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Call for Applications of the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research in Frankfurt am Main. Deadline: September 30, 2023

In Elite Universities and The Making of Privilege: Exploring Race and Class in Global Educational Economies, Kalwant Bhopal and Martin Myers examine how elite universities uphold race- and class-based privilege. Drawing on interviews with students and Critical Race Theory, this eye-opening book exposes the extent of the inequality ingrained in the "top tier" of university education, writes Cynthia Lawson. This blogpost originally … Continued

The University of Sydney welcomes applications for the position of Lecturer in Political Economy (Education Focused) (Level B)
The position is based at the School of Social and Political Sciences and will significantly contribute to the Discipline of Political Economy's pluralist, heterodox and interdisciplinary program of political economy teaching and learning at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The appointee will also conduct research in their field of study and/or in pedagogical practice, design and evaluation, and contribute to educational and other leadership and governance priorities in SSPS.
Full information about the role and application process is available on the University of Sydney’s Careers Website.
The post Lecturer in Political Economy (Education Focused) appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Jennifer Huddleston


As headlines have gotten the attention of parents and policymakers, a new Surgeon General's report has raised concerns about children's and teens' time on social media. Some states, including Utah, Arkansas, and California, have introduced bills that claim to "protect children," but these bills would carry significant consequences for speech and privacy. Many parents and policymakers are wondering what could be done to help keep kids safer online without taking such a restrictive —and likely unconstitutional — approach.
The issue of keeping children and teens safe online is as unique as each individual child and family. The best answers for these concerns are not one‐​size‐​fits‐​all and thus will emerge from a variety of market and civil society forces that can respond to these unique needs. In my latest policy brief, I highlight some ways that policymakers who want to support parents and families navigating these questions could do so without the problems for speech, privacy, and parental choice.
Many great resources exist already, from parental controls to resources for having conversations about technology with children and teens, but parents are often unsure of what parental controls are available, how to have conversations with their children about technology, or where to look for guidance. Policymakers could help empower parents by collating existing resources or engaging in other educational opportunities so families can choose the right solutions for their concerns. These resources need not be developed by the government, as a wide array of both industry and civil society groups have already developed such resources.
Second, further research is needed to understand the underlying concerns around issues like teenage mental health and social media. It should not be presumed that technology is always to blame, and how technology can help with these same issues should also be explored. Not only should further research and conversations include scientific and social science research, but policymakers and trusted adults like parents, caregivers, and teachers should also ask children and teenagers why they prefer to spend time online and discuss the value they find in online communities.
Finally, many states already have a digital or computer literacy component in their curriculums. However, many of these curriculums and standards were developed before social media gained popularity. This year, Florida passed a law to include updated online safety and media literacy around social media in a way that allows schools and parents to be aware of and choose the curriculum. This flexible approach does not dictate to children and teenagers what choices they should make, but instead prepares them to both make responsible choices and understand the risks and benefits of using technology.
In short, it is understandable that many parents are concerned about what they hear about children, teenagers, and social media. It is not uncommon for these concerns to arise with technology or in popular culture. Similar concerns have played out over everything from the novel to video games.
Despite these concerns, many children and teens have found valuable online communities, educational opportunities, or new passions online. Rather than rushing to regulate or take away technology from teenagers, parents, and policymakers should look at the tools available to empower and educate all users on how to have a beneficial online experience.

