Coachella Kids, Textbook Trump, Draft Ditch-Day | Parent Alert | PragerU

Okay, today is April 15th, 2026. It is Tax Day. I don't expect anybody to applaud for that, but our headlines today, let's get back on track. Our Parent Alert headlines today. The kids at Coachella Music Festival are not okay. An AP American Government textbook likens President Trump to Adolf Hitler, and Pittsburgh schools are being closed for a few days thanks to, drumroll, the NFL draft. It's time for Parent Alert. Let's go. Was it just me, or are those the headlines today? Today's headlines, you guys, I gotta say, I am, they're a little confusing to me. Nothing surprises me anymore, but everything surprises me. Welcome to Parent Alert. I'm Jill Simonian from PragerU Kids. Every Wednesday, we are here at 10.30 a.m. Pacific time. We're on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, ex-PragerU's social media channels, and of course, later in the day, this episode will be on PragerU.com slash Parent Alert for you to watch or listen to at your convenience. Drop me a comment if you're watching live right now. Tell me where you're from, what state you're watching from. We're in California, as we often tackle California headlines. And if you have not already subscribed, PragerUKids.com, educational and entertaining short videos and lessons, standards aligned by grade level and age level for kindergarten through 12th grade, history, civics, good character, financial literacy. Before we get into the headlines, we cannot do a live stream on tax day without, we should have preloaded a sound effect every time I say tax day, wah, you know. You can't do a live stream on tax day without mentioning our financial literacy workbook. Yes, I am doing commercial right up front. This is our financial literacy workbook for tweens. It's based on our Cash Course Financial Literacy Series. Dozens and dozens of short episodes, about five to 10 minutes each, tackling what kids need to know to be financially knowledgeable and responsible for their own lives. As we discussed on, I think it was Parent Alert a couple weeks ago. You can go back and check the episode, but financial lit is soon gonna be a requirement in California high schools, which sounds great, but as I discussed here from this chair, according to the governor's office, it's gonna have a little bit of a woke bent. They don't categorize it that way, but of course I do, because the financial literacy course that California will be mandating in just a few years will be focused on getting women involved in our economy, as though women are not already involved in the economy. But our financial literacy is not woke. So, this is a workbook, total workbook, that aligns with all of our videos, teaching about investing in stocks, taxes, credit, savings, loans, checking, what is a budget, all the stuff that our tweens, and frankly, we as parents, should know. I link to it in the description here, so you can check it out. You can buy this on Amazon, or it's free to download on our website. Okay, let's get into what everyone came here for, the kids in Coachella. Roll the first clip, please. What's up, North, how you doing? Where your parents? North, hey, I want y'all to make some noise for North, she in the swamp with me. Like, you just casually out, just casually having fun, like, what are you doing? Deanna Taylor here, what's up, sis? What are you doing? You're just casually out having fun, he says. The quote that I hope everyone caught at the very top of that was, what's up, North, where are your parents? Where are your parents? That was Young Thug. My producer's been waiting all morning for me to say the words, Young Thug. That was Young Thug. Clip was compliments of, I believe, Complex Music on X. Northwest, of course, is the daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. She's 12 years old. So she's either in the sixth grade or the seventh grade, if she's young for her grade, I don't know. There's been pictures of her at Coachella floating around all over the internet this week. She's wearing this blue-green wig, she's got a blue-green long hair, she's got long nails. I know she's a celebrity, her parents are megastars. She's not growing up in a normal environment like us regular folk, we know that, okay? So this is a normal day for her. Front row Coachella by herself. She was reportedly with a handler and some other people, her mother, and I believe a lot of her aunts were at the Coachella Music Festival from what I've seen online. And I did go into a deeper dive than I'm proud to admit on this. Apparently Young Thug called out from the stage during that same concert to also protect her from an impending mosh pit. So you can look it up, you can entertain yourself. People have been talking about this chatter, chatter, chatter online. I think I saw, not that I watch Perez Hilton all the time, but he does come up on my Instagram feed. So I did see a lot of commentary about this 12-year-old Northwest at Coachella at a concert without the immediate presence of her parents with her. How Young Thug is like, where are your parents? A lot of chatter, should she be there? Why did Kim let her go by herself to the concert? Was Kanye upset? Coachella says all ages are welcome, so technically there was no... All of the chatter, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Our headline today is not really about Northwest. The reason why we included this, it's the where are your parents phenomenon. Where are your parents? This is not just for celebrities at Coachella. This question, where are your parents, in my view as a mom of teenagers, is for regular people every single day, wherever we go. Coachella Music