© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Should Americans Trust Survey Results On Education From 'The New Majority?
In this photo taken on Tuesday, March 25, 2013, Mrs. Mary Natali goes over some information on the dry-erase board with her first grade class at George Buck Elementary School in Indianapolis. The national math and education standards outlined in the Common Core are everywhere at Buck Elementary. Stapled packets of the standards hang outside classroom doors, and individual guidelines are cut out and displayed in the hallways next to hand-drawn graphs scribbled in crayon. A bill signed last Monday by Gov. Mike Pence makes Indiana the first state to revoke those standards, but what will replace them is unclear in a state where teachers are still reeling from years of change. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)

Should Americans Trust Survey Results On Education From 'The New Majority?

Not everything is a racial issue. Let's look closely at what the left's agenda is before we believe what they are advocating.

If you are African-American or Latino with a child in the public school system, then your children are considered the "new education majority."

This "new majority" represents the first time in American history that the majority of students in public school are children of color.

What do you believe if you are a parent of color and your child is receiving an education in public schools? If you are inclined to believe the progressive left agenda, it means you blame the school and racial inequities for all of your children’s educational issues.

In this photo taken on Tuesday, March 25, 2013, Mrs. Mary Natali goes over some information on the dry-erase board with her first grade class at George Buck Elementary School in Indianapolis. The national math and education standards outlined in the Common Core are everywhere at Buck Elementary. Stapled packets of the standards hang outside classroom doors, and individual guidelines are cut out and displayed in the hallways next to hand-drawn graphs scribbled in crayon. A bill signed last Monday by Gov. Mike Pence makes Indiana the first state to revoke those standards, but what will replace them is unclear in a state where teachers are still reeling from years of change. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)  (AP Photo/AJ Mast)

According to an April 2016 survey conducted by the Leadership Conference Education Fund which was “founded in 1969 as the education and research arm of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, formerly called the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights,” parents of color believe, and I’m paraphrasing, there are racial inequities in education for their children, their children’s teachers aren’t great, schools need to set high expectations for their children and low-income families’ students and they believe they have a great deal of power to change the education system and are willing to do their part, as long as government addresses funding and other disparities that harm their children.

Immediately, I was anxious to see the nationwide results of what surely was a culmination of thousands of responses to the survey from parents of color. Additionally, since this Fund claims to “build public will for laws and policies that promote and protect the civil and human rights of 'every person' in the United States,” I was curious learn what the “old majority,” or those not of color had to say.

Imagine how sorely disappointed I was to discover only 400 African-American parents and 400 Latino parents were asked to complete the nationwide survey. So much for the opinions of thousands.

Also, I was struck by the fact that “due to resource constraints” other parents of color were left out of the survey. According to a letter from the president and CEO of the Fund, “Asian American and Native American parents and families were not included in this polling.”

Finally, the “old majority” which would apparently represent parents of Caucasian children, were also left out of the discussion. Seems odd for a Fund which claims to represent “every person in the United States” and considers itself the “nation’s premier civil and human rights coalition of more than 200 national organizations,” would be unable to add an additional 1,200 participants to the survey to include Asian Americans, Native Americans and Caucasian Americans.

When all is said and done, this survey is based on the “opinions” of a handful of parents of color and does not represent the full spectrum of “all” parents who have children in public schools.

The survey also fails miserably to convince anyone who requires facts, that African-American and Latino children are treated disproportionately to Caucasian children in schools, when no evidence is used other than “opinion and thoughts” in making that assumption.

Most people are aware there have always been disparities in education due to a number of factors, including but not limited to, income levels, lack of education of parents, single parent homes, mental health issues, violence within the home and the issues concerning the race of a student, especially those in school preceding the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The obvious implied message of the survey is to persuade the reader that “race” is the central reason for educational problems for children of color. If this was not the case, then why weren’t “all” parents adequately represented in the survey?

Seemingly, the political agenda was to use a small sampling of “opinions” from a limited number of parents of a particular race and then convince the general public they should accept those opinions as “expert” and furthermore, conclusive evidence to support the Fund’s scheme.

The survey’s results are “coincidentally” being released at the same time, President Barack Obama’s Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA is set to be implemented. The Act essentially returns most of the responsibility for your child’s education in public schools to the states. It allows states “to build, maintain, support and hold accountable public schools that will educate all children to be ready for college and a career that will provide them a living wage,” according to a statement from the Fund. While the goal of ESSA, according to the Fund, is to “educate all children,” not all children or their parents were fairly represented in the Fund’s survey.

Why would the Fund conduct such a limited and unreliable survey? I’ll base my answer on facts which are stated in the Fund’s “Introduction.”

“ESSA creates new opportunities and incentives to fully and adequately address the failure of our schools to educate all children, but only if we build the public and political will to do so. We cannot continue to sustain two separate and unequal education systems –one that educates Whites and middle-class children fairly well and one that absolutely fails children of color – and hope to maintain our status as the most powerful and diverse economy in the world,” according to the Fund's Introduction.

Once again, the Fund makes unfounded assumptions about “failure of our schools to educate all children.” It also does not base its racially biased statement about children of color versus “Whites and middle-class children” being educated in “two separate and unequal education systems” on anything other than its own agenda. The Fund’s unsupported accusations are used to further its stated goal to “maintain our status as the most powerful and diverse economy in the world.”

While the survey is supposed to be about education it apparently is being used instead to foster the “economy” in the long-run. Secondly, if the goal of the Fund is to “maintain our powerful status” then the statement implies the public education system has already reached a milestone they would like to keep rather than a system they would like to change because it is “broken.”

Nice try but the Fund may want to go back to the drawing board on this one if Americans are to trust in the results. Using an approach that includes “all races” would be more racially unbiased for starters and would represent a more realistic approach to an issue involving the education of children, which is important to “all parents.”

TheBlaze contributor channel supports an open discourse on a range of views. The opinions expressed in this channel are solely those of each individual author.

Want to leave a tip?

We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today.
Want to join the conversation?
Already a subscriber?