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EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVE
Quis magistros ipsos docebit? . |
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31 January, 2024
New York Jewish schools welcome Israeli children after October 7 horror: ‘Light in the dark time.’
When Stephanie Cramer left her home in southern Israel for New York City three days after the October, 7, Hamas attack desperate to seek safety, she also had to find a school for her three-year-old daughter.
Luckily a friend told her that Rabbi Arthur Schneier Park East Day School on the Upper East Side was offering to enroll children from Israeli families — and Yarzen, 3, found a classroom, with the school waiving her $30,000-a-year tuition.
She was not alone.
At least 168 Israeli students have been placed in 22 private Jewish day schools in New York City, Westchester and Long Island following the Hamas massacre, according to the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropy of New York (UJA).
And Jewish day schools across the country have seen a historic uptick in enrollment as more than 1,000 temporary Israeli students sought safety, according to the Enrollment Trend Report released earlier this month by Prizmah, Center for Jewish Day Schools.
The schools have also seen an uptick in demand from US parents transferring children from public schools since the Oct. 7 attacks, with 32% of those who moved children saying it was because of their previous schools’ response to the terrorist attacks.
Cramer, 30, who is also a U.S. citizen, left her husband, Erez, 30, who was deployed to Gaza to fight in Israel and brought their daughters Yarzen and 1-year-old Arava, to stay with her father in Hell’s Kitchen and feared finding a place for Yarzen would be difficult.
“I assumed it would be more complicated to find them a school mid-year,” said Cramer, who met her husband when they both served in the IDF.
“The moment I reached out they returned my call. The following day we came to see the school and the next day my 3-year-old started class in the early childhood development program.”
Rabbi Arthur Schneier Park East Day School (RASPEDS) welcomed 22 students from Israeli families following Oct. 7, after it sent out a memo to parents alerting them to their Open Doors Policy to Displaced Israeli Families.
“A lot of the schools [in Israel] had shut down right after the war began. Parents didn’t want their kids to be in lockdown again like during COVID,” Debbie Rochlin, principal of Rabbi Arthur Schneier Park East Day School, told The Post.
“Some parents felt they wanted to come to New York and have their children in a safe place.
“Our doors were open, and we were ready to provide a warm, nurturing environment for these students, ensuring that they can continue their academic journey without interruption.”
Rochlin says her faculty streamlined the admissions process by waiving all fees as well as tuition, and providing mental health counseling to students in need. Third grade, she noted, saw a particular uptick in Israeli students transferring in.
“It’s difficult in general for children to enter any school mid-year, let alone a foreign one, but our teachers and students embraced them,” Rochlin said.
Other schools which have enrolled Israeli children include Manhattan Day School on the Upper West Side, The Ramaz School on the Upper East Side, Luria Academy of Brooklyn and Westchester Day School.
Jewish day schools across the country have seen a historic uptick in enrollment as more than 1,000 temporary Israeli students sought safety, according to the Enrollment Trend Report released earlier this month by Prizmah, Center for Jewish Day Schools.
Among the complications are that the Israeli arrivals, like Cramer’s daughter, speak Hebrew as their primary language.
“She was learning a lot – her English improved. She could express herself [better] – it was a great place for her to be,” Cramer said.
Cramer returned to Israel to reunite with her husband who was released from the Israeli Defense Force in November, but the family are keen to move back to New York and re-enroll their daughters in a private Jewish day school.
Westchester Day School, a modern Orthodox Jewish private school for toddler through eighth grade in Mamaroneck, Westchester, was a refuge for Elana, who asked The Post to leave out her last name for privacy reasons, and her four kids aged 17, 14, 11, and 8.
With schools closed in Israel, the family left to stay with family in Scarsdale, New York on Oct. 12, and started her elementary aged kids after Thanksgiving.
“I said, ‘I have to get them enrolled in something.’ They were home doing nothing. We didn’t know what was going on with the war. Our kids were out of school for a month,” Elana told The Post.
WDS waived tuition fees — which are up to $29,700 a year— and bypassed requests for transcripts, she said.
She and her family are back in Israel, but hope to return to New York permanently.
“Personally when you’re displaced it’s a dark time for you,” Elana told The Post. “This gave us that light in the dark time.”
https://nypost.com/2024/01/31/news/nyc-jewish-schools-welcome-israeli-families-after-october-7/
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The Decline in American Universities, 2011-2024
Like ancient Rome, American universities have not fallen or declined in a day—or even a year. But as good of a date as any to measure the beginning of the decline is 2011. Enrollments started falling that year and since then they have fallen by roughly 15 percent. The ratio of college students to the total American population has declined even more—around 20 percent.
A decline of this magnitude for this long is unique in American history. Underlying this is a sharp decline in public support for universities. At the beginning of this decline, the primary complaint was over costs—colleges were too expensive. Costs had been rising far faster than not only inflation but, more critically, family incomes. In the three decades before 2010, American families could more readily than ever afford big televisions, cell phones, vacation homes, cruises, and other luxuries—but college education was becoming financially more burdensome.
Inefficiencies abound. Unlike in the rest of the economy, productivity in higher education was probably falling as the staff to student ratio rose. Buildings were empty too much of the year, faculty were writing a lot of articles of little consequence for miniscule audiences. Administrative bloat was already well under way. All of this is well before the pandemic beginning in 2020.
But the cost explosion is a minor factor in the big enrollment decline from 2010 to 2020. After all, in the previous decade (2000 to 2010) of rapidly rising tuition fees, enrollments rose robustly—by more than one-third. The single event that did more than anything to trigger the decline came on April 4, 2011 when the U.S. Department of Education in a “dear colleague” letter proclaimed that sexual violence on campus led by horny male students was a national problem, mandating remedies making a mockery of traditional Anglo-Saxon procedures of adjudicating wrongful behavior (e.g., no right to cross examine witnesses, prosecutors often serving also as judges or the equivalent). By 2015, these procedures were widely adopted.
The result? An exodus of men from campuses. Between 2015 and 2020, enrollment fell by nearly one million students with 87 percent of the decline being men. College student affairs offices, responding robustly to the Department of Education fatwa, declared a war on men as they administered Star Chamber justice.
An even more sinister university bureaucracy exploded roughly simultaneously, “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) offices. These offices have declared that justice demands that students swear fealty to a “diversity” agenda that evaluates students mainly on race, with a secondary aim at giving favorable status to gays, transgender students and others adjudged disadvantaged by the DEI bureaucracy. The dominant problem today is the fundamental positive rationale for higher education has been imperiled: universities have largely lost their reputation as places for robust debate and consideration of all viewpoints, instead moving towards becoming authoritarian institutions depressingly similar to universities in the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.
Associated with the new woke supremacy centered around “social justice” has come a decline in academic standards and expectations, with even prestigious selective schools dropping such important tools of assessing applicants as entrance examinations like the SAT. Grade inflation, already excessive endemic even in 2010 continued, with most students at our so-called elite universities getting “A” or “A-” grades. With that has come less time spent on academics.
Parents started asking “why send our kids to radical leftish and expensive schools where there is a good chance they either will not graduate or will end up in low paying jobs? The New York Federal Reserve Bank published “underemployment” statistics showing the vocational risksof pursuing a degree were pretty high. College graduates might average lifetime earnings of one million dollars more than high school graduates—but 40 percent or so of college freshmen do not get degrees in any timely fashion.
To be sure, there are enormous variations between schools—a great strength in our university system. Some schools are decidedly non-woke without typical obsessions over people’s skin coloration, religion or national origin. Others want kids with a strong sense of belief in God and rejection of what they regard as the sins and immorality of modern America.
I am cautiously optimistic that market forces, even weakened by the government subsidized environment of higher education, will lead to healthy change. The ultra-woke schools will be punished—already Harvard’s early admissions applications are down substantially—while traditional institutions emphasizing academics will do better. Reports are appearing that applications and enrollments are robust at some schools promoting traditional academic and sometimes religious values. Falling applications at ultra-woke schools will be accompanied by state governments increasingly attacking the instruments of leftish collegiate domination such as DEI. Private donors will start becoming more demanding while making gifts. One aspect of the revival would be to make college comfortable to males again.
This renaissance of campus sanity could be disrupted by the federal government, already the most single negative factor in modern higher education. An activist Department of Education, largely ignoring legislative intent and constitutional restraints, could impede reforms, joined by allies in the accreditation cartel. The 2024 elections should feature higher education issues more than usual.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14808&omhide=true&trk=title
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Australia: ‘We want our school back’: Newington parents, old boys gather to protest co-ed move
Students returning to Newington College on Wednesday were greeted with a parent protest outside the school’s gates, as backlash intensified against a decision to admit girls to the 160-year-old institution.
A group of parents and alumni gathered at a Stanmore park before walking to the private school’s main campus gates carrying placards that called for the college to reverse plans to transform into a fully co-educational school by 2033.
Newington announced late last year that it would admit girls in the junior school from 2026, and become a fully co-educational campus by 2033. The decision, made almost two years after the idea was first floated to the school community, has drawn intense criticism from some parents and old boys.