Festival has been happening since 1999. It kicks off the summer music festivals in the U.S., Lollapalooza in Chicago, Bonnaroo in Tennessee, Outside Lands in San Francisco. Music festivals are not new. They've been going on for decades and decades. It's a very adult atmosphere. I don't think I have to say that here. It's a very adult atmosphere. There's drinking, there's drugs, there's all sorts of adult activity. I've always said as a mom, take your kids out to live life with you. Take them to the grocery store, take them to the market, take them to the restaurant, shopping, vacations. Kids should always be out and about, but kids don't belong in every single situation. This is a friendly reminder. I want you to drop a comment. Let me know what you think about kids at Coachella. There's been all these trends, especially with the younger parents. I might get a lot of heat from this, but a lot of the younger parents, maybe 10 years younger than me, with babies and toddlers. Last year, babychella was like a trending thing on Instagram where everyone was taking their babies to Coachella and it was so cute and they had the little fake tattoos and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the past few years, I've noticed so many regular parents adopting this whole celebrity mom vibe where these, we know that these celebrity kids are out and about in all of these age-inappropriate atmospheres and situations all the time. It's a celebrity lifestyle. It's not for regular people, but I have noticed a very sharp shift in the vibe the last 10 years with young mothers and even moms my age who maybe have 12, 13-year-old kids and they're taking them to these very adult places with drugs and drinking and they're like, oh, but it's okay, they don't do that. No, but they're in the atmosphere. This is my call right now and drop a comment. We need to return to judging a little bit, a little bit. We need to return to judging, parent-to-parent, mom-to-mom, dad-to-dad. Starting with nine-year-olds going into Sephora and purchasing skincare because mommy thinks it's cute and fun. Starting with 12-year-olds who are given social media with their own account name and they're monitoring their own social media accounts. Starting with high schoolers having parties at their houses where the parents are supplying the alcohol because they wanna be cool and oh, if they wanna drink, I'd rather them do it in the house. What is this, what is this culture? What is this? I mean, not to mention all of the misguided schools and teachers who are encouraging kids to leave campus like adults to protest very political causes without requiring a parent to sign these students, these minors out of class during the day. Stop treating kids like adults. Stop including them in adult activities. Whether it's at Coachella or it's at Sephora or it's on social media or it's saying, hey, go ahead and protest on the street outside of the school because of this political cause. No, this is not a left or right issue. This is a common sense issue. We have to reject it. We have to pull this back. Kids cannot raise themselves. We should all be able to agree on this. That is what, that, drop your comments if you think I'm way too wound up. I mean, Northwest, I hope you had a good time at the concert and drop me a comment. That's what, that is why we talked about kids at Coachella today. I had to give a pep talk. All right, drop me a comment if I'm way too wound up. What else should we be able to agree on? The definition of what authoritarianism is. Brings me to our next headline, AP Government Rewriting History. Our friendly acquaintance, Carol Markowitz, who's a writer and a media personality who was actually, who was born in the USSR. She shared something this past week from an AP American government book that her teen cousin reportedly shared with her. Newsweek covered this. A bunch of outlets covered this. I saw a lot of chatter on this online. Our friendly colleague, Isabel Brown. We all know and love Isabel. She had some comments about this discovery if you will. You might have seen this in your scroll too. Roll the clip. I'm doing a wellness check on the teenagers in high school right now because what is this? Someone sent their AP government textbook to Carol Markowitz, their cousin, to show them the political ideology grid that they are currently teaching in American high schools. Guys, guys, I have so many questions. Apparently the only, the only person in American politics who is economic right and more libertarian is Ron Paul, who is like barely libertarian. Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush are the same dot because they have the same exact political ideology. What? And they both are more authoritarian than Fidel Castro. Apparently Obama is a right-wing authoritarian in 2008 and he becomes more right-wing economically and more authoritarian by 2012, closely mirroring the political ideology of Maggie Thatcher and of course Ted Cruz, who is far more authoritarian by the way than Fidel Castro and pretty much on the exact same line. It looks like he's more authoritarian than Joseph Stalin over there. Donald Trump is on par of course with Hitler. Bernie Sanders is barely, barely economic left. Nelson Mandela is a libertarian. What? I don't, I don't even know what to do with this. The textbook in question, your college level American government course, your AP course offered to high schoolers in America today and justice for George W. Bush having to share a dot with Hillary Clinton. Okay, so Isabel always puts a fun and entertaining spin on things. Can I just say, let me use this platform right now to reminisce, not so fondly, about how I hated charts like