California, and other left-leaning states, signaled its willingness to essentially subsidize education for immigrants who fall under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) category from the Obama administration years. California’s state legislature passed a bill which would increase DACA recipients’ access to government loans and grants.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed the bill into law. SB 354 will “expand DREAM loan eligibility” to students enrolled in coursework that will lead to a professional graduate degree. The changes due to the signed bill will also cover teaching credentials.

The guidelines for the loan include a minimum amount of $4,000, a maximum amount of $20,000, and that recipients have to be at least half-time students at any University of California or California State University campus. Additionally, the applicants must have a valid state DREAM Act application on file and meet certain academic standards during the duration of the loan. Repayment of the loan would take about ten years and would start after a six-month grace period after the student graduates or does not maintain half-time enrollment at the specific state universities.

The bill’s text did not indicate how much this would cost California taxpayers, who already shoulder many taxes. California is one of the more heavily-taxed states, due to its significant population, public services, and other similar factors. Recent data demonstrated that Californians, in addition to businesses and corporations, are relocating their homes and offices to neighboring states to escape the state’s onerous tax environment.

Not so long ago, everyone wanted to live in California.  The temperate climate,
the beaches, the Rose Parade, Hollywood —– the mystique attracted millions to the state over the years. Today, it’s a far different story. Chances are if you talk to ten residents of the Golden State, four or five of them might tell you they’d like to leave.

Frankly, it’s not hard to understand why.

The inconsistent lockdown regulations are continuing to impact restaurants across California. Restaurant owners and employees are not only concerned about Covid-19, but also about their future employment. Los Angeles has banned all types of in-person dining, even if customers are social distancing, wearing masks and eating outside. There is little to no evidence that suggests outdoor dining has been a main contributor to California’s increase in Covid cases.

Restaurant owners rely on in-person dining to sustain their business. The economic impact on communities is drastic. Thousands of employees are struggling to make ends meet. Although, Los Angeles is fueled by wealth, the lower/middle class restaurant employees are the ones who are most impacted by the mandate. As large fast-food corporations benefit from the mandates, local non-chain restaurants are struggling drastically.

Although Gov. Gavin Newsom implemented these regulations, he was seen eating indoors at a restaurant, just hours after he established the new restaurant Covid guidelines. To make matters worse, Newsome also received millions of dollars in PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans throughout the nine business in which he has a stake.

PPP loans were created to help small business that needed to pay entry level employees who were struggling because of Covid. Newsom manipulated PPP loans to create another revenue stream for himself. In fact, Newsom’s winery received $918,720 in PPP loans to distributed among its 14 employees. The average California small business loan for an establishment of 14 employees was roughly 128,000. For perspective, the only other winery that received close to the same amount as Newsom’s is Oak Knoll Farming Corp, which retained 79 employees.

Lastly, as the regulations and taxes continue to add up, more and more people are fleeing California. Arizona and Nevada have seen an incredible increase of first-time homebuyers in their respected states. This has caused housing prices to go through the roof for locals who have been living there for years. Large corporations are also fleeing California. Business mogul Elon Musk moved Tesla production from California to Texas to escape the incredibly high regulations. Elon Musk is just one of a few businessmen who are making the transition from California to more open states. With the current conditions, the economic future of California is headed toward a steep downfall.

John Whitmore is an intern at Accuracy in Academia.

Asian-American parents experienced woke and left-wing indoctrination in America’s schools in Cupertino, California, a wealthy Silicon Valley community in northern California. At R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School, a third-grade teacher began a math class with a lesson on so-called “social identities,” according to the City Journal.

The lesson then devolved into students forced to create an “identity map,” which listed their race, gender, class, religion, and other societal characteristics. The teacher then told the students that they lived in an unfair and “dominant culture” of “white, middle class, cisgender, educated, able-bodied, Christian, English speaker[s]” who hold power and do their best to “stay in power.”

However, the lesson did not end with those allegations. The teacher used the ‘This Book is Antiracist” book to teach students about social identities and white privilege. One particular reading claimed, “a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.”

Afterwards, the teacher told the students to dissect and deconstruct their “intersectional identities” and map out their identities according to the hierarchy of privilege and power. The students had to write short essays about how their identities held power and privilege, enough to fill “at least one page of writing.” There was an example shared about transgenderism and nonbinary sexuality, according to the report.

Does that lesson sound inappropriate for an elementary school classroom?

Yes, it was extremely inappropriate because education should be non-partisan, should focus on the basics such as writing, reading, and arithmetic, and should avoid indoctrination from any political ideology.

But parents did not take this intrusion into education lightly. Several parents banded together, met with the principal, and the “intersectionality” curriculum was suspended. Jenn Lashier, the principal, said that the curriculum was not a formal part of the education curriculum, but a “process of daily learning facilitated by a certified teacher,” jargon for indoctrination program from left-wing radicals hell-bent on social engineering.