An online petition objecting to the co-ed move has garnered 2300 signatures, while a separate group of parents is threatening legal action against the college over the plan to enrol girls.
In November, a letter from law firm Brown Wright Stein was sent to the council chairman Tony McDonald on behalf of parents and old boys, challenging the validity of the co-ed plan and arguing it was contrary to the inner west school’s trust, which was established in 1873.
The decision also prompted Newington’s Founders’ Society chairman Greg Mitchell to quit his position and withdraw his bequest to the school.
“I believe this decision is ideologically driven by the minority and is now being imposed on the whole of the Newington community with potentially disastrous consequences,” he told the Herald last year.
The Founders’ Society was established in 2010 to raise money for the college and for student scholarships by asking alumni to donate by making a bequest in their wills.
A separate coalition of parents and old boys have also set up a group called Save Newington College to campaign against the co-ed move and lobby the school to overturn the decision.
“Such a seismic shift in this extraordinary school will destroy the great traditions and heritage that make Newington College the greatest school for boys in Australia,” a message on the group’s website says.
Morgan, who graduated from the school in 1990 and is one of the founders of the Save Newington group, said 640 alumni and current and former parents had registered to be a part of the group.
“The Save Newington group is not directly involved in any legal action, however many of our groups’ supporters are, and we are all interested in its success,” said Morgan. “The group has helped to pass on information from the legal action group to our supporters, including fundraising efforts.”
A former parent at the school, Kerry Maxwell, who is part of the MOONS (Mothers of Old Newingtonians), said she attended the protest to help “speak up on behalf of a lot of families I know that are furious about this decision, but they’re too scared to talk”.
“Parents signed up for a boys’ school. They heard nothing about possible co-ed plans for months and then there is a sudden announcement. Now if parents try and get their boys into other schools they can’t.”
Another old boy, Tony Retsos, who graduated in 1977, said he had “nothing against co-ed” but the school “had been a private elite boys’ school for 160 years and the process to consult about a decision of this kind wasn’t sufficient.”
“All we want is for the decision to be reversed and a proper consultation with all stakeholders. Without more information the decision is unfathomable,” he said.
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30 January, 2024
Connecticut school district facing backlash after stripping Veterans Day, Columbus Day from holiday calendar
A Connecticut school district is facing backlash after deciding to strip Veterans and Columbus Days from its official holiday calendar in a controversial vote by the school board last week.
Students at Stamford public schools will no longer get the day off on both holidays for the next two school years after the board voted 5-3 to remove them on Tuesday night, the Stamford Advocate reported.
Board member Joshua Esses made a motion to wipe the holidays from the school calendar at Tuesday’s meeting, arguing that the school year cut too far into the summer — ending in mid-June.
“We should make it shorter because it’s better educationally for our students,” Esses said of the school year — which is required by state law to have at least 180 teaching days for students, according to the local newspaper.
He also suggested cutting the religious holidays Eid al-Fitr and the second day of Rosh Hashanah from the list of official holidays with the same justification — but that motion received no support, the outlet reported.
Esses noted that Veterans Day and Columbus Day would instead be recognized and celebrated with lesson plans about the meaning of each on the day of, a state requirement.
Still, the board’s decision — which was discussed at another meeting earlier this month when brought up by a different member — garnered outrage from veterans and Italian-Americans.
Veteran Alfred Fusco, a founding member of the Stamford chapter of the Italian-American service organization UNICO, told ABC7 that the school district’s announcement was a double whammy.
“It was a gut punch. It was terrible. It had no inclination,” Fusco told the station.
The school district defended its decision when reached by The Post, noting that other districts in the state already keep schools open on the two holidays.
“Stamford Public Schools already hosts many events in recognition of our local veterans, and we look forward to continuing that tradition on Veterans’ Day in 2024 and 2025,” a spokesperson for Stamford Public Schools said in a statement.
“In addition, our Teaching and Learning Department will be working to develop programming about Columbus Day that will be presented to students in recognition of that federal holiday.”
A large part of the debate focused on the particular role of Columbus Day, which has been rejected by some Americans in recent years in favor of Indigenous People’s Day due to the sordid history surrounding Italian explorer Christopher Columbus’ treatment of native peoples.
The other board member Versha Munshi-South said she observed a class lesson titled “Columbus: Hero or Villian?” at Dolan Middle School which made her rethink the holiday.
“The students were using primary sources to investigate the true history of Columbus and I can tell you that based on primary source research, no, they did not conclude that Columbus was a hero,” Munshi-South said, according to the Advocate.
“I don’t think it makes sense to teach students one thing in class and then have Columbus Day off. It’s a mixed message for students,” she said.
Another member of the school board, however, said that she saw Columbus as a hero and thought polarization on the issue should not inform their decision.
“There’s a lot of polarization with curriculums, so to paint Columbus as a villain is because of the polarization and I think we can’t be doing that publicly,” Becky Hamman said, the outlet reported.
“On Tuesday, January 23, the Stamford BOE approved the 2024-25 and 2025-26 Stamford Public Schools calendars following passage of a motion to have schools remain open on Columbus Day and Veterans Day,” a spokesperson for Stamford Public Schools said in a statement.
“Several neighboring districts already keep schools open on Columbus Day and/or Veterans Day, and both Columbus Day and Veterans Day will be acknowledged on the Stamford Public Schools calendar with other holidays and religious observances that occur when school is in session.”
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Happy National School Choice Week
Since 2011, National School Choice Week has been celebrated in late January to raise public awareness for education choice and to “help families discover the traditional public, public charter, public magnet, private, online, and home education options available for their children.” So far, National School Choice Week has been extremely successful in advocating for more education choice, however, there remains much more work to be done.
Presently, approximately nine out of 10 K-12 students in the United States attend government-run public schools. This is not because most parents prefer that their children attend public schools. Rather, it is because the vast majority of American families cannot afford to subsidize public schools through their state and local taxes while simultaneously paying out-of-pocket for their children to attend non-government schools.
In fact, most parents strongly prefer that their children attend a school other than the one and only public option arbitrarily assigned to them based on their geographic location.
This is especially true for parents with children trapped in under-performing and dangerous public schools. In recent years, standardized test scores show public schools have done an absolutely awful job in properly educating their students for a successful future.
My home state of Illinois is a prime example of the decaying state of public education. In 2023, only 35 percent of Illinois public school students in grades three to eight met or exceeded proficiency levels for English language arts (ELA) and only 27 percent met or exceeded proficiency levels for math.
At the high school level, Illinois public school test scores are similarly dreadful. Only 31 percent of Illinois high schoolers met or exceeded the proficiency standard for ELA and 26 percent scored proficient in math.
On the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), “the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas,” 31 percent of Illinois fourth graders scored proficient in ELA and an abysmal 21 percent tested proficient in math.
As academic achievement and test scores continue to head in the wrong direction in Illinois public schools, so, too, is “chronic absenteeism” and “chronic truancy.” In 2023, 28 percent of Illinois students missed at least 10 percent of school days with or without a valid excuse and 20 percent were “chronically truant.”
Student discipline has also emerged as a major problem. In 2023, the state recorded 250,351 “Discipline Action Incidents” committed by 114,218 students. This includes 15, 219 incidents involving violence with physical injury and 2,644 dangerous weapon incidents.
Despite these appalling statistics, which are the norm in far too many states, Illinois lawmakers terminated the state’s sole school choice option at the end of 2023: the highly popular and highly successful Invest in Kids Act.
While blue states like Illinois continue to wage all-out war on school choice, a different trend is emerging in red states. In 2023, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, and Utah passed universal school choice laws. In 2024, this trend is expected to continue.
Two of the most alluring aspects of school choice are that it results in less overall education spending and better academic outcomes.
On average, K-12 public schools spent $14,347 per pupil in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Several states, such as New York, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, and others spent more than $20,000 per student. On the other hand, the nation’s 22,440 private K-12 schools average tuition rate is $12,350 per student.
In Illinois, the state spends on average $20,152 per pupil in public schools whereas the average tuition for a private school registered at $8,464.
Generally, private schools are more affordable than public schools because they lack the massive bureaucracies that have become ordinary among public school districts. Private schools are more efficient and devote more of their resources straight into the classroom, whereas public schools and their bloated district offices divert precious resources to frivolous programs that have little to do with improving educational outcomes but lots to do with appeasing teacher unions and creating permanent bureaucratic positions.
What’s more, students attending private schools consistently outperform their public school peers on nationwide, standardized tests including the NAEP, better known as the “Nation’s Report Card.”
For most Americans, school choice is a commonsense policy that places parents, not education bureaucrats, in charge of their children’s education. This is the crux of the matter.
Eventually, I believe the tide will turn in favor of more school choice. Parents should possess the fundamental right to choose the educational option that best fits the unique needs of their children. Who knows, maybe a decade from now, school choice will be universal, making National School Choice Week more or less redundant. That would certainly be worth celebrating; but, until that day comes to fruition: Happy National School Choice Week, America.
https://townhall.com/columnists/christalgo/2024/01/25/happy-national-school-choice-week-n2634141
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The New York Times Is Wrong to Laud Schools Misleading Students About Climate Change
The New York Times (NYT) ran a story discussing a growing trend in states to incorporate climate change as a topic throughout their school district’s lesson plans. The story shows why this is a bad idea, showing how impressionable young minds are being indoctrinated into climate alarm, fed false narratives that are short on facts and lacking context.
