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The founder of the Legal Accountability Project explores how we got here and how we get out

The most persuasive argument in favor of school choice is not the promise of higher test scores, the beneficial effects of competition, or even an escape hatch from failing public schools—it's the power of choice to make a more satisfying range of school cultures and curriculum available than traditional public schools can accommodate.
The post The Best Argument for School Choice appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Call for Papers for a Summer School at Klagenfurt, Austria, on September 11–16, 2023. Deadline: June 19, 2023

Mustafa Akyol and Neal McCluskey


America's culture wars are sometimes perceived as conflict between "conservatives," who defend the values of white Christians, and "progressives," who defend the rights of minorities. But there is something new these days complicating this always too‐​simple dichotomy: Some minorities are also quite conservative in their moral standards, and they are raising their voices against impositions from the progressive side.
This is evident in ongoing protests by Muslim and Christian families, among others, from Maryland to Los Angeles, against public schools pushing lessons about gender and sexuality that contradict religious values. "Protect our children" these families have called together, adding, "Protect religious freedom."
On June 24, in National Review, we highlighted this new development in a co‐​authored article: "Defuse the Culture War with Liberated Education."
First, we argued that the newly emerging Muslim‐​Christian alliance for traditional values offers interesting lessons:
There are lessons for both political camps. America's assertive progressives should realize that theirs is a counterproductive campaign. By advancing their ideals through assertion and coercion, instead of persuasion, they are alienating many people, including some minorities they claim to defend. Among Muslims, they are also giving ammunition to hardliners, who preach that Western freedom is a lie, that it only means freedom from religion and tradition, and thus Muslims should reject it everywhere.

On the other hand, America's conservatives should reconsider their distance from minorities, including a rigid stance against immigration, symbolized by Donald Trump's famous "Build the Wall" campaign. Those on the political right should realize that they may well share values with some of the people that they want to push behind that wall.

Then, we also proposed a solution to these increasingly intense culture wars in American education:
We believe that the best strategy is to keep government out of decisions about values and culture whenever possible, including — perhaps especially — in education, which is about nothing less than shaping human minds. This requires allowing more choice, so families can decide for themselves what their kids will learn. Instead of diverse people being forced to fight, they can freely pursue what they think is right.

The solution, in other words, was in going back to the classical liberal foundations of America:
Government should not discriminate against LGBTQ individuals, nor should it discriminate against people with traditional values. The only way to treat all equally, while advancing genuine tolerance, is the good old American value of limited government.

Read the whole article here in National Review. Read more about School Choice here. And see our catalogue of culture war in public schools – the Public Schooling Battle Map – here.

On April 13, the School of Party Politics for Women Politicians was launched within the framework of the project "Strengthening Sustainable Political Culture Among Georgian Political Parties." This project

Are the members of the Bossier Parish School Board
and Superintendent Jason Rowland merely ignoramuses, or are they so craven as
to put their own self-interests ahead of children's needs?

Last week, the Board met – and in special session,
no less, at increased taxpayer expense so triggered they were – to pass a
resolution specifically opposing HB 745 by
Republican Rep. Julie
Emerson. The bill would create education savings accounts that could be
used to pay for educational expenses, including attendance of nonpublic schools
but not home schooled, phased in over three years starting next academic year.
Upper-middle-income and higher families would receive 55 percent of the state's
per student contribution to local schools, others would receive 80 percent, and
for those families with children with disabilities each would receive 160
percent. Any funds raised locally by a local education agency would remain
unaffected.

Yet ultimately the Board voted unanimously (Republican
Sherri Pool being absent) for the resolution,
which was full of dubious claims easily rebutted. Unfortunately, financial
statistics about education notoriously are difficult to come by and often quite
out-of-date. The federal government has some final numbers only as recently as 2021
and the state in aggregate form has others incredibly only up to academic year 2018.
Still, some conclusions may be drawn from these and likely relational rankings
and other comparisons haven't changed a whole lot in the present.

