Race to the Bottom: Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education by Luke Rosiak is a journalistic account of a network of radical political activists, unions with leadership captured by leftist ideology, bureaucrats that value their own interests above that of their constituents, and philanthropy organizations that use racist rhetoric to fundamentally upend the American education system and to indoctrinate students with political views which are empirically false. The stories about people across several school districts illustrates how powerful national and regional interests have captured local government and used their power to implement busing systems that was neither desired by residents nor benefitted students academic performance, to promote lesson plans that promote leftist ideology, to alter government’s border lines to financially benefit housing developers, and to transform the personal dysfunction of mentally troubled individuals into a social contagion. At the core of these efforts is a push towards “equity” and “anti-racism” – which Rosiak masterfully demonstrates are floating signifiers that can be mobilized for contradictory and counter-productive policy changes that are often passed due to most citizens being uninformed and disempowered actors in a local political setting.
Race to the Bottom covers numerous professional organizations and consultancies such as the American Educational Research Association (AERA), PolicyLink, Pacific Education Group (PEG), and the National Education Association (NEA) and how they work in collaboration with teachers’ unions and the Democratic Socialists of America
Chapter One, Cheating Math, shows how school districts across the country were engaged in deceptive practices to artificially inflate the test scores, passing rates, and enrollments numbers of students while also lowering the standards involved in demonstrations of subject area mastery to ensure that they had statistics which made them appear to be “highly effective”. Students in Montgomery County, Maryland that had failed the state-mandated exams to pass were not just given an alternative project to complete as an equivalent but were given worksheets filled out in advance so they had to do nothing. At Ballou in Washington D.C., students that were truant for more than three months – which meant according to district policy that they should be automatically failed – nevertheless still graduated. In Los Angeles, out of school suspensions decreased by 1/3 over a seven year period – leading to a major jump in the rate which teachers quit and in-class time was disrupted by small groups of poorly behaved students that knew discipline options were limited. The sections on the elimination of standards requirements, the alteration of their calculation, or the reduction of their importance were also disturbing. In the name of restorative justice and equity, the denominator for “good academic work” was drastically reduced.
Chapter Two, The Mathematician, is framed with a concerned parent seeking data to help him understand why the school district – and those around him – that his child was in was doing so poorly and getting stonewalled by the state Department of Education. This shows to highlight how the vast educational bureaucracy operates together to hide what’s actually going on in the classroom and the board rooms which decide what is “accomplished” and what is “proficient” from parents. Close examination of the minutes of labor union resolutions hints at the extent to which these groups have transitioned from being organizations concerned about workplace conditions to political bodies directed by the radicals that have captured the leadership positions. An example of this is found at the annual NEA conference in July 2019:
“…one of the first actions union delegates took was voting down a motion to “rededicate itself to the pursuit of increased student learning in every public school in America by putting a renewed emphasis on quality education.” Instead, it approved motions to “involve educators, students, and communities in the discussion around support for reparations”; to blame the United States for destabilizing Central America, therefor causing a flood of immigrants, and to “incorporate the concept of ‘White Fragility’ into NEA trainings/staff development”.
https://ra.nea.org/business-item/20109-nbi-002
https://ra.nea.org/business-item/20109-nbi-025
https://ra.nea.org/business-item/20109-nbi-118
https://ra.nea.org/business-item/20109-nbi-011
The reason why so many teachers might be ignorant of these developments is hinted at in an earlier section of this chapter. The results of aggregate test results show that those seeking graduate degrees in education had the lowest math and verbal reasoning scores.
Chapter Three, School Board, focuses on how down-ballot elections for school boards that received little media coverage were targeted by individuals that frequently had no children, were funded primarily by outside individuals and groups, were leftist/progressive/Islamist activists that employed by activist organizations – such as Media Matters or New Ventures Fund, and sought to change established educational standards towards indoctrination.
Karl Frisch, Elaine Tholen, Karen Keys-Gamarra, Abrar Omeish, Rachna Sizemore Heizer, are just several of those shown to pursue a political agenda. Heizer is even described as carrying a copy of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States when she was sworn into the school board in December of 2019. While the funding comes from outside networks, so too does the campaign infrastructure for their election. Rather than engaging parents of students going door to door for outreach regarding candidates that they believe would be best for their children, unions, gay pride clubs at nearby college campuses, and national interest groups funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg became involved. Once empowered, these activists show themselves to be incompetent, self-serving, and political in a viral manner: people that are competent and serve the students and community resign rather than follow orders which will not offer meaningful learning experiences for children. They sought to cut advanced academic programs – even when racial considerations were resulting in black students being placed into higher-level classes in which they were underperforming. Their election also becomes a way to promote activists whose work and policies aligns with their worldview rather than what’s best for children. One example of this is Ibram X. Kendi receiving $20,000 from school board funds for a one-hour Zoom speech. The most disturbing example shown, however, is how these activist school board members and the teacher’s unions united against the CDC guidelines that suggested schools reopen and used refused to use funds intended to go to PPE to promote the notion that the DOE was “underfunding” schools. While clearly not a comprehensive picture of all educational labor union activity – it’s clear from the accounts shared here how they’ve turned into highly politicized instruments of power rather than an organ for collective bargaining between employer and employee.
