History doesn't write itself

 History- the story of yesterday

It is often said history is written by the winners.  Probably true.   There are lots of history courses in the U.S. south where the Civil War is still called the War Between the States, ignoring the fact that the states that left the union did so in defiance of the Constitution.

The Smithsonian Institution recently announced that it was removing the mention of the two impeachments of Donald Trump from its exhibit on the Presidents of the United States.  Trump has said he does not want any divisive DEI exhibits that are against the American mainstream.   Under pressure a few days later, the Smithsonian changed tactics and said the removal was only temporary and would soon be restored.  History is written by the winners

The story of history is not just what is included but what is excluded as well.  What do we teach our children about history.   Even the topics we select for inclusion in the story reflect what we want our children to know.  A photos of the Potsdam Conference to end WWII show only white men.   A local Baltimore coed private school that prides itself on teaching values has a conference room with photos of leaders in our democracy.  There are NO women or persons of color in those photos, leading one to believe that these individuals contributed nothing to our democracy.  That is happening right now, not 70 years ago.

The Maryland State Department of Education recently released its curriculum and guidelines for teaching social studies.  Discussion of the Middle East conflicts ends at 1994.  Reason for this truncated view of history is that the Commission did not want teachers to be drawn into the conflict and not know what to teach.  What is the point of teaching history if not to be drawn into conflicts so that each student decides his or her own point of view of the events of history.  The same event can be viewed through two different lenses- one seeing a catastrophe and the other a great victory.  Every war ends that way.  Every Supreme Court decision has two points of view.  Every Big Beautiful Bill can be viewed that way.

If we do not present our students with all the information how do they become informed voters and citizens. The same nation that placed 120,000 Japanese American citizens in internment camps, forcing them to lose both property and freedom is the same nation that sent 133 billion dollars in today’s money with the Marshall Plan to Europe to rebuild a continent devastated by WWII.  

For generations our history books have been literally “white washed” when discussing the contributions of minority groups and women.  What message does this send to the children who belong to these groups? History is amazing.   Even more so when it is told from all its points of view and by all the folks who lived it and made it.

$1,700 doesn't buy a helluva lot

                                        $1,700 Doesn’t Buy a Helluva Lot

The recent tax bill (AKA the Big Beautiful Bill) has a provision for parents to donate up to $1,700 to a scholarship granting private school and then take that exact amount as a credit (not a deduction) against income taxes owed.  In essence, the family would have no expense at all for the donation.

The Republican party has been trying since Ronald Regan to come up with a plan to fund private schools with taxpayer money without running afoul of the U.S. Constitution.  This plan seems to do the job.

Seventeen hundred dollars is not a poke in the eye with a stick.  Nor is it a path for lower to middle income families to be able to afford private school.  It essentially allows higher income families to get a $1,700 reduction in tuition.  Non-public schools for children with disabilities have tuition rates that often range into six figures but definitely above sixty thousand.  The seventeen hundred dollar reduction will not make that tuition affordable for lower or middle income families.

Private school tuition for plain students for day programs in above thirty thousand.  A seventeen hundred dollar reduction in tuition will help those families that could afford the thirty thousand all along but will certainly not make that tuition affordable for lower to middle income families.

Individual state governors need to agree to accept participation in the plan.  Governors in blue states will be in a bind.  To accept the arrangement means they are going against their principles of not spending taxpayer dollars on private tuition.  If they don’t accept the plan, their private tuition paying families (and voters) will feel cheated out of a good deal.   Teacher unions are against states joining the program.

Cui bono?  Who benefits?  Wealthier families paying private tuition definitely benefit by having their tuition reduced.  Lower to middle income families are still out of the pool because the reduction is still insufficient to give these families a true choice.  And of course, politicians benefit because they can brag they have helped parents have choice in schools for their children even if the choice is only available to a select few.  Not much will change for kids, but then this was really never about kids because in private education $1,700 doesn’t buy a helluva lot.

 Trying again with Social Studies

Only an estimated 4 out of 10 American teens know that approximately six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, one-third of the world’s Jewish population at that time.  Only three out of 10 American teens know that Hitler came to power through a democratic process according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.   The representative body of the National Education Association (NEA) just voted to stop teaching about the Holocaust using any information from a Jewish organization.  That resolution was overturned by the NEA executive staff after a hard pushback from Jewish organizations.

