WEA Republican Educators Caucus

12/26/2025

Merciful Molly McGuire
Dec. 16, 2025

Rule of Law: Civil Liberties Act of 1988
Have We Forgotten Our Promise in 1988?

Takeaways:
•The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was a U.S. federal law that formally apologized to Japanese Americans for their unjust incarceration during World War II, acknowledging it a "grave injustice", acknowledging it a "grave injustice".
•Signed by President Reagan, the act cited "racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a lack of political leadership" as causes for the incarceration & it provided $20,000 in reparations to each surviving internee or their heirs, established a public education fund for research, and offered restitution to Aleut residents affected by the war.
•The Act aimed to right historical wrongs and prevent future violations of civil liberties, recognizing the profound impact on those of Japanese ancestry.
•The Act was the culmination of decades of advocacy by Japanese American civil rights activists seeking acknowledgment and redress for these wartime injustices.
•Though sponsored by Democrats like Norman Mineta and Spark Matsunaga, the bill faced Republican opposition but was signed by President Reagan in August 1988.
•Yet today, Republicans in Texas and Florida are leading efforts to target Muslim advocacy organizations in what civil rights advocates say is a coordinated effort to present Islam as a “national security threat.”
•Not a day goes by without news of some mass arrests of “alleged criminals”, taken by masked men under the appearance of law to unknown locations and deprived of access to legal representationj.

Personal Observations:
1] …”right historical wrongs and PREVENT FUTURE VIOLATIONS of civil liberties…” This phrase seems hollow, given our mass round ups of suspected criminals for deportation and a recently publicized efforts in Texas and Florida to target members of the Islamic faith.
2] As a teacher, I spent 20+ years teaching civics to high school freshmen. And yet I found I had to research and learn from scratch the events surrounding “Japanese American Internment” in order to write and teach a unit on the subject. That was in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
3] There is a scene from “Red Dawn” where a downed American pilot (played by Powers Booth) was asked why that war got started. He concluded that the reason might be “that folks just forgot how horrible a world war was!”
4] Have we just forgotten the promise we, as a society, made in 1988 that we’d never do this again?
5] Surely there are those who remember! Surely there are those who learned about it later! Surely there are those who could be speaking out, when we set out to repeat that sort of folly!
6] Surely, we will not let those voices who speak out be silenced!
7] This beat can not be allowed to go on!

Sources used in the preparation of this posting:
https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Civil_Liberties_Act_of_1988/ #:~:text=The%20federal%20act%20(Public%20Law,suggest%20remedies%20for%20the%20incarceration.

https://www.google.com/search?q=civil+liberties+act+of+1988&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS756US757&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgAEAAYgAQyCQgBEEUYORiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIICAgQABgWGB4yCAgJEAAYFhge0gEKMjU4NjNqMGoxNagCCLACAfEF0kFpU0Ig6cY&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&udm=50&fbs=AIIjpHxU7SXXniUZfeShr2fp4giZ1Y6MJ25_tmWITc7uy4KIeqDdErwP5rACeJAty2zADJgYJpo1blvMpITBRgbnARM6y8KwxzRsF24u6g33NutBQob5A_iQFqoKV6t8gXXdCIEJ8JnYNdKJoZI4xXF_cpcf-iEk6cUUutr62OIA6a-5Vkvw052RQJ26MgVJ9k1di7DvbhlFmqrCpuARL1a989np9gNdjg&ved=2ahUKEwiX6NHT4NuRAxWsHjQIHUPpCd4Q0NsOegUIqQEQAA&aep=10&ntc=1&mtid=V8lOaZGTIvvI0PEPndWzoAY&mstk=AUtExfBfuG2QutQ0Wx11bArNDbUUlv-_XoHfnbc-n7fnVDRooJ9-gFx47Ll2pFFfvkm4mpyIqQiXEzFKQ54Xp2po9PQml_Xhg2H9OXTIOIZ8APyBQLMrF5hTf8pHRMlzb3KAEWg4n4JYsYeznxI2I12on9aauTvmeOJX1gc&csuir=1

https://www.ms.now/watch/sneak-preview-rachel-maddow-s-live-event-with-experts-featured-on-burn-order-podcast-2478388291831?cid=eml_mda_20251225&user_email=85a5e31f8cb9543141697042262e5f44096be2eb9e8745228d8b4349029af0da

