WASHINGTON, DC, Sep 5 — Confidence in America’s schools — kindergarten, grammar schools, high schools, colleges and universities — is in the tank. A new Rasmussen [August 29] poll shows that just eight percent of respondents gave public schools an “excellent” ranking and only 22% said they were “good” enough. Ten days earlier [August 19] a separate Rasmussen survey found that “only 23% of American Adults believe U.S. public schools provide a world-class education for our students.”
The distrust of public schooling has resulted in an exodus of children as more and more parents opt to homeschool their kids or send them to private schools. Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Fellow at the Discovery Institute and Director of the Institute’s American Center for Transforming Education. In a recent article she penned for the Institute, Dr. Ingraham wrote that many parents are particularly concerned about “the far-left political indoctrination that dominates today’s K-12 public education classrooms (the daily promotion of the LGBT agenda, critical race theory divisiveness, and woke academics). Their children have been freed from the political agenda of teachers’ unions and school personnel using them as pawns in their power plays … One example of this indoctrination is the increasing use of the Gender Unicorn as a tool to encourage students as young as age 5 to select their gender identity, their gender expression, the gender they are physically attracted to, and the gender they are emotionally attracted to, whether women/men, feminine/masculine, or other.”
It would appear that not only are the parents concerned about the indoctrination, many teachers are dropping out of school as well. The Washington Post reports that there is an unprecedented shortage of teachers in America. As the 2022-23 school year gets underway, the Post says school districts across the country are reporting “staffing gaps that stretch from the hundreds to the thousands.”
Perhaps public schools can’t find teachers these days due to the politicalization of the classroom– the movements that seek to undermine the respect for America among the youngest of the nation’s school boys and girls, chief among them being the notorious Critical Race Theory [CRT].
Many teachers would rather quit their jobs than succumb to the socialist claptrap that teachers are being forced to teach at the increasing number of schools that promote CRT. And, maybe, it’s among the reasons that teachers are quitting.
Kali Fontanilla has been a teacher for 15 years and a few months ago she resigned her job at a school in Salinas, CA. Kali went public with her story in an OpEd she penned for the Orange County Register. She was teaching at the school for five years when she resigned because, as she put it, “school officials were obsessed with left-wing indoctrination, and dissenting voices—like my own—were not welcome.”
Schools tend to keep their promotion of CRT in their classrooms a secret and Kari’s school was no exception. She revealed in her article that school officials are deliberately hiding the fact from parents claiming they do not teach their kids according to a CRT agenda.
“Well, I’m here to tell you those officials are not being truthful. Since teachers at the school used the same online platform for lesson plans and learning materials, I was able to access the ethnic studies lessons. While I expected to see plenty of America-bashing, what I found legitimately shocked me: Just about every single lesson had some element of critical race theory in it … Children were learning about the so-called four I’s of oppression (institutional, internalized, ideological, and interpersonal). The course syllabus said students would use colored strings to ‘rank’ their different identities to create ‘intersectional rainbows.’ And the class even included a ‘privilege quiz’ instructing students to determine how marginalized—or privileged—they were.
Sending children to private schools is tricky too. Many are also teaching woke, LGBTQ and CRT curriculum. Parents need to shop around for education with the same care and thoughtfulness that they use to buy a car or a home.
That is a fact!!! Outstanding teachers have walked away. .What a loss for our children and America.
Those teachers who are leaving the public schools should band together and work with groups of homeschool students by setting up co-ops.
This has been going on longer than we’d like to believe. It has infiltrated outer churches, workplaces, entertainment. Some places, like Florida have fought hard against CRY and gender grooming. And as a result many offended teachers have left there as well.We must drive this perversion out of our lives in every corner that has been infected with it.
Is that why teachers quit , NOT Union policies etc, wow
JUST ANOTHER INSTITUTION THE liberals DESTROYED AND IT GOES ON
We have such a mess to clean up to get this country back on track. How in the world have so many educators and citizens succumbed to this insanity? PS: I’m one of the people who’ve moved my daughter from the insane asylums to private school. What a difference!!!!
