Local School-Related Irreconcilable Differences

Cy-Fair ISD school board meeting gets underway, April 11, 2022
screenshot from here

There's an action item at the bottom, so if you're in Texas, please don't miss that.

We have some irreconcilable differences in our school district. This month’s school board meeting was last Monday, April 11th. The public comment is where we see much of the conflict. There is one side that wants more power to the parents, more transparency, and less indoctrination and sexualization of our children. There is another side that wants to limit parent choice and to denigrate parent concerns.

Our school district is not unique in facing these differences. But what I want to emphasize is, this is not a problem seen elsewhere but not here in our backyard. It’s here.

School Board Member Concern

A friend passed along a blog post to me recently about some issues in our district. The blog post is anonymous. You can read it here.  Because I don’t know who wrote it, I can’t vouch for them. But I’ve read it and corroborated much of what is in it, and learned more to clarify a few things. 

A member of our school board recently joined a private group on Facebook of people in our community who have influence on what happens in our district. The group is called Cy-Fair Civic Alliance. Their description of the group says:

Cy-Fair Civic Alliance envisions a Cy-Fair ISD [Independent School District] that embraces the future, prioritizes an inclusive and equitable learning environment, and supports a diverse community where every child can thrive. Cy-Fair Civic Alliance works to engage, inform, and unite Cy-Fair ISD staff, parents, students, and taxpayers.

If you’re aware of the term “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (sometimes in different word order), then you can see why this is concerning. DEI is against diversity of thought, against equality of opportunity and instead favors equal outcomes, and excludes whoever they disfavor, which tends to be anyone with white skin, or possibly with Christian beliefs. This is an ideology spreading in businesses and institutions, like schools and governments. It’s often associated with ESG scoring, the social scoring system used in China.

The blog writer wanted to know what was going on in this group, so he/she joined, after answering several “progressive” questions. I wasn’t willing to answer those questions against truth, but I wondered what they were, so I went so far as to request membership, see the questions, and then withdraw the membership request. The questions are:

·        Please share your thoughts on diversity, inclusion, and equity in public education.

·        Why is Public Education important?

·        How do you see yourself contributing to this community? (Attending the board meetings, sending emails, sharing on social media, outreach, etc.)

It’s clear there is a certain viewpoint in the group. So when Cy-Fair ISD Board Member Julie Hinaman joined the group, she presumably answered those questions in a way that indicated she was in alignment with the group’s viewpoint.

welcome message for Julie Hinaman, 
posted on Cy-Fair Civic Alliance,
image found here

Hinaman was welcomed to the group with a post on November 9, 2021. The group was created November 4, 2021, immediately after the election in which three long-time school board members were replaced with what we hope are three members more aligned with parent values. It does appear that it was created in response to that school board changeout.

At the school board meeting last week, Hinaman was referred to as a founding member of Cy-fair Civic Alliance, which she denies. That might be a semantic difference; she joined during its first week of existence, but may not be a person involved in creating, or founding, the group.

One controversial issue that has come up with this group is their influence to reinstate in the Bridgeland High School library certain books that had been removed following parent concerns. The blog post includes screenshots of a book called Flamer, which was brought up by several citizens at the board meeting. It appears to be a graphic novel, and the samples shown in that blog post are particularly vile. They are sexually perverted in nature and involve minors. Clearly this violates the anti-pornography laws in place to protect young people.

So, to review, parents reported the content of these books to the school district (I don’t know to which entity), and some schools then removed the books from their libraries. CyFair Civic Alliance proudly announces in its Facebook group its success in getting the books placed back in the library at Bridgeland High School, where they had been removed. This post, by Tana Lam, is shown in the blog post, and was read during public testimony at the school board meeting.

During the meeting, Hinaman was accused of knowing about the content of the books in question, and knowing about Cy-Fair Civic Alliance’s personal contact with the librarian, making that decision to override parent concerns, and doing nothing about it.

CFISD Board Member Julia Hinaman, at the April 11 board meeting
screenshot from here

Later in the meeting Hinaman defends herself. She says,

I would like to correct a false statement made during public comments using my name…. While there is a board policy and a district process for reviewing library books, I have not been a part of the review process for any library book, because it is not part of my role of governance.