The irony was that Meyerholz Elementary School is 94 percent nonwhite, with the majority of families from Asian-American backgrounds. The school serves a wealthy city and where the majority of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher. It is an example of the American Dream, but not white privilege, intersectionality, and other left-wing buzzwords.

One parent said that this tragic attempt at critical race theory in an elementary school math class was eerily similar to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The rhetoric divided society between “the oppressor and the oppressed, and since these identities are inborn characteristics people cannot change, the only way to change it is via violent revolution.” The parent remarked, “The outcome is the family will be ripped apart; husband hates wife, children hate parents. I think it is already happening here.”

Will critical race theory and other left-wing indoctrination efforts meet a stiff resistance among other Asian-American parents?

Time will tell, but Asian-American families have mobilized in recent years to stop boneheaded policy decisions, halting an affirmative action initiative in Washington state in 2019 and another in California in 2020.

Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom and state Democrats agreed on a $2 billion legislative package to incentivize schools to reopen in districts with a low number of coronavirus cases. The agreement allowed concerned parents to breathe a sigh of relief, since they were finally able to see a light at the end of the tunnel concerning the prospect of getting their children back in the classroom. However, the agreement fell short of a mandate with the terms leaving plans vulnerable to the political whims of local officials and the collective bargaining tactics of teachers’ unions.

Immediately following the governor’s announcement, the United Teachers of Los Angeles came out in opposition to the agreement, shutting down parents’ hopes of a return to normalcy anytime soon.

In a press conference on Monday, UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz refused to “accept an arbitrary start date” and accused lawmakers of “propagating systematic racism” by striking the deal. Myart-Cruz asserted that offering financial incentives to districts that offer in-person learning would divert critical resources away from minority communities, where people are “dying at three times the rate of white residents.” The union president’s fears were echoed by the vice president of the La Mesa-Spring Valley Board of Education, who became irritated during a public school board meeting when members demanded a vote to establish a date to return to in-person learning.

After demanding to know the “language group” of the students who wished to return to school, Charda Bell-Fontenot chided the groups for their actions, stating, “That seems like a very white supremacist ideology, to force people to comply with and conform, just letting you know. Privilege, check it you guys.” If Democrat lawmakers and activists truly sought to help minority communities, they would move away from the virtual education system, which favors children whose families can afford technology and tutors to augment the reduced quality of education.

A study from the Ohio public schools illustrates the disproportionate effects of an online education. In the poverty-ridden suburbs of Ohio, chronic absenteeism, defined by the Department of Education as missing 10% or more of a school year, jumped by 18 percentage points in the African American community, up from 29% two years ago to 47% this year.

In comparison, chronic absenteeism among white students rose by only 8 points during the same time period. Furthermore, a report from the NWEA suggests that not only are white students outperforming minority students on assessments, but they are showing up for  virtual school much more often. These alarming trends should reveal the dire consequences that accompany the politicization of our children’s development.

Case counts in California have stabilized and most of the state’s counties fall below 10 new cases per 100,000. Under the $2 billion agreement, districts with 7 or fewer cases per 100,000 would be required to offer in-person instruction to all elementary school students and at least one grade of middle school. The faster that students are allowed back in classrooms, the sooner that teachers can address the issues of those who have fallen behind. Therefore, officials should be careful in characterizing supporters of reopening as “white supremacist,” since they are actually attempting to save the futures of minority children.

School districts, keenly aware of growing parental criticism of and resistance towards Critical Race Theory, are promising to bar or ban the controversial theory from classrooms. In Orange County, California, the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District joined the ranks of districts who will ban the teaching of the theory in classrooms.

A local non-profit newspaper, Voice of OC, said that although the ban has not yet been officially enacted, school officials claimed that the theory was not currently being taught in classrooms. The district’s board of trustees voted 4-1 on the first reading of a resolution to ban the theory.

After reading the resolution, the board of trustees must take another vote on it before finalizing the resolution to enshrine the ban. It has to go through the procedure of having a study session to go over the resolution, and then putting the final version up for another vote.

Specifically, the board of trustees debated on which specific teachings should be banned and how to define Critical Race Theory.

One of the prominent opponents to the proposed ban was a group called Voices for PYLUSD, which claims to be a group of parents, teachers and students in the district. The group cited an article by PEN America, an anti-Trump journalism organization, and how the ban could be an example of government censorship. The Voices for PYLUSD is trying to get more signatures for its petition to kill the proposed ban.

Making things more difficult is the statewide requirement to have high school students take a semester-long ethnic studies course. The Democrat-majority legislature passed the requirement and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law, which law will take effect in the beginning of the school year for the graduating class of 2029-2030.

