The State Board of Education could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members, as a narrowly tailored means to address the decision-makers who led to the violation of law."