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/texas-florida-gop-battle-muslim-advocacy-groups/?email=48591ca5342f98796e24b622f9a13349da598ff0&emaila=d8d3058e6371363db3fd8e7ae26b0fb7&emailb=85a5e31f8cb9543141697042262e5f44096be2eb9e8745228d8b4349029af0da&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Your%20Morning%20holiday%20edition%20Christmas%20week%202025%202025-12-26

Advocates have said bills on Capitol Hill paired with unprecedented state measures and executive action from President Trump have sparked a rise in Islamophobic rhetoric and threats.

06/17/2019

An example of what makes Mainstream unique as a conservative group.

As their minivan rolled north, they felt their nerves kick in - but they kept on driving. At the wheel: Lija Greenseid, a rule-abiding Minnesota mom steering her Mazda5 on a cross-border drug run. Her daughter, who is 13, has...

04/30/2019

This page is inactive. The WEA Republican Caucus has not existed for ten years.

01/01/2016

Two Distinct Education Funding Issues

As the WA State Legislature convenes for its required short session this January, it faces two distinctly different issues, regarding educational funding.

1] The ‘Great Recession’: This issue addresses the recovery from the ‘Great Recession’ and efforts to bring us back to pre-recession funding levels.
By focusing improving state revenues upon educational funding, the Legislature has made significant progress toward this goal. It is done, however, at a cost that supporters of other state government services no doubt consider inappropriate and aggravating. And, it has yet to bring funding levels up to where they would have been, had not the recession interrupted the growth.

2] The ‘McCleary’ Decision: This issue addresses the WA State Supreme Court’s order for the Legislature to fulfill its constitutional mandate and fully fund education.
The fact that the Supreme Court has twice held the Legislature in contempt of court for its failure to develop a plan to achieve the levels of funding required by the court’s order of 2012 suggests there’s been no progress on this issue. Funds appropriated toward recovery from the recession do not address the systematic under-funding of education that occurred prior to the recession and may not be touted as addressing both issues.

12/11/2015

The Myth of Unions’ Overprotection of Bad Teachers:
Evidence from the District-Teacher Matched Panel Data on Teacher Turnover
E u n i c e S . H a n - W e l l e s l e y C o l l e g e a n d N B E R O c t o b e r 5 , 2 015

Objective data now exists that contradicts the Republican mantra that unions protect incompetent teachers. While it is true that unions provide legal services for which members have contracted with their union dues, much is also done within union circles to help teachers improve and to council ineffective teachers out of the profession. This study, published by Harvard University, connects strong unionism with efforts to remove the less effective teachers and raises pay rates that keep more of the highly qualified teachers. -- Ken Mortland

Three quotes from the report:
“The data confirms that, compared to districts with weak unionism, districts with strong unionism dismiss more low-quality teachers and retain more high-quality teachers. The empirical analysis shows that this dynamic of teacher turnover in highly unionized districts raises average teacher quality and improves student achievement.”
Abstract – pg 1

“Through the dynamics of teacher turnover, unions ultimately raise teacher quality, as unionized districts can better retain good teachers and dismiss more underperforming teachers. Two pieces of empirical evidence support this hypothesis: districts with strong unionism have more teachers with stronger qualifications and lower dropout rates than districts with weak unionism. I also find that the recent legal change weakening unionism in four states affects the teacher turnover pattern and teacher quality negatively, confirming unions’ positive role in the US educational system.”
Part 8 – Conclusions – page 48

“This research, therefore, suggests that restricting the legal boundary for unions’ activities may not be the appropriate approach in improving educational outcomes.”
Part 8 – Conclusions – page 48

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/papers/Teacher_dismissal.pdf

11/09/2015

Friedrichs, ET.AL., v. CTA, ET.AL. will be heard by the US Supreme Court during this court session. The outcome of that appeal will determine if public sector unions will continue to be viable organizations that serve their employee members.