Critical Race Theory is the flawed and inaccurate theory that claims all longtime or established American institutions, whether they be political, legal, or educational, are inherently racist and are biased against black Americans. It promotes the unproven argument that America has not progressed from the allegedly embedded racism in these institutions, despite history proving the theory and its supporters wrong.

Pamela Kadakia, an equity project manager in the California Department of Education, resigned from her position this past week because she is not a resident of the Golden State. Kadakia has been a Texas resident since 2019, but was hired as a California government bureaucrat anyway.

California state laws prohibit public state employees from residing in another state, unless their job requires them to do so.

Fox News reported that she is the second high-ranking California education equity official to resign in recent weeks over state residency. Daniel Lee, an equity superintendent in the same department, resigned in mid-December 2021 when it was discovered that he was a remote worker who resides in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Lee was hired without a public job listing, which is unusual for government jobs, and had an annual salary of $160,000.

Kadakia’s Texas residency also raised concerns because Texas is on the list of prohibited state-funded travel locations for California public employees over alleged discriminatory laws.

What did the department have to say about Kadakia’s resignation?

“We sought to ensure that all our personnel were in line with the new guidance…In doing so, we accepted Ms. Kadakia’s resignation,” the California Department of Education said in a statement.

Her one-month tenure garnered her a salary of $10,400, but when that is multiplied to an annual salary, it means that she could have earned $124,800 from California taxpayers if her Texas residency was not discovered.

Although this is an example of holding public officials accountable, these controversies do not acknowledge the reality that so-called equity initiatives are ingrained in public education bureaucracies. It is up to parents to stand up to equity indoctrination, which advocates for the degrading of education standards, to ensure equality remains in public education.

America’s ongoing and seemingly-constant crises have left Americans scrambling to find a sense of normalcy and safety. Just in time, to cut through the chaotic bombardment of conflicting messages and opinions while providing a voice of calm assurance and reason, is noted conservative scholar Victor Davis Hanson in his latest book, “The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization are Destroying the Idea of America”.

“The Dying Citizen” book cover

Hanson’s background is in the classics, such as Greek philosophy and history, and he weaved consistent themes and lessons from Greek history to apply to America’s current crises.

The book is a must-read for the engaged, or unengaged, American citizen because it interprets and explains the present day in a calm manner, free of clickbait or inflammatory rhetoric.

For example, Hanson compared the Athenian middle class to modern America’s middle class, and traced the decline of the Athenian middle class directly to the collapse of Athenian power among the Hellenistic fiefdoms and other outside forces.

In a prescient warning, he reminded the reader that the collapse of the middle class could prove to be America’s undoing and encouraged Americans to no longer remain silent in the face of elitist power grabs from the federal and state government.

He pointed to illegal immigration and claimed that the practice of open borders has devalued, if not negated, the unique value of American citizenship. American citizens have become mere residents of a country that they call home, even though citizenship should be defined by more than one’s residency.

Citizenship in Athens, as Hanson asserted, was unique because it was an identity and it was earned. Athens’s middle class became a collective body keenly interested in the welfare of the city-state. But its decline came, much like the Roman Empire, when it no longer made citizenship a unique achievement and lifestyle. Hanson warned that open borders and lackluster enforcement of U.S. laws will make American citizenship obsolete and a memory of the past like Athens and the Romans before them.

Hanson’s stinging criticism of California’s political, social, and economic morass was something to behold, too, because he did not pull punches and cited data to highlight how California has fallen far from its idealistic and once-proud status among the U.S. states. When it was once viewed as a model for the country, California is now the butt of jokes or source of derision throughout the U.S.

One of the more memorable parts of the book was Hanson’s complete takedown of the federal government bureaucracy which peddled the “Russiagate” hoax for years, in addition to Democratic Party power brokers, politicians such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and a complicit mainstream media. He did not mince words and he traced the corrupt connections between the federal government, mainstream media, and Democratic Party to perpetuate lies to malign and undermine President Donald Trump.

Whether the reader is a history or classics buff, or not, it does not matter because Hanson is clear, understandable, and direct. He does not get caught up in the academic mumbo-jumbo or word salads typically found among the Ivory Tower elitists.

The way in which Hanson weaves examples and lessons from classical or ancient history to the modern day practically gift wraps the proper context to the reader. It is one thing for an author to present material and rattle off dates and events, but what defines a superb author like Hanson is to present material in an understandable way for the average reader.

Again, Hanson’s book is a must-read for the average American reader and U.S. citizen, especially those worried or stressed about the crises of the present day. His message is calm and clear: America is imperfect, yet it is a far better place than its critics or detractors give credit for.

The book was published by Basic Books, which graciously provided a review copy for Accuracy in Academia.

California’s college dropout rates are much higher than the national average, according to a recent report by Los Angeles, California news outlet KTLA.