Lets just cut through all the noise here. Teachers are public service workers accountable to the public and paid for by the public. If some don’t want to do their jobs as the public demands, then they can leave or be fired and will be replaced by people who will do the job properly. Teaching today pays quite well and has outstanding benefits. So attracting new, fresh talent shouldn’t be the problem the teachers’ unions all like to make it out to be. Remember, what the unions all fear is loss of clout and control, so they tend to make any issue more dire than it actually is.
To facilitate the much needed correction of our public school system, the following needs to occur:
1) Decertify all the teachers’ unions. Even “progressive” FDR realized that public sector unions were a very bad idea and would eventually lead to the type of situation we now have with the teacher’ unions. The teachers would still be covered by civil service protections, but they would no longer be able to have a stranglehold on public education.
2) Eliminate the Department of Education. That means zero out its budget and eliminate the department permanently. Student test scores have consistently declined year after year since that federal department was created and started pushing political ideology dressed up as “progressive teaching ideas”. Control of the schools should return to the local / state level as far as setting curriculum and teaching standards.
3) Tenure, which is granted far too easily and makes it far too difficult to remove problematic teachers afterwards, needs to be eliminated. Sorry, but teaching is a job like everything else and the idea that somehow the teaching profession can’t exist without layer upon layer of bureaucratic red tape shielding America’s teachers from accountability to the people that pay their salaries and benefits is a non-starter in the 21st century. Again, teachers will still be covered by civil service protections, which should be good enough for competent, well-performing teachers.
Do the above items and you will quickly weed out the teachers that no longer want to teach, but would rather spend their time politically indoctrinating in our public schools. Yes, that means we may lose 10 to 20 percent of the most hardcare leftists “teaching” today, but that will also mean the children will be receiving the type of education they actually need to excel and compete in our global economy. Doing nothing but endlessly complaining about what we know is broken is NOT a solution. More children just end up failing in the real world that way.
While some dedicated teachers will leave, many who don’t care remain. Credentials will be the next thing to slide, a remake of affirmative action, to fill voids left by real educators. Society elect school boards and like government politicians, once elected they fail to represent voters or parents. The DOJ is on record labeling parents that challenge leftist school boards “domestic terrorists”. That alone should tell you who’s behind the curtain.
We are dealing with the mess that accumulated over 50 years Drastic measures will not go well but perhaps a baby step to start with. Academic curriculum only,no political issues of any kind and rules of civility
Good for the teachers who quit. I respect all who do. Many have chosen to go to private schools and charter schools, where they only teach the subject matter and don’t teach any of the “social crap” the government subjects them too. I respect the teachers and faculty who have done this. I, fortunately, had a medical problem, that took me out of the situation, so I still got all my benefits and didn’t have to lose everything.
Teachers who take seriously for everybody that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Good on ’em.
This is just so sad & wrong! We need to pray for OUR future (children)!!! #AmericaFirst
Don’t forget the teachers chased out by the shot mandates!
I see the future of education as school choice! This is a winning issue for Republicans! Take these students and teachers and start up more one room school houses like the pioneer days! Those kids learned more than any of the kids today! Each generation learns less and less knowledge and skills to be adults and more and more indoctrination creating immature, self-righteous, leftist activists! Not good for the future of America!
If good teachers quit the leftists win. It’s tought but you need to stay and fight
Only a fool stands between American parents and their children!!!
Teaching children about sexual identity is child abuse. It is abusing the child’s ability to grow naturally, whether they grow to adulthood being heterosexual or homosexual, they should not be prompted to make such decisions as children.
Currently, what’s actually being taught in public schools is based on the far left agenda of taking down America from within.
What is currently being taught in public schools is part of the far left agenda to take down the U.S. from within. Mark my words, we are in the fight of our lives to protect our children from these subversives.
The disregard for parens rights, indoctrination of children, sex education
As Project Veritas exposed recently they are asking pointed questions during employment interviews to discover if a candidate is republican. Then not hiring them. I say it’s a win win to pull out of public schools.
The God and America hating Universities is where it begins. Let the offending institutions have their public funding removed AND, at long last, give parents the wherewithal to send their heritage to the schools that will not only educate their young minds, but also mold them to become citizen worthy adults.
The silent majority have to come out and vote in November!!!