Week in Review: Do You Know What Your Kids Are Learning?

For too many parents, the answer to that question is a resounding “no.” Increasingly, children are learning that America is a racist country, that our Founders were bad people, and that race is the most important part of their identity, determining whether they can succeed or fail. And it’s politically powerful unions that are making this change possible, prioritizing politics over the education of our kids.

To make matters worse, many parents have no idea this is happening—even in states where the law protects parents’ right to review educational content, there’s often no practical way to access that content. Usually, parents must enroll their children first before they’re told what the school is teaching, and that makes it impossible for parents to make informed choices about their kids’ education. This opaque system is simply bad for parents and bad for kids.

On the latest episode of the Epoch Times’ “California Insider” program, Goldwater Institute Executive Vice President Christina Sandefur talks about this growing problem—and Goldwater’s needed solution to it. Our academic transparency reform would require public schools to make a list of their curricula available online to parents, so parents can have a better understanding of what their children are learning and be better equipped to make decisions about the educational experiences that best fit their child’s unique needs.

You can watch the full interview with Sandefur above, and you can learn more about Goldwater’s efforts to shine a light on classroom curricula here.

The Federal Government’s Nonsensical Tax-and-Spend COVID Relief Plan

As states continue to recover from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it makes no sense for the federal government to limit states’ ability to provide tax relief. Yet that’s exactly what President Joe Biden’s “American Rescue Plan Act” does: As a condition of taking federal dollar under that law, a state is effectively prohibited from cutting taxes through 2024.

This week at National Review Online, Goldwater Institute Senior Attorney Jacob Huebert takes on the “tax mandate” in this new law. “For years, taxpayers have been fleeing poorly managed high-tax states, such as California and Illinois, for states with lower taxes. The pandemic has accelerated that trend,” Huebert writes. “Unsurprisingly, senators from the states that are losing the most residents voted for the mandate, in an apparent attempt to stem the outflow of residents and businesses to lower-tax states—that is, to suppress the competition among the states that our federalist system was designed to encourage.”

Forcing states to adhere to such a tax-and-spend plan is not only illogical—it’s also unconstitutional. Congress can’t take advantage of an emergency to coerce states into giving up control of such an important issue of state policy. The Goldwater Institute has filed a brief supporting the state of Ohio’s challenge—one of several legal challenges that state attorneys general have filed against the tax mandate.

You can read Huebert’s full op-ed here.

LAST CHANCE! Join Us for “A Time for Choosing” Webinar

From classrooms to boardrooms, activists are using Critical Race Theory to reject the fundamental principles on which our freedom is based, pervert the idea of justice, and deny everyone’s rightful claim to an opportunity to pursue the American Dream.

This coming Tuesday (June 29) at 1pm AZ time, the Goldwater Institute will host a special live video discussion about the growing use of Critical Race Theory in everyday life—and what we can do to keep the promise of the American Dream alive in the face of such a divisive worldview. Radio show host and commentator Kevin Jackson and Goldwater Senior Fellow Jonathan Butcher will join Goldwater Director of Communications Mike Brownfield to explore the rise of Critical Race Theory in American institutions and the impact it’s having on our national discourse.

You can sign up for this special event here—we hope you can join us on Tuesday!