Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

There was a time when I would ignore rants of Fox News talking heads like Mark Levin… but that was before we lived in a world where New Hampshire and other states passed laws forbidding the teaching of “divisive issues” and roughly two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65%) say they trust Fox News for political and election news. In this case, Mark Levin’s absurd rants about the Marxist takeover of public education require some kind of rebuttal, for if they are allowed to stand without one they will eventually become accepted as “true”. And what are those rants? Try this on:

“Life, Liberty & Levin” host Mark Levin detailed a “plan” for parents to stand up against the institutions “that are undermining our country and destroying the minds of our children” in his opening monologue Sunday.

“Parents are starting to show up in numbers at school board meetings, but they’re abused at these school board meetings, the entrenched unions, the entrenched educational bureaucracy and administrators, the school board members, this cabal, they have no intention of doing what we demand,” he began. “We spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year for these institutions. They call it public education. Yet we have no say on anything that takes place. We don’t even have transparency. While that’s got an end. And I got a plan,” he said.

Wait… what??? The unions, school boards and administrators are a cabal??? I’m not sure what state or school district Mr. Levin is describing with but it certainly isn’t one in the six states or where I lived or worked! The boards and unions and administrators all belong to separate organizations at the state level and each of those organizations have markedly different perspectives on how school districts should be governed.

Mr. Levin, like most Fox news talking heads, conveniently ignores the fact that 30% of the teachers in the US are not in a union and, as noted in earlier posts, it is medical professionals and concerned parents more than unions who are driving decisions on issues like masking, returning to in-person instruction, and social distancing.

And his assertion that the “voters have no say on anything that takes place”? Again, I’m not sure what school district Mr. Levin is describing with but it certainly isn’t one in the five states where I worked! In each and every state in the union the budgets are voted on either by elected officials or, in New England, by the voters. Indeed, in New Hampshire voters vote on whether to fund the financial impacts on negotiated agreements! Voters DO have a say on virtually everything that school districts do… and in most cases the volume of information available exceeds the amount an individual voter can absorb.

And Mr. Levin’s charge of a “lack of transparency” is based on the need for Executive Sessions:

These school board meetings, they have these executive sessions. Why are they having executive sessions? What’s discussed in the executive sessions?

I think if Mr. Levin wanted to know why boards have executive sessions and what is discussed in them he might counsel his viewers to review their state laws and local school board policies. The open meetings laws in the five states where I worked all have strict limits on what can be discussed.

So in the end, Mr. Levin either doesn’t know what he is talking about or knows exactly how schools function and assumes that his viewers are incapable of examining the facts and are willing to believe whatever he tells them. In either case, his diatribes are dangerous and undercut the boards, administrators, and teachers who are striving to provide the best education possible for the children in their schools.