Recently-released data claimed that California residents enrolled in colleges are “46.5% more likely” to drop out of college, compared to the national average of 32.9%. The older the student, the more likely the student will drop out, as demonstrated by the 51.6% dropout rate among students between the ages of 35 and 64 years old.

The article also mentioned that college dropouts who take out student loans are “four times more likely to default on these loans than students who graduate,” with over half of students taking on student loans failing to earn a college degree.

Among college dropouts, the top reasons for dropping out of college are financial pressure forcing them to leave college (42%), followed by family reasons (32%), college being a bad fit (30%), and lack of time (24%).

One of the largest omissions from the article was the fact that college tuition rates continue to climb without abandon. Instead, the news outlet focused on the lack of help or guidance from college employees, the student’s unpreparedness for college courses, and the lack of available financial aid. The news outlet also failed to explain that California’s in-state tuition rates are significantly higher than neighboring states.

For example, the University of California-Berkeley costs a student at least $14,000 a year in tuition alone. Another example of a smaller state-run college, California State University-Fresno, costs California resident students over $6,600 a year in tuition.

Other states have slightly-lower in-state tuition rates, such as Arizona State University (around $11,300 a year), University of Utah (under $9,000 a year), University of Texas (about $11,700 a year), and the University of Florida (around $6,400 a year).

A college education has become increasingly unaffordable because of federal subsidies which prop up colleges and do not incentivize reducing costs for students. As a result, students feel pressured to take out student loans, which many struggle to pay after graduation or dropping out.

A former faculty director is accusing a California community college of targeting her for her viewpoints and not catering to the “woke” ideology of gender pronouns and other issues.

Tabia Lee, who is black, said that De Anza College and her colleagues did not appreciate her questions about issues such as “anti-racism” (the Left’s buzzword to describe anti-black racism), the college’s land acknowledgements to a Native American tribe, her refusal to join a network of socialists and refusal to use gender pronouns, an attempt to bring a “Jewish inclusion” event to the community college, and allegedly lacked respect for a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.

As Inside Higher Ed reported, Lee used to work as the faculty director for the community college’s Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education. De Anza College is located in Cupertino, California, which is west of San Jose.

Lee said that her colleagues maligned her for not joining in on their personal political activism.

For example, referring to the use of gender pronouns, Lee wrote, “I no longer participate in gender pronouns because I find that the same toxic ideologies around race ideologies are now being advanced under gender ideologies; I also find that the constant obsession with pronouns and declaration of pronouns causes deep discomfort for individuals who identify as gender fluid or who struggle with gender dysphoria.”

She was accused of supporting white supremacy, “white speaking,” and “whitesplaining,” even though she is a black woman.

When asked to comment, the college said, “Without commenting on any specific matter, we can share that faculty members have comprehensive due process and appeals rights both under the law and negotiated through their bargaining unit.”

Lee was not retained as a contract employee and a college official, Judy Miner, noted that Lee displayed a “persistent inability to demonstrate cooperation in working with colleagues and staff” and she showed an “unwillingness to accept constructive criticism.”

As of publishing, Lee has not sued De Anza College over her termination.

It is a good reminder that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are commonplace, if not widespread, throughout higher education in the United States. Conservatives point to DEI offices and staff as a waste of taxpayer dollars and resource, while liberals argue that DEI is important to rooting out racism and white supremacy.

But, as Lee’s case suggests, DEI orthodoxy may not like to be criticized from within.

In the southern California city of Glendale, a protest and counter-protest took place outside of the building for the Glendale Unified School Board and resulted in at least three arrests due to a brawl between people.

Local news outlet Fox 11 News reported that the school board was voting to reconsider curriculum that included LGBTQIA+ material and issues. One controversial issue was the use of preferred gender pronouns for students attending schools in the school district, which follows state law.

Because of the fracas, the local police asked the school board to go into recess, halting official business, until the police could keep the situation under control. The police declared an unlawful assembly to encourage people to disperse from the vicinity of the building and also insisted that the public comment period be cut short.

When the school board reconvened, the board members voted unanimously to go forward with the curriculum and declare June as “Pride Month.”

Police chief in Glendale, Manuel Cid, blamed a “handful of agitators” on both sides for the fracas.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statement, which criticized the “hate we saw on full display.” Newsom said, “What should have been a routine vote — simply recognizing Pride Month for the fourth year in a row — turned to violence. The words of the resolution did not change from years past, but what has changed is a wave of division and demonization sweeping our nation.”

Yet the incident highlights not only the political divisiveness that is pushed by the mainstream media and cable news pundits, but also the divisive nature of the gender identity ideology when it meets people who live traditional family values. For years, parts of Glendale have had a significant Armenian population, which tend to be religious conservatives, and the introduction of gender identity ideology can be viewed as a direct assault on the Armenian community’s values.