Regarding a Facebook group, I am a follower. I follow several different community groups across our community, just to stay in touch and to see what’s going on in our community. I am not involved in the management of that particular group that was mentioned. I am not a founder. And I’m unaware of the post that was referenced.

There’s a difference between “following” a group and being a member of a private group on Facebook. She had to join, and express her allegiance to the ideas of the group, so that’s a bit disingenuous.

Also, I haven’t seen her membership in any of the community groups I’m in, the kind that want to promote parents’ rights and school choice, for example.

About being unaware of the post that was referenced, that may be true, but it was testified to by multiple community members on both sides of the issue, so by this late point in the meeting she is aware of the post and of the involvement of the group for which she is a member. And by her very resistance to the parents calling her out, she is supporting the pornographic material being put back into the library. She could have expressed that she was unaware of the group’s involvement and then have added that she would not approve of such materials in our libraries, but she doesn’t do that.

On April 8, Cy-Fair ISD announced that Julie Hinaman had been elected to the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), “taking an interim position representing Region 4, Position F.”

During our district platform work, where we took the resolutions from precinct conventions to develop wording to pass along for the state platform, one of the most common education resolutions was a demand to cut ties with various organizations, of which TASB was mentioned specifically. The platform wording we came up with was,

Sever Ties: We insist that local ISDs immediately sever ties with organizations that have opposed parental rights and the voices of parents, particularly concerning CRT-related materials and the sexualization of the child as in the LGBT agenda. These include but are not limited to the HB3 Reading Academies, the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA), the Texas Association of Community Schools (TACS), the National School Boards Association (NSBA), the American Library Association (ALA), the Texas Library Association (TLA), and the International Baccalaureate Program (IBP), nor will we accept testing from the Next Generation Assessments and Accountability (NGAA).

Reasoning from the resolutions mentioned that TASB, among others, consistently lobbies against bills for parental rights and transparency, works with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to label parents concerned with Critical Race Theory as domestic terrorists, and has worked to erode parental authority.

The SREC (State Republican Executive Committee) has also called out TASB for these issues.

In other words, being on TASB is not a reason to trust Julie Hinaman to represent parents in our district; it is a reason to distrust her.

Irreconcilable Differences

We can see that those who oppose parent values in our schools coincidentally favor books like those pornography examples we talked about. But they want, not only for those things to be in our schools; they want parents to have no place to go.

One of the public commenters at last week’s meeting called out the new board members, particularly Natalie Blasingame (not by name, but she’s the only new female board member), for having the audacity to suggest that underutilized campuses could be used for things parents want.

Dr. Tara Cummings, speaking at the April 11 school board meeting
screenshot from here

So, this was the testimony of Dr. Tara Cummings:

In response to the report [demographic report at Thursday’s work session], one of our trustees commented that she’s committed to making CFISD the very best choice for all families. I’m glad to hear that, but I’m a bit confused and concerned, considering some of the anti-public ed political candidates that she and our other new trustees have publicly endorsed.

Knowing that charter growth is a threat to our district and public education in general, it’s imperative that our trustees mind their votes accordingly, and that the community continue to pay attention to such.

This same trustee also stated in the future she hopes to see underutilized campuses “used for things families want.” Although I agree that the district must be judicious in making decisions about the facilities, our facilities now and in the future, the primary priority, and a factor that sets us far and above other educational options, especially charter and private schools, is the commitment to opportunity for all. The promise that all students, regardless of their zip code, campus, or circumstances are afforded exceptional and equitable educational opportunities.

Speaking of equitable, how ‘bout them equity audit recommendations? As a parent partner in education, which according to our new trustees makes me the primary stakeholder in education, what I don’t want is something along the lines of magnet-type programs. CFISD doesn’t need lotteries in order to provide a world-class education to every single one of our students. Opportunity for all means just that.

I’ve talked with Dr. Natalie Blasingame about what “used for things families want” might mean. She suggests that, if there were parents of 20 students that wanted, say, a particular track, maybe a Christian track, it would be possible—at no extra cost—to accommodate that choice. We simply use current facilities and willing current staff to fill the need.

