Threats to school safety. On Wednesday of this week, I spoke with Max Eden, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in a Heritage Foundation Policy Pulse about keeping children safe at school. The White House has signaled that they want to limit teachers’ abilities to maintain order in their classrooms. Max has researched and testified on the issue of school safety and student discipline, and his book Why Meadow Died with Parkland father Andrew Pollack describes the devastating experience of losing a child in a violent incident at school. The entire event will be available here.
Backpedaling. Writing for the Daily Signal this week, I describe how the U.S. Department of Education stared into critical race theory’s abyss and blinked. I write, “In April, the agency proposed prioritizing the theory’s racially discriminatory ideas in a small federal grant program for K-12 schools. But after a ‘significant’ number of comments to the announcement, the agency demurred earlier this week, saying it would not give a ‘competitive advantage’ to applicants proposing to use critical race theory.”
For more on how a Marxist philosopher called critical theory an idea “on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity” and why the federal agency’s retreat matters, read on.
Upcoming Event
At the State Policy Network (SPN) annual meeting this year I will speak with Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO of the Georgia Policy Foundation, and Michael Chartier, senior director of policy initiatives at SPN, about the long-term expectations for learning pods after the pandemic. Will the trend last and what policies are needed to make pods successful? Our session will be held on September 1. You can register for the event here.
