David McCormick joins Betsy DeVos at Moms for Liberty event in Nazareth

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Educational and political hot topics were served up at a “fireside chat” by the Northampton County chapter of Moms for Liberty. Republican Senate candidate David McCormick and Betsy DeVos, former United States secretary of education, discussed school-related issues including Title IX, student loan forgiveness and thoughts on the scourge of “wokeness” in school.

“In the pursuit of all these ideological objectives, our school systems have lost touch with the very basis of America, in my opinion,” McCormick told the audience. “There’s no incremental way to little-by-little fix this. This is a broken system that needs radical change and radical leadership to get things back on track and school choice or other things.”

The landmark 1972 legislation was originally passed to prohibit discrimination “on the basis of sex” in educational programs and other activities that receive federal government funding. The Obama administration expanded the interpretation of those protections to cover assigned sex, gender identity and transgender status. Since then, battle lines around Title IX have divided Democrats and Republicans, often fiercely.

The new guidance identified sexual assault as another type of discrimination, requiring schools to take a greater role in prevention and punishment. This language added protects for victims from further harassment, including providing them with confidentiality, which Republicans have criticized as taking away the ability of the accused to defend themselves.

While serving as secretary of education, DeVos “did away with the Title IX guidance that the Obama administration set forth, which stripped college students of their due process rights,” said Aly Warner, chair of the Northampton County chapter of Moms for Liberty, who moderated the discussion.

The Biden administration then reincluded some of the protections, which will go into effect Aug. 1. Republicans have campaigned against the changes.

“The very idea that we’d allow biological males to compete with biological females is fundamentally unfair,” McCormick said. “I think it will gut women’s sports and gut Title IX, which was really a great development in terms of promoting those sports.”

However, the White House proposals do not include requiring schools to allow transgender students to compete in women’s sports. Rather, it leaves those decisions to the schools to be made on a case-by-case basis depending on the age of the athletes and the specific sport.

Warner also asked McCormick and DeVos about “woke policies” she claimed are being instituted in schools across the country.

“Critical race theory, which is race ideology, encourages young children to put their peers’ backgrounds first and foremost in their minds rather than teaching them how to be respectful of others,” she said. “So do you have any thoughts about how we fight back?”

McCormick argued that these were issues holding the country back, saying that if students “don’t believe America’s exceptional… we’re going to fall behind.”

“Our education system is losing ground to the rest of the world,” he said. “We’re not top 10 in the world among any industrialized country in anything.”

The former secretary pointed to charter schools as a way of providing alternative education and career paths, saying that the current education system is being monopolized by teachers unions, a sentiment with which McCormick, who called himself “pro-teacher,” agreed.

The event was held at The Phoenix in Nazareth, where Moms of Liberty–backed candidates recently won three seats on the Nazareth Area School Board. Last year, a slate of Democratic candidates ousted incumbents who were supported by the organization.

In response to a request for comment, Pennsylvania Democratic Party spokesperson TaNisha Camerson said McCormick “makes his priorities clear by showing Pennsylvanians who he stands with: insurrectionists, anti-choice extremists who also want to make abortion illegal even in cases or rape or incest, and now, fringe far-right groups and Betsy DeVos, who made it harder to investigate sexual assaults on college campuses.”

“McCormick is out-of-touch with Pennsylvanians and voters will reject him in November,” she said in an emailed statement to WHYY News.