At issue are “whether Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977) should be overruled and public-sector “agency shop” arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment” and, “whether it violates the First Amendment to require that public employees affirmatively object to subsidizing non-chargeable speech by public-sector unions, rather than requiring that employees affirmatively consent to subsidizing such speech. “

“Agency shop” is a statutory arrangement in which all employees hired into a particular public service and who will benefit from the services of the union, which is the sole bargaining unit for those employees, must pay a “fair share” fee as a condition of their employment. Washington state has such an “agency shop” statute. If declared unConstitutional by the Supreme Court, such statutes would disappear and employees not wishing to pay union dues or agency fees could withdraw, while still benefiting from the contracts and services provided by the union. “Abood v. Detroit Board of Education” ruled that such statutes were legal, Constitutional, and binding.

Unions in general and NEA in particular are designed to be democratically run institutions. Local elections select shop stewards & building reps, council reps, and officers. State and national elections, held at conventions, select officers and hold annual policy setting meetings, attended by elected delegates. Among the policies established and enforced in that system are support for issues deemed crucial by the elected delegates and leadership and selection of political issues and candidates to support. Laws already exist that prohibit the use of union dues to support candidates, but political issues, such as initiatives and referendums may be supported with union dues.

Despite the fact that members who opposed certain issues or candidates have the same opportunity to compete in democratic elections for representatives, delegates, and officers, some seem to believe that their First Amendment rights are being violated by having to be a member of an organization that supports causes or candidates they oppose. That is the second issue in this appeal.

WEA is obliged to obtain affirmative consent for membership in WEAPAC right now. No one belongs to WEAPAC that has not volunteered for that membership. In some election cycles, WEA has transferred union dues money to WEAPAC for support of issues, like opposition to the Charter Schools Initiative. That money is not used for candidates, but does free up other money that could be used for candidates.

If you are interested in learning more about NEA’s respondent’s brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Friedrichs v. CTA, go to this web address:

http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/Union_Respondents_Brief_-_as_Filed_11-6-15.pdf

10/05/2015

To WEA Republican Caucus Members:

Over the years I have written about the dangers of misusing and misinterpreting the data from student testing. This excerpt of an article from the Brookings Institute’s BROWN CENTER CHALKBOARD speak directly to that issue by pointing out that the SAT is not and never was intended to be a national measure of achievement. The SAT is an aptitude test, not an achievement test, intended to determine the projected success of a student at elite Ivy League universities.

In addition, the SAT student test taking pool is self-selected, including only about half of the annual graduating classes in the US. Even if the SAT were designed as an achievement test or became an achievement test, self-selection would negate any opportunity to apply SAT scores to the entire graduating class. The best test to track national student achievement is the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). “In contrast to SAT scores, NAEP scores, which are designed to monitor national achievement, report slight gains for 17-year-olds over the past ten years.”

In this article, the author states: “Since the population of test takers is self-selected, using aggregate SAT scores to compare or evaluate teachers, schools, districts, states, or other educational units is not valid, and the College Board strongly discourages such uses.”

*************************

Brookings Institute: The BROWN CENTER CHALKBOARD
Tom Loveless – Oct. 1, 2015

The SAT is not designed to measure national achievement

It never was. The SAT was originally meant to measure a student’s aptitude for college independent of that student’s exposure to a particular curriculum. The test’s founders believed that gauging aptitude, rather than achievement, would serve the cause of fairness. A bright student from a high school in rural Nebraska or the mountains of West Virginia, they held, should have the same shot at attending elite universities as a student from an Eastern prep school, despite not having been exposed to the great literature and higher mathematics taught at prep schools. The SAT would measure reasoning and analytical skills, not the mastery of any particular body of knowledge. Its scores would level the playing field in terms of curricular exposure while providing a reasonable estimate of an individual’s probability of success in college.

Note that even in this capacity, the scores never suffice alone; they are only used to make admissions decisions by colleges and universities, including such luminaries as Harvard and Stanford, in combination with a lot of other information—grade point averages, curricular resumes, essays, reference letters, extra-curricular activities—all of which constitute a student’s complete application.