Those data invalidate the resolution's assertion
that Louisiana "has failed to adequately fund K-12 public education." In fact,
from 2002-2020,
inflation-adjusted education revenue grew 32.1 percent that ranked 12th highest
in the U.S. Inflation adjusted salaries on average did dip 1.7 percent, 27th
best among the states, but that was more than offset by a near doubling in
benefits over the period, also the 12th highest in growth rate.

These trends place Louisiana right in the middle
of the pack as far as revenues
and expenditures on a per pupil basis, ranking 26th in revenues
and 28th in current spending. Collectively, the state's LEAs are
over-reliant on federal (10th) and local (18th) sources
compared to other states, making its LEAs less reliant on state dollars (39th).
That's as a deliberate consequence of the Minimum Foundation Program, that
reduces state aid to LEAs that provide more support for education, although not
entirely proportionally so for every extra local dollar of effort they lose
something less than a dollar in MFP aid.

That base rate per pupil this year of just over
$4,000, before any additions for factors such as local effort, comprised 30
percent of the 2021 average total current spending of just under $13,400. In light
of these numbers, it's hard to argue that in comparison to other states that
not enough resources are coming education's way, and even if you did it's clear
the state has done more than most to boost its contribution in recent years.

Although overall current spending is in about in
the middle, that pattern doesn't replicate across categories. Among the states,
total per student instruction spending ranks 32nd, while general
administration is 19th and school administration is 23rd.
Any complaints about teacher compensation being too low – and remember that Louisiana ranks only
37th in cost of living among the states so on an adjusted basis
its spending would rank higher, including on salaries and benefits – must begin
by questioning disproportionately high degree of spending outside of the
classroom, even as the state mandates that 70
percent of spending be for instruction.

Bossier Parish is much worse insofar as
instructional effort. Whereas across the state 64.1 percent of spent dollars
went to teacher compensation, in Bossier it was only 54.7 percent, which ranked
fifth lowest among the state's LEAs in AY
2018. Yet in terms of total
spending per pupil it ranked in the 40th percentile, so clearly
an imbalance in favor of administration existed.

But instead of reallocating spending away from
administration towards teacher pay raises, in AY 2019 the Board – several of
whose members then still serve on it today – in its wisdom decided to put
almost 24 mils of tax increases on the ballot, alleging this was the way to
increase salaries. Had voters approved this 40 percent hike, it would have
taken the third-highest property tax rate for LEAs in the state and made it the
highest by far. Instead, voters
decisively rejected this. (The 1.75 percent sales tax levied remains, a bit
below the average of all rates across state LEAs of just over 2 percent.)

Had voters not rebelled, Bossier would have zoomed
up the ranks of Louisiana LEAs in local effort. In AY
2018, it ranked 26th (33 percentile) in local revenues and 46th
(67 percentile) in state revenues. The reason why it ranked only 42nd
overall is its 66th place – three from the bottom – in federal aid,
in a state that overall disproportionately draws federal education dollars. Since
then, its spending per pupil has soared by two-thirds, yet it seems this
isn't enough.

In short, if in fact Bossier school officials see
themselves shortchanged in funds, perhaps they could do a better job in
hustling for federal dollars (the parish citizenry's above-average income for
Louisiana parishes – 18th
highest – doesn't diminish the fact higher-income parishes are drawing much
more federal money) and put more money into instruction and less into
administration, rather than hold out their hands to have the state or local
taxpayers grease them.

The problem for Bossier schools, insofar as any
financial concerns go, isn't that the state doesn't give it enough money – in AY
2023, 39 percent of revenues or $144 million came from the MFP, the same proportion
and amount raised by sales and property taxes – but that it doesn't seek more federal
dollars and what dollars do come in it overweighs towards bureaucracy and
administrators. In other words, any perceived money problems start with the
Board and now Rowland himself (although he assumed his current position only at
the end of last year).

