Andrew and Beth speak with education analyst, Tom Kelly who talks about his work with the Jack Miller Center advocating for civics education in K-12 schools. We discuss the appalling results of the recently released assessment of eighth-grade students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) where only 14 percent of students scored proficient in US history and 22 percent in civics.

Kelly also explains the difference between traditional civics education focused on America’s founding documents and the structure of American government and “action civics” being taught in public schools and favored by the national teachers unions which focuses on civic engagement and social justice issues.

Thomas Kelly oversees all K-12 civic education efforts for the Jack Miller Center (JMC) through its Founding Civics Initiative. Since 2016, Tom has grown JMC’s K-12 civics programming from 2 to more than 130 programs in ten states with a network of nearly 2,000 teachers. Tom’s articles on civic education have appeared in Newsweek, The Hill, National Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and RealClear Public Affairs. He received an A.B. from the University of Chicago in international studies and a J.D. from the University of Notre Dame.

This week Beth and Andrew speak with journalist and author Lisa Selin Davis, who shares how she, as a self-described liberal, started being interested in writing about gender and social justice ideology. We talk about her recent expose in The Free Press, “How Therapists Became Social Justice Warriors” and Davis shares her research on how the fields of psychology and psychiatry have been co-opted by critical social justice, and the role that feminization has played in these trends.

Davis also talks about how her NY Times op-ed, “My daughter is not transgender: She’s a Tomboy” led to her prominent writing about the rise of transgenderism. We also discuss the state of the hyper-polarized media and the deterioration of journalist integrity in recent years.

Lisa Selin Davis is the author of the nonfiction books TOMBOY: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different, and the forthcoming HOUSEWIFE: Why Women Still Do It All (and What to Do Instead). She writes the Substack newsletter BROADview, and is at work on a book about the youth gender culture war.

Beth and Andrew speak with educator, political scientist, and author, Rick Hess, who shares his views on whether we can reform our country’s failing K-12 education system.

We discuss the appalling results of our public schools in teaching kids reading, math, history and civics, and how they have declined even more since the covid pandemic. Hess talks about how progressive ideology has taken over the education establishment including graduate schools of education and shares his opinions on what we can do to potentially reform the education system and why he is newly optimistic given the rise of the parent’s movement in the post-covid years as a force for change.

Frederick M. Hess is a senior fellow and the director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on K–12 and higher education issues. The author of Education Week’s popular blog “Rick Hess Straight Up,” Dr. Hess is also an executive editor of Education Next and a senior contributor to Forbes. He is the founder and chairman of AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network.

On this episode Andrew and Beth interview noted author Heather Mac Donald. She was the first to write about elite K-12 private schools being taken over by an obsession with race and identity nearly 20 years before the events of 2020 and the start of the parent’s movement. We also discuss her recently published book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty and Threatens Lives.

Mac Donald talks about how the concept of “disparate impact” and how it is corrupting our science and our medical system, our cultural institutions, and our criminal justice system, all with disastrous consequences for American and for western civilization.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor at City Journal, and the 2005 recipient of the Bradley Prize. Her work has covered a range of topics, from higher education and immigration to policing and race relations. She is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including The Diversity Delusion and the New York Times bestseller The War on Cops.

Beth and Andrew welcome in Paul Zimmerman of the Defense of Freedom Institute about his recently released report, “Catching the Trash: Holding Teacher Unions, School Districts, and the U.S. Department of Education Accountable for the Epidemic of Sexual Abuse in Public Schools.”

Zimmerman details the alarming rise in reported sexual abuse cases by teachers in public schools in recent years and explains how abusive teachers are allowed to remain in classrooms, being passed from one school district to another without parent’s having any knowledge of the teachers’ history of misconduct. We also discuss the teachers unions role in protecting abusive teachers and Zimmerman walks us through what kind of local, state and federal legislation can help put an end to the these shocking and appalling trends of sexual abuse in our nation’s public schools.

Paul Zimmerman serves as Policy Counsel at the Defense of Freedom Institute, where he leads the organization’s Teacher Union Accountability Project and contributes to its legal and oversight efforts. Prior to joining DFI, Zimmerman was Counsel at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he coordinated agency responses to requests from oversight entities, consulted on legal privileges in the context of litigation and Freedom of Information Act requests, and prepared senior personnel for testimony before congressional committees. He also worked for over a decade in multiple roles at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.

Carrie Mendoza, MD (FAIR in Medicine)

Every week on Take Back Our Schools we tackle the culture of illiberalism that has permeated our education system. With teachers and administrators now involving themselves with medical decisions and parents’ rights to control the care students get, this week we speak with physician and healthcare policy advocate Carrie Mendoza, MD.

Beth and Andrew speak with education innovator and author Ray Ravaglia about what lead to his founding of the Stanford Online High School back in 2007, and the challenges of using technology to create a robust online school for gifted and talented students.

Ravaglia discusses how online learning has changed over the past several decades, and especially since the Covid years. We delve into his current work at the organization, Opportunity Education, and how technology can be used in the classroom to successfully track student learning and engagement. We also talk about the pros and cons of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and ChatGPT in education.

Ray Ravaglia is the author of two books, numerous articles, and has produced over 100 online courses.

Education analyst Max Eden joins Andrew and Beth for a wide-ranging discussion on the issues facing today’s eductaion system. Eden describes what led to him to a career studying education policy and we discuss his explosive and bestselling book about the Parkland school shooting, which concluded that progressive “restorative justice” policies in the school led to the horrific incident.

Eden also gives us an update on the Biden administrations proposed changes to Title IX rules and their impact on girls sports. We also discuss what states like Florida are doing to combat progressive ideology in public schools and we talk about the rapidly growing movement for school choice.

Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on education reform, specifically K–12 and early childhood education, and was previously a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Max is the coauthor of the bestseller “Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created the Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students” and the coeditor of “The Every Student Succeeds Act: What It Means for Schools, Systems, and States.” Eden has testified about school violence before Congress and about the “school-to-prison pipeline” before the US Commission on Civil Rights.

Photo courtesy of Karith Foster

On this episode, Andrew and Beth speak with comedian and diversity trainer, Karith Foster.