On DESE's Agenda: How to Trans 4 Year Olds
DESE claims "Best Practices," but their practices are just AWFUL.
If you’re not signed up for DESE’s “Commissioner’s Weekly Update” emails, you really should be. It’s the best way to keep in touch with all of the important goings-on at DESE.
And by “important goings-on,” we mean, all the different ways they are trying to cram their extreme progressive agenda down on MA parents and families.
For instance, see above. It’s the contents from the January 16th, 2024 Update.
Now, if you’ve been following woke trends in education for any amount of time now, especially the divisive ideologies that are smuggled in under the umbrella of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI), there might be a few keywords that stick out to you as possibly suspicious. You’ll find more about those at the end of this post. But the main focus of Massachusetts Informed Parents (MIP) is warning parents about Comprehensive Sexuality Education and the sexualization of children in MA public schools, so we want to draw your attention to: #3: Gender Inclusive Practices in Early Childhood and the Elementary Years.”
Yes, that’s right, parents. DESE is hosting a professional development (PD) session for district and school administrators (when you click the registration link, you will also see that it is open to teachers) on supporting transgender and gender-expansive students, starting in Pre-K. Honoring Student Voice: Establishing Safe and Supportive Environments through Gender Inclusive Practices will “focus on supporting gender identity and expression in early childhood and elementary grades. The session will highlight laws, policies, best practices, and resources for supporting LGBTQ students and families, with a focus on transgender and gender-expansive students.”
(See how it says, “student voice?” Make a mental note of that term, we’ll talk about it again later.)
Now, the obvious gripe with this PD from adults who still live in the land of common sense is that it’s completely gross and inappropriate for any school staff to be discussing gender identity with kids who still believe in the Tooth Fairy. Of course, every school should already be supportive of girls-who-like-trucks-and-boys-who-like-dolls but anything beyond that is venturing into the realm of sexuality with littles who don’t understand sexual feelings yet (and shouldn’t). But on top of the general inappropriateness of the topic of the training, parents need to be wise to is that DESE will be highlighting “laws, policies, best practices, and resources….”
This is a problem because DESE seems to enjoy presenting their wishes as mandates, and school districts often take the bait. We have seen this happen over and over since the passing of the Comprehensive Health and Physical Education framework in September 2023. In fact, it’s happening so often that one of the attorneys from the Massachusetts Family Institute created a graphic for parents that delineated what DESE is allowed to demand, and what they are NOT. DESE keeps making it sound like schools are required to implement this Framework, when in fact, this is not the case.
See page 2 of the graphic below:
We have seen other examples of DESE overstepping their bounds (or districts blaming their bad behavior on DESE, which makes an extremely appealing scapegoat), like this post from MIP. According to this MA public school parent, her school district informed parents that DESE had given them a directive stating that “parents are not to be provided an opportunity to opt their student out of anything other than the Sexual Health standards.”
We don’t know what “DESE kickoff event” her district leadership is referencing, or what they would say if a parent asked for proof of this claim. But it doesn’t ultimately matter because DESE doesn’t actually have the authority to tell local districts that they can’t allow parents to opt out of other concerning content.
Another example of this happened (and is happening) in Natick, where parents have shown concern about second graders being required to read Call Me Max, a story about a transgender child. Natick Public Schools issued a Q&A document that very much gave the impression that the law requires them to teach this topic (it doesn’t) and that they are not allowed to provide an opt-out option for parents (they are). MFI’s attorney yet again came in clutch with a response letter to Natick Public Schools that stated otherwise. You can read his letter in its entirety HERE, and the most relevant portion is below:
But what does this all have to do with DESE’s upcoming Gender Inclusive Practices in Early Childhood and the Elementary Years training? This training is yet another opportunity for DESE to claim (either directly or indirectly) more authority than they actually have, and for district leaders to leave their common sense at the door and uncritically accept what DESE considers “best practices” when it comes to talking to little kids about sex and sexual orientation and so-called girl-brains-in-boy-bodies.
