Parents Defending Education Goes Anti-Immigrant
Parents Defending Education is primo astroturf, a group of seasoned political communications professionals with the usual connections and deep pocketed backers, pretending to be a grass roots organization.
PDE has come out opposed to Black Lives Matter At School. They are staunchly against choice if it involves choices on the wrong side of culture panic (like a charter school with an LGBTQ focus). Their website notes:
Parents Defending Education is a national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas. Through network and coalition building, investigative reporting, litigation, and engagement on local, state, and national policies, we are fighting indoctrination in the classroom -- and for the restoration of a healthy, non-political education for our kids.
Their main shtick is to encourage people to turn in schools doing naughty indoctrinaty, CRT/DEI/SEL/MOUSE things and, in some cases, aim some litigation at them. Central to this culture panic battle is their IndoctriNation map along with the opportunity to submit an Incident Report.
The "incidents" include schools with Gay Straight Alliance chapters and "restorative practices." Fairfax County is reported for using terms like "marginalized group" and "protected class." Hosting drag performers. DEI hiring. And more recently, any school critical of Israel in current war. You can search under categories like ethnic studies and critical race theory and affinity groups. All aimed at catching districts, schools, or teachers doing naughty stuff.
But two days ago, PDE added a new category and a new incident report.
This is not a typical PDE report of administrative leftiness or some teacher getting all LGBTQ-accepting or anti-racist. This is strictly a complaint about immigrant children in Massachusetts.
In reviewing thousands of documents retrieved by Parents Defending Education via the Freedom of Information Act, there are indicators that show how this mass influx of migrant families has impacted schools in this northeastern state, particularly in the city of Springfield.
Thousands of dollars in local resources have been allocated to accommodate “newcomer students” and their families. This programming has included training sessions for teachers, administrators, and staff, as well as mental health support and translation services (both written and oral), which have included translating school documents in at least 17 different languages. Additional purchased documents include translation dictionaries for at least nine different languages.
Teachers admit there's an influx. Interpreters for at least six different languages were requested to help with parent-teacher conferences (Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Spanish). Talk about buying translation dictionaries. At least 135 migrant students in one city.
PDE does not critique districts' handling of this influx, so one assumes that the panic here is over all those furriners coming into our schools, and costing us money to educate and care for them. Apparently, on top of the usual culture panic, PDE will now add some Foreign Others panic. There's not even an attempt this panic to undocumented immigrants--this is just any immigrants at all! No recognition that, hey, these new folks might have jobs and be paying taxes. Just "These folks don't talk 'murican and that costs us money and aren't you outraged by that?"
Is it really necessary to explain, again, that immigrants have lifted this country up, and that children, who have no say over where their parents take them, deserve an education because they are young humans and the world will be marginally worse if they don't get one? That yes, this is hard, but that's no excuse not to do it?
PDE is now right up there with the Heritage Foundation, which back in February said Supreme Court decision be damned, let's charge undocumented immigrant children tuition to go to school. Even other conservatives knew this was a pretty odious stance.
I suppose this fits with PDE's general stance of championing intolerance and opposing money spent on Other People's Kids, but somehow this seems like stooping even lower. I guess we'll see whether being anti-immigrant is a big new part of their portfolio.
When average people, not these culture warriors, engage in good faith contemplation of immigration, they can certainly have some legitimate concerns about their community. It largely boils down to one that is hard to define, but is intuitively understood - does this Vulcan want to become an American of Vulcan descent/heritage or do they want to be a Vulcan just living in America? The first involves those nebulous feelings of belonging or acceptance while the second is strictly transactional. The presence of a “China town” or “Little Havana” in one’s community can be enormously conflicting. We can recognize that our own lack of immigrant acceptance has a role in creating them, but that we in turn are not accepted by them is uncomfortable.
Funny thing about Springfield, MA. It's had immigrant students since the 1970's - a lot of them Puerto Rican kids, who are, ya know, citizens. A common pattern of Puerto Rican migration is that families flow between island and mainland schools, and island schools are taught in Spanish. But PDE has just found this out, somehow.