Using novel linked data to track educational and employment trajectories in PeruJoan Jennifer Martinez (PhD candidate in Economics, UC Berkeley) measures the impact of teachers' gender bias on high school students' education and employment trajectories using novel data. This study was supported by CEGA's Psychology and Economics of Poverty Initiative.Data collection through in-person student sessions in Lima, Peru | José Miguel Valverde (Opportunities for Everyone)Although gender wage gaps have declined worldwide, this pattern has been uneven between higher-income and low- and middle-income countries. Labor supply outcomes continue to differ across genders globally, as unemployment and part-time jobs are more common among women. While recent research suggests that these gaps may be partially driven by behaviors that differ across genders — such as salary requests (Roussille, 2021), self-promotion (Exley and Kessler, 2022), and job-attribute preferences (Le Barbanchon et al., 2020, Biasi and Sarsons, 2020) — such behaviors may be reinforced by preferences and attitudes acquired prior to entering the labor market. Gender bias encountered during school, including students' exposure to teacher biases may have long-lasting effects on their labor market outcomes.Measuring the Gender Bias of School InstructorsUsing novel data from two sources — linked administrative information on students' education and employment and nationwide survey responses from public high school teachers and students — I evaluated the long-term effects of gender-bias exposure on 1.7 million public high school students expected to graduate between 2015 and 2019 in Peru.To construct and validate a measure of teachers' gender bias, I developed an online government portal that recorded approximately 2,400 teacher responses and 4,600 student responses to an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and gender-attitudes surveys. Data was also collected in person through sessions in Lima during 2022. I constructed an assessment-based measure of teachers' gender bias comparing the gender differences in teacher-assigned and blindly-graded tests. I veiled this measure with an alternative measure of bias using the IAT. Next, I used Empirical Bayes methods to retrieve teacher-level measures of teachers' gender bias in assessment, later using this measure as a dependent variable for estimating its long-term effects. I estimated the long-term consequences of bias by comparing students enrolled in the same school, grade and year but assigned to different teachers and, therefore, exposed to different levels of gender bias.Study Results and the Long Shadow of Gender BiasStudy results suggest that when high school students are exposed to the gender biases of teachers the effects can be deleterious and long-lasting, impacting factors such as whether students finish school, whether they apply to and attend college, and whether they succeed in formal sector employment as young adults.Math teachers who strongly associate males with scientific disciplines give higher scores to male students, when compared to blindly-graded test scores, while language arts teachers who strongly associate females with humanities-based disciplines award higher grades to female students. Figure 2 shows the distribution of teachers' IAT scores: math teachers who are men more strongly associate males with science than math teachers who are women, and the converse holds for language arts instructors.Distribution of teachers' gender-science Implicit Association Test (IAT) scores | Joan Jennifer MartinezFindings also suggest that female students who are assigned to more biased teachers are less likely to complete high school and apply to college than male students. Assigning female students during one grade to a high school math teacher who exhibits one standard deviation more severe gender bias against girls, compared to the average teacher, reduces girls' likelihood of ever graduating from high school by 1.3 percentage points (1.6 percent of the group mean) relative to the case in which boys are assigned to this teacher.Finally, female students assigned to more biased teachers in high school are less likely to hold a job in the formal sector after graduation and/or have fewer paid working hours relative to their male classmates. Female students who are assigned to a math teacher who is one standard deviation more biased during one academic year are 1.3 percentage points less likely to hold a formal-sector job at ages 18–19 (equivalent to 18 percent of the group mean). Further, this bias exposure causes monthly earnings losses of USD 2.6 at ages 18–19. The magnitude of this effect is large enough that it exacerbates the gender wage gap between 11 and 30 percent between ages 18–23, leading female students to suffer cumulative losses during their first two years in the labor market.Contributions and Policy ImplicationsEducators' gender biases in student assessments are a previously undocumented source of gender gaps in formal sector employment and earnings. These results offer insight into the effects of teacher biases on long-lasting human capital decisions and outcomes, especially the adverse conditions women face. Designing policy interventions to reduce the prevalence of such biases in educational settings is urgent. Another important area for potential study is whether students can be trained to recognize teachers' gender biases in order to prevent these biases from affecting their decisions.The Impact of Teacher Gender Bias on High School Student Outcomes was originally published in CEGA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

That crash you heard was Republican Gov. Jeff Landry
throwing a brick through the plate glass window of business-as-usual leftist
populism infecting Louisiana public policy. And not a moment too soon.

Landry gave the state a head start in knowing some
of his policy priorities of when projected inclement weather bumped up his
inauguration a day early (although he would not officially take the reins for
another 19 hours). In his subsequent speech,
he made clear he would come after certain orthodoxies underpinning policy of
his predecessor Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and allies.

His overall theme – Louisiana as home, but
welcoming back those who had departed it for presumably greener pastures –
pulled back the curtain on what was to come: leaving implied things were wrong
with the state that could be fixed. He gave in the first part a paean to
Louisianans, interspersed with hints of what was to come with assertions that government
was not to "disenfranchise" people nor to be driven by divisive elite interests,
and spoke of a need to "repair and reform" government.

Around this time, the camera gave a glance at
Edwards, who looked like he had swallowed a sour mouse. Then Landry stopped
pulling punches.

He spoke of a people's agenda where "children be
afforded an education that reflects those wholesome principles, and not an
indoctrination behind their mother's back" that would "honor our teachers by
letting them teach and safeguard our schools from the toxicity of unsuitable
subject matter." He empathized with "the victims of crime whose compelling
voices have gone un-heard for far too long, squelched by the misguided noise of
those who had rather coddle criminals than live in peace."

He pledged to heed "all of the science, not just
the selective slices spoon-fed to us by those seeking to profit, in many cases,
from the taxpayer funded subsidies that disregard the health, the safety, and
the employment security of our citizens; hiding the truth about the real
environmental footprints created by the lust for wealth by a chosen few and
their reckless proposals." And, he vowed, while praising those directly serving
in the industry, to correct the health and welfare of our families from being "politicized
to the point of endangerment and disregard for the dignity of our elderly and
our suffering."

Translation: measures on the way to excise neo-racism
posing as anti-racism in instruction as foundational principles and the steering
of children towards faddish ideas about their identities, even without parental
knowledge, whether in the classroom or elsewhere, in the state's educational
institutions from kindergarten through the university.

Translation: significant reversal of Edwards' criminal
justice changes and installing other reforms to ensure accountability is brought
not just for criminal behavior but also to the justice system to have it protect
first and foremost the law-abiding citizenry.

Translation: sweeping away Edwards' policies and government
infrastructure built around those based on the junk science of climate alarmism
to take an informed and balanced approach towards upkeeping and burnishing the
environment.

Translation: stop leaders from measuring success
in health care delivery by how many people they can put on government insurance
rather than seeking efficiency and giving priority to the most needy and vulnerable,
and instead start concentrating on making sure those in genuine need have meaningful
access to health care with the most vulnerable receiving priority, by spending  more wisely while sidelining special interests
trying to distort the system, whether those be ideologically and/or
economically motivated.

