Putting Parents Back in Charge | City Journal
Ducey: Covid changed everything in K-12 education. Parents were able to see what their children were being taught via Zoom videos. They were also able to see the lack of rigor and expectation in these classrooms. They saw this pervasive CRT that s been discovered in so many different districts. And parents were rejecting that, along with the heavy-handed mandates around vaccines and masking, while they saw little to no focus on math, reading, science, character formation, or American civics. We had a lot of parents who were not politically engaged, or had been sitting on the sidelines, saying, I want to have a say in what happens in my children s education. We had an African-American lady, Janelle Wood, who started micro-schools. She sat next to my wife, Angela, at the State of the State address, when I told the body: Fifty years ago, politicians stood in the schoolhouse door and wouldn t let minorities in. Today, union-backed politicians stand in the schoolhouse door and won t let minorities out. These kids are trapped in failing public schools. It s time to set these families free. That s not a Republican idea. That s an American idea, that we all have equal opportunity and we should have that opportunity for an excellent education.