The anecdotal example of incorporating climate change into young kids lesson plans opening the NYT’s story, “Reading, Writing, Math … and Climate Change?,” shows the perils of allowing misleadingly educated, inadequately informed teachers to teach kids about climate change, much less infusing climate change as a topic throughout a school systems’ lesson plans.
The NYT described the extensive training in climate science that the featured elementary school teacher in the story, Kristy Neumeister, received before unleashing her on her students:
Ms. Neumeister was one of 39 elementary school teachers from across the city who participated in a four-day training session in the summer called “Integrating Climate Education in N.Y.C. Public Schools.” Its goal was to make the teachers familiar with the topic, so they can work climate change into their lesson plans.
Four whole days to instill a climate science and policy education into teachers before sending them out educate (scare it turns out) the young kids in their classrooms with ill-informed, as the story demonstrates, lessons about the causes and consequences of climate change. The story quickly lays out the evidence for this assessment.
Third graders at Public School 103 in the north Bronx sat on a rug last month while their teacher, Kristy Neumeister, led a book discussion.
The book, “Rain School,” is about children who live in a rural region of Chad, a country in central Africa. Every year, their school must be rebuilt because storms wash it away.
“And what’s causing all these rains and storms and floods?” asked Ms. Neumeister.
“Carbon,” said Aiden, a serious-looking 8-year-old.
That is nonsense. Repeatedly building a school in well established flood plain is the cause of the school’s repeated flooding, not long-term climate change.
How can we know this? Chads geography and climate history tell the tale.
Northern Chad is largely desert with the remainder of the country consisting of various types of wooded savannah and steppes, except or one area, the Lake Chad flooded savanna—yes, it’s called a “flooded savannah,” because it typically floods annually.
Looking at data for Chad from the World Bank one finds that rainfall patterns in Chad have not changed significantly over the past 100 years, so there is no evidence climate change is causing floods to occur more frequently or to be more severe when they occur. In 2021, Chad’s rainfall total fell significantly from the previous year, but throughout the decade, Chad’s rainfall has stayed within its historic range, varying within the norm, higher one year, lower the next. Over the past two decades, claimed by climate alarmist to be the warmest on record, Chad’s rainfall totals have come nowhere near to exceeding its high rainfall total, of about 473 mm set in 1961, more than sixty years of global warming ago when the global average temperature was declining, which lead many scientists to warn of a return of the ice age. Nor have Chad’s recent rainfall totals come anywhere near its low mark of approximately 231 mm, set in 1984.
Indeed, Lake Chad, one of the largest freshwater lakes in Africa has declined in recent decades, but not due to decreased rainfall, since rainfall not decreased, but due to increased water withdrawals and diversions from the lake and its feeder rivers and streams to satisfy the demands of Chad’s growing population and agriculture. Chad’s population growth rate is 3.2 percent. Its population grew by 1.4 million people since 2021, alone. Of course when more people live in areas historically prone to nearly annual flooding, more people will be affected when floods occur.
In short, rainfall patterns haven’t changed in Chad and flooding has not become more frequent or severe. As a result climate change, contrary to what Neumeister is misleadingly teaching, can’t be responsible for the floods described at the school in Chad. This is clear example of a falsehood being used to promote fear of climate change in the New York School system’s lesson plans.
One suspects, neither Neumeister, nor the other teachers trained at the aforementioned “Integrating Climate Education in N.Y.C. Public Schools,” workshop were advised to check data and facts about the topics they would be discussing before incorporating alarming climate claims into their lesson plans. To the extent climate change has a place in schools’ curriculums, it is as part of science for students in higher grades, not infused across the broad spectrum of lessons taught to elementary school students.
Four days in a training is not enough time to build a core competency in anyone sufficient to teach kids or anyone else about climate change, but it is enough time to arm teachers, perhaps already predisposed to climate concern and activism, with propaganda to indoctrinate the impressionable youths they are charged with educating. If the Chad lesson was indicative of the types falsehoods Neumeister and others in New York schools and in other states where climate education has become (or is being proposed as) mandatory, are teaching daily to the kids in their classrooms, there is little wonder why the United States lags many countries of the world in science and math education, or that so many youths suffer climate related anxiety, as discussed at Climate Realism, here and here, and at Climate Change Weekly, for example.
For the children’s sake, get and keep climate change propaganda out of the classroom. Teachers should be helping kids learn how to think and reason through complex scientific and political issues, not what to think about them.
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29 January, 2024
Harvard: Another Anti-Semite on the Way
Harvard has an anti-Semitism problem, as do many of the Ivy League schools. One would think perhaps it had learned its lesson after the disgraceful conduct of former President Claudine Gay at a congressional hearing regarding anti-Semitism on campus, but no.
Harvard decided for its next trick that it’s going to appoint Derek Penslar, a professor of Jewish history, as co-chair for its anti-Semitism task force. This task force is also supposed to address instances of so-called Islamophobia, which is ridiculous on its face, as it’s not the Muslim students who are facing calls for the genocide of their people.
Penslar is an expert in modern Jewish history. According to his Harvard biography, he “takes a comparative and transnational approach to modern Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism.” In other words, he looks at Israel through the eyes of a modern leftist whose worldview is centered on a DEI model. From what can be gleaned from his books and works, the tone and tenor are very anti-Israel and frankly anti-Jew.
Penslar has underlined this tendency in recent years through his actions and commentary. He signed an open letter entitled “The Elephant in the Room” that has several troubling aspects to it. First, it claims that “there cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid.” Then it states, “As Israel has grown more right-wing and come under the spell of the current government’s messianic, homophobic, and misogynistic agenda, young American Jews have grown more and more alienated from it.”
So Palestinians have no responsibility for the economic and political state of their own country, according to these esteemed academics? And Heaven forbid Israel turn toward a more right-wing approach to governing.
Then there are Penslar’s personal writings. In his book Zionism: An Emotional State, he claims that the “veins of hatred run through Jewish civilization.” The context for this particular comment had to do with the biblical claims of the Jews. Reminder: Jews are the indigenous people of Israel.
Penslar was also one of the Harvard faculty who rallied around Gay after her lapse of good leadership during the infamous congressional hearing and, in doing so, tried to minimize the growing and pervasive anti-Semitism on campus.
Penslar is not a reasonable choice to chair this task force, as his own sentiments seem to skew anti-Semitic.
Meanwhile, Harvard students returning from Christmas break were greeted with more grotesque anti-Israel and anti-Jew hate on campus. Posters of the Jewish hostages taken on October 7 had been posted around campus. However, after the break, those posters were covered in anti-Jew slurs. The defilers blamed Israelis for 9/11, called the posters of hostages a lie, and otherwise defaced them.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a returning student, filmed the evidence and stated, “I am a visibly Jewish student, and when Jewish students say they don’t feel safe, let alone welcomed, it’s because of actions like this, and we have no faith that Harvard will do anything to stop it.”
Harvard supposedly has some of the brightest minds working there. Surely they knew that being under the microscope of public scrutiny thanks to the Claudine Gay scandal, their continued missteps in this direction would be detected. It really seems like a “screw you” not only to their Jewish students but to the public at large. Harvard is a disgrace.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103868
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NJ school district blasted for partnering with controversial CAIR group
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) is blasting a New Jersey school district for partnering up with the local branch of a controversial American-Islamic advocacy organization CAIR — calling the move “outrageous and unacceptable.”
Teaneck Public Schools Superintendent Andre Spencer, who endorsed a polarizing Nov. 29 walkout in support of the group, hailed the partnership as part of a new “Togetherness and Belonging program” in Teaneck schools in a letter to community members obtained by The Post.
In the December letter, Spencer described the program as a way to “improve the dialogue within our scholastic community and bolster respect for and appreciation of our diverse population.”
Spencer went on to note the “expansion of these programs with organizations like CAIR-NJ to provide education sessions on a variety of local and global issues.”
The program will also be run in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League and Facing History and Ourselves.
A letter from Gottheimer obtained by The Post slammed Spencer’s decision, highlighting that CAIR has “openly praised Hamas terrorists” after their brutal attack on Israel Oct. 7.”
“It is outrageous and unacceptable to welcome CAIR-NJ into Teaneck’s schools to promote ‘togetherness and belonging’ after its national executive director [Nihad Awad] openly expressed glorification about the vile terrorist attacks and sexual violence perpetrated against innocent Americans, Israelis, and others,” Gottheimer said.
Gottheimer said the organization should not be afforded a pulpit to “promote antisemitism and hatred as part of the Teaneck’s curriculum.
“As Superintendent, you have a duty to protect Teaneck students of all backgrounds. Inviting CAIR-NJ to your schools puts the safety of Jewish students at risk,” he added.
In a statement to The Post, a CAIR-NJ spokesperson said Awad’s words “were taken out of context and have been interpreted in bad faith.”