At the ceremony's conclusion, fireworks erupted,
auguring what will come over the next four years on the policy front as Landry
and like-minded legislators try to reverse finally a century of misguided agendas
that veered even more off course over the past eight years. Only that, as the
speech suggested, will bring home Louisianans separated from both state soil physically
by or in morale attitudinally over the wages of that history. Not a moment too
soon, it's morning in Louisiana again.

Colleen Hroncich


In the United States today, the word "liberal" is often linked to Democrats and others on the political left who favor using government to implement social change. But the word actually comes from the Latin root liber, which means free. And that is at the heart of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE), which was founded in 1999. ICLE's mission is to renew Catholic schools "by drawing on the Church's tradition of education, which frees teachers and students for the joyful pursuit of faith, wisdom, and virtue."
According to the Institute, most modern schools are based on a pragmatic, utilitarian, secular philosophy that is fragmented and focused on skills, job training, and standardized tests. A Catholic classical liberal arts education, on the other hand, emphasizes wisdom, independent thought, and discovery while focusing on the whole child created in the image of God.
ICLE provides a number of resources for schools that want to adopt the Catholic classical educational philosophy. For schools that are considering this path, ICLE offers presentations for parents, clergy, and boards as well as training for teachers and school leaders. There are also conferences, workshops on various topics, publications, and site visits.
New this year after a pilot program in Denver, ICLE is launching a Catholic Educator Formation and Credential (CEFC) program. This 18‐​month program, delivered online and in‐​person, is designed to be an alternative to state licensure that can be used by Catholic dioceses across the nation.
Emily Zgonc is the principal at St. Michael School, a Catholic school in western Pennsylvania that was founded in 1899. This year, the school is embarking on a new ICLE partnership that Emily is very excited about. "ICLE has been working with Catholic schools across the United States to support a refreshing renewal of Catholic education," she explains.
"We're going back to our roots of what made Catholic education so effective and vibrant: the importance of story and wonder. Our students will be reading great stories that they can delve deeply into, befriending and learning life lessons from the characters. Instead of bland 'social studies,' our students will learn the history of western civilization and where they fit in that story. Going beyond a typical science class, we're going to incorporate nature studies so our students can 'get their hands dirty' and dig into what they are learning about, awakening a sense of wonder and leading to deep questions. Our newly revamped curriculum will help our students grow to become intelligent, curious, and engaging adults."
St. Michael School is not alone. Interest in classical education, including ICLE, has exploded in recent years. Earlier this week, ICLE hosted its national conference at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. While the Institute expanded conference capacity by 25 percent compared to last year, the event still sold out quicker than in the past.
I attended the ICLE conference to participate on a panel about school choice and Catholic schools. One of the topics I discussed was how the government largely monopolized education in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which crowded out many other models. School choice policies, like tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts, and vouchers, are helping to correct that problem. As interest grows in education options beyond local district schools—including interest in classical Catholic schools like ICLE partners—the expansion of school choice programs will help families access these options.

Colleen Hroncich


Education entrepreneurs come from all walks of life. Monica Hall, founder of THRIVE Christian Academy near Atlanta, didn't set out to start a school. She was serving as an Army chaplain and gradually realized her soldiers needed more support. This prompted her to open a community center focused on well being. She was also a youth pastor at a nearby church, and people started asking her to add tutoring at the center or start a school. Monica was initially reluctant, but after a few different people suggested something similar, she realized maybe this was what she was meant to do.
In 2013, Monica opened THRIVE Christian Academy, which stands for Truth, Humility, Respect, Integrity, Victory, and Excellence—the six pillars of the school. There were initially just two students—both children whose parents helped inspire her to create the school. Because she only had two students, Monica met up with homeschoolers throughout the year for various activities. She finished the school year with three students and gave them each a "brag book" that compiled some of the things they'd done during the year.
One of the parents shared photos of the brag book on Facebook where a local teacher saw it. The teacher showed up at Monica's door one day and said she wanted to be part of the school. "I don't have any kindergartners and you teach kindergarten," Monica recalls telling the teacher. The teacher said three of her fellow teachers also wanted to join THRIVE and assured Monica that students would come if she hired the teachers.







She was right—THRIVE opened the new school year with 56 students, pre‐​K3 to 5th grade. Enrollment kept growing. Monica added a middle school and then a high school. The first graduating class was 2020—the COVID class they called themselves. In Georgia, things started opening back up from COVID-19 restrictions by the end of May, so they held that first graduation on Juneteenth. Monica expects to have around 300 students when school is back in session this fall.
THRIVE utilizes a unique blended curriculum that pairs high‐​quality video lessons with in‐​person instruction from dedicated teachers. This allows students to have a more tailored, individualized experience. Monica estimates that around 40 percent of her students have special needs. Most of them just need extra attention and are integrated into the general education population.
"Some have a significant educational delay, like maybe they're in 6th grade but they read on a 2nd grade level," she says. "So, let's figure out where the stepping stone was missed. Let's fill in that gap, and let's just watch you accelerate." 14 students have more intensive needs and are in their own classroom with a dedicated teacher and aide, which is pretty impressive for such a small school.







The school also offers a variety of extracurricular academic activities, including debate, robotics, geography and spelling bees, a science fair, and math, history, and quiz bowls. Each year, they take an enrichment trip; previous destinations have included Washington D.C., New Orleans, Memphis, Niagara Falls, Baltimore, and Chicago.