Today’s SAT has moved towards being a content-oriented test, but not entirely. Next year, the College Board will introduce a revised SAT to more closely reflect high school curricula. Even then, SAT scores should not be used to make judgments about U.S. high school performance, whether it’s a single high school, a state’s high schools, or all of the high schools in the country. The SAT sample is self-selected. In 2015, it only included about one-half of the nation’s high school graduates: 1.7 million out of approximately 3.3 million total. And that’s about one-ninth of approximately 16 million high school students. Generalizing SAT scores to these larger populations violates a basic rule of social science. The College Board issues a warning when it releases SAT scores: “Since the population of test takers is self-selected, using aggregate SAT scores to compare or evaluate teachers, schools, districts, states, or other educational units is not valid, and the College Board strongly discourages such uses.”

TIME’s coverage of the SAT release included a statement by Andrew Ho of Harvard University, who succinctly makes the point: “I think SAT and ACT are tests with important purposes, but measuring overall national educational progress is not one of them.”

04/30/2015

Union members are terrorists equated to ISIS?

Governor Walker compared the unions in his state to terrorists as he promoted a controversial "right-to-work" bill.

04/30/2015

Go to minute 6 and listen to this Republican Texas Legislator articulate her conservative position on supporting women's medical services and urging the Texas Legislature to stop practicing medicine.

Texas State Rep. Sarah Davis talks with Rachel Maddow about her opposition to a plan supported by anti-abortion groups to defund Planned Parenthood's cancer screening programs, and explains why her support for abortion rights is essentially Republican.

04/02/2015

The Washington Post
Cruz is aiming at the wrong Republicans
By George F. Will Opinion writer April 1, 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/cruz-is-aiming-at-the-wrong-republicans/2015/04/01/87899c0a-d893-11e4-b3f2-607bd612aeac_story.html?hpid=z3

“Today, however, there is no need to nominate Cruz in order to make the GOP conservative. Cruz sits in a Senate that has no Republicans akin to the liberals Goldwater served with — New York’s Jacob Javits, Massachusetts’s Edward Brooke, Illinois’s Charles Percy, New Jersey’s Clifford Case, California’s Thomas Kuchel. When Jeb Bush, the most conservative governor of a large state since Ronald Reagan (by some metrics — taxes, school choice — Bush was a more conservative governor than Reagan), is called a threat to conservatism, Republicans are with Alice in Wonderland.”

The Texas senator is courting born-again Christians, but that bloc won’t deliver him a victory.

02/11/2015

Letter to Cong. DelBene & Cong. Reichert:

Reauthorization of ESEA

I'm glad to see Congress has begun serious work on the reauthorization of ESEA. It's long overdue.

Having been trained in the basics of statistical analysis as part of my undergraduate degree in Experimental and Personnel Psychology, I have some grave concerns about our nearly obsessive reliance on testing and the unwarranted applications of the data derived from testing. Here is a synopsis of my concerns:

Isolating the Cause of Learning Is Simplistic
The concept that we can isolate the effects of one teacher is overly simplistic. Not long ago, the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education joined together to share concerns about our lack of ability to distinguish which teachers were the cause of learning that has been demonstrated.

Test Scores Are Unstable
New York University economist Sean Corcoran describes the problems the instability of test score results this way. The “margin of error" of the tests we use is so large that a teacher at the 43rd percentile might actually be at the 15th percentile or the 71st percentile.

Issue Is Size of the Data Pool
Corcoran's message is that any set of data scores that is below 400 has an unacceptable margin of error. That means using a standardized test for graduation purposes is not warranted. It also means drawing inferences from the test scores of 35 elementary school kids or 155-165 secondary school kids are also unwarranted.

Testing Services Incompetence
Pearson is the premier test writing/grading company in America and a publisher of textbooks. It handles the testing programs for thousands of districts and dozens of states. And, it has a long litany of problems with its services. In 1998, 12,000 tests in Arizona and 45,739 graduation tests in Minnesota were misgraded. In 2000, 204,000 WASL test tests had to be rescored. In 2010, 180,000 online science tests in Minnesota were delayed due to scoring error. And that’s just a narrow sampling of the list of Pearson’s lack of reliability.

Implications for ESEA
Continued use of test score data to make inferences about student graduation, teacher/principal evaluation, or general educational policy below the entire school population as a data pool is unwarranted. This obsession of ours with testing needs to stop. Anything you can do to help achieve that goal in the reauthorization of ESEA would be appreciated.