The sneaky anti-public education attacks are increasing in the Kansas legislature this week. One area we’re watching particularly is new “transparency” proposals. This piece connects the dots. Please educate yourself and engage with legislators as these bills start making their way through the legislature.

“This raises the question of who actually wants this flood of new information. As a parent of two kids, I have more information about their teacher’s activities than I really need. Instead, the ‘transparency’ agenda serves those who are not on the parental email list, or who are not invited to the parent-teacher meetings.

“The key audience for this information is not the typical parent, but activists or interest groups. While the anti-CRT movement was presented as an organic parent-driven movement, many of the most prominent figures are professional political activists, some who did not have kids in the schools they are attacking. They are looking for scandals that can serve a pre-existing political agenda. The model legislation does not compel teachers to provide materials that are all that useful to parents—teachers have to list materials, but not provide the actual content. Instead, it is only groups with the time and resources to investigate each book, or watch each video, or do a background check on each guest speaker, who will have the capacity to use this material.

“Because the purpose of these bills is to arm interest groups, the outcome will not be higher trust or greater consensus among parents, but greater polarization and distrust. Such bills are consistent with laws that encourage college students to record faculty at universities in the hope of catching a comment they can use to sue the university and get the professor punished. It is hard to imagine a setting less conducive to learning…

“A final danger with ‘transparency’ bills is that they serve as a seemingly innocuous bait for a nasty hook. The kicker come in the form of unworkable conditions, unreasonable punishment and penalties, or a defunding of public schools.”

Read more about it in article by Don Moynihan, McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-purposes-of-the-new-education

Originally posted to Facebook 1/30/2022