This failure to recognize own culpability
resonates through the resolution's entirely deceptive claim of "diverting
public dollars to private schools and other programs through Education Savings
Accounts (ESAs) without fully funding public schools [that] disadvantages our
students and schools." Its phrasing implies that dollars to fund ESAs would
come at expense of public education funding, despite the fact the two aren't
tied legally in any way. Plus, the bills for consideration permit some ESA
money to go to public schools to allow nonpublic students to access certain
programs, and the bills don't even commit the state to funding ESAs; that
funding is contingent whereas the money public schools receive through the
legal mechanism of the MFP and property and local sales taxes are compulsorily
supplied.

In fact, because the ESA bills don't touch local
funds, if students end up leaving Bossier public schools to attend nonpublic
schools – and in the fiscal note
for the bill's version on the Senate side, SB 313 by GOP
state Sen. Rick Edmonds it's
estimated only about one percent of students will do that to start – more
dollars will be left per student for Bossier to spend. The resolution avoids
acknowledging that in financial terms LEAs will become better off under the ESA
bills.

Finally, the resolution moans about how "providing
public dollars to ESAs without requiring the same state accountability testing
imposed on public school students is irresponsible public policy." But that
sentiment ignores that an accountability measure is built into to the concept
of ESA: if a participating school doesn't graduate a high enough proportion of
students (requirements for which the state regulates that apply equally to all
schools), or perform to other likings of parents, they simply don't choose to
send their kids to those schools. The better a nonpublic school does, the more
dollars it will attract; that's the accountability mechanism that public schools
get to avoid, who have students shoveled to them because of where families
live, regardless of school quality.

As it turns out, this method of accountability
works to benefit both public and nonpublic schools, when reviewing research related
to academics. As the data show, the rising tide promoted by school choice
lifts all boats with public school students generally showing improved
performance where there are ESA programs, and at the very least these don't
cause foundering of public schools academically. (Nor do ESA programs harm the
finances of public schools, according to national data.) Research also indicates
that while school choice programs like the ESA bills under consideration have as
often as not increased student learning, these have shown nearly universal
success in promoting graduation, college attendance, and obtaining a college
degree. The subgroup showing the strongest positive effects in all cases has
been black students.

That's not surprising, given that black students
disproportionately attend poorer-performing schools and so those families with
a choice option exercise it. It's no accident that, compared to other races, black
families are more likely to use their ESA dollars to pay for nonpublic school tuition.
Indeed, in a 2021
survey 84 percent of black parents supported ESAs, as they see these
programs as a liberation mechanism for their children trapped in underperforming
schools that likely also are more dangerous and less amenable to inculcating a
culture of achievement.

Which underscores the fantastically surreal, if
not incredibly stupid, remark Rowland made on the same day of the meeting. In a
video the district made, apparently as
a lobbying tool, where Rowland appears with two other nearby rural district superintendents,
he stated that "ESAs are just another form of segregation, a modern form of
segregation," referring to the segregation of students by race in Bossier and
elsewhere in the south decades ago.

Despite the fact that ESA bills won't do much to
affect attendance in public schools, despite the fact that black students
disproportionately benefit from ESA programs, despite the fact black families
overwhelming support choice, and despite the fact
that choice programs have a racial integrating effect and that private schools
tend to have fewer racial tensions, Rowland actually seems to believe this? After
decades in public education, it's hard to believe he would be that ignorant about
a major issue in his profession even if just a classroom teacher, much less
head of an entire school system, and with that remark brings shame to parish
schools.

Or maybe he, as well as board members whose
remarks seemed to indicate the special meeting and resolution were Rowland's
idea, and they aren't so out-to-lunch but instead are just disingenuously trying
to deflect attention from their real objection to ESAs. Perhaps subconsciously,
GOP Member Glen Bullard, who spoke on the resolution, let that slip when he
spoke about the entire thing being about "money."

Because with ESAs, board members and
administrators would have fewer state taxpayer dollars to control, because they
would be educating fewer students. Each student who opts out of public
education means one less allotment of MFP dollars. Further, enough of that
happens and you have fewer staff and eventually fewer facilities. It means
downsizing government, which especially is anathema to those part of the
government monopoly model of education who see success as a function of how big
their bureaucracy can be. Rather than promote policy that enhances education regardless
of how its delivered, they're more interested in protecting turf, because the
more turf they have, the more power they have.

