What does Utah’s current education choice landscape look like? The range of education choice programs and policies include vouchers, tax credits and tax credit scholarships, public school choice, and a diverse blend of taxpayer-funded online options.

As we reflect upon September 11, 2001, consider the history and the memory of the day. Both are important – and combined, they argue that we as grateful Americans must do a better job of teaching our past to the future citizens of this Republic.

If we are to do better in the future and maintain the American experiment in self-governance, it will be at least partly due to improved civics education.

This post informs readers about the main ideas of critical race theory by describing them in the words of critical race theorists, without intending any commentary on those ideas. The descriptions below should not be viewed as either critique or endorsement of the ideas described.

“There is no one silver bullet to defeating the rise of politics in the classroom, but academic (curriculum) transparency would put a decisive stop to the ability of schools to smuggle controversial content in absent parental awareness.“

Whatever the next mask mandate dispute or controversy may be, it should remind us of the importance of understanding how our government works. The more we lose that understanding, the more that mask mandates and similar issues will feel like the least of our worries.

The Federalist Papers are a civics education in and of themselves. Written with the intent to explain particulars in the Constitution, the collection of essays helps readers today understand the mechanisms found within the Constitution and the political and philosophical justification for them.

The win-win potential of curriculum transparency is important, since survey data suggests that parents and teachers are on the same page when it comes to things like civics and history education – where classroom politicization is most likely to occur.

“Education policy is one of the things we tend to play a game of ‘whack-a-mole’ much too often,” Sorensen says. “The reality is we could solve a lot of these problems by creating a more market-based system where the parent and child become real consumers of education rather than education being dictated by your ZIP code.”

States with “exemplary” civics and history standards typically include four elements. This is the conclusion from a Sutherland Institute Q&A with Fordham Institute senior researcher David Griffith, who co-authored a recent analysis of every state’s civics and history standards, in which Utah rated “mediocre.”