While I am very pro-homeschooling, Blasingame wants the opportunity for the school district to try to meet the needs before a parent feels like they have to turn elsewhere.

Dr. Cummings here reveals a couple of divisive points. She claims, as though it’s common knowledge, that charter schools are a threat to public schools. Charter schools are public schools; they are a type of public school, with funding being part of public school funding; i.e., taxpayer funding.

Every student that goes to a charter school goes there because the public school they were assigned to failed to meet their needs—and because they were among the lucky ones to get a slot in a charter school, which the parents hoped would be a better option. The problem is, the waiting list for charter schools is long—too long. And we’re not getting enough new charter schools. Even though there is great demand, charter schools with proven track records, such as those coming out of Hillsdale College, are being refused a charter in Texas.

When Dr. Cummings says CFISD can “provide a world-class education to every single one of our students; opportunity for all means just that,” she doesn’t mean meeting the needs of all those students who have turned elsewhere because their needs aren’t met; she means she wants to keep them stuck in the failing situation along with everyone else that’s stuck there—so she can make sure all of the state’s education funding goes to indoctrinating them the way she wants.

Stacy DeMeier speaks at the school board
meeting on April 11,
screenshot from here

Another of last week’s public commenters, Stacy DeMeier, is what I refer to at times as a public school believer—like it’s a religion. And anyone who doesn’t agree with her is a heretic. She claims that charter schools are a threat. But, again, charter schools are public schools, just not her preferred sect. If the entire school system were changed so that all schools were charter schools, and parents chose the type they wanted for their child, public schooling would simply look different; it would not disappear. Funding might need to be restructured. Charters actually do cost more per child right now, unlike private and homeschools, which accomplish the goal at lower costs. But if there were a free-market deciding the costs, that could change everything for the better. But DeMeier doesn’t want better services at lower costs; she wants every child stuck in the type of classroom she believes in:

It’s pretty clear that if we, as a community, do not stand up to the recent attacks aimed at undermining public education, including book banning, false accusations of CRT in the curriculum, and the constant attacks on our teachers, then we will be left with a school district that is not receiving adequate funding it needs. We need to support pro-public education representatives. And we especially need board members who are not actively trying to take funds away from our district by supporting and publicly endorsing school choice voucher-loving politicians.

What she calls book banning is removing harmful pornographic materials from school libraries intended for minors. We’re not talking about depriving children from reading Huckleberry Finn for its depiction of racial issues, or Harry Potter because it mentions witchcraft; we’re talking about keeping out of school libraries actual pornography aimed at children. This used to be something parents and schools could agree on.

And there aren’t false accusations of CRT in the curriculum; there are actual examples of CRT ideology being taught—which have been presented in multiple previous school board meetings. I don’t know what she means by attacks on teachers, unless she means teachers who are going against the will of the parents and teaching things we’ve insisted not be taught. Such a teacher might feel “attacked,” if a parent calls for them to be accountable. But no, there are no physical or even verbal attacks on teachers, so that’s what you might politely call a mischaracterization—or, more accurately, a lie.

Ayse Endomayo speaks at the
school board meeting April 11,
screenshot from here

As for physical attacks, though, the person who bragged in that Facebook group about getting the book back in the library, Tana Lam—she reportedly attacked one of the parents—one of those testifying at this meeting and who regularly attends and testifies, Ayse Endomayo (sp?). According to Endomayo's testimony, this happened a couple of months ago outside the meeting. There was a police report filed. The school board has been made aware of it. And yet this person has been allowed to go into a school library and get pornography put back in.

So, what is a heretic in DeMeier’s public school religion? Someone who supports choice for parents who want their children’s needs met without indoctrination or sexualization of the child.

We are at an impasse. As parents, grandparents, and concerned community members, we’d better push harder than the public school religion inquisitors. And we’d better do it now. Because the harm to our children is already being done. The next school board election isn’t until 2023. We need better from our board now.