Monica wants to make sure THRIVE alum have plenty of options in the future. "We make sure that they apply to at least three colleges, and we have a 100% acceptance rate now," she explains. "So far from the senior classes, probably about 60% of them are in college." The others are pursuing various careers like the Army, EMT, modeling, and entrepreneurship. "For me, the point of requiring them to apply is that they know they always have that option," says Monica. If they start down one path and it doesn't work out, they'll "forever know that push comes to shove I've been accepted to schools before. I can go back and go to college if I decide to do that."
Like most of the education entrepreneurs I talk to, Monica says if you have the urge to open your own school, just do it. "It wasn't the ideal time for me when I started THRIVE—my son was two weeks old on the first day. I carried him in there in a car seat, fed him, burped him, put him down, and went next door to welcome two 1st graders for the first day of school," she says. "But the feeling isn't going to leave. You're going to keep feeling this tug until you do it, so you're going to be sleepless anyway. You may as well just go ahead and jump out there and trust God to catch you."

Erec Smith


There is no such thing as a panacea; few things are actual cure‐​alls in themselves, especially when it pertains to social issues. However, the closest thing to a panacea for contemporary social injustice—both actual and perceived—is the concept of individualism. It is the closest foil to what is, arguably, the most dangerous aspect of critical social justice activism: race fatalism, i.e., the idea that especially minoritized groups have no locus of control and are at the mercy of their hegemonic oppressors.
Unfortunately, too many social justice activists embrace this fatalism and, both implicitly and explicitly, demonize individualism as an inherently oppressive, white supremacist concept.
Race fatalism cannot exist without the idea that all people from a given race experience the world similarly (race essentialism), and that we are forever defined by our home environments (linked fate), concepts that could not be more opposed to individualism. Thus, to embrace individualism is to relinquish faith in the fundamentals of critical social justice.
Fortunately, when individualism destroys these fundamentals steeped in powerlessness, it gives birth to agency and freedom conducive to an empowered and fulfilled life.
The most egregious aspects of critical social justice activism—now wryly and/​or disdainfully referred to as "woke" activism—can be considered footnotes of fatalism: skin‐​color and or gender determine if you are a perpetual oppressor or a perpetual victim; racism will never go away and can only be managed; black kids can't learn math like other kids; all people who look the same or live in the same area are bound to a particular outlook and particular fate. All these suggest the "truth" of race essentialism, that racism is always already present, and that even words, if coming from an oppressor, are literal violence.
The power of this fatalism is weakened by the concept of methodological individualism, what can be understood as an embrace of free will with an acknowledgement that we live an interdependent existence, i.e., "no man is an island."
In recent essays, I describe such individualism as an antidote to race essentialism and linked fate. In "Individualism is a Social Justice Issue," I insist that the embrace of individualism can enhance racial justice through its implied refutation of linked fate and its conduciveness to defensive confidence.
Regarding linked fate, I write, "linked fate denotes the use of the social standing of a group as a proxy for one's individual identity, i.e., an individual's fate is inevitably and intricately linked to that of the group. Any individual that seems to escape this fate is considered an exception." Linked fate depends on the debunked stimulus‐​response theory in behavioral science: the idea that people who share the same race or culture experience the world the same way. Senator Tim Scott's passionate rebuttal of linked fate focuses on the idea that educational reform is the thing that can unlink fate most efficiently and instill a sense of agency in students, a sentiment elaborated upon by Ian Rowe.
Agency, or "agential fate," a concept of individual efficacy I support in "Ditching Our Discourses of Doom" (excerpted here), "can be construed as a confluence of pre‐​established circumstances—one's life experiences—combined with free will." This concept necessitates the belief "that each individual in a particular context may react to stimulus in different ways; that they each may have a different desired future state; and that their decisions and choices matter in relation to achieving those future states, we enter into a place of agency, possibility, and hope."
This agency, possibility, and hope imply the concept of defensive confidence I reference in a recent Discourse article. If people have defensive confidence—the confidence that one can successfully defend one's ideas in given situations—they are more likely to engage the world more courageously as individuals unbeholden to a group and is, ironically, more likely to have one's mind changed precisely because of this willingness to engage.
These concepts suggest the benefits individualism can have to a sense of social justice and, especially, in combatting the fatalism of social justice activism. Individuals can think independently, adapt to circumstances, and, therefore, more effectively exercise agential fate and defensive confidence, thus better ensuring an attempt to communicate across differences.
Sadly, the concept of individualism is almost anathema in critical social justice circles, in which group identity is favored and individualism is considered an oppressive concept. Race essentialism, which implies concepts like linked fate and group consciousness, is a foundational concept in critical social justice that is diametrically opposed to individualism.
Individualism is not only the best thing for curing the ills of social injustice; it is also, by nature, the downfall of critical social justice ideology. For this reason, maybe "panacea's" more colloquial synonym, "magic bullet" would be more apropos.

Four years ago, the largest single mistake in U.S.
public health history began its commencement, leaving former Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards to manufacture the most unsavory portion of his legacy, along with
others.

With a paucity of information about the Wuhan
coronavirus in mid-March, 2020, it's difficult to fault the extreme steps taken
initially over the next few months. These comprised of closing schools, closing
of all but the smallest public gatherings, restricting commercial activities,
and requiring social distancing including face coverings.

