{"id":1471037,"date":"2022-05-11T08:01:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T12:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1471037"},"modified":"2022-05-11T08:01:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T12:01:23","slug":"parents-fending-critical-race-theory-off-from-destroying-high-achieving-schools-need-to-keep-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/parents-fending-critical-race-theory-off-from-destroying-high-achieving-schools-need-to-keep-going\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents Fending Critical Race Theory Off From Destroying High-Achieving Schools Need To Keep Going"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fparents-fending-critical-race-theory-off-from-destroying-high-achieving-schools-need-to-keep-going%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1471037&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Soccer_mums_4334993603-scaled-e1652214616119.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Parents in the Texas suburbs took the first step in <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/10\/conservatives-who-promise-to-stop-leftist-racism-win-texas-school-board-seats\/\">reclaiming<\/a> their schools in last week\u2019s school board elections. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ElectionWiz\/status\/1523294505918631936\">Conservative candidates triumphed<\/a> over progressive incumbents in \u201cFrisco, Clear Creek, Grapevine, Southlake, Keller, Carroll, Spring Branch, Richardson, and even in Dripping Springs\u201d (Austin). All of these districts are affluent suburbs with typically stellar public schools.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the conservative candidates ran on opposition to critical race theory (CRT) and mask mandates, and this messaging resonated with frustrated voters. This might baffle observers who don\u2019t actually see teachers in these districts incorporating CRT, except maybe in the <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/01\/27\/dallas-private-school-lies-to-parents-about-teaching-students-racism\/\">elite private prep schools<\/a>. Nor have there been mask mandates for a long time now. Nevertheless, these two issues played a role in schools, albeit under the surface, and it\u2019s important to understand why this has set off parents.<\/p>\n<h2>How Critical Race Theory Atrophied Excellence<\/h2>\n<p>While <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2021\/06\/24\/1009839021\/uncovering-who-is-driving-the-fight-against-critical-race-theory-in-schools\">leftist apologists in corporate media<\/a> like to claim that CRT is a theory bandied about in graduate schools and that K-12 teachers don\u2019t actually use the words \u201ccritical race theory,\u201d they are wrong to assume this makes CRT a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/opinion\/right-wing-freakout-about-critical-race-theory-began-1960s-n1271670\">mythical rallying cry for white supremacist voters<\/a>. In truth, CRT has brought about bad policy by subverting state governments, school boards, and district leaders with poisonous ideology and bad logic.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/us\/what-is-critical-race-theory\">CRT dogma<\/a>, all disparities in outcomes between different racial groups are attributable to systemic racism. Thus, if black and Hispanic students fail their classes and are suspended more often than white and Asian students, this must be because of racism, not because they aren\u2019t working as hard or behaving as well. The problem supposedly lies with the discriminatory standards set, not with the students who aren\u2019t meeting those standards.<\/p>\n<p>From this perspective, affluent districts like Keller or Southlake with glaring achievement gaps between different racial groups have a big problem. On the whole, they may be exemplary, but their unequal performance outcomes would negate this. Instead of meeting the needs of their struggling students of color, they focused their efforts on serving the majority of competitive upper-middle-class students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In order to fix this problem, these school districts\u2019 priorities were accordingly flipped by left-leaning school board members and district leaders committed to CRT. As Luke Rosiak writes in his recent book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.harpercollins.com\/products\/race-to-the-bottom-luke-rosiak?variant=39351311400994\">Race to the Bottom<\/a>,\u201d this has happened all over the country, particularly in ritzy suburban schools where \u201cequity\u201d (that is, ensuring equal outcomes) becomes the overarching goal of every policy. Since boosting performance across races while narrowing the pre-existing gap is impossible, the usual course of action is to flatten all students to the same low standard.<\/p>\n<p>This is exactly what happened in these Texas school districts. In order to escape the charge of systemic racism and inequity, district leaders pushed agendas that would lower standards and expectations for everyone. Academically, this means they moved towards a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/quillette.com\/2021\/12\/02\/standards-based-grading-will-ruin-education\/\">standards-based<\/a>\u201d or \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/08\/19\/why-competency-based-education-can-be-another-way-to-get-out-of-teaching-students\/\">project-based<\/a>\u201d model where grades became increasingly meaningless and the work was either playtime or mindless busywork. Behaviorally, schools like these in Texas promoted \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.weareteachers.com\/restorative-justice\/\">restorative practices<\/a>\u201d that substituted therapy and permissiveness for accountability and correction.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Consequently, many formerly great public schools slid into mediocrity over the past few years. Fights, vandalism, and truancy have become increasingly common. Test scores started declining as more and more students reported doing nothing in their classes. And despite weekly <a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2022\/05\/06\/dont-buy-into-sel\/\">\u201csocial emotional learning\u201d (SEL)<\/a> sessions with the students, depression, bullying, and various addictions have become the norm in classes. Among teachers, who have to deal with these issues on a daily basis, burnout is high.<\/p>\n<h2>Covid Was a Perfect Excuse to Launch \u2018Equity\u2019 War<\/h2>\n<p>Many parents might wonder why this is all happening now. Why did equity suddenly become a concern for these districts? Why are the superintendents in ritzy places like Grapevine or Clear Creek acting like their districts are impoverished minority-majority districts with high suspension and dropout rates?<\/p>\n<p>This is where Covid comes in. It wasn\u2019t so much that districts were mandating masks \u2014 we had those last school year, and it was awful \u2014 but that Covid became a perfect excuse to lower standards and focus on \u201csocial justice.\u201d Why challenge students and demand good behavior from them when lockdowns and Covid restrictions make this all but impossible? It was better that educational leaders use this moment to address injustices happening on their campuses by resetting all of them with different norms and values.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it was only a matter of time before parents grew tired of the Covid excuse and noticed the change in their children. Whereas before Covid, parents would call and complain about teachers being too hard or too strict, now most of them are complaining about teachers doing nothing about misbehavior and not preparing their kids for college.<\/p>\n<p>They also voiced their grievances at school board meetings, which became much more active in the wake of Covid. Although issues like masking, canceling extracurricular events, CRT, and banning various library books came up, most parents were upset about their neighborhood schools, which they were paying top dollar to be zoned for, falling short. And, as this recent election illustrates, the school boards had no good answer for them.<\/p>\n<p>Although it\u2019s tempting to take comfort in a changing of the guard, parents need to capitalize on this change and continue pushing for reform. They should realize now that schools and their school boards will indeed respond to pressure. For too long, that pressure has come from educational charlatans looking to exploit a crisis. Now is the time for parents to apply pressure in the other direction, to restore standards and excellence in their schools. Voting is just the first step.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MeyratAuguste\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Parents in the Texas suburbs took the first step in reclaiming their schools in last week\u2019s school board elections. Conservative candidates triumphed over progressive incumbents in \u201cFrisco, Clear Creek, Grapevine,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":551,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1471037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1471037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1471037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1471037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1471037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}