Call to Action

One more thing. The Texas Education Association (TEA) has, at the direction of Governor Abbott, updated their guidelines for selecting and removing school library materials. (Texas Scorecard story here.) The purpose of these statewide standards is to prevent the presence of pornography and other obscene content in Texas public schools, such as those we’re talking about here in CFISD. The new standards require a district librarian to read all materials brought into libraries, something that has not always happened. And the review and selection process will be transparent and will emphasize parental rights.

I got a text today suggesting that several hundred of us ought to contact our school board members to adopt these new library review policies. What the TEA has set forth is a model policy; it is then up to local school districts to adopt policies. That means the parents need to require it. Maybe a reminder that showing porn or other harmful materials to minors is against the law, so in order to protect themselves from prosecution, they’d better set an appropriate policy.

Education Conversation

Some friends and I have been thinking a lot about education lately. It is a two-month theme for our local Tea Party meetings. I spoke, and wrote about that, a few weeks ago. (Someone recorded it, and it’s actually available for viewing here. If you go to the website of the person who recorded it, the other speaker and the Q&A are available there as well.)

We’re having another meeting this Saturday, hearing from two members of the State Board of Education.

The entire public education system is something of a mess, and not succeeding in what we want it to do. There are many approaches to solving that. But key is getting the decision making more local. 

Toward that end, a friend shared with me, and I’m going to pass along to you, some things from a tele-townhall in which Hugh Hewitt interviewed Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, and Dr. Kathleen O’Toole, the provost for K-12 education for Hillsdale, which covers their Barney Charter School Initiative.

Hugh Hewitt (left), Dr. Larry Arnn, and Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
at tele-townhall for the Barney Charter School Initiative

A conversation between Hugh Hewitt and Larry Arnn is always fun to listen in on. They typically talk once a week for an hour on radio, called the Hillsdale Dialogue. Dr. O’Toole happens to be Dr. Arnn’s daughter, and she is a good addition to the discussion, particularly on the issue of education.

This discussion was meant to provide information about their charter schools, and to give people an opportunity to donate—because they try to give away as much education as they can, which they can only do when there are enough donations.

Anyway, I’d like to share parts of their discussion, just because I think it helps us see the gap between what we know works to educate students and what our schools typically do—often at no fault of the teachers.

The Barney Charter Schools are about classical education. That’s another name for liberal education—but not what liberal means in the political sphere. It means open-minded and clear thinking. It implies studying the classics, and the good. That’s probably going to include Aristotle and Plato, who pointed out that there’s evidence of the divine everywhere. Wherever you rate one thing as being better than another, you imply there is an ultimate good. That is God; and God is the arbiter of what is good.

These schools will talk about the role of ethics and religion. They’re public schools, but they can still talk about what a religion believes, what it is, and the role of the three major monotheistic religions in Western thought.

Dr. Arnn often speaks about defining what is good. He references C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, which comes up in this discussion as well. In that book, Lewis talks about the problem you have when you strip out conscience from a person. Humans are the only creatures with a conscience. Without that, all you have left is appetite; you lose what makes you human. You need to build character, which is the condition you build in yourself, foregoing pleasure, enduring pain, so that you can become educated and just.

Dr. Katherine O'Toole
at the tele-townhall for Barney Charter School Initiative

Schools are going to teach what the adults in the school believe to be virtue, that that might as well be intentional. Dr. O’Toole says,

If you send your child to any school, you are sending your child to a group of people who are giving examples to your child of what adults and bigger kids are like. That’s what school is.… Every school is teaching kids about right and wrong, good and bad, who you should be and who you shouldn’t be. That’s just what school is, in part. If you send your kid to one of these classical schools, you will send them to a group of people who are thinking about that question explicitly, and talking about it explicitly. They’re talking about virtue. We recognize that kids are going to be learning about right and wrong by being around us, so we might as well make a point of doing it right.

Dr. O’Toole points out that education is an activity performed by the student. You cannot educate someone against his or her will. She says,

The teachers are there to guide them, set up framework, hold them accountable, introduce them to the ideas. But students are the ones doing it. If a class is run well, they are the ones asking questions. They are being asked questions. They are interested in what is going on. They are connecting what they’re learning in one subject to what they learned in another subject in the previous period. They’re talking about what they’ve been learning all day every day with each other. It’s part of who they are. It’s not some other thing that they do besides their real life. It is their lives.