Yet
within three months it had become clear enough that much of this was or had
been ineffective. Because the virus was quite selective in who got hit hardest –
those with co-morbidities, followed by the elderly – the overwhelming majority
of the public, and especially children, would face no more than an inconvenient
respiratory virus of relatively short duration. In this time span, it became
clear that these punitive measures Edwards imposed for the vast
majority cost much more than any benefits that might accrue – learning and
developmental loss among children, tremendous economic dislocation, and assaults
on personal liberties.

Alternative models already existed for Edwards'
consideration by the time the 2020 school year commenced. Internationally, on
almost every measure the light touch practiced by Sweden avoided these costs.
Nationally, other
states' governors far less severely locked down their states and reaped the
same benefits.

Edwards made matters worse, when availability
arrived by the end of the year, by imposing unnecessary and intrusive
vaccination policies on adults and worst of all on children without
co-morbidities. The research has shown because of the extremely low benefit for
children that becomes microscopic for those below the age of 5 since almost
none suffer more than minorly, because detrimental side effect risks remained,
even if very low in probability, overall children were put at unnecessary risk
with vaccinations.

Even
if he backed off from his goal of forcing vaccinations and/or frequent testing
on state employees for its impracticality and bad optics (by the fall of 2021),
for a time he tried to strongarm educational institutions into forcing their employees
and students to have the same. Colleges were allowed free rein, and they
stupidly did, to impose such rules. Worse, he pushed through a rule forcing
that vaccination on school children that, again, proved so at odds with the science
and public that only months later he had
to retreat sheepishly.

Chalk up his enthusiasm for defying the science to
his leftist impulse towards command and control, where mandates increased
government power. As well, being a politician who focused more on retaining power
than in deferring it to allow individuals greater autonomy, he fell prey to the
zero
COVID fantasy and attendant myths
(such as acquired immunity wasn't as good as vaccination, vaccines would prevent
spread, and a host of others) to stave of fear that his political standing
would be injured significantly with every single death that could be traced
back to the virus.

Which ended
up spreading blood on his hands. While overaggressive pandemic policies may
have saved some lives, statistics would verify over time that on net they cost
more. People couldn't access crucial medical interventions and restrictions
produced mental stress that, the data showed, led to Louisiana ranking among
the highest in excess deaths not attributable directly to the virus.

It's not like any of these warts and alternative
approaches to his weren't known within months of the pandemic descending, yet
for the next couple of years that he continued to insist on strict measures (and
ineffective ones; besides indicating that through the links in this post and
the links within those, there's here,
here,
here,
here,
and here,
among many others). Unfortunately, he had many other enablers who either didn't
stand up to speak necessary truth to power, or who actively aided him in leaving
this miserable legacy.

If it was Edwards who had blood on his hands from
his pandemic policy, the apparatchik most responsible for handing him
the knife was former state epidemiologist Joe Kanter. He came to the office a
few months into the pandemic when it was peaking, upon the previous occupant
resigning for what he said were personal reasons (who months
later took a private sector job on the east coast). If Edwards was wanting
a yes man to add a veneer of respect to his decisions, he found the right guy.

Kanter supplied
full-throated support to a number of now-discredited policy choices by
Edwards, with whom he shares political ideology. He kept up a drumbeat of alarmist
rhetoric that never panned out and acted as chief cheerleader for every
restriction or as thugee
trying to suppress dissent. Even as recently as a year ago, in his official
capacity he was pimping vaccination for infants. He didn't last two months into
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry's
term, either or both because Landry couldn't stomach his policy preferences and
history or he knew because of that Landry would show him the door sometime soon;
regardless, he has been shamelessly unrepentant
to the end.

If Kanter was Edwards' consigliere in the
unfolding poor and unscientific policy choices, a pair of milquetoast Republican
legislative leaders ended up facilitating these. Former House Speaker Clay
Schexnayder and former Sen. Pres. Page Cortez, despite multiple opportunities
offered by their party members, did little to put up resistance to Edwards'
agenda. They allowed many bills that would have clipped Edwards' wings, if not
reverse his moves, either to die
in their chambers or didn't
back their revival as part of veto override votes. They even refused until
too late to back a petition
that could have done the same.

While a number of almost exclusively Republicans
in the legislature and in some local governments did their best to overcome Edwards'
destructive pandemic agenda, one prominent appointed official stood out
heroically: Superintendent of Education Cade
Brumley, who didn't assume the post until a couple of months into the
pandemic. He defied Edwards and Kanter by refusing to order students out of
classrooms statewide after the last couple months of the 2020 academic year, leaving
it up to districts to decide, and he eventually he scrapped the rule that said
students without symptoms but who had family members come down with the virus couldn't
attend in-person instruction.

In fact, as a result of Brumley's decisions, Louisiana
students' learning weathered better than just about any states' students in the
pandemic period, and the dismal overall rankings the state received for
pandemic policy didn't hit bottom solely because its education policy
performance turned out near the top. (I was anything but his many media critics,
but if it helps, "OK,
Brumley was right").

Four years have passed, and what did and didn't
work and who were the responsible villains and heroes need public refreshing so
that those whose moves disserved the state and those moves don't get lost in a
memory hole (a binning no doubt encouraged by those at fault) that would hinder
future publics from avoiding the same mistakes again.

