Education or Agitation?

Back to School 2024

They’re Baaaaack!

As USA Today’s reporters were pondering just this week whether “protests tied to the Israel-Hamas war” would return, it was already happening at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. That institution’s president said they would respect free speech. But what of the rights of the students paying to get educated, not agitated? Thankfully, some state leaders know what to do.

“We are not going to allow anarchists to take over our college campuses, especially going back to school,” said Georgia Governor Brian Kemp at a recent gathering.  “People should face the consequences for their actions. If you have committed a crime, caused damage to property, or assaulted someone, especially police officers, you should receive severe penalties. This will send a clear message that we will not tolerate Georgia becoming like Columbia University,” stated Kemp.

Other governors have similar resolve, which is critical. As a reporter for The Hill wrote in April, “While governors have no direct authority to hand down punishments to students on campus, the political leverage they have over schools is significant.”  

Let’s be clear, however. Most protests are not comprised of innocent, activist students protesting over their “concerns” about Hamas. As the intelligence community has shared with Congress, they are vehemently and intentionally anti-Israel and supported by hostile nations, not only funded by Hamas-backed groups, but the funding is also translating into organized training sessions on how to protest most effectively and protect yourself from arrests.  “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters,” the Director of National Intelligence says. 

“The pro-Palestinian activists who disrupted campuses across the nation are plotting their return for the new academic year.” The Hill Newspaper, 8/4/24

Knowing that many students are easily influenced by the professional organizers as well as what their own institutions feed them, Florida instructed all its public universities to scrape their curricula for with the “goal of tagging content that may contain ‘antisemitic material’ or ‘anti-Israeli bias.’” Governor Ron DeSantis also emphasized that he would “safeguard our Jewish communities from hatred in the K–20 school system…and welcome Jewish students to live and learn in Florida where they will be respected and not persecuted due to their faith.”

While she didn’t go that far, Wake Forest President Susan Wente disbanded the encampment on her campus last spring, arguing the situation was “increasingly unsafe, with health risks to students and the potential for escalation due to external involvement from outside actors.” Of course, her faculty wasn’t not universally pleased, but hats off to President Wente for taking a strong position, unlike leaders at Columbia and Yale, which as DeSantis pointed out is where Hamas protesters rule the roost…even as these mobs harass Jewish students and faculty. 

“If you try that at a Florida university, you are going to be expelled.”

If the first few days of college are any indication, a universal commitment to a similar outcome in every state may soon be in order.

(Need a resource to help you navigate and fight anti-semitism?  The Combat Antisemitism Movement represents over 700 organizations working across the landscape to help accomplish just that.)

For The Younger Kids…

…Ah, the innocent! Back to School time is often a wonderful and forward looking time of year, but can we preserve that? We can only hope. Meanwhile, “school” looks vastly different for thousands of students than it has in years past, with only about 80% of students going “back” to something that resembles the traditional school of old (NB: It is likely far less but the data pundits don’t reliably measure real-time variations in school delivery beyond private, public and charter sectors…) 

Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona must have missed the memo about sector diversity, however, confining his “Back to School” bus tour to traditional school districts and issues that, for the most part, have little to do with ensuring students have access to 21st century education that best meets their needs. 

This part of the Education Department’s release is illustrative, intended to agitate:

“The tour will end in [the, ahem, swing state] Pennsylvania, where [Cardona] will be joined by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten to highlight the critical role of full-service community schools, serving the whole child, in ensuring food security in communities, offering mental health supports for communities, and improving opportunities and outcomes for students. The tour will end with a back-to-school Community Block Party.”

So opportunities and outcomes for students come last, huh? 

Innovative options, anyone?

#WhatAboutUs?

The teachers union also had a big hand in the Democratic party platform again, with this surprising twist on what makes strong communities -

“Democrats have teachers’ backs,” it reads. “Teachers, education support professionals, paraprofessional and school-related personnel, and specialized instructional support personnel are the heart and soul of our communities.

“We oppose the use of private school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education. Public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate.”

That word “discriminate” is more than a bit over the top. It’s not the poor who can afford to “discriminate” against their zoned public school and choose other options for their kids - it’s the wealthy.

This fact is what brought into existence the #WhatAboutUs movement during the 2020 election, as scores of black and brown parents working with the Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools took to the campaign trail and the debates to follow and prod the candidates for president on the Democratic side to hear their voice, and recognize their support, for all-of-the-above options for kids which put the goal of concrete educating first above all other “goals” for the kids every day. 

Why should it be only the Republican party platform that has and continues to support for “various publicly supported educational models,” parental choice and school improvement? To be sure, the GOP’s Education Dept. elimination and social issue agenda are non-starters for most. And platforms for neither party guarantee that a particular partisan will support or oppose an issue. But just imagine if “they” all just just put their special interests aside and did the right thing in freeing parents and kids to find the best education available for them.

It can be this way. It should be about the children, not the candidates. Always.

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How, you ask? When diverse providers and viewpoints work together to make outstanding stuff happen for our kids, great things happen. We’ve witnessed it time and time again. And you can do so next week, when the best in education innovation across the country are revealed with the Yass Prize 2024 Semifinalist announcement, live from Washington, D.C., on September 5, at 1 pm ET via YassPrize.org. Join us!

Meanwhile, enjoy the summer’s finale and your Labor Day weekend! And remember, it’s really not about the unions anymore, but the value of work.

To the Republic! - Jeanne