Either way, as a board member or superintendent, this
opposition to ESAs signals unsuitability to lead on education policy. The data support
school choice and refute objections to it, so if you are against it and sign off
on refutable, if not contrafactual, arguments opposing it, you either don't
understand what you're doing or you do and you're deliberately choosing to work
for your own interests ahead of those of children. Either way disqualifies you
from having entrusted to you the parish's children, something that voters need
to remember in 2026, if not seeing amateur historian/social scientist/polemist Rowland
discharged before then.

One of the most enduring blind spots in U.S. educational outcomes is the implementation of policies and approaches that support excellence for Black boys both within and outside of schools. Although outcomes frequently do not reflect the ongoing advocacy for supporting the achievements of Black boys, for over five decades, there has been a continued,…

Gene Healy


Last week, the New York Times ran a front-page story admiring President Biden's political acumen on culture-war issues ("Biden Sidesteps Any Notion That He's a 'Flaming Woke Warrior'", NYT, July 4, 2023). You've got to hand it to him, apparently: Biden has "deftly avoided becoming enmeshed in battles over hotly contested social issues" like transgender rights. "At a moment when the American political parties are trading fierce fire," we're told, "the president is staying out of the fray."
The claim is pure malarkey. In fact, Biden has repeatedly engaged the full powers of the presidency in an attempt to impose a forced settlement on issues where the American people are deeply divided.
The analysis, by Times reporter Reid Epstein, is entirely style over substance. Being elderly and somewhat out of touch is the president's secret superpower on social issues, the argument goes. Biden is "white, male, 80 years old, and not particularly up-to-date on the language of the left"; Epstein writes; "the president has not adopted the terminology of progressive activists," and sometimes seems confused by it.
To be fair, it's tough even for non-octogenarians to stay abreast of the ever-proliferating jargon in this area. Last month, Biden's Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, warned unsuspecting Americans of the perils of "biphobia" and "interphobia,"; and last week brought new "health equity" guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on "chestfeeding" infants. (Epstein got a little confused himself; the original version of the article included this perplexing sentence: "[Biden] also does not always remember the words most American politicians use to describe same-sex people.")
But even if, as the Times piece insists, "Mr. Biden has never presented as a left-wing culture warrior," what the president is actually doing with the weapons of executive power ought to count for something. For example:
the president's proposed Title IX edicts would give him the power to make national rules about which kid gets to use which bathroom and who gets to play on the girls' team for every K-12 public school and practically every college in America;
a rulemaking put forward by Biden's Department of Health and Human Services would require doctors and hospitals to provide "gender-affirming care"— puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and "top" and "bottom" sex-change surgeries—including for minor children. Private insurers—and the taxpayer, via Medicaid—will be required to foot the bill;
and in the president's June 2022 "Executive Order on Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals," he proposes sending the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after doctors practicing "conversion therapy," which may be defined broadly enough to include psychologists who resist immediately forking over puberty blockers.
"Staying out of the fray"? C'mon, man.
Millions of Americans believe that medical intervention for trans-identifying minors is compassionate "gender-affirming care"; millions more believe it amounts to experimenting on children in the midst of social contagion. The state of the medical evidence here is "worryingly weak"; but even if it wasn't, the debate's not likely to be settled by telling people to shut up and "trust the science."
Biden's attempt to force a settlement on transgender issues points to a larger problem with "the deformation of our governmental structure" toward one-man rule. The original constitutional design required broad consensus for broad policy changes, but as law professors John O. McGinnis and Michael B. Rappaport warn in an important recent article, "Presidential Polarization":
"now the president can adopt such changes unilaterally…. Domestically, Congress's delegation of policy decisions to the executive branch allows the President's administration to create the most important regulations of our economic and social life. The result is relatively extreme regulations that can shift radically between administrations of different parties."