Colleen Hroncich


"I'm not happy in my position as an educator at a school, and my son's not happy going to school." When Iman Alleyne realized this, her next thought was "What can we do?" This question ultimately resulted in Kind Academy, a microschool in Coral Springs, Florida.
Iman had looked for a play‐​based preschool for her son without much success. "I chose the closest thing that I thought was play based," she recalls. "But even there, developmentally, there were moments where I saw things that just didn't make sense—like forcing three‐ and four‐​year olds to write three sentences before they could go play."
Similarly, she saw things she disagreed with at the school where she was working. She was particularly troubled by mandatory silent lunches and kids losing recess for misbehavior. To Iman, these were the kids who really needed recess for a chance to burn energy during the school day.
She pulled her son from his school at the end of the school year and began homeschooling him. "I started getting into the homeschooling groups, and I quickly recognized that this is the way education should be done. The kids were interested. The parents were engaged in their kids' learning. Everything was very passion based," says Iman.







Since she'd been conventionally trained, Iman was shocked by some of what she learned from the other homeschoolers. "They would tell me things like 'you can just do school for an hour a day, maybe 45 minutes for kindergarten.' My mind was blown by the things that these homeschoolers were doing," she says. But Iman's experiences were also beneficial to the homeschoolers, and some started asking her to help them plan their children's educational paths. Before too long, Kind Academy was born.
In creating Kind Academy, Iman incorporated the best parts of what she'd learned in her education career and from homeschoolers—and left out the parts she found objectionable. There's also a strong Montessori influence. Children are in mixed‐​age classrooms with a good degree of choice and freedom of movement throughout the day as they learn through discovery.
The school day generally starts with unstructured social time and then moves to a morning meeting where they discuss their goals for the day and what's happening that week. They also talk about the character trait they're focusing on that month. "We focused on assertiveness during the last month of school—learning how to speak up and how to ask for things, but in a way that is appropriate," Iman explains.
The students then shift to academics, with every student working through an individualized learning path. "In the beginning, they take a diagnostic so we see where they are. So no two kids are really doing the same thing. Even the curriculum might be different for different kids," says Iman. "We also put them in small groups where they'll do personalized learning—it might be a one‐​to‐​three or one‐​to‐​four ratio with kids who are doing similar things for math, writing, and reading."







After academics, they do project‐​based learning, which is usually an enrichment activity in things like nature, art, play, science, or stem. The children take a field trip nearly every day. They usually go to a nearby park, but they've also visited forests, wetlands, and a nature preserve. To wrap up the day after the field trip they have quiet time, which usually means reading, puzzles, or games.
To support parents and kids during COVID-19, Iman started offering virtual classes. "Probably within a week we went online. First we started teaching our circle time online, and then within about two weeks, we started sending out kits to everybody. We put all of our sensory, nature, art, play, math activities, and reading activities into a box, and we shipped it to parents or they came and picked it up," Iman says.
When she began offering classes on Outschool​.com, Iman says it took off. "We went global, where we had families coming in from all over the world and seeing what we did. We did a lot of our same classes that we were doing in person, but then we started doing a lot more for older kids. Middle school is where we exploded." At its peak, she had 3,000 kids from around the world taking Kind Academy classes during COVID-19.
Iman now offers Kind Online School as well as individual classes on Outschool. She's also started a "Launch Your Kind" program to help education entrepreneurs open their own Kind Academies. Through that, she offers support with curriculum, marketing, enrollment, payment systems, and more. She currently has 10 "baby" Kind Academies planning to open for the upcoming school year—seven in Florida and three in other states.
When asked what advice she has for others considering a similar path, Iman points to the three Ps: passion, purpose, and a plan. On the planning front, she says, "Try to find a way to make an income. A lot of people jump into it right away and don't have any sort of idea of how they're going to earn income. In Launch Your Kind, I always stress budgeting—going in there and understanding that it's going to cost money to do things."
Iman has a new Launch Your Kind cohort starting July 27, 2023, so it's a great time to check it out if you've been considering starting your own microschool.

Advice to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and the
Louisiana Legislature when it comes to the state's higher education institutions
concerning the anti-Semitic
Trojan Horse of diversity, equity, and inclusion policy and personnel: don't
trust them but make them earn your trust through well-designed legislation.

While DEI could be as innocuous and benign as
ensuring laws are followed against well-defined discriminatory practices, in
practice in academia it has become an insidious worldview that alleges people
not of color who allegedly control government, business, and societal institutions
use that power, whether consciously, allegedly to oppress all others through any
practice, whether in law, that in terms of outcomes in the distribution of
resources, whether tangible or monetary, generally leaves all others with relatively
fewer that for redress demands policies to redistribute those resources to
those others. Increasingly it has come under scrutiny for its demonizing of whites
as oppressors by inclination solely by their racial identification, its efforts
to grant preferential treatment to non-whites, and its propagation as
foundational in educating across all disciplines starting from the moment a
child begins schooling.

Landry and a number of legislators ran against
allowing DEI as a worldview to infect educational institutions, and a number of
returning legislators had backed, some publicly, a measure last year that would
have made higher education institutions report spending on DEI that
unfortunately didn't pass. Their concerns are part of a larger trend among the
states that have passed legislation to curtail DEI ideology's propagation on
campuses in their classrooms and administrations.