Chapter Four, Riots, highlights Glenn Singleton’s Pacific Education Group – an educational consulting group that “has made millions implanting radical ideas into K-12 school through his trademarked Courageous Conversation programming (Rosiak 64). The costs of his training and the extent to which this company is able to impact lesson plans and hiring decisions is shocking – with some principals at schools quitting in protest rather than allowing what they see to be a toxic set of principles to be disseminated in their schools. In St. Paul, Edina, and other locales disciplinary rules change to ensure disruptive students face no repercussions for their behavior and academic standards are lowered and redirected to topics that openly promote leftist indoctrination within the student body.
Chapter Five, Don Quixote, opens with a journalistic account parsed from court documents about Tracy Hammond. She starts off as a housewife who, after numerous online exchanges with a convicted child molester who she eventually marries turns into a masochist, an anarchist and radical atheist who claims a Hispanic heritage that her parents say is fabricated would come to wield immense power in the Seattle School Board system. The power she wields, notably, continues the trend mentioned above: a heightened focus on ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ issues – such as the creation of ‘math ethnic studies’ – and the decreased ability of students to pass standardized exams required to demonstrate subject area mastery. Rosniak chronicles the life of this morbidly obese activist who was the Regional Teacher of the Year up until she was later deemed a racial fraud like Rachel Dolezal and fired from her job. He shows how the small network she formed was able to build a significant footing within the school bureaucracy, to link up with outside funders (the NAACP), and then push for changes oriented to her vision of “social justice” while at the same time attacking anyone that questioned the value of these equity initiatives. Reports published by the educational think tank Brightbeam, notably, came to show that the more progressive the policies the worst the achievement gap.
Chapter Six, Critical Race Theory, provides an account of how Critical Race Theory was repackaged as equity and how activists were successful in clandestinely adding its tenants to school curriculums in several school districts – such as Loudon County, Virginia. Michelle Thomas, who would become the NAACP brand president in Loudon in 2018, was the “pastor” leading the charge in her district. Pastor is in quotations as while she wore the collar of someone in the clergy, she has no theological training and despite claims of a connection to American slaves – she is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. It’s these people – with tenuous connections to the racial communities they claim to serve which act in a manner that could be categorized as over-compensation and that have dubious ethics (The ‘black owned’ business which Thomas once ran sub-contracted out all of the work to white-owned firms, i.e. was a mere intermediary, and she previously had an arrest warrant for her arrest for passing bad-checks). During her leadership a poorly researched report written by Kenya Savage, the leader of a group operating in the school system called the Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee, ispromoted by Katrecia Nolen, Wendy Caudle Hodge, Lara Profitt, Zerell Johnson-Welch, and other pro-CRT activists which is then used to demand the district to pay over $500,000 for school staff training. Some of those advocating for the necessity of the training, notably, were heads of companies that received money from these and related contracts.
This training sought to promote the view that “whiteness” was inherently “anti-black” and is noticeably silent about Hispanic students – despite being a demographic that was nearly double the population of blacks in schools. These equity projects, in essence, exploited administrators’ and school board members’ fears of being deemed “racist” for not supporting an initiative to fill the pockets of themselves and their friends. This allowed activists to promote force the school district to promote ethnic studies that, essentially, promoted the notion that capitalism was inherently racist, that it ought to be overcome, and that liberal notions such as the neutrality of law were nothing more than a sham to perpetuate racial injustice.
The following nine chapters continue with similar accounts as those described above. The details of educator organizations that have been captured by radicals, how these groups partner with activist cliques seeks to change school policy as well as private firms which rely upon such actors to change regulations to their benefit or obtain contracts are truly disturbing. Rosniak traces how many of the people now pushing for these changes have long histories of radical activism which goes back to the New Left and who now receive funding from people like Michael Bloomberg, whose wealth is in large part a product of his connections to the Chinese Communist Party. The section on government-funded lobbying – wherein groups are paid to train students to essentially function as the radical activist wing of the democratic party – is also worth further examination. While this book does not apply intelligence analysis to develop a larger picture of all the efforts of those described, the book does present a compelling series of accounts of the extent to which radicals are seeking to lay the groundwork for Cultural Revolution-style changes in the U.S. and is thus highly recommended.