A Madrid-Waddington Central School teacher was honored with an "inclusion" award for advocacy work — the latest example of a public education system that prizes ideological activism over the one job it actually has: teaching kids.
Ashley Chevrier received the Johanna Mansfield Sullivan Inclusion Award from the Northern Regional Center for Independent Living, according to Europe Says. The award recognizes so-called "barrier busters" who promote accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities. State Sen. Mark Walczyk, a Republican, also gave Chevrier a certificate of special recognition.
The school praised Chevrier for declining to participate in activities that are not "fully inclusive" and for working to ensure students feel "valued, included and supported."
Nobody disputes that students with disabilities deserve access to school activities. But look at what the system chooses to celebrate: not the teacher who gets kids reading at grade level, not the one who drills math facts until they stick, but the one who checks the right ideological boxes. "Inclusion" and "advocacy" are the currency of the modern education establishment — and parents who ask why their children can't read get labeled extremists for daring to question it.
The award itself is telling. The Johanna Mansfield Sullivan Inclusion Award exists to spotlight people who remove barriers — a fine goal when it means a kid in a wheelchair can go on a field trip. But in practice, the language of "barrier busting" and "inclusion" has become the all-purpose justification for every progressive cause that works its way into a classroom. The education bureaucracy rewards compliance with its values, not competence in its core mission.
Walczyk's decision to lend his name to the recognition raises its own questions. A Republican senator signing off on an award framed in the language of advocacy and inclusion gives the entire apparatus bipartisan cover — exactly the kind of deal where the public gets sold out while both sides congratulate each other.
Meanwhile, the Buffalo News ran a separate piece on a School 62 teacher reflecting on forgiveness and reconnection with a student from the 1970s — a human-interest story about personal redemption that at least centers on the teacher-student relationship rather than institutional activism. The contrast is stark: one story is about a teacher and a kid; the other is about a teacher and an award.
The question nobody in the system wants to answer is simple: when do the awards go to the teachers who produce results instead of the ones who perform the right politics?