The organization also hit out at Gottheimer for some of his own past statements, claiming they put Muslim students across the state — some of them minors — “in direct harm’s way.”
“The Congressman accused minor students at Teaneck High School of antisemitism simply because they saw Muslims like themselves being killed in Palestine, and walked out of school in protest — with the permission and support of Dr. Andre Spencer,” the spokesperson wrote.
The advocacy group went on to note that they’ve received 157 reports of anti-Muslim bigotry between Oct. 7 and Dec. 31 of last year, compared to 152 in all of 2022.
“The Congressman’s accusations against CAIR are defamatory and untrue in nature. CAIR and its chapters — including New Jersey — have a strong track record of condemning antisemitism. We have consistently made clear that our critique is of Israel as a nation state and not of Jews.”
In November about 100 students at Teaneck High School staged a walkout in support of the partnership with Spencer’s blessing, despite complaints from local Jewish organizations.
The school district has since been added to the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights list of open Title VI Shared Ancestry Investigations of Institutions of Higher Education and K-12 schools on Jan. 5 for “possible discrimination based on race, color or national origin.”
Spencer’s statements and the board of education’s subsequent handling of public speakers on the subject at its meetings has been called into question as a result.
Deborah Blaiberg, a Jewish mother of four who has been a Teaneck resident since 2008, said when posts about the walkout circulated she felt forced to keep her children home after receiving “little to no response from the school” about the handling of her children’s’ safety.
After Spencer’s letter to the Teaneck community went out, Blaiberg said the decision to partner with CAIR-NJ was not discussed with parents ahead of the program’s launch.
“It’s an absolute disgrace. If you speak to any Jewish parent, well, you might as well have slapped us in the face, it’s so disrespectful,” she said noting her understanding of the organization’s comments regarding Hamas.
Teaneck has historically been a town with a strong black and Jewish connection, which has been strained by months of divisiveness.
There has been an increase in bias crimes against Jewish people in the community and the rally has been viewed as a possible breaking point, with Blaiberg commenting it feels as though the Jewish community has been muzzled.”
Awad’s latest controversial statements came in November, when the group’s co-founder said, “the people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not free to walk in.”
The White House later condemned Awad’s comments as “shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest terms.” Awad has stressed the comments were taken out of context.
CAIR has long been a controversial player in Washington, presenting itself as a champion of civil rights for Muslims in an era of Islamophobia, yet has been regularly pilloried as an apologist for extremism.
Awad, a Palestinian American, and his group have been accused of past sympathy for Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union.
In 1994 Awad said he was “in support of the Hamas movement” later, in 2006 backtracking and saying “I don’t support Hamas today” with CAIR denying any ties to the group or support of terrorism.
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Australia: International student visa numbers fall amid migration squeeze
The number of international student visa holders approved to come to Australia is on track to plummet by more than 90,000 this financial year, as the federal government rejects an increasing number of applicants to curb the high levels of temporary migration.
The number of visas granted to offshore students dropped to 139,132 in the first half of the financial year, figures from the Department of Home Affairs reveal, with nearly 20 per cent of all applicants rejected. If the approval rate continues 91,715 fewer overseas students will arrive in 2023-24 compared with the past year.
International Education Association of Australia CEO Phil Honeywood said the figures were part of the government crackdown on giving visas to applicants who were more interested in work rights than study, which the government refers to as “non-genuine students”.
“The focus has been on winding back a large number of diploma-level vocational students doing courses such as diploma of leadership, and instead the primary focus is on students who can add skills to the Australian economy,” he said.
The total number of student visas approved – including for non-residents already in Australia – was 195,934, which is also on track to fall below the record 577,295 visas granted in 2022-23.
The change in the numbers is being driven by the number of rejected applicants, with 81 per cent of student visa requests being granted in the past six months.
This is down from 86 per cent of applicants being approved in 2022-23, 91.5 per cent in 2021-22 and 89.9 per cent in the pre-Covid year of 2018-19.
A Department of Home Affairs spokeswoman said visa approvals needed to be “balanced against upholding the integrity of the student visa program”.
“The department has seen increasing levels of integrity concerns across the student visa program,” she said.
“The department received higher levels of fraudulent documents, fraud related to English language testing, non-genuine claims and non-genuine subsequent marriages being presented in student visa applications.
“The department will refuse a visa application to non-genuine applicants who do not meet regulatory requirements and where fraud is present.”
Education Minister Jason Clare said Labor was committed to improving the standing of the nation’s higher education sector and combating exploitation.
“The Albanese government’s migration strategy and the other integrity measures we’ve put in place send a clear message that we will act to prevent the exploitation of students and protect Australia’s reputation as a high-quality international education provider,” he said.
A global push is under way to limit student migration, with Canada seeking to curb its numbers by announcing a two-year cap on foreign students that will cut numbers by 35 per cent, and Britain barring foreign students from bringing dependants.
Migration expert and former immigration department official Abul Rizvi said the decline in student visa approvals reflected a bid from the government to lower net migration and ease the pressure on infrastructure and the housing market.
“The reason I think the government is targeting students right now is to get net migration down to a more sustainable level,” he said. “And in our history, whenever net migration has hit or approached around 300,000, problems have occurred in terms of congestion, inadequate infrastructure and housing, but also many government services start to strain at that level of net migration.
“And of course last year, we hit over 500,000, which is the highest in our history and not surprisingly, all of those things are under strain as a result.”
Mr Rizvi said the Australian, Canadian and British governments’ different approaches to bringing down student numbers were all poorly designed, arguing that the Albanese government’s strategy of upping refusals wasted resources. “Australia’s approach has been to crank refusal rates,” he said. “I personally think all three countries have got it wrong; they’re just doing it badly.
“Not letting dependants come is poor practice, student visa capping in an arbitrary way and it’s also chaotic … and Australia’s approach is subjective refusal rates.
“That’s not very good either, it’s just a waste of resources.”
Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan has accused Labor of pursuing a “Big Australia policy” and allowing a record intake of international students to help “drive overseas migration to a record 518,000 people as Australians endured housing shortages, rent hikes, and a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by population growth”.
“Labor says they’re not running a Big Australia policy but they also said they would deliver the stage 3 tax cuts,” he said.
The rate of visas being granted to international students in the university education sector alone dropped to 82.5 per cent since July, from 87.5 per cent in 2022-23 and 96 per cent in 2021-22.
In the past six months 98,198 student visas have been granted for study in the higher education sector showing a trend downwards from 2022-23 when 261,317 visas were granted through the course of the year, the highest in more than a decade.
While the rate of overseas Chinese university students being granted visas offshore remained steady at about 97 per cent, grant rates for offshore higher education students from India, Australia’s second-biggest market, dropped from 74.2 per cent in 2022-23 to 60.8 per cent this financial year. Grant rates for the third-biggest market, Nepal, went from 65.2 per cent to 48.8 per cent in the same period.
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28 January, 2024
New School Choice Program Launches in South Carolina. Parents are Winning
Despite the most well-funded efforts to stop education reform, the school choice movement still clearly has momentum.
The fruits of those efforts can be seen during this year’s National School Choice Week (Jan. 21-27), which saw a new program just launched in South Carolina.
School choice programs got a huge boost during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Not only were many public schools kept locked down due to the influence of teachers unions, but parents discovered that their children were often receiving indoctrination, rather than education.
Several governors took steps to remove propaganda from their state’s public schools. But allowing parents to have flexibility when their local school district is failing is another roadblock to the radicals’ takeover of education.
The aftermath of the lockdowns prompted many states, including South Carolina, to embrace various school choice initiatives.
In April, the South Carolina General Assembly passed legislation that created the Education Scholarship Trust Fund that was subsequently signed into law by Gov. Henry McMaster.
There are now 13 states that have education savings account programs.
Of course, teachers unions—the ones responsible for keeping schools closed in the Palmetto State and elsewhere during COVID-19—tried to derail the ESA effort in South Carolina.
It didn’t work.
The new program went into effect this January, and now parents have the opportunity to participate.
The South Carolina Department of Education created a portal for parents to apply through that launched on Jan. 15.
The South Carolina fund provides up to $6,000 for approved families that parents can use on private school tuition or other programs. That $6,000 just about matches the average annual private school tuition in the state.
“The passage of the Education Scholarship Account law is a significant victory for parents, students and the future of education in South Carolina,” Wendy Damron, president and CEO of the Palmetto Promise Institute, a conservative think tank, said in a news release. “But now we must get the word out. We call on all South Carolinians who believe in a wide array of education options for kids to tell every parent they know about [the Education Scholarship Trust Fund].”
The application deadline for the program is March 15
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/25/new-education-savings-account-program-launches-south-carolina
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Republican Senators Hold Listening Session With Parents Fighting Indoctrination in Schools
Republican senators met Wednesday with a group of parents to discuss the state of education in the U.S. and school systems affected by woke ideology and critical race theory.
Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt of Alabama joined Sens. Ted Budd of North Carolina, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, and Roger Marshall of Kansas at the listening session, led by Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.
Eighteen parents from a number of states around the country sat around the table on Capitol Hill, and several of them spoke up to thank the senators for their efforts to fight back against woke education. They voiced concerns about the effects of not just gender ideology, but also leftist ethnic studies programs, the influence of the Chinese Communist Party, and new burdens placed on school districts by the immigration crisis the U.S. faces.
