Bethany Mandel, the controversial right-wing pundit, home-schooling advocate, and prolific social media poster, is running for county school board — as a Democrat.
Though the school board race in deep-blue Montgomery County, Maryland, is technically nonpartisan, Mandel’s campaign published a graphic on Tuesday listing her as a Democrat. The move quickly raised eyebrows online, and prompted a community note on X (formerly Twitter) stating, “Bethany Mandel has identified as a Republican numerous times on her personal Twitter account.”
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Those who know Mandel recognize her for writing molten-hot takes and far-right political commentary. The most infamous was a column, published in the wake of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, titled “We Need to Start Befriending Neo Nazis.” (Mandel is Jewish.) Her content can be cringey, like her column defending Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife: “If Casey DeSantis is a Karen, she’s our Karen.” She’s posted dehumanizing rhetoric, too. “Not nuking these fucking animals is the only restraint I expect and that’s only because the cloud would hurt Israelis,” she’s written about Palestinians.
Considering there are kids who’ve gone through high school and done it in a third of the time or less, I seriously question how many substantive hours of engaged learning is actually occurring. Quality (and with it, engagement), not just quantity is all that matters. At the end of the day, isn’t it more concerning to you that such amount of time is sufficient to outperform the average public schooler?
Edit: Moreover have you considered the fact that there is a 1:1 teacher ratio, and a teacher who has an invested interested in seeing their own child succeed? That the learning environment can be adapted according to that child’s needs? That there is literally the aggregate of all human knowledge and online learning programs and homeschool co-ops and that homeschooled kids can utilize public school facilities and even join sports teams? Shit, I did theater…
Most critics don’t. They only see the ones that make the news or people that “act” differently to them.
But is it 72% learn for 5 hours a week or 50% learn for 25-40 hours? Both can’t be true.
Having a student teacher ratio 10x-20x greater than public schools one would hope that homeschoolers drastically outperform public school students, rather than just have marginally better academics. It’s also worth considering that many families can’t afford to have a parent teaching instead of working.
In my state, there are no reporting or testing requirements, and parents themselves issue highschool diplomas for their kids. With such lax rules in most states, how trustworthy can surveys even be about the academic performance of homeschoolers?
That’s a fair point and without delving into which source this comes from in the article, my guess is they meant to say, “72% learn for at least 5 hours a week while 50% learn for 25-40”.
But yeah that’s fair. As I wrote from the start homeschooling is not without its downsides and definitely circumstantial. For example, if both parents are working full-time jobs, then it’s probably not feasible in most cases. Either way, the general data does conclude that outcomes are better, which ultimately is all that really matters for the sake of this discussion.
In the state I lived most of my childhood, we had to do standardized testing like public schooled kids, and in addition be evaluated every end of year by a certified teacher who reviewed our learning materials (an end-of-year portfolio, basically).
In my later years, we moved to a state that like you mentioned has minimal requirements. This can of course be abused but also be a blessing under certain circumstances where an education be adapted to unique life situations.