that in high school so much. It might be me, the chart is very confusing. Let's pull up the chart. I think we have a still image of the chart. This chart is from a high school textbook for an AP American government class. I looked this up, spent a little bit too much time looking up this book last night online. It's on Amazon. I clicked on all the reading samples. I read through the book. This book is apparently for the AP course. And I want you to take a little bit of time, just look at the quadrants, look at, kind of get yourself oriented to figure out like what, you know, how to read this chart, how to reconcile, you know, all the axis and the X and Y axis on this chart. Okay, so we're gonna leave it up there for you, okay? So this book, apparently for the AP course, American government, high schoolers nationwide obviously enroll in this course to earn college credit while they're in high school. And the name of the book is American Government Stories of a Nation. It's written by a college professor and an attorney who also happens to be a high school teacher. Now the page shows, as we can see, a political chart identifying several international politicians on a spectrum, going from authoritarian to libertarian, top to bottom. So the higher you are on the chart, it's authoritarian, and the lower you are, you're libertarian, live and let live, right? And then the economic left and the economic right, left to right. Trump appears in the top right quadrant to the right of Hitler and just slightly below him in terms of authoritarianism. And you can read about this on newsweek.com. I appreciated reading this article on Newsweek. Among the politicians in the authoritarian quadrant, mind you, there's Stalin and there's Fidel Castro to the left and then Ted Cruz, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George W. Bush to the right. So, so much chatter about this online. There's a particularly vibrant conversation that I went through on X. If you go to Carol Markowitz's account where she posted the comments and the back and forth. And there are, listen, there's some valid points of people who are refuting this. At PragerU, I'm gonna say, at PragerU we are obsessed with finding the truth. Yes, we, you know, as parents and consumers, we get caught up about what's online. But again, I'm bringing this here today because I'm a little bit obsessed with finding the truth. We know that we at PragerU kids have been falsely accused of saying certain things in our videos that we did not say because they were taken out of context and not looked at the full picture. So that's why I looked up this full book. I wanted to look up all the dialogue, all of that stuff. I trust Carol Markowitz, I will say this. She's very sensible, she's very credible. Very common sense, very common sense. I have not seen the entire book page by page by page by page in full context though. So here's some of the reactions I found online on X. This graph was allegedly part of a survey that was done from an outside blog, outside of this textbook. So a lot of people online are arguing, okay, this is not an official academic perspective, yet it's in the academic textbook. So riddle me that. Many people also said that students, the readers of this textbook were asked in the text, do you agree with where the graphic places certain people? And a lot of people were alleging that this graph was part of some sort of critical thinking exercise and that they were arguing, well, the textbook clearly does not endorse it as accurate. And then Carol responded, they quoted a blog in an official textbook. That's a problem. Someone else asked, well, does the textbook ever provide the correct answer? And to actually teach the kids factual things that no, President Trump is not more authoritarian than Joseph Stalin, like facts, right? In the textbook, the chart is also presented as a graphic made by someone else. And students are asked again, do you agree with where the graphic places certain people? The graphic, again, was this graphic that you're seeing here this was the result of a survey from a blog called Political Compass, which I have no idea if it's accredited or not. The A word is very wielded at us here at PragerU all the time, so I'm not gonna wield it at someone else. But the survey on this chart was from a blog and then it was placed into this AP American government textbook. So a lot of chaotic mess as social media often yields. The biggest problem I see as a mom here and as someone who creates educational content with a team of credentialed teachers here in-house at PragerU kids, well, the big problem, first of all, is that the quadrants are confusing. I'll just say that outright, but seriously, the biggest problem is that, let's back it up, kids are not being taught to think critically at all from the time they begin school, when they're small. So how in anyone's right mind can a teacher, a textbook, how can kids be expected to think critically suddenly as high schoolers by looking at a chart and to think critically and to agree or disagree? How can we expect them to think critically when their entire educational career to this point was likely one-sided and politicized to skew left or else risk being shamed about it? We can't expect kids to think critically. As I said, I skimmed through the book samples on Amazon and I read a lot of varied sections. Many things that I saw in this particular book through the reading samples on Amazon actually aligned with what we teach here at Prager U Kids. So I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but let me specify, not all of it, okay? The textbook does cite how we were created, the United States, to be a constitutional