Transparency in Education

08/30/2025

The claims that the trans movement is akin to the fight for equal treatment is ridiculous. This isn’t the same as the legitimate arguments and changes that created a society that eventually embraced and accepted gay and racial inclusion and rights. This isn’t a fight for civil rights; it’s a demand that society accept the mental condition of a small group of people and adjust societal norms for everyone to accommodate it.

08/02/2025

Another example of faux outrage and hypocrisy is seen in those wringing their hands over the “horrible” message from the Sydney Sweeney ads. These are the same people who are ok with drag queen shows at public school fundraisers and Dylan McDermott’s bud light ads.

For those unfamiliar with the public school fundraisers, we pointed out that a local school program (as well as a substantial number of library events held in libraries) used a drag queen shows to raise funds. When we asked the board of education if they endorsed this method of fundraising and whether there weren’t better ways to raise funds we were told these programs “literally save lives,” a non-answer.

This unfortunately is the actions and mentality we’ve encountered in school districts across the country.

07/07/2025

Today’s Wall Street Journal contained an article on Gen Z (Gen Z, the Useful Idiot Generation) that stated “College is where many young people learn that socialism means free stuff. They are indoctrinated to blame capitalism for racism, inequality and climate change” but that thinking is at least a decade out of date. If you know anything about K-12 public education you know the public schools are heavily skewed with “left-wing ideology” with diminishing emphasis on opposing perspectives. Young Americans are already solidly conditioned to lean towards socialism when they get to college.

Parents remain largely unaware of how far the public schools have shifted in the last 10-15 years.

07/03/2025

Board of Ed members Dean Rose and Karen Yoho voted to continue the policy of allowing boys to compete on girls’ interscholastic sports teams and their argument is the same one they made 2 years ago when asked why the support allowing boys to compete on girls’ sports interscholastic teams: case law.
Cowards, hiding behind a technical point.

The question they have been asked and still refuse to answer is “what is your position on men competing on women’s interscholastic sports teams? Regardless of case law, do you think it should continue?”
It’s cowardly for an elected representative to hide behind a technical point.

Hopefully the Supreme Court will return a decision that ends this irrational policy because the Frederick County BOE will not until forced to do so.

A Frederick County Board of Education committee has rejected a proposal to prohibit transgender students from competing on sports teams or using restrooms that match their gender identity.

03/20/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16T56kXtVC/?mibextid=wwXIfr

In one year the Blueprint will cost Maryland taxpayers 700 million more than the said when they passed, and $3.7 billion over 5 years , but besides substantial increases in property taxes residents will not make the education system “world class.”

Conservatively, FCPS has at least $30 million in their $1 billion budget that could be reallocated to teacher salaries, academic programs, music and art, and infrastructure if fiscal control was moved from the state to the county level. The Blueprint is a one size fits all plan that will leave Frederick County with higher taxes and the essentially same problems it has now.

12/04/2024

In 2023 we co-authored and submitted a policy proposal to the board of education that would change the current FCPS policy to keep interscholastic sports in FCPS separated by biological s*x. It also included a process for parental involvement for families with students who were dealing with a child with gender dysphoria along with counseling and guidance to insure everyone - student, families, medical experts, and the school - were provided the best information for the situation.

It was rejected without discussion by the FCPS BOE, including current board president Karen Yoho and current board member Dean Rose.

Hopefully the most recent additions to the board can reintroduce the proposal and it can be given full public consideration.

08/23/2024

Both Kamala Harris and Tim Walz continue to repeat the lie that Trump supports a national abortion plan. He does not and has stated so multiple times in the past week. Trump’s position is that the SCOTUS decision to return the abortion decision to the states was constitutionally correct and he agrees with it.

MSNBC has also repeated this lie.

When this lie is challenged the Democrats try to tie Trump to Project 2025, an organization that supports a ban. Trump has also stated he disagrees with Project 2025 on this and many other of their positions.

08/13/2024

Concerning men competing on women’s sports teams: No one has presented a rational argument for allowing biological males to compete like this. No one can, not even the transgender community.

It is an indulgence that should have been stopped the moment it was first presented.

08/09/2024

After the mess that was women’s boxing at the Olympics some are calling for a separate competitive segment for transgender athletes. Here’s another reason why this is a terrible idea.

Less than 5% of US citizens under 30 self-declare as a gender different than their s*x. Far less than that if you count only those that have received a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and under .018% (source: the NIH) if the gender cannot be accurately determined due to a chromosomal disorder or biological anomaly. You don’t create a separate league for such a small segment where the physical nature of a contestant already aligns with one of the two existing segments.

06/21/2024

If cultural appropriation is truly a deep societal sin and an offense why isn’t gender appropriation subject to the same outrage?

04/29/2024

Related to our preceding posts, here are some of the positions of the teacher’s union (taken from their website and Resolution). Each is followed by our thoughts or question. Keep these in mind when you vote.

The teachers' union: “Equity is the centerpiece of the long-overdue funding formula that Maryland students need.”
It should be the decade-long low academic proficiency results.

The state union “opposes standardized testing because of its white-based contexts.”
No consideration for the root causes of disparate results beyond racial bias?

The union believes the state’s academic testing assessments “should not be used to evaluate school systems, individual schools, or teachers.”
If the state assessments are inadequate perhaps fixing them should be the centerpiece and focus instead of equity.

The state union “advocates that members be agents of change to combat structural and institutional racism.”
The implication is that it is the only cause and institutional racism is a given - an absolute truth not open to further discussion or other potential causes. It is apparently the only cause with pursuing.

The union opposes school choice for parents. Their position on Charter schools is that they must be "qualitatively" different and “not be just an avenue for parental school choice,” and the union is silent on ESA’s, the programs that allow parents to use tax dollars from the general fund to pursue alternatives to public school and are now active in 16 states. Other than a restrictive support for Charter schools any competitive program that provides parents an alternative to public school is opposed by the union.

There is much more; here are some examples. The union supports title IX but won’t oppose males joining female interscholastic sports teams (which is the FCPS position); believes non-vaccinated students “present a threat to students” and "employees"; believes non-citizens should be allowed to attend public schools (yet we could find no assessment of the impact on funding); and tacitly do not support parental notification of a child’s gender choices or social transition while at school.

If you want the unions financial backing these are just some of the things you’ll have to support as a candidate and board member.

NOTE: Why we do not support union candidates: Voters should decide what they want in their schools, but for us the Maryland teachers’ union, which is part of the NEA, has a Resolution that sounds more like a social activist organization than a labor union, stepping into the various roles of childhood development that have traditionally and historically been left to the family. Parents and the community should be free to choose what is best locally, not with a board under the influence of a national organization whose main priorities seem unrelated to a classical education.

Please share.

04/28/2024

Here is why we take issue with the Maryland state teachers’ union’s statement that they “oppose standardized testing because of its white-based contexts.”

Testing, by its nature, tells you where both students and the educational systems are succeeding and failing. It should be color blind, because as we’ve seen and reported when any subset of students underachieves the root causes, and therefore the solutions, lie in examining economic, behavioral, environmental, and cultural influences. This is true no matter the race, ethnicity, or gender.

This obsession with solely focusing on equity and racism has produced virtually no progress in academic proficiency in at least a decade but the unions will not move from that focus.