“One major issue is that parents want to know what is being taught. They want to be involved in this,” Neily said. “Districts now maintain what we call parental exclusion policies. As of this week, we’ve identified almost 1,100 school districts across the country … infecting almost 11 million children and saying parents do not have a right to know their child’s gender at school.”
She subsequently added: “We’re also concerned about immigration. This is placing new burdens on districts as migrants pour across the southern border. Recently in New York, the James Madison High School was forced to go remote while migrants were moved into the school, while in Chicago, families are angry that residents are required to provide vaccination records to enroll their child in public schools, yet migrants are allowed to enroll without such documents.”
One mother from California, Sonja Shaw, warned that ethnic studies is the next frontier for leftist activists, noting that in her state, ethnic studies are a requirement for graduating: “It’s a gateway for hatred. It’s a gateway to brainwash our children.”
Another mother, Wai Wah Chin from New York, addressed concerns from parents about the immigration crisis and how it is affecting both children and education. She said that she herself is an immigrant, adding, “A lot of the residents in New York happen to be immigrants, and we think that New York is a special place that can provide good education.”
She expressed fears about the way that migrants are being allowed into the country, warning: “This is impacting New York, but not just New York. In New York, we know that it is going to cost another $13 billion or so to take care of what has become like a small city of illegal migrants.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., urged parents at a Capitol Hill meeting Wednesday to continue to let lawmakers know what’s going on in their schools and school districts. (Photo: Mary Margaret Olohan/The Daily Signal)
“In this room right here, we’ll get away from having union meetings and have more about the real thing called education, and people like you brought here as witnesses,” Tuberville told the parents.
“It doesn’t happen up here, folks,” he added. “This is the facade. This is the icing on the cake. The cake is made in your neighborhoods. You control your neighborhoods; we don’t. Unfortunately, we hurt your neighborhoods, what goes on here.”
Tuberville urged the parents to continue to let lawmakers know what is going on, predicting that the country is at a breaking point when it comes to education, as well as with regard to other issues.
“They are the future,” he said of the children in American education systems. “They are the No. 1 commodity that we have. It’s our kids. It’s our kids. We gotta remember that. Some reason, a lot of people up here don’t understand that. So, thank you.”
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NYC School Debacle Is About Politicians Who Don’t Care About Their Citizens
Just when you thought New York City couldn’t sink any lower, its public officials are now commandeering schools to shelter illegal aliens.
Earlier this month, students at James Madison High School in Brooklyn were forced to go remote so that thousands of illegal aliens could by moved to the school’s gymnasium. Given the studies we’ve seen about the effects remote schooling has on children, we know that remote school is not a real substitute for in-person learning, therefore children in Brooklyn were deprived of learning opportunities in order to make room for illegal aliens. This is perhaps the grossest example yet of how illegal immigration deprives Americans of vital resources, but it has also been telegraphed for months.
New York Mayor Eric Adams attempted to commandeer 20 school gyms to house illegal aliens last year, but backed off the plan following outrage from parents. Now, as New York runs out of room to care for these aliens, the city’s children are paying an inevitable price. All of this is unnecessary, and all of this is the result of politicians who are deliberately neglecting the wellbeing of their citizens in service of an extremist ideology.
For a long time, New York has touted itself as a “sanctuary city” for illegal aliens, brazenly flouting federal law, but they’ve never had to pay a real price for their lawlessness until recently. Texas’ illegal alien bussing program, initiated by Gov. Greg Abbott, has forced New York to reckon with its sanctuary policies, and demonstrated that despite all their bluster, the city is incapable of putting its money where its mouth is on this issue. The illegal immigration crisis has cost the city and state billions of dollars, hemorrhaged social services, degraded the quality of life for New Yorkers, and is now keeping kids out of the classroom.
Instead of admitting that their sanctuary policies have been a colossal failure, New York politicians have responded by suing transportation companies, and pointing their fingers everywhere but inwards. This begs the question. : If the tremendous costs New York has paid in recent years does not lead to a re-evaluation of the city’s sanctuary policies, is there anything that will? Unfortunately for residents of the Big Apple, the answer is probably not. So, where is this headed? What happens next?
It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago to kick children out of the classroom in order to make room for illegal aliens. That this is happening now demonstrates that there is nothing elected officials in New York won’t sacrifice at the altar of its anti-border policies.
The logical next step in this madness will likely involve politicians asking citizens to take illegal aliens into their homes. The groundwork for this idea has already been laid. Adams floated the idea last year of housing illegal aliens in private residences, saying that these residences have “spare rooms,” that could be used to house the aliens. Adams even said he would house illegal aliens at his residence in Gracie Mansion, before reneging on that pledge.
Before last Thanksgiving, an anti-borders advocacy group asked Massachusetts residences to consider bringing illegal aliens into their homes ahead of the holidays. Earlier this month, Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll asked state residents with an “extra room or suite in your home,” to consider welcoming illegal aliens after a state of emergency was declared in the Commonwealth.
Given the many millions of illegal aliens who have penetrated U.S. borders since the Biden Administration took office, these requests could soon turn into demands. The nation is being overwhelmed by a historic influx of illegal aliens, and even the country’s biggest cities are running out of room.
While it would be constitutionally dubious to require private citizens to take illegal aliens into their homes, this does not mean that ideologues and opportunistic politicians won’t do everything they can to wreak havoc on the lives of ordinary Americans before agreeing to re-evaluate their sacred cow of illegal immigration. Ultimately, the illegal immigration crisis is the predictable result of an endless cycle of abuse perpetuated by politicians against their own citizenry. At the end of the day, every citizen of every nation deserves a government that prioritizes their interests over anybody else’s. This is the essence of the social contract citizens enter into with their government. But, in the U.S., the social contract has been shredded by politicians who are willing to upend our private lives, and our children’s education in order to import large numbers of foreign nationals who they believe will be more dependent on them, and more willing to vote for them.
No matter how many billions of dollars illegal immigration costs taxpayers, no matter how much it continues to disrupt the lives of American citizens, U.S. political elites keep courting more of it. Anti-borders politicians and activists have made clear that nothing is off limits if it furthers their goals, not even your homes or your kids ‘education.
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25 January, 2024
Georgetown School of Foreign Service Pledges to 'Embed' DEI Throughout Campus
Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service (SFS) recently renewed its pledge to “embed” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology as a core principle of the school, according to an email sent to students on January 10.
Georgetown SFS communicated the effort through its DEI Office and promoted its Strategic Plan for “boosting” the ideology throughout the school.
While DEI advocates say the ideology is about promoting diversity in schools and workplaces, public figures across the political spectrum have criticized DEI for its ties to antisemitism on college campuses.
In the weeks following Hamas’ October 7 invasion of Israel, antisemitic incidents surged across the college campuses nationwide. Observers soon connected the incidents to DEI ideology on campuses.
Tabia Lee, a former DEI director for De Anza College, torched the ideology in a New York Post op-ed, stating “This outpouring of antisemitic hatred is the direct result of DEI’s insistence that Jews are oppressors.”
Lee, a senior fellow at Do No Harm, writes “At its worst, DEI is built on the unshakable belief that the world is divided into two groups of people: the oppressors and the oppressed. Jews are categorically placed in the oppressor category, while Israel is branded a “genocidal, settler, colonialist state.”
Bill Ackman, an American billionaire and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, offered similar criticism. Ackman slammed DEI as “the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard” and “a political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology.”
Despite the apparent connection between DEI and campus antisemitism, however, Georgetown doubled down on DEI.
The Strategic Plan, which Georgetown SFS began implementing last fall, features numerous objectives, including:
“Embed attention to DEI in hiring, promotion, and performance review efforts,” throughout the school.
“Cross-fertilize and connect DEI-related efforts across SFS programs.”
“Ensure anti-racism and DEI are regularly and consistently part of leaders’ messaging.”
“Affirm and reward attention to DEI and antiracism in course content and classroom operations.”
The school’s DEI office also highlighted multiple DEI classes for students to take in the spring, including a mandatory undergraduate course titled “Race, Power, and Justice.” The course focuses on Georgetown’s historical connections to slavery, and “how that history intersects with national and global experiences of slavery and emancipation, settler colonialism, imperialism, and contemporary struggles for justice.”
The course aims to “develop a common vocabulary for all Georgetown students to continue to engage in conversations about racial equity and justice,” according to the original course proposal. Georgetown has not published a syllabus for the class, but its DEI office promotes an “Antiracism Resources” page featuring Critical Race Theorists Ibram X. Kendi and Peggy McIntosh.
The school’s renewed commitment to DEI is particularly noteworthy given Georgetown’s own struggles with campus antisemitism.
One week after Hamas invaded Israel, raping and killing its citizens, Georgetown students held a pro-Hamas vigil, chanting “Glory to our Martyrs” and reading a list of dead Palestinians. Similarly, Georgetown Students for Justice in Palestine released a public statement declaring “We fight for a Palestine in which all people are free and have dignity, and the only way for that to happen is for the zionist occupation of Palestine to cease.”
