Transparency in Education

If cultural appropriation is truly a deep societal sin and an offense why isn’t gender appropriation subject to the same outrage?

Related to our preceding posts, here are some of the positions of the teacher’s union (taken from their website and Resolution). Each is followed by our thoughts or question. Keep these in mind when you vote.

The teachers' union: “Equity is the centerpiece of the long-overdue funding formula that Maryland students need.”
It should be the decade-long low academic proficiency results.

The state union “opposes standardized testing because of its white-based contexts.”
No consideration for the root causes of disparate results beyond racial bias?

The union believes the state’s academic testing assessments “should not be used to evaluate school systems, individual schools, or teachers.”
If the state assessments are inadequate perhaps fixing them should be the centerpiece and focus instead of equity.

The state union “advocates that members be agents of change to combat structural and institutional racism.”
The implication is that it is the only cause and institutional racism is a given - an absolute truth not open to further discussion or other potential causes. It is apparently the only cause with pursuing.

The union opposes school choice for parents. Their position on Charter schools is that they must be "qualitatively" different and “not be just an avenue for parental school choice,” and the union is silent on ESA’s, the programs that allow parents to use tax dollars from the general fund to pursue alternatives to public school and are now active in 16 states. Other than a restrictive support for Charter schools any competitive program that provides parents an alternative to public school is opposed by the union.

There is much more; here are some examples. The union supports title IX but won’t oppose males joining female interscholastic sports teams (which is the FCPS position); believes non-vaccinated students “present a threat to students” and "employees"; believes non-citizens should be allowed to attend public schools (yet we could find no assessment of the impact on funding); and tacitly do not support parental notification of a child’s gender choices or social transition while at school.

If you want the unions financial backing these are just some of the things you’ll have to support as a candidate and board member.

NOTE: Why we do not support union candidates: Voters should decide what they want in their schools, but for us the Maryland teachers’ union, which is part of the NEA, has a Resolution that sounds more like a social activist organization than a labor union, stepping into the various roles of childhood development that have traditionally and historically been left to the family. Parents and the community should be free to choose what is best locally, not with a board under the influence of a national organization whose main priorities seem unrelated to a classical education.

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