Parents need to remind their local educators that they work for them, not for DESE. And educators need to do their professional due diligence and educate themselves about the difference between “guidance” and law. Teachers and Admins, don’t let DESE trick you into thinking they have more power than they do. Question everything that comes from the administrative state and the unelected bureaucrats who seem to be more interested in pleasing the activists (or being activists themselves) than they are in respecting the rights of the parents who are actually legally responsible for (and actually love) the little people who fill your school halls every day.
The “best practice” that any district admin can do is to OPT OUT of ridiculous trainings like this, and not to give DESE an inch beyond what the law requires. And the “best practice” that parents can do is to stay involved and to make sure that their school leaders know that DESE doesn’t dictate what is “best” for their child.
Let’s just let kids be kids, m’kay? Pre-K and elementary kids don’t need gender ideology. Obviously.
Hey, DESE. Leave the kids alone.
*****
Oh, and about those other red flags we mentioned? Well, here’s your DEI lesson for the day.
#4, “Grant to Support Student Voice and Well-Being,” is one example. It’s really sad that a benign-sounding term like “Elevating Student Voice” is tied to identity politics, and that the warm-and-fuzzy sounding phrase “Well-Being” is tied to public-school-as-therapist, but they are. It says so right in the second paragraph. “Culturally responsive” and “anti-racist” are two other loaded terms that parents should watch out for because they can be used to bring racial division into the classroom, all in the name of (supposedly) helping marginalized students.
Here’s another example. #6 mentions the “Equity Leader Accelerator Program,” which should set off DEI alarm bells right away. Any time you hear the word “Equity” used in the title of a program, you know it’s going to be driven by progressive ideology.
Of course, it doesn’t take much research to see that CLEE is a Critical Theory-infused activist organization. They are all about “disrupting” the system and making “transformative change” to public schools to create “equity” (and I’ve put those words in quotes to remind the reader that, in woke-world, these terms are definitionally loaded). Here’s “What Transformative Change Looks Like…,” from the Equity Statement on their website:
According to CLEE…
The perfect school is one where students would:
be “self-directed and independent” (read: peers with their teachers),
feel “safe and affirmed” (read: never made to ‘feel bad’ with discipline),
pursue content, skills, and knowledge that are “personally meaningful and culturally relevant” (read: students should only need to learn things that they personally care about or relate to their ethnic culture), and
apply what they have learned in work that “improves our world for the better” (read: activism).
And teachers at their perfect school are fully committed to:
“anti-racist and anti-oppression practices” (read: CRT activism and ideology),
“relinquish and share power” with their students (read: no discipline or authority),
monitoring student progress toward “individual and shared learning goals” (read: no objective learning standards), and
“engage students in the collaborative development of a learning environment” (read: teachers and students are equal),
where students are “liberated” (more activism).
CLEE doesn’t hide its objectives, it’s all on their website. But it’s up to parents (and educators) to know how to read between the lines and anticipate the downstream effects of putting these objectives into practice. This program is for principals - the people in the highest level of leadership at each school building. You can imagine what would happen to a school led by someone who buys into CLEE’s mission.
If you’ve spent any time looking into Critical Theory and its impact on the K-12 public school system, you probably picked up on a lot of this right away. But for those of you who haven’t gone down this rabbit trail yet, consider this your push. Go chase that rabbit, mom and dad. If folks from your district get involved with organizations like CLEE, or if your district goes after grants that require them to follow the DEI playbook, you can expect to see more of these ideas implemented in your kids’ classrooms.
MIP does not exist to fight DEI. But the DEI agenda is being used to push gender and sexuality issues into the public schools, under the name of ‘inclusion’ and ‘belonging.’ Parents need to be able to recognize loaded language when they see it so they can protect their kids from divisive and destructive ideologies.
Want to learn more about loaded language and DEI “woke speak?” Here’s a great site to get you started. Once you’re done there, here’s an ARTICLE, another WEBSITE, and a BOOK that will help you on your way.
#equippingparents
#protectingkids
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