There’s a key, she says, to an excellent school. It’s “involved parents, excellent teaching, and a sound and solid and robust curriculum.”

And what does it take to have an excellent teacher? Teacher have to have learned and studied the content. Dr. Arnn suggests getting rid of the teaching of teaching. It’s a waste for teachers to spend time studying methods for teaching the subject matter—which takes away time from actually studying the subject matter.

I used to notice this in college, as an English major. Many people in my major headed toward education. But I didn’t like taking the time out from what I wanted to study and spending that in classroom preparation classes. In addition, let me note that, many English majors going into teaching (in my experience) struggled with grammar—where we diagrammed sentences, among other things. It was their worst subject, typically a C, D, or Fail class for them. If you’d taken a foreign language, it came much easier, which I had. But future teachers took English because they loved reading stories. Maybe, if they were good, they could help lead a discussion for students on what they’d read. But they were typically subpar in grammar and writing. They needed more time learning those skills, rather than taking that time to learn how to write out a lesson plan.

Dr. Arnn talked about the rights and responsibilities of parents, which I think is an essential part of any discussion on education, and why the control has to be local.

The school, should absorb this. You have a right, as a parent to raise your children—the duty and the right. And the natural love that parents have for children is the strongest force on earth. Human babies take longer to raise than any other kind. And they would die, for years, if they were not tended. So that love that you have should be influential in the school.

Now, the second thing is teachers. Teachers are smart people. And they could do a lot of things with their lives, and this is not the highest paying profession. So, they’re people who are devoted. And they and the parents and the administration of the school—which shouldn’t be very many people—they are the right ones to run the school. And that is the way education worked in America.

Charter schools, he says, are a step back toward self-government, toward management by the people who know and love the kids. Also, he points out, as I would expect, that education is not among the things enumerated for the federal government to do.

There is some discussion about learning phonics, rather than whole language. And getting young children to memorize important writing, such as the Preamble to the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address (both of which we memorized in our homeschool), or maybe Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, which is only seven minutes long. Kids memorize, and then they understand the words and the concepts.

There’s discussion about learning math facts, so when you get to more complicated equations, you’re not taking time to work out 6 time 7 on your fingers; there’s no time for that. In our homeschool, we memorized through 12X12 for multiplication, but we have a book that recommended memorizing up through 25X25, which would be handy.

They discussed connecting subject matter, rather than keeping each subject disconnected.

There’s more, but I’ll leave it to you to listen to the whole thing, if you want to know more specifics about their charter schools. But, here’s something to think about. They started in 2010, and opened their first school in 2012. They now have 22 schools in 11 states. Dr. Arnn’s goal is to have 50 schools. They can be smaller, but the one Dr. O’Toole headed in Leander, Texas, had about 650 students K-12.

When you look at the total number of students who would like this kind of education instead of what they’re getting, it seems like just a drop in the bucket. We've talked about the difficulty of getting in here and here.

The hope is that getting started, and doing even this small number, will have an effect on society as a whole.

If you’re interested in taking a look at their curriculum for free, email them at charterschoola@hillsdale.edu and they’ll quickly get back to you and provide it—no charge. There was also a fair amount of information at the link to this tele-townhall, here.

If you’re interested in donating, call 800-437-2268, or click the link at the bottom of the page below the tele-townhall.

Dr. Larry Arnn
at the tele-townhall for Barney Charter School Initiative

Dr. Arnn ended with a thought I’d like to repeat here, while we’re in the midst of this conversation on education:

Nothing is more important than to become an informed citizen, because we’re losing the whole constitutional fabric of the nation, and the principles that gave rise to it. That [loss] started in education, and it’s proceeding through it now. We have to interrupt that. So, first of all, inform yourself. Anything you don’t know, always learn more. And then, talk to your neighbors…. If you’ve got opinions and influence, use it. And we will help you; we will give you things to know. It’s very possible to save the country by saving the education system.

People who know how to learn, and how to teach, and how that all connects to raising people to become great souls—we can find a way together to make that happen. We have to.