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is running for president, and he has his own views on medical treatment for gender dysphoria: he says it amounts to making children "guinea pigs" and "mutilating them." If elected, he'll certainly take inspiration from Biden's FTC move—maybe he'll even encourage a few creative prosecutions under the federal Female Genital Mutilation law.
Alexander Hamilton supposed that "energy in the executive" would lead to "steady administration of the laws." In the service of presidential culture-warring, that energy can mean whipsawing between "compulsory" and "forbidden" in four to eight-year cycles, depending on which party manages to seize the White House.
Worse still, as McGinnis and Rappaport note:
The imperial administrative presidency also raises the stakes of any presidential election, making each side fear that the other will enjoy largely unchecked and substantial power in many areas of policy.

That fear encourages the dangerous sentiment that every election is a "Flight 93 Election": charge the cockpit, do or die. The relentless growth of federal power—and its concentration in the executive branch—has made our government a catalyst of social strife.
Having a president who actually stays out of the culture-war fray isn't just a worthy goal: under current conditions it may be essential to the "domestic Tranquility" our federal government is supposed to ensure. But unless we expect them to refrain out of the goodness of their hearts, we'll need structural reforms that limit their power to intervene.

Gene Healy


"The library looms as the next big confrontation in the culture war," the Atlantic reports, and President Biden, our Culture‐​Warrior‐​in‐​Chief, is itching for the fight. "The president signaled a new approach in his late‐​April announcement video, when he cited book bans as evidence for his accusation that Republicans in the Donald Trump era are targeting Americans' 'personal freedom.'"
Not today, Satan—not on Joe Biden's watch. "We're taking on these civil rights violations, because that's what they are," Biden told the crowd at the White House Pride Celebration in June: "book bans may violate the federal civil rights laws when they target LGBTQ students or students of color and create hostile classroom environments."
When that happens, local school districts will face the wrath of the new federal Czar of the Middle‐​School Library. "Students have a right to learn free from discrimination," the president's top domestic policy advisor, Neera Tanden, explains, but "across the country, our nation faces a dangerous spike in book bans [targeting] LGBTQI+ communities." Accordingly, the administration is appointing a new "coordinator" in the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights who'll bring the full force of the federal government to bear in this fight.
I wrote recently that Biden's new Title IX edicts make him "Commander‐​in‐​Chief of the Girls' Room"; with this latest move, he can add "Boss of the Bookmobile" to his collection of extraconstitutional titles. It's an absurd power‐​grab based on the flimsiest of pretexts—and it's certain to make America's cultural conflicts worse.







The White House, like much of the press, has been cagey and duplicitious when it comes to what the "book‐​banning" controversy is really about. In Biden's reelection video, for example, while the president rails against "MAGA extremists… banning books," the camera shows a stack of titles including Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
Atticus Finch in the dock? Maybe in a few notorious MAGA strongholds like, er, Los Angeles and Seattle, where Lee's novel has been pulled from the curriculum for its insensitive "white‐​savior" storyline. But the real school‐​library fight centers on a quite different class of books.
In both the PEN America and American Library Association "most banned" lists, number one by a wide margin is Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer, a "graphic novel" that's decidedly Not Safe For Work and—arguably!—inappropriate for a grammar‐​school library.
Others in the ALA's top 10 include:
All Boys Aren't Blue (#2), (depictions of underage cousin‐​incest)
Lawn Boy (#7), "which describes 10‐​year‐​old boys performing oral sex on each other"; and
This Book Is Gay (#10), which includes advice on mutual masturbation—"something they don't teach you in school"(!)—and "instructions on how to use Grindr to find sex partners.")
The ACLU and former president Barack Obama have recently encouraged public‐​spirited Americans to start Banned Books clubs. I'd love to see the face of any earnest suburban liberal who signs up expecting a refresher course in Vonnegut and Steinbeck. In any event, if you'd like a clearer picture of what some parents are objecting to, in their new study, "The Book Ban Mirage," AEI's Max Eden and Heritage's Jay P. Greene and Madison Marino helpfully screenshot many of the offending passages.
As for the supposed "dangerous spike in book bans," Eden, Greene, and Marino show that activists are playing fast and loose with the term "banned." PEN America's definition is broad enough to include "any action taken against a book" that leads to "restricted" or "diminished" access for any period of time. Temporarily removed then reshelved after review? "Banned." Moved from the middle‐​school library to the high‐​school shelves? "Banned." Removed from a recommended reading list but still on the library shelves? "Banned."
In fact, when Eden et al. decided to check online school library catalogs against the PEN index of "banned" books, they found that:
"74 percent of the books that PEN America lists as banned are listed as available in the same districts from which PEN America says those books were banned."