Weeks later, Georgetown SFS placed Aneesa Johnson, its Assistant Director of Academic and Faculty Affairs, on leave after students highlighted her antisemitic behavior online.
Johnson, who was hired by Georgetown SFS to be the "primary point of contact" for master's students regarding "everything academic," referred to Jews as “dogs” and “thieves” in posts online.
Johnson’s current employment status is unclear.
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Harvard watch: DEI Machine Grows Stronger
“After Claudine Gay’s dismissal as Harvard president, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) complex is already regrouping,” argues Eric Kaufmann at UnHerd: The school created “an anti-Islamophobia committee alongside the antisemitism committee” and “nominated an anti-Zionist” to help lead the antisemitism group.
“Faced with pushback from outside its walls, the university has circled the wagons.”
Indeed, “the DEI complex on campus is shape-shifting, hiding affirmative action under misleading euphemisms here, bolting on some anti-antisemitism there.”
And donors aren’t “anti-woke heroes”: “They have punished elite universities for alleged antisemitism rather than their poor record on freedom.”
“So long as our highest moral ideals and sacred taboos revolve around racism, sexism and LGBT-phobia, elite institutions will be incentivized to push the identity politics
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Mandatory University of Wisconsin Law School seminar tells students ‘there are no exceptional White people’
A mandatory "re-orientation" seminar for first-year students at the University of Wisconsin Law School allegedly instructed them to share racial slurs and claimed "there are no exceptional White people," according to reports.
Students were asked before the Friday presentation to review pamphlets, one of which claimed"colorblindness" can negate the life experiences, norms and cultural values of people of color.
"By saying we are not different, that you don't see the color, you are also saying you don't see your whiteness. This denies the people of colors' experience of racism and your experience of privilege," the pamphlet read.
The two-hour lecture was held by self-described "social justice educator" Joey Oteng, who used it as a "follow-up to the DEI session" that students attended at the beginning of the fall semester, according to Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Lauren L. Devine.
"Re-orientation is intended to do just that – reorient you now that you have your first semester of law school behind you and a new semester ahead," Devine wrote in an email to students. She also told students to review an article on "28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors" and finish a "Race Timeline Worksheet" prior to the seminar.
Part of "The 28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors" article suggests people of color cannot be racist.
"Let's first define racism with this formula: Racism =racial prejudice + systemic, institutional power. To say people of color can be racist, denies the power imbalance inherent in racism," the handout said.
Another section of the pre-activity materials claimed White people benefit from racial oppression regardless of their actions, noting that "there are no exceptional White people."
Sources who spoke with The Federalist under the condition of anonymity said Oteng used a real-time interactive survey where students were asked to respond to the phrase "I understand institutional and systemic racism" on a scale from "unsure" to "confidently."
The law school's spokesman, John Lucas, told the outlet the seminar "was held in partial fulfillment of ABA (American Bar Association) Standard 303's requirement that law schools provide education to their students on "bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism."
One attendee said many of the activities felt like a "confessional" for White law students in the audience.
Students in attendance were also allegedly asked to share "words, phrases, stereotypes, slurs, words of bias, etc." that could be associated with minority groups.
When Oteng asked the audience for a slur to describe White people, someone in attendance allegedly described them as "boring as f—k."
"When it came to slurs about Black people, Native Americans, Asians and Middle Eastern people, it was a very serious moment. When it got to White people and the derogatory terms used for White people, [Oteng] was implying that it was okay to laugh at White slurs because White people don't have any problems," one participant said.
The seminar was later criticized by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty President and General Counsel Rick Eisenberg.
"The student body is being subject to nonsense that ignores the rule of law and true equality in favor of a racialized way of seeing the world," he said in a statement.
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24 January, 2024
This National School Choice Week, Let’s Celebrate Return to Founding Principles
The school choice policies sweeping the nation may be among the most innovative—and promising—enacted in recent memory. Yet they also embody a return to principles first enshrined in American law nearly 400 years ago.
In 1642, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony crafted the nation’s first education law, its objective was clear: Parents must educate their children.
Echoing Moses’ exhortation to Israelite parents to teach their children and their children’s children the statutes and decrees of the Lord, the law recognized not just the grave importance of a good education, “of singular behoof and benefit to any Common-wealth,” but how parents are uniquely positioned to deliver this benefit.
Education entails more than preparation for the workforce, after all. It entails the cultivation of virtue, both intellectual and moral. To educate children in this way, to form their minds and shape their souls, demands knowledge of their souls—which is to say it requires love. And no one loves a child more than his or her parents.
“Consider how much the dignity and happiness of your children both in time and in eternity, depend upon your care and fidelity,” Founding-era preacher Nathanael Emmons reminded Massachusetts parents nearly a century after the first education law passed. “And let the ties of nature, the authority of God, and your own solemn vows, engage you … to cultivate and embellish their opening minds in every branch of useful and ornamental knowledge.”
In keeping with these natural ties, the 1642 law charged parents—not state bureaucrats—with the duty to ensure that their children learn not only how to provide for themselves, whether through farming or some other trade, but also how to think for themselves, which requires the literacy skills necessary to read and understand texts of history, law, religion, and philosophy, among others.
Should parents neglect this natural duty, the Massachusetts law continued, they would face legal consequences, incurring fines for initial offenses. Prolonged negligence, however, would up the ante. Children whose parents refused to educate them would be placed with government-appointed teachers.
Such was the pedagogical vision of our nation’s earliest lawmakers. Education begins in the home, with parents possessing both the right and the responsibility to direct their children’s education. Only exceptional circumstances would warrant governmental intrusion into this emphatically familial affair.
In this, the Massachusetts colonists’ 17th-century education policies embodied the truth that human law ought to reflect and assist the natural law, rather than seek to undermine or replace it.
As future President Calvin Coolidge reminded another set of Massachusetts lawmakers in 1914, almost three centuries later: “Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.”
The law ought not to supplant parents in their natural role as primary educators of their children, then, but to encourage and, where possible, facilitate this noble endeavor.
For too long, however, modern lawmakers and administrators have perverted this natural order, insisting on government-run schooling as the rule, rather than the exception, while suppressing parental involvement and stigmatizing home-based education as backward.
Thanks to the school choice movement’s tireless efforts, in several states those days finally are coming to an end.
Among the cutting-edge tools employed in the movement’s fight for education freedom are universal education savings accounts or ESA-style options, which allocate a portion of a school district’s per-pupil spending to an account that parents then may use for their children’s education. Although vouchers must be used for tuition, ESAs may be used for other educational expenses as well, including home-schooling materials, individual classes, personal tutors, special needs therapy, and more.
As universal policies, these accounts are available to all K-12 students in states that have embraced them, regardless of income level. They also permit parents to save unused funds from year to year, encouraging a fiscal responsibility that ever has eluded government-run schools.
Add to the universal ESA programs now live in nine states (and counting) the curriculum transparency laws that more than a dozen states have adopted in recent years, and it’s clear that such policies better enable parents to take charge of their children’s education.
Affirming that parents are their children’s primary caregivers, transparency laws protect parents’ right to know what their children are reading and learning at school, so that parents in turn can make informed decisions concerning their children’s education.
In other words, education choice policies invite parents—all parents—to resume the central role they traditionally held in America’s approach to education.
Like the Puritans’ 1642 law, transparency reforms and ESAs summon parents to take the reins, reviewing curriculum options for their children, customizing the courses taken and skills honed to their children’s particular talents and needs if not teaching themselves, and planning for their children’s future.
Should parents reject this invitation, government-run schools remain available as the backup option lawmakers initially intended them to be.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/22/school-choice-movement-revives-americas-education-principles/
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Public Education's Alarming New 4th 'R': Reversal of Learning
Call it the big reset – downward – in public education.
The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.
Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven’t made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.
It’s as if many of the nation's 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.
“I'm getting concerned that, rather than continuing to do the hard work of addressing learning loss, schools will start to accept a new normal of lower standards,” said Amber Northern, who oversees research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that advocates for academic rigor in schools.
The question is—why did the windfall of federal funding do so little to help students catch up?
Northern and other researchers, state officials and school leaders interviewed for this article say many districts, facing staffing shortages and a spike in absenteeism, didn’t have the bandwidth to take on the hard work of helping students recover. But other districts, including those that don’t take academic rigor and test scores very seriously, share in the blame. They didn’t see learning loss as a top priority to tackle. It was easier to spend the money on pay rises for staff and upgrading buildings.
The learning loss debacle is the latest chapter in the decade-long decline in public schools. Achievement among black and Latino students on state tests was already dropping before COVID drove an exodus of families away from traditional public schools in search of a better education. Although by lowering standards and lifting the graduation rate districts have created the impression that they have bounced back, experts say that’s the wrong signal to send, creating complacency when urgency is needed.
“There is a lot of fatigue among educators in looking at this issue and how to deal with it,” says Karyn Lewis, a research director at assessment group NWEA. “But if we just accept this as the new normal, it means accepting achievement gaps that have widened exponentially. That is what’s most concerning.”
