If right-wingers succeed in removing the accreditation of a school, its students will lose access to federal financial aid.
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Conventional wisdom tells us that every crisis contains an opportunity, and the right wing in the United States is wasting no time in proving this true. Take public schooling. “The uncertain period following pandemic destruction [is] an ideal moment to reimagine U.S. education,” Frederick M. Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in his recently released book, The Great School Rethink.
Hess is not alone in his reactionary revisioning. Groups including the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council and the Manhattan Institute, alongside conservative talk radio and other media, have raced to formulate and impose their wish list on what students can learn and what teachers can teach. It’s a long roster and extends from banning the teaching of anything that could possibly be dubbed “critical race theory” (CRT), to eliminating programs that promote and support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Also included are efforts to exclude transgender athletes from women’s teams, the reframing of curricula to focus exclusively on Western civilization, the elimination of gender and ethnic studies classes and majors, and placing fixed limits on tenure and faculty governance.
And now a new bugaboo has been added: The agencies that award accreditation to colleges, universities, and technical and vocational training programs, both online and on brick-and-mortar campuses, are under fire.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is leading the charge against the “inordinate amount of power” that he believes accreditors exert. Likewise, former President Donald Trump in May of this year announced that he would “fire” accreditors if he is reelected. His reason? They fail to protect students from the “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” that he envisions at the helm of U.S. higher education.
Then there’s Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and one of the masterminds behind the national campaign to squelch CRT and the teaching of truthful (if unflattering) depictions of U.S. history. Rufo, a DeSantis adviser who is on the board of New College of Florida — an entity that is taking steps to dismantle the once-LGBTQIA+ friendly honors college — has also declared his intent to “liberate” Florida’s public colleges from “cultural hostage takers.”
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