Still, the authors managed to find a few localities where kids can no longer check out some of the spicier tomes on PEN's List. So what? There are over 13,000 school districts in the United States; are we supposed to think Our Democracy is imperiled because a couple dozen of them took Gender Queer off their library shelves?
Reports of a wave of book‐​banning Babbittry have been greatly exaggerated. But to be fair to PEN America, the organization does document some serious cases of legislative overreach by Red‐​state politicians claiming to speak for concerned parents. Last year, for example, Missouri made it a misdemeanor offense, carrying possible jail time, for librarians to provide "explicit sexual material" to students. That's nutty: decisions about what goes on school‐​library shelves should be made at the local level, not forcibly dictated from the state house.
Still less should those decisions be dictated from Washington, D.C.: if the taxpayers in a local school district don't want Gender Queer or This Book Is Gay in their kids' library, it's none of Joe Biden's business.
That's not how Biden sees things, unfortunately; in the president's view, it's his right and duty to make a federal case out of how school libraries stock their shelves.
In January, according to the Washington Post, the Biden administration embarked on its "first test of a new legal argument that failing to represent students in school books can constitute discrimination."
In early 2022, the Granbury Independent School District in North Texas removed multiple LGBTQ‐​focused books from its libraries for review, ultimately deciding to return most of them to the shelves. Only three books, including This Book Is Gay (the one "that teaches kids about anal sex, oral sex, and hookup apps"), were permanently removed. The ACLU hit back with a federal civil rights complaint charging that the district had "actively facilitated discrimination and hateful rhetoric" in violation of Title IX. As the Post noted:
"If the government finds in the ACLU's favor, the determination could have implications for schools nationwide, experts said, forcing libraries to stock more books about LGBTQ individuals and… ensur[e] student access to books that some Americans, especially right‐​leaning parents, deem unacceptable.

The Granbury investigation is still in progress, but in May, OCR reached a settlement in a similar case involving a suburban Atlanta school system. Here, the Biden administration advanced the novel theory that, even if the school district itself doesn't discriminate, it can be held accountable for a "hostile environment" created by parents' comments at a school board meeting.
The Forsyth County School District's trouble started in January 2022, when it temporarily removed eight books following parent complaints. After review, they returned seven of eight to the library shelves, excluding only one, the aforementioned All Boys Aren't Blue. FCS soon found itself subject to a federal civil rights investigation into whether the removal of those books created a "racially and sexually hostile environment for students."
In its May 19 letter announcing the resolution of that case, the Office for Civil Rights admits that Forsyth County wasn't engaged in an anti‐​gay book purge: it had "limited its book screening process to sexually explicit material." "Nonetheless," OCR chides, "communications at board meetings conveyed the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment." OCR found it troubling that during a February 15 board meeting:
"some [parents'] comments focused on removing books for reasons related to gender identity or sexual orientation. Also some parents made negative comments about diversity and inclusion or critical race theory."

The OCR letter doesn't specify what those comments were, but according to press coverage of the Board meeting, they included statements like
"Do you think it's healthy for 8‑year‐​olds to be exposed to books which encourage transgenderism, sexualization and masturbation?"

and
"CRT, DEI, SEL, or any other name you give it is not harmless…. No more lies, such as 'DEI's purpose is to teach children that there are different cultures that eat different foods. Really?"