The Depths of Learning Loss
The Nation's Report Card/National Center for Education Statistics
During COVID all types of students fell behind, partly because of chronic absenteeism of more than 25% that persisted even after they returned to in-person schooling. On average, students fell behind by the equivalent a half year's worth of learning in math and a bit less in reading, while those in high poverty cities like St. Louis regressed three times that much, according to a joint Harvard-Stanford study. Reading scores in 2022-23 resembled those of the 1970s, before the era of school accountability.
What’s even more worrisome is that students have not been recovering. NWEA has examined the test scores of 6.7 million students since the fall of 2020 when all schools resorted to remote learning. Researchers found that after an initial drop off in performance when compared to pre-pandemic scores, the pace of learning returned to normal in 2021-22. That seemed like good news. But then learning slowed again the next year. This means students have been losing more ground even after returning to classrooms, lacking the skills to keep up with a curriculum that keeps advancing.
“It's alarming to us that the academic growth in 2022-23 was actually more sluggish than the previous year,” said Lewis, co-author of the study. “The students are missing those building blocks in their skills that allow them to understand grade level content.”
The consequences for students with learning loss could be serious, affecting everything from lifetime earnings to incarceration rates. In a paper co-authored by Harvard’s Thomas Kane, researchers estimate that K-12 students on average face a drop in lifetime earnings of almost 2 percent, totaling $900 billion.
As learning declined, so did academic standards. More than 40 states eased requirements beginning with the class of 2020, according to a report in Education Week. Graduation tests and required courses were eliminated, and the number of credits needed to graduate was reduced. Schools also backed off on standard grading with credit-no credit scores, limits on low grades and more.
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Australia: The road to reform in higher education is long and slow
Late next month Education Minister Jason Clare will at last unveil his long-term plan for higher education when he releases the final report of his Universities Accord.
It’s the culmination of something that started 15 months ago and has consumed a huge amount of effort from the Accord panel, education bureaucrats and those who made 800-odd submissions to the review.
The Accord review had broad terms of reference that would have allowed it to be another Bradley Review leading to major reforms. But as it progressed, the heady enthusiasm that marked its beginning gradually waned. It became clear the Universities Accord would be limited in its immediate impact.
It’s main idea for visionary change is to expand university access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds – something to which Clare has a deep personal commitment.
But other goals that are priorities of universities look like being pushed toward the horizon.
For example, as a legacy of the Morrison government, HECS fees are now four times higher for students doing humanities, law and business degrees compared to those doing teaching and nursing degrees. The goal of this Morrison policy, to persuade more students to become nurses and teachers, is not being achieved but we are left with this inequitable fee structure. Fee reform is essential but it does not look likely to happen quickly under the Universities Accord.
Similarly the urgent pleas of research-intensive universities for more research funding are unlikely to be fulfilled in the short term.
The Accord will almost certainly recommend the creation of a new Tertiary Education Commission to oversee universities, and it seems likely that many things universities want, such as fee restructuring and a research funding review, are likely to be shunted to the commission for consideration down the track.
But Clare must find money for any new initiatives – including extra funding for disadvantaged students – from within his portfolio, which is why a tax on international student revenue is expected to be recommended by the Accord review, to the chagrin of nearly all universities.
The upshot is a reform plan that will extend over several terms of government, and, as any observer of politics knows, such plans rarely retain the support they need for that lengthy period.
We all know government works under constraints but, at this stage, it looks like a lot of work has been done to create something that is weighted toward aspiration rather than action.
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23 January, 2024
New cheating scandal rocks Harvard as Ivy League teaching hospital scrambles to correct medical research articles from top researchers accused of falsifying papers
Four Harvard University professors have been accused of authoring dozens of scientific papers with sloppy or outright falsified data.
The scientists are top staff at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, and all are members of the university's faculty.
Academics who poured over their published papers claimed to find evidence of falsified data in 57 articles from 1999 to 2017, mostly in doctored images.
DFCI asked academic journals to retract six of the papers and correct 31 others, with 17 more of the claims still to be fully investigated. Three were found not to need any corrections.
The institute's research integrity officer, Barrett Rollins, said it was yet to be determined whether misconduct occurred.
Data falsification claims against the four scientists is the latest scandal for Harvard after its president Claudine Gay was forced to resign over plagiarism in several of her old academic papers.
Many of the discrepancies with the data involved images where blots, bands, and plots were allegedly copied and pasted to show a certain result.
Three of the papers were co-authored by DFCI president Laurie Glimcher, though she was one of the last credited on all of them.
Merely being on the list of authors does not mean she, or any of the others, participated in, or even knew about, the allegedly questionable data.
Another 12 papers by chief operating officer William Hahn, and 10 by director of the clinical investigator research program, Irene Ghobrial contained 'data forgery'.
A further 16 were by Kenneth Anderson, program director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center, including five co-authored by both Dr Anderson and Dr Ghobrial.
Dr Laurie co-authored several papers, one of which was accused of having dodgy data, with Claudio Hetz, a disgraced neuroscientist.
An investigation by his university accused Hetz of 'recklessness, negligence, and a problematic attitude to research ethics'.
Sholto David, an analytical scientist in Cardiff, Wales, spotted the problematic papers using artificial intelligence image analysis software ImageTwin and his own eyes as he poured over the data.
He called the alleged data forgery 'pathetically amateurish and excessive' in a detailed analysis on his blog earlier this month.
David also wrote that three papers co-authored by Dr Anderson were retracted in 2010 due to a mix-up in the cell lines.
'We only see the tiny tip of the fraud iceberg – image data duplications, the last resort of a failed scientist after every other trick failed to provide the desired result,' he wrote.
Dr Rollins said the DFCI was also investigating many other papers by its staff, and that it already knew about many of the claims before David's blog post.
He said the institute would not reveal specific details of the investigation or any misconduct findings, in line with its policies.
Such investigations took a long time because reporting of alleged academic maleficence was dramatically rising.
'The frequency of these allegations has gone into some sort of hyper-exponential phase. Our individuals or workforce to evaluate these have not increased,' he told the Harvard Crimson.
DFCI spokeswoman Ellen Berlin said the presence of image discrepancies in a paper was not evidence of an author's intent to deceive.
'That conclusion can only be drawn after a careful, fact-based examination which is an integral part of our response,' she said.
'We are committed to a culture of accountability and integrity. Every inquiry about research integrity is examined fully.
'Our efforts are focused on locating and examining the original data, and taking the appropriate corrective actions.'
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NYC unveils plan to ease school tensions over Israel-Hamas war after aggressive incidents left Jewish staff, students fearful
The city Department of Education on Monday unveiled a plan to deal with growing tensions in public schools after a series of high-profile incidents over the Israel-Hamas war — including one that left a Queens teacher cowering in fear from a mob of students.
Schools Chancellor David Banks unveiled the three pronged approach of “education, safety and engagement,” which includes “tangible consequences” for students and training and support workshops for educators and parents.
“These trainings are important because I’ve heard that some of our school principals feel disempowered from taking meaningful disciplinary action against any egregious student behavior, even in clear-cut common sense cases,” Banks said during the announcement at Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan.
“We cannot and we will not have schools where students feel like they can do whatever they want without accountability for their actions. That is no way to run a school system, and we will not allow that to happen, certainly not on my watch,” he vowed.
Banks specifically described the mayhem that erupted in November at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica — where a Jewish teacher was forced to go into hiding — as “deeply concerning.
“When hate rears its head in our schools, be it Islamophobia, antisemitism or any form of bigotry, we will respond,” he said.
Specifics on what consequences students would face and further detail about the workshops remained scant at the DOE announcement.
The DOE has had a slow and rocky response to school incidents arising from the Middle East conflict, which broke out Oct. 7 when Hamas launched its brutal surprise attack on Israel.
Just this month, the department was slammed for its lackluster response to a controversial map that omitted Israel yet was hanging in a classroom of Brooklyn elementary school PS261.
“Why would it not be?” DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer said at the time when asked by the Free Press if the map was still up in the classroom. “This is a map of countries that speak Arabic.”
Arabic is the second most common language in Israel after Hebrew, spoken by at least 20% of the population, including Arab citizens and Jews from Arab countries.
“As soon as we were made aware of concerns regarding the map, it was removed,” Styer later said as he attempted to backtrack from his previously published statement.
“We are committed to fostering a welcoming environment here at NYC Public Schools that supports all cultures and communities,” he said.
But that “welcoming environment” apparently doesn’t include all reporters.
The Post attended Monday’s event despite being told by Styer that it was not among a select group of three news outlets to have been invited. Styer, who earns $140,000 for his role as a media liaison, cited “limited space” at the Tweed Courthouse venue, which has a maximum capacity of 300 according to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.
Approximately 150 people attended the event, including members of the Panel for Educational Policy, lawmakers and advocates. Some teachers were also asked to attend, according to an invitation obtained by The Post.
After the announcement, Banks made a swift exit without taking questions from invited press. When a Post reporter tried to speak to attendees, she was followed by a DOE staffer and asked to leave the venue by security.