That has gotten the attention of state university and
colleges. Last
spring, I reviewed all of the state's campuses for DEI infrastructure and
noted that among senior institutions, with notable exceptions, all had at least
one administrator with duties identified with DEI and several had an administrative
structure specifically designated for DEI with multiple personnel. Some went
further, with individual college employees, whether faculty, having such
duties. The one exception was the least diverse set of institutions,
historically black universities and colleges.

Louisiana State University had the most extensive
apparatus, with dedicated associate deans in colleges to the task. But perhaps
no more, reports
the pro-DEI leftist media outlet Louisiana Illuminator, which notes that
Pres. William Tate IV recently had renamed bureaucracies to remove words
associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion, explaining last year that
language would be changed but would not interfere with principles and couched
in what was "legally defensible." Nor do colleges there appear any more to list
associate deans with having related DEI responsibilities, and other DEI-related
materials on its website have disappeared.

A similar, perhaps diluted, dynamic is playing out
at other University of Louisiana System schools. Looking at the largest, my
alma mater the University of New Orleans doesn't even list, with one exception,
anything to do with DEI, the exception being an employee award where DEI is
a criterion for its awarding. It's harder to scrub its past news feed,
however, which at one time trumpets winning
a $1.2 million grant to create a "center for equity and diversity" in the
hard science of engineering, where you figure critical thinking and mathematics
mostly would matter. But almost 18 months later, the website makes no
indication that the center exists. At Louisiana Tech University, its college of
business has put on five DEI in
the Workplace forums although it's not indicated whether there will be one
in 2024 as of this writing, but doesn't offer much else other than its
Multicultural Affairs office.

It seems the University of Louisiana Lafayette was
in the running to compete with LSU as the most DEI-oriented campus in the
state, having an Office for Campus Diversity
with several employees located in the office of its president that had a plan
from 2019-22 to move the campus towards greater facility to DEI that asked,
among others thing, to "Review, assess and develop internal policies and procedures
throughout the University's operations that support diversity, equity and
inclusion" that may have led to a ratings
instrument of employees attempting to measure their fidelity to DEI, as
well as featured an attempt to construct "Principles
of Community." However, activity seems to have dropped off in the past year,
its website indicates.

Don't be fooled. By its nature, academia is full
of behind-the-scenes jockeying and is well- versed in presenting a public face
that resembles one side of Janus. DEI has infiltrated
academia extensively, and many in academia, especially at the
administrative level, flatter themselves as a kind of resistance to whatever
powers-that-be they may imagine to keep on with furtive missions out of public
view that validate their worldviews. If they are pulling back because they see
Landry and a legislative majority in opposition to their agenda, the pullback
is strategic and, in their minds, temporary but doesn't stop attempts to
advance the agenda from continuing in the shadows and in less obtrusive ways.

To prevent this subversion, DEI has to be pulled
out by its roots in Louisiana. Model legislation in Texas and Florida, among
other states, provide the means to best accomplish this. These, among other
things, prohibit public universities from creating diversity offices, hiring
employees to conduct DEI work, requiring any related DEI training, or asking
for diversity statements from students and employees – which can weigh the
required confessionals equally with measurements of merit for hiring and
retention that half of all institutions nationally already use. Also, legislation
should ban public universities from spending state or federal funds for DEI
programs and activities that support or engage in political or social activism
unless required by an outside accrediting body.

DEI cloaked in instruction is trickier to handle.
Even as the assumptions behind DEI are neo-racist wolves posing as anti-racist
sheep, students benefit from understanding the flaws behind those which
requires exposure to the tenets of DEI even if they comprise a thinly-veiled hate
speech. Abuse of students by ascribing to them unsavory characteristics merely because
of their race, sex, disability status, or religious background (or lack
thereof) doesn't serve a legitimate instructional purpose in and of itself.

Legislation could address this not by banning all discussion
of DEI-based worldviews in the classroom, but by mandating that any worldview
taught that denigrates groups of people defined by protected classes under
civil rights law – such as DEI's arguing that white people by virtue of being genetically
white naturally oppress non-whites in allegedly how government, business, and
society are structured that only can be overcome through DEI reprogramming –
must also be critiqued honestly in the presentation of material, with a
statement required in course syllabi informing students of this. More and more robust
explicatory material is what sets the stage for sharpening critical thinking ability
among students.

As
Landry noted in his inaugural speech, genuine learning rather than
indoctrination should guide education in Louisiana, and he and legislators
should make it a priority to pass legislation guaranteeing this regardless of
what words higher education institutions use to clarify or obscure their preferences
and agendas.

