The National Education Association sent a letter to Twitter accusing the platform of fueling the rise of parent protests against school boards.
The Chalkboard Review, a heterodox education publication founded in late 2020, abruptly had its Twitter account suspended on Thursday. In addition to the official account’s suspension, the personal account of Samuel Bravo, who helps run the Review’s social media, was also suspended.
Tony Kinnett, the publication’s co-founder and executive director, suggested in an interview with National Review that the social media company’s actions could be connected to a letter Twitter received from the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, in October.
In that letter, president Becky Pringle brought “the alarming growth of a small but violent group of radicalized adults who falsely believe that graduate level courses about racism are being taught in K-12 public schools” to the attention of social media companies, and asserted that this was “putting the safety of our children, educators, and families at risk.”
“Where is the urgency from the very companies that have helped fuel the conspiracies causing attacks?” asked Pringle.
While the letter does not specifically reference the Review, the publication has run a series of articles objecting to various school Covid policies favored by teachers’ unions, such as a return to remote learning and mandatory masking. The publication has also compiled a “tool kit” for parents and teachers to fight back against the introduction of critical race theory into K-12 curricula.
Many of the articles in the Chalkboard Review are supportive of school choice and other conservative and libertarian educational principles, but the site welcomes submissions from all over the ideological spectrum. “We have a lot of pieces I disagree with. In fact, I think we have a piece that calls me a disingenuous liar,” said Kinnett.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I take his article down because I disagree with his politics,” he added, referencing the author who labeled him a “liar.” As of mid-afternoon on Thursday, Twitter had not responded to Kinnett and other representatives’ inquiries about why the Review’s account had been suspended.
In its close a year and a half of existence, the Chalkboard Review has gained a monthly following of between 40,000 and 50,000 unique visitors to its site, as well 7,600 followers on Twitter, according to Kinnett, who co-founded the publication with Daniel Buck, a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute.
He called it “rather suspicious” that the account’s suspension followed the NEA’s urging of a crackdown on dissenting voices to its agenda and noted that the only remotely controversial recent item to have been posted by the Chalkboard Review was a tongue-in-cheek tweet naming American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten “school choice advocate of the year.”
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.