republic, how our government was rooted in Greek and Roman systems. So my personal deep dive into this textbook online, I did not have the physical copy online, is that many of the concepts that are being taught do in fact align with many of the things that we at Prager U Kids are often attacked of. Well, you're a democracy, not a constitutional republic. No, we are a constitutional republic. So it's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag. This chart, I don't agree with putting a chart like this that is very confusing to high schoolers, especially if they've been indoctrinated in the school system to view President Trump as some kind of authoritarian villain. I don't agree with putting a chart like this because it just pours gasoline on an unjust fire in politicizing kids even further because your average high school student, your average high school student who has not been taught to think critically from the age of five is gonna look at this chart and say, oh yeah, look, the AP government textbook says that President Trump was worse than Joseph Stalin. Millions of people died under Joseph Stalin's power. So bottom line, are we ever going to achieve total truth in educational textbooks? Probably not because too much has been compromised over too many decades. But what we can do as parents and teachers is to stay on top of all of this stuff. Thank you, Carol Markowitz, for sharing this. Thank you for making us adults think and discuss. Drop your comment if your child, I want you to drop a comment if your child is taking an AP American government class and if you see if they have this textbook, if you've noticed anything. My kids are a few years away from taking AP American government so I'm gonna be very, very curious. But it's our job as parents to stay on top of all this stuff before we get to the AP American government class. And while our kids are in the AP American government class, we've got the resources to supplement, to balance the scales, to give information and education that gets students actually critically thinking and actually get our educational systems closer to finding the truth. It takes multiple resources. And oh look, I have one. You can get this. This is our brand new, okay, so it's not for high schoolers. It's not for AP American government but this is our brand new graphic novel for tweens and teens. It's called The Signers, The Heroic Story of the Declaration of Independence. This is so much fun. You can see the graphic there. Before I open it up and show you, I'm gonna read you a review. This is all in good fun, right? These reviews are all in good fun. An unfortunate tale but I still couldn't put it down. Most creative storytelling indeed. King George III of Great Britain. One of the reviews on the back. Fun stuff. This is written, this graphic novel, I'll give you some inside peeks. It's a true comic book. Can I flip it like this? Here we go, let's see. There we go. It's a true comic book based on historical documents, standards aligned with grade levels five and eight because fifth grade and eighth grade here in the United States learn American history. It's written by credentialed teachers here in house at Prager U Kids. You can get this on Amazon. You can buy it if you want the hard copy which is really fun. I took this home and my eighth grader actually looked at it and she goes, oh my gosh, what is this, mom? I go, it's history. No, it's not, it's not history. No, it is, honey, it's history. It's history, John Adams, Sam Adams, Sons of Liberty, John Hancock. Here, oh, look at John Hancock. Can I just show? I know we're taking too much time. Look at John Hancock. John Hancock, everybody. All right. You can also download this for free on pragerukids.com. It's really fun. This is really fun. We're really proud of this. I dare you to take this to your school. Tell them it's free. There is no cost to taxpayers at all. We don't take one. We don't take money from teachers, not one cent from the government to create our content at pragerukids.com. Teachers can download this and use it. The whole thing, full transparency for free in their classes. Read and vet the whole thing for yourself. Literally judge it for yourself. Try it, it's perfect. It's perfect for summer and it's perfect for a ditch day which leads me to our next headline. Pittsburgh, the signers. I've actually, I've linked to this in the description. The signers, the story of the declaration of independence celebrate America's 250th birthday with this graphic novel. Okay, next headline. Pittsburgh public schools are canceling school days because of the NFL draft happening this month. What in the what? The full press release from the district reads and let's go ahead and pull up the graphic for the quote for the superintendent. You can read this on your screen but I wanna read you out loud. It's story time for me right now. This is the full press release from the Pittsburgh Public Schools District. This release was sent out on March 17th, so a few weeks ago. Pittsburgh Public Schools has notified staff and families today that schools will transition to asynchronous teaching and learning from April 22nd through the 24th, 2026 in preparation for the significant increase in visitors expected across the region during the 2026 NFL draft. And this is the quote that we have pulled up on screen. Our priority is maintaining continuity of learning while recognizing the extraordinary circumstances the city will experience during the NFL draft said Superintendent Dr. Wayne N. Walters. Transitioning to asynchronous learning allows us to support students academically while helping families navigate the logistical challenges expected across