Hidden in Plain Sight P. II

All roads lead to CRT

In part one of Hidden in Plain Sight we discussed how the Educator Effectiveness Block Grant, being considered by the Desert Sands Unified School District (DSUSD) is really Critical Race Theory (CRT) training for all district staff in disguise. If you recall, we delved into consultant Katie Novak and how her UDL training is actually CRT. Katie is due to earn nearly $1 million for 6 days of training.

Today, we will delve into the other consultant, Solution Tree, who is due to earn $989,334.00 for training staff in MTSS via PLCs over the course of four years. It is not stipulated how many days the training would encompass.

As previously discussed, MTSS is Multi-Tiered System of Supports, PLC is “Professional Learning Community”. PLCs broken down to the most basic component would be, as examples, all world history teachers, or all geometry teachers at a specific school—where they would be expected to share their best practices and lessons. As a larger idea, the entire school (and even district) have to be on the same page, so to speak, for PLCs to have any effect.

Let’s start at the source, shall we? Well, that was helpful. What an informative landing page! We can subscribe to a PLC magazine for just $49.95 a year, or order a PLC plan book for $19.95, or claim a seat to a summit on RTI for $779.00, or even register for a summit to achieve equity and elevate learning for another $779.00. It is suggested that we start our journey by buying a few books and requesting information on a coaching academy. After which we are afforded the opportunity to buy an endless number of other books. Then we read testimonials about how great the company, a couple of unverified and un-sourced statistics, and a couple of toot-your-own-horn videos that explain little. Not sure about you but I did not learn anything from that landing page about MTSS or PLC, however I did take away some marketing techniques.

As par the course in the field of education these days, we will need to do some digging to figure out just what Solution Tree is marketing.

The Solution Tree powered site allthingsplc.info is a good place to start, what do they say PLC is?

So, what is a PLC? We argue that it is an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for educators.

Okay… hmmm. Sounds pretty benign, right? What issue could I possibly have with that? Well, none, but as other teachers can attest to, teachers have been doing that since the first tribe of Neanderthals’ first hunter was skewered by a mammoth tusk—”must train better hunters, not get skewered”.

Surely, there must be more to it than that? Am I alone in wondering why the DSUSD would need to give $989,334.00 to train teachers in something they already do, most innately?

We actually gain more insight from that article when it tells of teachers mocking the process (as well they should), for it is there that we learn what teachers are actually being trained in.

These terms, “understanding by design” and “differentiated instruction” will be familiar to readers of part I, as they are buzzwords essential to Universal Design Learning (UDL), which we know relies on the indoctrination of CRT principles.

So that is our first clue—we never seem to learn much from the consultants themselves though, do we? At least not on a cursory look, but we never settle for that do we?

Well maybe if we pretended we wanted to attend a summit we could find some information? I clicked on the on-site events tab, then to all events, and clicked on the sold-out summit in Little Rock, if you would like to join me there. Again, we learn… nothing, it all sounds benign (but exciting, reee!) and is uninformative. Keep clicking for details and you’ll end up in the summit session descriptions. Let’s check.

Clue #2 and we learn a bit more: that the guiding principle of PLC is that is “drives an effective Multitiered System of Supports (MTSS)”. We already know how intricately tied MTSS is to CRT. In my eye, that is enough right there to disqualify this consultant and this grant. But let’s see how many more clues we can find as to where in plain sight is the CRT hiding, just for fun. What do you say?

Thanks for sticking around… did you know that Solution Tree maintains a blog? Yep, true story. For those familiar with communists, you understand how smart they all regard themselves to be, thus just cannot refrain from telling us who they are. In this case, they have to, for they want to sell you books and services! Feel like taking a look around?

Clue #3 is a doozy! Lauren Porosoff is the founder of Empower Forwards, has mental illnesses, and is married to a (perhaps her own) therapist. Not that any of that matters, but she thought it gave her some street cred so might as well point it out.

More importantly is what she says in this post titled “Teaching for Racial Justice”, that Solution Tree saw fit to highlight and advertise. Pretty big red flag there, in that title, wouldn’t you say?

Charlottesville, for those unaware, was a dual protest between groups that wanted to remove Confederate monuments and those that didn’t—both of these groups were referred to as “very fine people” by then President Trump, as proven in the second fake impeachment hoax. Both Antifa and neo-Nazis decided to show up and brawl a bit, with one of them, a murderous thugh, driving a car through the crowd—these groups were NOT referred to as very fine people by anyone but themselves.

Lauren reinforces the fact that PLCs are the vehicle to ensure all staff, district wide, teach and practice CRT concepts. Conversely, Lauren only had two twitter posts during the “Summer of Love” 2020, when BLM riots caused over $2 billion of damages in their wanton orgy of destruction. Goes to show explicit bias.

Think we can find more? I bet we can.

Anthony Muhammad is one of the consultants from Solution Tree. Of course, he also wants you to buy his books, he has ten to choose from! You already know where we’re going from here, so why not just pop over and join me in the look-inside of “Overcoming the Achievement Gap” and see what Anthony has to say. The following is on page 33.