Sowell Food for Thought

Another Uncommon Knowledge interview with economist Thomas Sowell came out this week, coinciding with the updated version of his book Discrimination and Disparities. There’s always wisdom that comes from listening to this octogenarian (I hope he lives at least another 20 years). Some of the stories I’ve heard before. I’ve read his biography. But some of it is new, or clarifying because of current data. He’s big on finding evidence from the data.

Thomas Sowell, on Uncommon Knowledge
screen shot from here

He has added a new chapter to the book, and here’s an example quoted from that:

The poverty rate among black married couples has been less than 10% every year since 1994. As far back as 1969 young black males whose homes included newspapers, magazines, and library cards had similar incomes to those of their white counterparts. Academic outcomes show a pattern of disparities similar to the pattern of disparities in the amount of time devoted to schoolwork. Apparently, lifestyle choices have consequences.

Host Peter Robinson asks him about that:

PR: So this is the constrained vision once again. Welfare state, that’s government; we don’t rely on that. Affirmative action, government; we don’t rely on that. We rely on hard work. We rely on the institution of marriage. That’s correct?

TS: Yes. In other words, these things— I don’t think it’s the marriage as such or the library cards as such; it’s that there are lifestyle choices that have been made. And the comparison I made was between—if you look at the poverty rate among blacks, it was at 22%, and among whites it was 11%, but among black married couples, it was 7.5%. So they not only do better than blacks as a whole; they do better than whites as a whole. So it’s lifestyle choices.

That’s not something we hear in the news, or from mainstream opinion commentary.

new edition, with new chapter

Thomas Sowell talks some about minimum wages. That was a particular interest of his, back when he was working on his PhD, and was still a Marxist, but was academically committed to empirical data (which, of course, is what led him in the opposite direction of Marxism so many decades ago). When he tried to get data from one department of government to another, he couldn’t. There was a sense that people’s jobs—in the government—were at stake if evidence showed, as some believed, that higher minimum wages led to greater unemployment.

Of that experience he quips:

I worked in the US Department of Labor, and I began to realize—well, a number of things—that the government is not simply the personification of the general will, like Rousseau or others would say. The government institutions have their own institutional interests.

His own life example about the minimum wage was as a 16-year-old high school dropout, when he got a job as a Western Union messenger, delivering telegrams on a bicycle. The minimum wage for the job, as set by the US Fair Labor Standards in 1938 was 40¢/hour. But by 1948, when he got the job, he started at the bottom, getting paid 60¢/hour—the going rate to get the workers, rendering the minimum wage irrelevant.

But then “compassionate” government stepped in to “help” by raising the minimum wage. The result is that 20 years later a black kid (or for that matter a white kid) can’t get a job.

Sowell and Robinson spend some time discussing the difference between the “constrained vision” and the “unconstrained vision,” from an earlier book, A Conflict of Visions. Constrained means that you pay attention to reality. Unconstrained means there’s an assumption that good things happen all by themselves, but if bad things happen there’s some institution to blame—even maybe civilization itself. 

So, when there’s disparity, there’s one side that looks for data and evidence to compare one approach to another (the constrained side). And then there’s the side that assumes there’s racism or some other social ill at fault (the unconstrained side).

Most of the time, in our country today, disparities are not racially caused. He talks about another possible effect contributing to poverty:

TS: Wherever you look around the country, around the world, you find people that live up in the mountains poor and backwards. Even in the richest country, including the United States. I believe the poorest county in the United States was in a mountain community which was almost 100% white.

PR: Somewhere in Appalachia? West Virginia? Southern Ohio?

TS: Yeah. And men in that county had a life expectancy ten years less than men in a county in Virginia.

PR: And the unconstrained vision says, “Lets fix that. Surely we can pass a law that would improve that.” And the constrained vision says, “Well, now, wait a moment. If people who live in isolated pockets in mountains are poor and backwards all around the world, and we see this pattern over, and over, and over again, maybe there’s something very deeply rooted in reality about that that is hard for us to get at.” Correct?

TS: Yes.

