Category: Education
Inside the radical pipeline turning America’s teachers into activists
Following the unrest that unfolded at a Turning Point USA event at the University of California, Berkeley, the Department of Justice has launched an investigation into those behind the disruption.
One of the alleged organizers of the recent protest, By Any Means Necessary, has been described as part of the ecosystem of the “anti-fascist” movement.
These educators are attempting to advance their political agenda through statewide governmental jobs and teachers’ union leadership positions.
Unfortunately, UC Berkeley is no stranger to left-wing protests turning violent.
In 2017, several far-left agitators were arrested at a conservative rally on the same campus. One of those individuals was BAMN member and middle school teacher Yvette Felarca, who had previously defended the use of militant violence in an interview. She had also been charged in 2016 with assault related to a previous counter-protest.
But Felarca is not an anomaly. Rather, she is one example of a fringe of aggressive, far-left revolutionaries who seek to corrupt the K-12 education ecosystem to advance their radical political ideology. Whether through ethnic studies curriculums, organizing “Teach-ins for Gaza” and anti-Israel activism, or alleged glorification of terrorism and endorsement of Antifa, activist teachers are leveraging the historical trust bestowed upon the education profession to foment an anti-Western, anti-American mindset in schools and the culture writ large.
Not surprisingly, the teachers’ unions play a role in funding, promoting, and protecting these activist educators.
In fact, the American Federation of Teachers came to Felarca’s aid in 2018 by passing a resolution in support of her and her lawsuit against Judicial Watch. The legal action was aimed at stopping the watchdog group from obtaining public records from the school district. But the lawsuit failed.
Yet this has not stopped Felarca and other BAMN members from continuing to advance a far-left ideology both inside and outside K-12 schools.
For example, in March, Oakland High School (Calif.) students, flanked by teachers who affiliate with BAMN, led a protest over immigration policies. In this instance, the influence of the teacher-activists is no secret. The student protesters publicly claimed they received help from the local BAMN chapter in organizing the event.
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Even though street activism can be the most visible form of ideological battle on the American culture, these educators are attempting to advance their political agenda through statewide government jobs and teachers’ union leadership positions.
The executive vice president of United Educators of San Francisco, for example, is currently running for state superintendent of public instruction. The San Francisco Unified teacher touts that under his leadership, the UESF “transformed into one of California’s strongest and most militant unions.” His site also states that he is an activist and “longtime organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation” — an organization known to be behind many of the anti-Israel and anti-ICE protests that have taken place across the country.
In Los Angeles, the Association of Raza Educators, the education wing of the radical group Union del Barrio, has a slate of individuals running for positions of leadership in United Teachers Los Angeles. Included on the roster is teacher Ron Gochez, who is no stranger to controversial comments and actions.
In fact, he was recently the subject of a DOJ probe over public statements he made toward Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Other ARE members have served on committees for the California Teachers Association, have been delegates to the NEA convention, and are engaged in groups such as Educators for Justice in Palestine and Queers for Palestine.
The system is being used as a tool to advance a radical left-wing political agenda.
But should ARE achieve its goal of taking over leadership of the union of one of the largest school districts in the country, it would be more status quo than anomaly.
In 2021, UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz infamously proclaimed that “there is no such thing as learning loss.” She continued by stating that it was “OK that our babies may not have learned their times tables … they learned the difference between riot and a protest.”
Myart-Cruz said the quiet part out loud — the teachers’ unions and far-left educators value political activism over learning.
Yet parents, public officials, and even other teachers are either willfully blind or largely unaware of the influence that these nefarious actors have on education despite the increase in public-facing activism. The system is being used as a tool to advance a radical left-wing political agenda, and it comes with a very steep cost for American children.
The proof is already starting to rear its ugly head, as evidenced by a recent University of California, San Diego, report.
Regardless of one’s position on public schools or teachers’ unions, this issue will eventually impact all Americans if left unaddressed. It is time to put a stop to the “school to far-left activism” pipeline and return the institution to its primary charter — to teach children to read and do math.
