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Commentary By Diane Yap

Ideology or Education? That Is the Choice for the S.F. Board of Education Election

Education Pre K-12

I got my 15 minutes of fame when I found Alison Collins’ infamous tweets deriding Asians as “house n----rs” who “use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’” My critics are correct that I deliberately searched for these tweets. I wanted to confirm what I observed from Collins and her colleague and fierce supporter, Gabriela López, during school board meetings — a disdain for and willingness to overlook the needs of Asian constituents.

I am not here to rehash the past, but the recall happened for a reason. Voters overwhelmingly recalled three school board members because they saw the dysfunction of prioritizing ideology over basics: renaming schools that weren’t even open, pouring money into a legal fight over a mural despite the $125 million budget deficit and randomizing the admissions of San Francisco’s No. 1 high school. Did they once ask: How will this improve academic outcomes?

I am here to sound the alarm. Three Board of Education candidates for the Nov. 8 election are, unfortunately, motivated by ideology over educating students. A focus on ideology means we can expect to hear endless soliloquies on equity, uplifting marginalized voices, how everything (including academic merit-based admissions) is “racist” while literacy, math and chronic absenteeism outcomes for the most disadvantaged continue to decline. Don’t take my word for it: Former school board president  López is on the record dismissing academic setbacks from distance learning as “different learning experiences.”

Continue reading the entire piece here at San Francisco Examiner

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Diane Yap is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.

This piece originally appeared in San Francisco Examiner