Robinson reminds him of a recent column in which he challenged Nicholas Kristoff, a New York Times writer who thinks whites should pay reparations for the legacy of slavery.

PR: Kristoff had ascribed the gaps between African Americans and whites in America—gaps in wealth, gaps in educational achievement, the usual gaps—to, and this is a quotation from Kristoff: “to the lingering effects of slavery.” And here’s Tom Sowell:

“If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood 100 years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state. In other words, we could compare hard evidence on the legacy of slavery with hard evidence on the legacy of liberals.”

And so there it is. Life is hard; you use the word hard. You use the word serious. You use evidence. Tom Sowell is a man of the constrained vision through and through and through. Correct?

TS: Yes. Part of a vanishing breed, I might add.

There are a couple of times in the conversation that charter schools come up. They’re educating better than children in privileged areas are being educated. And they’re not getting the cream of the crop; they’re allowing students in by lottery, without even looking at they’re academic history. But they do have high expectations, and they don’t tolerate nonsense.

Near the end they cover charter schools in more detail. Robinson points out that Democrats—and he can’t remain nonpartisan about it—prevent quality education for those that need it. And Dr. Sowell agrees:

TS: That really is one of the moral outrages, that for many kids who come from a very poor background, and whose parents might not have had much education, a decent education is the one thing they have to have to have a better life.

And these schools have been absolutely spectacular. The charter schools. The successful ones. Now there are some that weren’t, but— For example, a few years ago on the New York statewide math test, there was an elementary school, grade 4 I believe, in Harlem, whose students passed those tests at a higher rate than any 4^th grade kids anywhere in the state of New York. I mean, we’re talking Scarsdale, Radcliffe, places like that. The Success Academy schools as a whole, their students pass both the math and the English statewide tests at a higher rate than any school district in the entire state of New York.

The vast majority of the kids in the Success Academy schools are either black or Hispanic. If you look at the five highest scoring school districts in the state, in terms of the percentage of students who pass the math or the English tests, their average family income ranges from four times that of the kids in the Success Academy schools to more than nine times the family income of the kids in the Success Academy schools. And yet, the Mayor of New York is doing his darndest to put a stop to the expansion of these schools in general, but his special ire is aimed at the Success Academy schools. And this is happening all across the country.

PR: Because they make the teachers unions look bad, in the public schools? What’s the political motivation? Why would Mayor de Blasio have it out for the charter schools such as Success Academy?

TS: Well, the teachers unions are the major reason. And we talk about the money they contribute, the votes they contribute. What’s happening, again, not just in New York, but other parts of the country, including California, is there’s all kinds of chicanery to prevent the charter schools from expanding. That’s why you have tens of thousands on the waiting list. It’s not that the charter schools aren’t willing to expand, but every conceivable obstacle is put in their way. Because, if you let that go at the natural pace, it would be very hard for public schools to compete.

There it is again: something about that government institution having its own institutional interests—apart, and probably in conflict with the stated goal.

What’s missing is a search for—or even a valuing of—evidence, or truth. The current rise of socialism’s popularity is an example—51% approval from those in the 18-29 demographic, according to a recent Gallup poll. How can that be?

TS: Yes. Socialism is a great idea; that does not mean it’s a great reality. One of the things that disturbs me tremendously is about this enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and socialism at a time when people are literally starving in Venezuela, an oil rich country. And they’re breaking into the grocery stores to try to get food. And they’re fleeing to neighboring countries, most of which are not all that prosperous themselves, but at least you don’t starve to death in them. And none of that makes a bit of difference. I don’t think most of the people that are out there cheering for Bernie Sanders have given a thought to Venezuela.

PR: To the evidence.

TS: That’s right. To the evidence, yeah.

So that’s one theme for this conversation: get the evidence, so you know what you’re talking about.

And this is another common Sowell theme:

TS: In the government you have surrogate decision makers, and they cannot possibly know as much as the individuals whose person decisions have been preempted.

The third would be about lifestyle choices:

PR: Tom Sowell’s view is, get an education, stay married, and do your job, roughly?

TS: Yeah.

It sounds like what we’ve been saying here for years. If Thomas Sowell agrees with us, I think that means we’re on the right track.