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Mississippi ‘miracle’ catapults 4th-grade reading scores from bottom into top 10 by getting back to phonics
In 2013, Mississippi ranked 49th out of the 50 U.S. states in grade four reading achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the largest continuing national assessment of American students’ knowledge and capability in math, reading, science, and writing.
In what has repeatedly been dubbed a “miracle,” the state made its way up the list — to 29th in 2019 and then 10 spots higher to ninth place nationally for reading scores last year.
According to the NAEP, black students in Mississippi ranked third nationally last year among their cohort for reading and math scores; Hispanic students in the state ranked first in the nation for reading and second for math scores; and poor students in the Magnolia State ranked first for reading and second for math scores nationally.
‘No, it’s not impossible to teach children, and no, it’s not very costly.’
The assessment noted that “Mississippi is one of only a few states with improved NAEP scores since 2013. In most states, NAEP scores have been falling over the past decade.”
While there have been numerous attempts to explain Mississippi’s success, it appears the “Mississippi miracle” is attributable ultimately to the state’s 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which conservative commentator Rich Lowry recently noted effectively came down to adopting phonics and setting high standards for students.
Noah Spencer, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s economics department, analyzed the impact of the LBPA — the three pillars of which are improving teaching, identifying and helping kids with reading deficiencies, and holding back third-graders who can’t hack it on an end-of-year reading assessment — in a study published last year in the Economics of Education Review. Spencer found that:
the policy, which included investments in teacher training and coaching, early screening for and targeted assistance to struggling readers, and retention for deficient readers, increased both grade 4 reading and math test scores on a national assessment by 0.14 and 0.18 [standard deviations], respectively, for students with any amount of exposure to the policy, and by 0.23 and 0.29 SDs for students with K-3 exposure to the policy.
Spencer stressed the significance of these increases, citing previous research that found “that ‘children with test scores that are one standard deviation higher at age 12 report 1-2 more years of schooling by age 22’ in the lower- and middle-income countries they study.”
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Linda McMahon. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
“While these estimates likely do not apply precisely to Mississippi’s context, it does seem reasonable to suggest that, given the LBPA’s sizable effects on test scores for children exposed from kindergarten to grade 3, it may also increase earnings for exposed cohorts in the future,” wrote Spencer. “The impressive effects of this policy change should be noted by policymakers in other jurisdictions.”
Lowry echoed this sentiment, noting that Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee, which have employed similar strategies, have also made gains.
“With reading scores nationally sliding the wrong way, especially for the bottom 10% of students, Mississippi and the other Southern states offer a beacon of hope,” wrote Lowry. “Their example shows that, no, it’s not impossible to teach children, and no, it’s not very costly. It’s a good sign that even California just passed a phonics bill.”
‘It’s really smart, local innovation at work.’
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has extolled the approach taken in Mississippi, telling the New York Post in September, “What I’m seeing now is a great return to classical learning.”
“We’ve tried a lot of things, you know — No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top — and I believe they were done with the best of intentions, but they were not successful,” said McMahon. “But what we have clearly seen is the science of reading is successful.”
Despite the noted success of the LBPA in Mississippi, some lawmakers around the country still haven’t taken the hint.
Democrats in Michigan, for instance, reportedly repealed similar reforms, eliminating, for instance, an A-F grade-ranking system for every public school in the state and scrapping the requirement that illiterate third-graders get held back.
Whereas last year, the average score of fourth-grade students in Mississippi for reading was 219/500 — higher than the national average score of 214 — the average score in Michigan was 209, which was lower than scores in 31 other states and jurisdictions.
The Mississippi Department of Education announced on Nov. 13 that 85% of the Magnolia State’s third-graders passed the reading assignment required to transition to grade four, a 1-percentage-point increase over last year.
The U.S. Department of Education noted, “Mississippi’s literacy climb may be called ‘miracle,’ but it’s really smart, local innovation at work.”
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