Scandalous wrongthink—and in the presence of children, no less! According to OCR, parents' statements at the board meeting contributed to a potential "racially and sexually hostile environment," which the district failed to adequately address with "supportive measures" for afflicted students.
To get the feds off their back, Forsyth County Schools had to agree to a number of humiliating terms. Per the Resolution Agreement, FCS must:
Publicly Pledge Fealty to DEI Thought: "in locations readily available to the District's middle and high school students," FCS shall post a statement affirming that "the District strives to provide a global perspective and promote diversity by including in school libraries materials about and by authors and illustrators of all cultures";
Help Aggrieved Students Sic the Feds on Their School: that statement will also provide "any student who feels impacted by the environment surrounding the removal of books" with "information about how to file a complaint about discrimination or harassment" under Title IX and Title VI;
Take a Long, Hard Look in the Mirror: "The District will administer a school climate survey" on the prevalence of book‐​related and other harassment in its middle and high schools; and "assess whether any additional student or other training is needed to further improve the climate." Look, this is a wealthy school district with plenty of tax dollars to go around: why shouldn't the DEI‐​consultant industry get a taste?
…all this because school officials took a book featuring underage cousin‐​incest off their middle‐​school library shelves.
As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression notes, OCR's strong‐​arm tactics succeeded here despite the fact that
"there is no legal authority that [says] failure to 'promote diversity' violates federal anti‐​discrimination law. If OCR thinks it can require schools to affirmatively 'promote diversity'— a term left undefined — what else does the agency think it can get away with?"

I suppose we'll find out as Biden's new school‐​library czar gets to work.

Louisiana's local education agencies should heed State
Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley's advice
to disregard new and radical rulemaking from the federal Department of
Education that likely is unconstitutional that conflicts with present and
likely Louisiana law.

Last week, the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden
Administration released its recodification of Title IX of the Education Amendments
of 1972, which lays down rules to which state-regulated (because the U.S. Constitution
grants states the power to regulate education provision) education provision must
adhere in order tor receive federal grants. The sweeping and unprecedented changes
it had telegraphed with its initial filing last year and reinvented Title IX
only four years after substantial revision had occurred.

The purpose was to expand coverage, despite
the clear wording of statute denying that, of nondiscriminatory classes,
redefining "sex" to, among other things, "sexual orientation" and "gender
identity." It tried
to justify this deviance by referring to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated
area of law, and almost certainly is unconstitutional for that overreach.
Any attempt to deny funding for not following the rule if challenged would lead
to the regulation's overturn by the judiciary.

In contrast, Brumley's letter noted that to accept
the demands of the rule at face value could open up LEAs to legal liability by
conflicting with Louisiana law. It could run counter to the Fairness in Women's
Sports Act as well as other
legislation currently making its way through the Legislature that almost certainly
will become law within months. In particular, Brumley pointed out that the
nature of this oncoming legislation – forms of which passed last year but
vetoed by culture warrior and past governor Democrat John Bel Edwards – also could
put schools at risk of violating the First Amendment if after these law's enactments
they followed the rule.

He's not alone in this warning. A number of state
school chiefs after release of preliminary versions of the rule levied similar criticisms
and concerns. And in
nearby Oklahoma, its top school official said it would make school
districts adhere to state law mandating that bathroom usage align to the physical
sex of the individual, contrary to the rule. Louisiana's Legislature is
considering a similar law the enabling bill of which
already has passed the House of Representatives.

That's not picayunish. Policy in Loudoun County, VA
schools allowed any student claiming a gender identity to use the restroom of
that, which played a part with one
male teenage twice assaulting females (the second attack occurring after
the policy's implementation) in women's restrooms about which the school system
did little except to prosecute the complaining father of one victim.
Eventually, as a result of its decisions the district's superintendent was
fired and the district now faces an expensive lawsuit from the victims. While
an extreme example, the new regulation would present greater opportunities such
as in that incident for assaulters and create huge potential liabilities for
schools if something like that happened.