Anthony starts out with this definition in his support of teaching CRT. Take notice that Anthony does NOT state that CRT is just a legal theory from the 70’s and not taught, or that CRT is an analytical tool. Nope, Anthony defines and defends. In fact, Anthony will even use CRT being used in South Africa as an example of why it should be used in our education system.

Anthony is gaslighting. If you are not familiar with South Africa, you might want to study up on how the post-Apartheid government encouraged and/or allowed the murder and property confiscation of white farmers, to this day. The next paragraph is how the signers of the Declaration of Independence were racists for owning slaves. There is no mention of the racist African tribes that also kept and sold slaves. Nor does he address the millions subject to slavery in today’s world. Nope, Anthony just wants teachers trained to teach students how to be aggrieved, a victim. Why?

Let’s move on. Oh, “hyperlocal activist” Zachary Wright sounds interesting. You can buy Zach’s book, “Dismantling a Broken System” for just $31.95, what a bargain! Get ‘em before they’re gone!

Honestly, that book description is enough for me to know that Zach wants to train BLM-like activists. Ugh, most of the books on the site are like this.

All this makes me wonder… who is the owner of this company? What are they like? Did they teach in inner-city schools? Raised in inner-city schools? Prominent Democrat activist or “community organizer”? Write your guesses down now! By the way, I am only utilizing “they” pronouns because we don’t know the owners gender yet, it could be a woman.

The CEO of Solution Tree is Jeffery C. Jones, who is listed as an incorporator of the company in Indiana in 1996, along with sports-group owner D. G. Elmore.

Jeffrey Jones was never an educator, rather he graduated from Indiana University in 1980, according to his LinkedIn profile, but his bio at Marzano Resources gives us more complete picture.

Marzano Resources, LLC was founded in Delaware in 2008 and then registered in Colorado as a foreign entity in 2014—long term readers may recognize this pattern.

It may interest you to know that Jeff is one step away from a Salvation Army type statement, judging by this one he issued in 2020.

Keep in mind that this statement was issued before the jury was terrorist-mob intimidated into a guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial. The trail of course proved, via the autopsy and testimony, that Mr. Floyd ate too many drugs, had covid, and had no neck injuries. Brenna Taylor, on the other hand, was a criminal being served a no-knock warrant (universal accountability?)—never a good idea to shoot at cops serving warrants.

I searched and searched and searched but could not find any similar statements by Jones in relation to anyone murdered by BLM mobs during the 2020 riots, nor for parade goers plowed down by a BLM supporting terrorist.

You might be surprised to learn that, according to Opensecrets.org, Jones gives almost exclusively to Senator Todd Young (R-In), dating back to his time in the House in 2011. You may have noticed that he also sits on a few boards, all of which could be considered right-leaning—TWR for instance, is a Christian radio broadcast operation in Africa. Todd Young, in short, is a RINO that voted for impeachment, voted for the Infrastructure monstrosity, and is probably on board with the final Communist nail in our coffin—the BBB (build back biden’s bank account?). These all deserve extra digs, but I mention it because it gives me pause—I have never heard of a Republican allowed to survive in a leftist business climate. Odd that. I have my conclusions, but it would take another article (or two) to support them, so I will leave you to draw your own conclusions on that score. I would ask you to consider that Jones is an example of how our fight is not strictly Democrat vs. Republican; that we live in a time where the fight is right vs. wrong, communis vs. freedom—good vs. evil.

Whew, this has gotten quite long. I wanted to get to Social Emotional Learning a bit more in depth, but will leave you with just this additional reading. Suffice it to say that SEL is simply another avenue for CRT. The “trauma” training (for substitutes even) is the trauma that long-dead people (Biden voters in 2020), that nobody is related to, inflicted upon other long-dead people (yes, more Biden voters) that nobody is related to. I cannot help but wonder what the family of Lynn Forester de Rothschild was up to back then….

I wanted to close out with just a couple of more points.

When we urged the school board to not approve Ethnic Studies, as it was proven to be CRT by another name, the board told us we were wrong. To that argument I would suggest you read this article from The Gateway Pundit about a whistleblower that explains how CRT is being taught in the classrooms.

The above article mentions Indianapolis Public Schools. Look at the gems coming out of IPS, and coming for DSUSD soon if We The People do not stop it.

Lastly, then I’ll say adieu.

The board promised us that CRT would not be taught in our classrooms, that the board’s mission is to inspire inclusivity and critical thinking, not divisiveness. And yet… and yet I hear tales of teachers giving surveys to all students asking them to identify their “preferred pronouns”; of teachers demoralizing and bullying students by keeping them after class to explain why their political views, which they were required to express, were wrong.

Those are anecdotal, to be sure, but this lesson given to a high school English class is not anecdotal, and is most definitely divisive CRT. I hate to be “that guy” but, spoiler alert.

I’m of the mind that it would be a mistake to adopt the Educator Effectiveness Block Grant, what is your take?

—Kenny, from The Tavern

*Edit 12/9/21. CRT cannot be defined in a couple of sentences, but if you need help, here is a start: