I have long been a Meghan Daum fan (I discovered her in the early days of the pandemic) and I am a regular listener of her podcast, The Unspeakable. We were supposed to record a couple months ago but then the Los Angeles wild fires hit and Meghan is one of the many residents who lost their home. She has done a few audio dispatches about the fires to share her own personal experience and help us understand that these fires affected families from every social class and and the lazy narrative that “only rich people were affected” is a myth.
I’m so grateful that we were able to reschedule our conversation for today. This was my first time going live on Substack and I think we witnessed a miracle—I figured out how to record on my phone and my mini tripod didn’t fall over even once.
During our lively and wide-reaching chat, we talk about my organization (Parents Defending Education), K-12 education trends, the teaching profession, the current status of boys, our literacy crisis, how NOT to try to solve a problem at your school and the importance of inoculating your children against the ideological capture they may experience at school. I enjoyed every minute and could have talked with her for hours.
We also shouted out a few people during the conversation including
, and .Meghan’s podcast is perfect for people who appreciate the nuance that is too often ignored in conversations about contentious topics. In addition to her podcast, she is a wonderful writer of books and essays. To learn more about her work, click here.
Additional links to things I mentioned during the conversation:
The resource I mention that has a lot of data about girls v boys.
Emily Hanford’s investigative report, ‘Sold a Story, ’ about how teaching kids to read went so wrong.
How Louisiana became a rare bright spot in a sea of terrible reading and math results.
My piece taking on those who say that if we really loved our kids, we’d homeschool them.
To see the school districts we have documented at Parents Defending Education that have policies to withhold information from parents about their own child’s gender identity at school, click here. This list is not exhaustive and we add to it regularly.
Breaking News!
There is very big news out of the Department of Education tonight with the announcement of their plan for a 50 percent reduction in staff — I’ll likely have more to say in the next few days but suffice it to say that any claims that Title I or IDEA funds will be cut or reduced are false—these are federally guaranteed programs. Rumors about the school lunch program are even more ridiculous because school lunches have NOTHING to do with the Department of Education—they are housed in the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture.)
The announced cuts will directly impact half of the 4000+ bureaucrats that staff the Department of Education and it’s important to note that while the department has grown exponentially over the years, student outcomes have declined and we have more students performing at the lowest levels in math and reading today than we did thirty years ago— the most recent round of math and reading scores for 4th and 8th graders were catastrophic.
Nobody that interacts directly with students, parents or teachers is losing their job with these specific cuts. People can certainly disagree on the merits of the cuts and debate the value of a 4,000+ person Department of Education, but let’s please try to stay within the guardrails of accuracy and truth.
That’s all for now. Talk soon.
ES
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