The Maryland State Department of Education Social Studies Standards and Frameworks Validation Committee approved a new framework for instruction this past June that includes a reworked focus on antisemitism and Holocaust education, which are set to go into effect beginning in the 2026-27 school year.  It has been over a year in progress.

The Committee consulted the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the nonprofit Facing History & Ourselves.  Changes in the curriculum include a middle school addition of how the bubonic plague had both long and short-term impact on population and antisemitism.  A high school world history unit on WWI discusses how the European mandate system contributed to the rise of Zionism.  The language of the curriculum tries to avoid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to “regional conflicts and diplomacy have influenced efforts towards stability and cooperation in the Middle East”.  The portion of the curriculum that discusses the Middle East stops at 1994.  Many critics felt this is a significant omission since it does not provide students with an understanding of current events and prevents the curriculum from being relevant.   Some members of the Committee felt bring the curriculum to the present day put too much of a burden on teachers.  Others explained that the framework is a floor not a ceiling and it is not a cap on what can be taught.  Individual school systems will use the revised frameworks to write their own curriculum based on that content.   The CAIR- Council on Arab-Islamic Relations has strongly protested the absence of content and word usage in not mentioning the word "Palestine". 

Overall, 67% of public comments were in support of the revisions, another 16% supported it but wanted revisions.  Only 17% of the comments were in opposition.

Maybe we have something.

 

No place to lay your head at night

 NO Place to lay your head at night

As rents increase the number of children who are homeless is also increasing.  In the last six years, the number of homeless children has risen 24%.  In that same time, federal funding for these children has decreased 11%.  At last count there were 5,732 homeless kids in Baltimore City schools.  Baltimore County was right behind at 2,791.  Montgomery County came in third with 1,234 and Prince George’s County at 1,245.  

Median incomes in all of these jurisdictions are high. The median income means that 50% or the population is above the number and 50% is below the number.  In Baltimore City the median income is $59,000.   In Baltimore County it is 90k and rises to 100k in both Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.  These children do not just live in outdoor encampments.  The numbers include kids living in cars, emergency shelters and motels.  As these children move, district transportation will follow them. In Baltimore City 8% of the children are homeless.  While the numbers aren’t large in school districts like Talbot County, they have the second highest percentage in the state at 7% followed by St.Mary’s County at 5%.  Baltimore County has 2.5% of its student body homeless.

Most of these families are living paycheck to paycheck.  Changes in eviction laws have made it easier for a missed paycheck to lead to missed rent payments and eviction.  Families with no place to live do not have discretionary funds for school supplies, school trips, participation in extra-curricular activities.   For many of these kids, breakfast and lunch at school are their main meals of the day.  The noise of a growling stomach can be very disruptive to learning.  As kids get older the peer pressures to do the things other kids are doing can lead to minor (or even major) criminal activity. 

If you have no good place to lay your head at night, it’s hard to engage your brain in the morning.

How good is good enough

 Is Well Enough Good Enough?

 

Under federal and state law, if a child has a disability,  parents have the right to contest their child’s education placement.    The laws require that public schools provide a free and appropriate education (FAPE) for all children with disabilities up until age 21.   Of course, there is that pesky word “appropriate” and there is lots of disagreement about that.   Parents often disagree about what that word means for their children.

Long ago “appropriate” meant helping the child to achieve his or her full potential.  That standard has long since been abandoned.  The new standard seems to be “well-enough”.  Often public schools lack sufficient staffing to provide the level of speech therapy and other related services as determined on the child’s IEP.  And no, they often don’t inform parents of that issue.  There is also the issue of staffing of teachers.  Every Maryland school district is lacking fully licensed teachers.  Parents are not told if their child’s teacher is fully licensed.   Are the students of these teachers receiving FAPE?  The answer is maybe.  There is no guarantee that every fully licensed teacher is good nor that every conditionally licensed teacher is bad.  Parents should just be informed.  

When parents are sufficiently unhappy about the education their children are receiving, they can enter into a system called “due process”.   The process begins with a mediation and can progress all the way to a formal hearing with an administrative law judge.  Not all school complaints involve dissatisfaction with special education services.   However, for the 23-24 school year, EVERY complaint that wound up before an administrative law judge was about a family requesting non-public school placement for their children.  There were only 20 cases and the families won 18 of them.