the region. Okay, so and then the press release goes on and you can find this, it's all public information online. I mean, we literally Googled it and we found this. So the press release goes on to say that about 700,000 people, a lot of people are gonna be traveling to Pittsburgh for this multi-day NFL draft event. I get it, football's huge, this is a big deal. This is our American pop culture, yay, hooray, fine, right? Celebrate, I love going to a good football game. But three days of asynchronous instruction. Students are, you know, they say, oh, students are gonna be completing assignments and learning activities provided by their teachers through digital platforms and instructional materials. Didn't we already do this already? We tried this. We tried the digital learning. It doesn't work. It's a farce, it's a joke, it's a hoax. It is a waste of time for everyone, not to mention, it makes the teacher's lives more complicated, it makes the parents' lives more complicated and the kids are likely getting close to zero out of this digital instruction. Didn't we try this during the lockdown? We tried it, we tried it during 2020, it didn't work. Follow the science, follow the data, it didn't work. Oh, but Jill, it's only for three days. I know, but, oh, by the way, and they're also, they gotta postpone their standardized testing for these days, which I have mixed feelings about. I don't know, I won't get into that. But I wanna share with you, in light of this whole school cancellation, I wanna share with you some academic realities from Pittsburgh schools right now. According to Pittsburgh's local NPR station, reading proficiency in Pittsburgh public schools has recently faced declines, with only 44% of third graders scoring proficient or advanced on state exams for the 2024-25 school year. It's marked a drop from 46% the previous year and 55.5% in 2018. So according to recent data, but nevermind, we can cancel school for three days. Thanks to the NFL draft, that decision made in light of this recent data from US News and World Report about reading proficiency rates. In Pittsburgh specifically, this is Pittsburgh specific, Pittsburgh elementary schools have about a 37% proficiency rate for reading. In middle schools, it's a 39% proficiency rate in reading, Pittsburgh schools. In high school, it's about a 52% proficiency rate and based on the literature from Keystone exams. And then proficiency levels fluctuate widely depending on the individual school. Again, in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Allegheny K-5, 57% reading proficiency. Pittsburgh Fulton K-5, 57% reading proficiency. Pittsburgh Phillips K-5 school, 39% reading proficiency for third graders. Pittsburgh Starrett grade six through eight, 28% reading proficiency. Yet let's cancel school for three days because of the NFL draft. Every single teacher, admin and family should be shouting from the rooftops to not cancel school. Pittsburgh, may I respectfully say that you do not have the luxury of canceling school with reading proficiency rates that hover around 50% or less. Am I wrong? Drop me a comment. If you're from Pittsburgh, you don't have the luxury of canceling school for one day, much less three days. We already did the distance learning experiment. It doesn't work. Teachers know this. Follow the data, follow the science. Stop lowering the standards. Stop minimizing responsibility, hard work and common sense priorities for kids to learn from. I never ever thought I'd say this, but right now I am going to give love and thanks to the Washington Post. What is happening, right? I'm giving love and thanks to the Washington Post for an opinion article that they put out. The writer was Joseph Sabino Mystic. He's an associate professor of law at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Look at this article if you can. It's from the Washington Post. His close, and we can pull up the quote right now. His closing remarks say everything regarding this three-day closure of Pittsburgh schools because of the NFL draft. And I quote by Mr. Mystic, but we may have missed a great opportunity to teach students another important lesson rooted in Pittsburgh culture. Anyone who grew up here remembers that dads and granddads, uncles and aunts went to work every day in factories and mills in the worst weather when they were sick or injured or feeling down. They poured through the gates and worked their shifts. They certainly wouldn't stay home because there was a big celebration in town. They all met their responsibilities. Applause here. Exactly, applause here. They're applauding in the booth. Drop me a comment. Pittsburgh teachers, please, please, please. I know it's tempting to say, oh yeah, the traffic that this is, please push back against this. We know there are good teachers in Pittsburgh. Perhaps the unions push this through. I don't know. I don't live in Pennsylvania. But we gotta do better. We gotta do better. All right, everybody, we are out of time on Parent Alert today. Drop me a comment if you like this episode. If you don't like this episode, drop me a comment. If something's happening in your area, subscribe to PragerUKids.com for free. We've got new releases every week, if not more, delivered to your inbox for your kids' grades, kindergarten through 12th grade. Don't miss an episode about U.S. and world history, American values, good character, civics, financial literacy, and more. Pick up the signers for one of your tweens' summer reading activities. Oh, look, there's King George. They must die. Your kids are gonna love this. Mine do. Thank you for your support of PragerUKids. Always can't do it without you. See you next time on Parent Alert.