The NYS Board of Regents’ Recent Attack on Education

This week, the State Board of Regents continued its assault on New York education by pushing the teaching of revisionist DEI history ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations at a time when so many public schools are failing any Teach.

In this case, the panel approved the introduction of 40 videos to be shown in “Revisit the Revolution” kiosks at state parks beginning in February.

The videos, along with other narrative material, feature indigenous and enslaved people who fought alongside the American colonists and were only betrayed at the end of the Revolutionary War.

A video about the treatment of Native Americans ends with the extremely dubious epitaph: “Since its founding, the United States has never honored a treaty made with an indigenous nation.”

Even worse, the regents plan to distribute a similarly focused new curriculum for teaching about the country’s founding to schools across the state next year.

Although the videos will be available online, SED officials are planning a request more Funding to cover the cost of student field trips to kiosks in state parks.

Complete madness.

After approving the revisionist videos, several regents feared suffering another round of criticism similar to those faced when implementing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

In promoting the DEI curriculum, Chancellor Lester Young Jr. reportedly said, “It is important that we maintain the courage to do the right thing.”

That’s a welcome statement from the chairman of a board that has retreated from adhering to higher graduation standards and more rigorous state assessment tests.

Courage would be to stand up to teachers unions and demand accountability instead of hiding test results that show more and more schools are failing.

Courage would mean confronting the scourge of chronic absenteeism and pandemic-related learning loss, not deciding to stop.

What the regents offer instead is self-indulgence arrogance: Imposing ideology on children and schools while betraying their fundamental mission of ensuring New York’s children have access to an excellent education.

It is not the madmen who run the institution, but the criminals who run the courts.