After months of will-they-won't-they speculation, the Xi Jinping-Joe Biden summit in San Francisco next week is on. Unless of course some black swan should spoil the diplomatic inertia drawing the two leaders together.After jumping the hosting queue to take on the convening duties for this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting, the U.S. has now guaranteed that its own agenda for the summit — supply chain resilience, digital trade, connectivity, small and medium-sized enterprises, climate change and sustainability — will be well and truly overshadowed by the focus on the face-to-face between the two most powerful leaders in the world. The sideline session will be the main event.In the world of "omnicrisis" — in particular, the Ukraine conflict and the Israel-Hamas war and siege of Gaza, and the global challenge of climate change — China and the U.S. have to be in communication, settled into a working rivalry based on the Biden administration's "three Cs" framework of cooperation, competition and confrontation. Washington and Beijing are both an indispensable partner and an inevitable adversary — they can and will clash, even in a manner reminiscent of the brinkmanship of the Cold War, but for global stability, peace and environmental sustainability, they must work together on critical international crises, or at least talk about them. A China-U.S. war, which strategists in both countries have spent countless hours gaming out, would be a meaningless contest, with no winner, only losers and unfathomable collateral damage.Biden and Xi could have met in September at the G20 summit in Delhi, but Xi was a no-show — possibly to avoid a visit to India, the geopolitical belle-of-the-ball with which China has a bubbling border dispute. More likely he needed instead to attend to urgent domestic matters such as China's weak economy and troubles with two disappeared ministers who were eventually sacked. The Chinese have remained officially non-committal about Xi's attendance at APEC too, but Foreign Minister Wang Yi's two-day October visit to Washington, capped by an hour-long encounter with Biden at the White House, has apparently confirmed the appointment.Both sides appear willing to keep the tête-à-tête on track. For one thing, the stream of high-level contacts since Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Beijing in June, a visit postponed by the "spy balloon" brouhaha, has continued unabated. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was in China shortly after, followed by Biden's climate envoy John Kerry. Commerce chief Gina Raimondo, the administration's point person on economic sanctions and trade restrictions, arrived in August. There have been telling cameo appearances, too. In July, centenarian Henry Kissinger flew in to be celebrated as an "old friend" by the Chinese leadership including Xi. In October, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Beijing, meeting Xi two days after the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists. Later in the month, California Governor Gavin Newsom breezed through China on a tour pointedly focused on climate change. Widely regarded as a presidential hopeful, Newsom was the first American governor to visit China in over four years and the first to be received by Xi in over six years. Signs that China is eager for the Biden-Xi meeting to go ahead and for the two countries to put their relationship on a more productive footing have been discernible. Wang Yi has been meeting for hours of talks with both Blinken and Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan at different venues around the world. Besides receiving American officials in Beijing, China has reciprocated with visits to the U.S. by Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in May, Wang Yi at the end of October, and on the eve of the APEC meeting Vice Premier He Lifeng, Yellen's counterpart. But possibly the most significant re-engagement move so far was the resumption of defense contacts at the end of October when Chinese and American officials met briefly at a multilateral security forum in Beijing. The U.S. had been trying to restart military-to-military talks which China cut off after then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022. American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had reached out to his counterpart Li Shangfu, also a U.S.-sanctioned individual, requesting a meeting on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore in June, but was refused. Li was removed from his position on October 24. Austin has requested a meeting with his yet-unnamed counterpart at an ASEAN defense ministers gathering in Jakarta on November 16. Where does all this put the China-U.S. relationship? There is little expectation that the Biden-Xi meeting will yield any significant outcome. When they met in Bali in November 2022, the two had discussed "guardrails" to prevent the contentious relationship from deteriorating into conflict. Some of those preventive mechanisms are now in place. The two governments launched working groups on economic and financial issues in September, with the former meeting for the first time by video conference on October 24. Both groups are supposed to convene again when Yellen and He confer in San Francisco on November 9-10.The diplomatic exchange between China and the U.S. is arguably the highest and broadest since the eighth and final round of the bilateral Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) in 2016. The S&ED was a series of senior-level discussions launched in a limited format during the George W. Bush administration and expanded in 2009 by Barack Obama. While the two nations are not yet back to that level of engagement, the launch of mechanisms for regular consultations goes against the persistent narrative of utter negativity. To be sure, the two sides may be talking at cross purposes, merely airing grievances. China is seeking relief or at least a pause from all the sanctions and exclusions, particularly on advanced technology transfer and financial flows. The U.S., however, is unlikely to comply, especially with the 2024 election campaign already underway. One of Beijing's demands for Xi's presence in San Francisco is for Washington to refrain from announcing fresh trade restrictions before, during or soon after the Biden meeting. Other complications are on the horizon. Some regional analysts argue that Beijing will want to challenge Washington at this geopolitically fraught time. But the Chinese are no less stretched diplomatically and, more to the point, are facing serious economic challenges at home. The Taiwan presidential election in January will surely be preceded and followed by the mainland's customary military menacing. Washington's drift away from its traditional ambiguity on defending the island is the biggest irritant in China-U.S. relations. Actions by both China and the Philippines in the South China Sea have raised fears of a conflict that could draw in the U.S., which has a mutual defense treaty with Manila. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is planning on passing more security laws in the first half of 2024. As the U.S. elections approach, the political rhetoric and policy making in Washington are likely to get more performative and provocative.This is not (yet) a G2 world, but Xi and Biden could capture imaginations by together engineering a diplomatic masterstroke in San Francisco if they were to announce a trio of cooperative projects: first, a joint effort to convene relevant parties to resolve the Israel-Hamas war and set a pathway to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; second, a collaborative initiative to bring peace to Ukraine; and third, an agreement to catalyze countries to increase commitments at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai in December. And while they are at it, they should endorse rebounding post-pandemic bilateral cultural and educational exchange (Washington can reinstate the Fulbright program with Hong Kong and the mainland), renew the U.S.-China science and technology agreement set to expire early next year, and reboot China's program to loan pandas to American zoos. An impossibility? Optimists in these dire times should dare to dream.