Evidently well enough isn’t quite good enough for some families and their children.

Protection is a spectrum disorder

 Protection is a spectrum disorder

The Supreme Court recently ruled that parents have the right to remove their elementary aged children from being exposed to literature and/or instruction with regard to LGBYQIA+ based on the religious beliefs of the parents.   The case happened to be a Montgomery County Public Schools case beginning in Maryland.   The decision was not a final ruling in the case but the Justices hinted strongly that the parents will likely win in the end.

The ability of parents to protect their children from certain experiences is not a new privilege.  Parents can deprive children of vaccination  based on religious beliefs.  Parents can already require that their children be excluded from sex ed.   As a society we exclude children from sexually explicit content in movies (but interestingly not specific violence in video games or the internet).  

So what is different from this new parental prerogative that uses religion as the foil.  In the other instances the prohibition was about a non-human experience.  Now parents may exclude the recognition of humans from their children’s knowledge.

How much protection should parents provide for their children and how much it too much.  When does that protection smack up against the dignity and protection of other kids.  One of the first things parents who would deny access to their children should know is that the more something is forbidden the more it becomes fascinating.   Kids who are removed from the group during instruction on these topics will be VERY curious about what they are missing.  Probably more curious than they would have been with the lesson.  Secondly, there is a chance that one or more of the kids in the class is wondering about his/her own sexuality.  The question becomes “why am I so tainted that I can’t be seen in a story?”   Thirdly, what happens when two same gender parents show up at a PTA event or other parent invitation events?   How will the same gender parents be explained to the children who have been deprived?

Organizations such as Moms for Liberty will tell you the public schools were set up to meet the parents’ needs so therefore, parents should have the right to opt out of unacceptable instruction.   Actually that is not true.  Public schools were set up at the taxpayer’s expense to ensure an informed electorate for a democracy at a time when the majority of the population could barely read or write.

In the ‘50’s there was a Broadway musical, South Pacific.  One song in the show, had the lyrics, “you’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, it’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear, you’ve got to be taught from year to year, to hate all the people your relatives fear, you’ve got to be carefully taught”.

The Supreme Court is always supreme.  It just isn’t always on the right side of history.  This is one of those times.

 

 

 

 

Does your child go to a religious school?

 Does your child go to a religious school?

 

Since 1962 the Supreme Court has bared prayer in the public schools.   In the not so good old days, kids read from the bible and said the Lord’s Prayer as part of the opening of school each day.   Whether it was the protestant or Catholic version depended on the politics of the region.   Then came Madeline Murray, a Marylander who also happened to be an atheist.  She resisted and out of that resistance came the Supreme Court decision.  Although not a party to the case, her reasoning that prayer in public schools violates the first amendment to the religious establishment clause of the Constitution became part of the decision.

Now come the new found religious conservatives.   Legislators in Tennessee, Texas and Louisiana have passed legislation that would require the 10 Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom in the state.   In 1980, there was a similar law in Kentucky and it was struck down by the Supreme Court as a violation of the Establishment Clause.

Recently, Louisiana thought it might give the idea a chance.   But the federal appeals court struck down that law.

But hey, nothing succeeds like “let’s give this another try”. The effort is very appealing to the conservative religious right.   Sorry, last week the Appeals Court also struck down a new Tennessee law for the same reason.  Do these folks even pay attention?   Because days after the Tennessee law was struck down, the Texas Governor signed an almost identical bill requiring that the 10  Commandments be displayed in every classroom in Texas.   More than likely opponents of the legislation in Texas will also raise the issue of the Establishment Clause and separation of church and state.

So why do these bills keep passing if they are consistently struck down?  The answer is pandering to the conservative base.   The governors of these states and their legislative majorities knowing full well that what they are doing violates the US Constitution can tell their constituents that they tried.  The can blame the left wing courts that struck them down.  Thing is the courts in these states could hardly be called left wing.

Religious schools are a good thing for those who want to send their children to a school with those belief systems.   Folks sending their kids to public schools, for whatever reasons, need to know that they did NOT chose a religious school and their taxes shouldn’t be supporting one.   Says so in the First Amendment.