August 12, 2020
Fairfax County, Virginia public schools tell parents not to hire tutors because it is unfair to kids whose parents can’t afford them
By Thomas Lifson

If you had any doubt that hard-left ideologues run government school systems in many (most?) places, take a look at Fairfax County, Virginia's most populous county, with over a million residents, one of the richest counties in the United States with an average household income well over one hundred thousand dollars.

The educrats who run the Fairfax public schools have advised parents there not to hire tutors or organize informal homeschool "pods" to replace the shuttered schools because some parents cannot afford to do so, and that would be "unfair."

I am not making this up. Here is a link to a memo sent to parents on August 7, with some key excerpts below:
https://archive.is/o/Te1TX/https://www.fcps.edu/blog/message-parents-tutoring-pods%23.XzG1kI-4KuU.twitter

Across the country, many parents are joining together to engage private tutors (who are often school teachers) to provide tutoring or home instruction for small groups of children. While there is no systematic way to track these private efforts, it's clear that a number of "pandemic pods" or tutoring pods are being established in Fairfax County.

We are aware of these tutoring pods, as well as some accompanying community concerns. To be clear, these instructional efforts are not supported by or in any way controlled by FCPS….

(snip)

While FCPS doesn't and can't control these private tutoring groups, we do have concerns that they may widen the gap in educational access and equity for all students. Many parents cannot afford private instruction. Many working families can't provide transportation to and from a tutoring pod, even if they could afford to pay for the service.

We have received some requests from parents who would like to cluster groups or pods of students together with a specific teacher. From both a logistical perspective, and in the interest of educational equity, FCPS cannot accommodate such requests. [emphases added]

In other words, parents who strive to educate their children are being unfair to parents who don't because their children will have an advantage. This is insanity. By the same logic, parents who remain married and raise their children in intact families are being unfair to children whose parents cannot maintain their marriage, because many studies show that children with a mother and father at home do better. Taking the logic even farther, parents who don't become drug addicts are being unfair to children whose parents enslave themselves to heroin, crack, methamphetamine, or even alcohol.
Everyone must descend to the lowest common denominator in the interest of "equity." After all, responsible behavior leads to "gaps" with the children of the worst parents.
I wonder of the parents of Fairfax County, who tend to be more highly educated as well as richer than the national average, understand the insanity of the bureaucrats who run their taxpayer-funded schools. According to the 2010 Census, there are almost twice as many Asian-heritage residents as blacks (17.53% versus 9.17%). Do the Asian-heritage families — group that generally highly values education — support this notion of dumbing down their kids so they won't outperform other ethnicities?