The letter didn't outright order school systems to disregard the rule,
which Brumley couldn't do, but he made clear that they should ignore it. Perversely,
he pointed out, by the privileging of students who declare themselves possessors
of a particular sexual identity – perhaps as part of a psychological condition
that research shows that the majority grows out of – it subverts
the very intent of Title IX by making females second-class citizens. For
both legal and moral reasons, Louisiana schools need to heed his counsel.

Thomas A. Berry and Nicholas DeBenedetto


In the Fall of 2020, public schools in Springfield, Missouri implemented mandatory "equity" training. All employees of the school district were required to attend a session, not just teachers. The employees were told that if they did not participate, the school district would dock their pay and they could lose necessary professional development credit.
The training topics included "Oppression, White Supremacy, and Systemic Racism" and tools on "how to become Anti‐​Racist educators." Training sessions included several interactive exercises that required participants to share reactions to videos, write down answers to instructor questions, answer multiple‐​choice questions, and fill out charts related to concepts presented by the training.
Brooke Henderson and Jennifer Lumley, two non‐​teacher employees, strongly disagreed with many of the views advanced by the school district through the training sessions. These sessions taught that believing in colorblindness is a form of white supremacy; that systemic racism is "woven into the very foundation of American culture, society, and laws"; and that American institutions all contribute to or reinforce "the oppression of marginalized social groups while elevating dominant social groups." Participants were also told that being sufficiently "anti‐​racist" means not remaining "silent or inactive" because doing so constitutes "white silence"—a form of white supremacy.
During training sessions, employees were required to answer questions and give responses affirming these assertions. For example, some of the questions presented two answers, only one of which was correct in the eyes of the school district. In order to advance through the modules and receive credit, participants had to give the school district‐​approved answer. To complete their training, Henderson and Lumley both gave many answers that they did not actually believe.
Henderson and Lumley, represented by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, filed suit and raised several claims under the First Amendment including compelled speech, content and viewpoint discrimination, and unconstitutional conditions of employment. But the district court held in favor of the school district and ruled that Henderson and Lumley would have to pay the school district over $300,000 in legal fees and sanctions.
Henderson and Lumley have appealed to the Eighth Circuit, and Cato has filed an amicus brief supporting that appeal. Our brief focuses on two aspects of the district court's decision that raise substantial First Amendment issues. First, the court's analysis of the plaintiffs' compelled speech claim conflicts with the Supreme Court's foundational decision in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943). Barnette makes clear that a person suffers a First Amendment injury at the moment he or she is required to affirm a belief to which he or she objects. Plaintiffs repeatedly had to provide the "correct" response and profess agreement with the school district's ideas about equity, white supremacy, and racism, even though they strongly disagreed.
Second, the district court's decision to award attorneys' fees and sanctions violates the First Amendment right of the plaintiffs to participate in public‐​interest litigation. The district court justified its exorbitant award by referencing the​plaintiffs' desire to advance a political cause in this litigation. But the Supreme Court explicitly held in NAACP v. Button (1963) and In re Primus (1978) that advancing a cause through good‐​faith public‐​interest litigation is an important First Amendment right, not something to be punished. Penalizing litigants for exercising their First Amendment freedoms will only chill future good‐​faith litigation.
If allowed to stand, the district court's opinion would invite government employers to undermine key First Amendment principles and would chill legitimate public‐​interest litigation. The Eighth Circuit should correct these errors and reverse the decision of the district court.

The culture of public accusation and shaming, in high school (and stemming from a relationship that apparently happened when the accuser and accused were sophomores).

Casey DeSantis' "Mamas for DeSantis" ad goes all in on the culture war instead of focusing on Ron DeSantis' strong record on school choice and COVID policy.

The protests against the 'culture of violence' in Serbia were triggered by a mass shooting at a Belgrade elementary school, in which nine children and a security guard died.

Several schools in London, England, are offering summer literacy lessons that are open only to black students to "accelerate progress in reading and writing whilst also developing the children's knowledge of black history and culture." They are not offering a similar program for white students even though educational achievement is lower for whites from a…