Starting in the spring, the DOE’s new plan will see all middle and high school principals participate in professional learning courses focused on “navigating difficult conversations” and will be provided with resources and materials on Islamophobia and antisemitism to facilitate “student discussions on sensitive topics,” the department and Banks said.
Principals will also be receiving new tips on how to apply the schools Discipline Code in the aim of cracking down on bullying and bigotry.
This will include prioritizing investigations into antisemitism and Islamophobia allegations so no child or staff member “feel bullied or harassed” at school.
An interfaith advisory council to support city public schools, chaired by Reverend Jacques DeGraff, will also be established.
“From my years as a school safety officer, a teacher, a principal, and perhaps most importantly, as a parent, raising four children of my own, I know that it is possible and critical to find balance when it comes to discipline to provide both restorative conversations, as well as tangible consequences,” Banks said
https://nypost.com/2024/01/22/metro/nyc-doe-announce-plan-to-combat-israel-hamas-tensions/
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“No, you’re not going to school’: Why more Qld parents are keeping their kids at home
While once seen as alternative, homeschooling is becoming increasingly popular for families from all walks of life.
In Queensland, Education Department data shows 10,048 children were registered for homeschooling in 2023, a huge surge from the 1108 kids enrolled a decade ago. In South Australia, there are 2443 registered homeschoolers and 11,912 in Victoria. NSW has the highest number of registered homeschooled students in the country with almost 12,500.
The Low family in Bargo, NSW, is part of that group. Pediatric occupational therapist Jessica Low, 35, and her husband, researcher Dr Mitchell Low, 35, have five children and have never sent them to school.
“The biggest factor for me is child development,” Jessica Low says, drawing on her experience gained over the past nine years she has spent working as an OT. “Just physically they don’t even have the proper core strength to sit at desks for long periods in early childhood. “That’s why you see kids flopped over with their head in their hands.
“And they’re not even allowed to sensory regulate themselves because if they start wriggling and fidgeting, they’re told to stop.”
Low says her oldest children – Penelope, 9, Josie, 7 and John, 6 – are thriving at home, and so too is their family.
“If my kids were in school we would have such little connection,” Low says, noting that learning begins from the moment they wake up.
“A big part of our day is breakfast. They all have jobs, one clears the table, one does the dishwasher. It’s learning to work as a team, learning to communicate with one another.
“There are sibling fights which they may need guidance to resolve. These are important skills for them to learn.”
Home education looks different for every family, shaped by each state’s regulations.
Generally, children are expected to meet outcomes that are in line with their schooled peers. For example, the Low family follows the NSW syllabus and is checked by a moderator at least once a year.
But Low says she adapts everything so they are learning through play, adding: “Kids just need to spend time playing, running, jumping, climbing trees.”
Educator and parenting specialist Maggie Dent, 68, echoes this sentiment. She’s spent much of her life’s work advocating for kids to spend less time at desks and more time playing, particularly in the formative years.
“Our children aren’t moving enough. And the lack of movement impacts the way the brain is shaped,” Dent explains.
“Children as young as five are doing a lot more sitting on mats and at desks than they used to.”
Dent says Australia’s education results “have crashed” over the past 20 years when compared with other countries.
She cites Finland as a positive example of where children are assessed not just on a curriculum but with a focus on social and emotional intelligence.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development measures the education standards of 41 participating countries through its Program for International Student Assessment. Finland ranks fourth in the PISA, while Estonia is the highest performing OECD country. In those two countries children don’t start compulsory schooling until the age of seven.
Australian children are strapping on their backpacks and heading into compulsory schooling at age five, resulting in a rank of 17.
“There is no evidence that starting earlier gets better results. In actual fact we see just the opposite. Teachers are telling me all the time that the curriculum is so crowded, and they have to so do much more assessment that it’s taken the joy and fun out of teaching,” Dent says.
“So what happens is children start to hate learning, they start to lose their curiosity and they start really struggling in social environments because there aren’t enough play opportunities.”
Dispelling the myth of social isolation, homeschooling programs such as the We Are Nature Network in Perth, Western Australia, provide a nature-based classroom for children aged four to seven. It’s run by teachers who’ve left the education system.
On the day I visit, co-founder Emily Patterson starts the morning by reading The Troll, by Julia Donaldson, on a picnic rug under a tree. There are 10 pairs of eyes watching intently.
Some of the kids are sitting on their parents’ laps, others are eating from their lunch box. Nearby three little boys who are climbing a tree turn to look and listen every now and then.
Another boy hops up from the rug and picks up a stick he’s found lying nearby. He starts tapping the stick on the dirt. No one seems to notice, they’re all too engrossed in the story, including the little boy with the stick. He’s listening to every word Patterson reads.
At one point a golden retriever being walked off its leash comes past and story time quickly turns into a collective dog patting session.
“A huge value of mine is being outdoors and playing,” Patterson, 31, says.
The mother-of-three left her job as a primary school teacher when she had her first son, Taj, seven years ago, and hasn’t looked back.
“I thought, I’ll create something that feels right for my family, but also where other kids can come and feel good about learning.”
There is limited research on the academic outcomes of homeschooling because many parents choose for their children not to sit exams. A 2014 NSW government report found homeschooled children who participated in the NAPLAN tests scored “significantly above the overall NSW average”, but noted just 10 per cent of homeschooled children took the tests.
“There is such a focus on academics at school, but you can learn to read and write at 90. You can learn anything at any age. The first seven years of life are absolutely critical to social and emotional development. You can’t get that time back,” Patterson says.
For some families homeschooling is something they never thought they’d do, but made the decision based on issues like bullying, mental health and a lack of support for neurodivergent children.
“We don’t factor neurodivergent kids and their unique needs into teaching environments at all,” Dent says.
“Many parents are asking why would I put them into a system that is ‘one size fits all’, when I can keep them home and still be doing all the things that help them learn.”
Just like school, homeschooling isn’t for everyone. It does involve sacrifices with some families having to weigh up the financial burden of having one parent give up employment, typically the mother, to stay home.
And while all the mothers I interviewed have managed to continue working flexibly around their children’s education, they do all agree on one downside: the scarcity of personal time. Nevertheless, it’s a compromise willingly embraced.
“That’s probably the only thing because I’m with them all day,” Lycett reflects. “So at night time, I need a little bit of time to myself. But other than that, they are great kids, we love being with them.”
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22 January, 2024
Asian parents filed a federal discrimination suit against the New York State Education Department Wednesday — claiming their kids are being unfairly kept out of a STEM summer program
The state-funded Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP) admits around 11,000 7th-to-12th-grade students a year for classes at 56 participating colleges and medical schools statewide.
The pre-college enrichment program aims to “increase the number of historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students prepared to enter college and improve their participation rate” in math, science, tech and health fields, according to its website.
But while black, Hispanic and Native American students can apply regardless of family wealth — Asian and white schoolkids need to meet certain low-income criteria, the lawsuit filed in upstate New York federal court claims.
“In other words, the Hispanic child of a multi-millionaire is eligible to apply to STEP, while an Asian American child whose family earns just above the state’s low- income threshold is not, solely because of her race or ethnicity,” the filing states.
The allegedly biased admissions criteria have been in place for nearly four decades, the suit claims, adding: “Thirty-nine years of discrimination is enough.”
Plaintiffs include New York City-based Yiatin Chu of the Asian Wave Alliance, who said she was stunned when she first heard of STEP’s policy a few weeks ago and decided to join the suit, which also names Education Commissioner Betty Rosa as a defendant.
“This is outright discrimination against Asian-American students pursuing the STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education] field,” said Chu, an advocate for merit-based admissions at the city’s specialized high schools.
“The program should be for all students or for low income students. The state is choosing which race is eligible,” she told The Post.
Other plaintiffs include the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, Inclusive Education Advocacy Group and Higher with Our Parent Engagement.
Attorneys from both the Pacific Legal Foundation and the anti-affirmative action group Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation are representing them in the case.
The EPP has filed other lawsuits and civil rights complaints with the US Education Department against New York colleges for allegedly promoting discriminatory racial-preference admission policies for academic programs.
“The time has come to correct and end discrimination against students throughout the state,” said EPP’s president and director William Jacobson, a Cornell Law professor.
The Equal Protection Project (EqualProtect.org) is proud to team up with Pacific Legal to challenge discriminatory standards in the STEP program so that students do not miss out on educational opportunities because of their skin color or ethnicity,” he said.
In 1985, New York lawmakers passed legislation aimed at boosting interest in science, technology, and healthcare among low-income and underrepresented minority students — resulting in the creation of STEP, which earmarked public funds to 56 colleges, universities and medical schools statewide to instruct the younger students.
Colleges host and operate STEP initiatives for 7th-to-12th-grade students that include instruction, exam preparation, hands-on and research training, college admissions guidance and career-focused activities such as field trips and college visits.
But racial-preference programs — aimed at correcting historic injustices or underrepresentation of African Americans and other minorities — have come under the microscope after the US Supreme Court last year struck down college affirmative action programs aimed at boosting minority representation as discriminatory.
“If the government wants to fund educational opportunities for children in need, it can do so. What it can’t do is use economic need as a way to treat applicants differently based on their race,” the Pacific Legal Foundation said in a statement.
“STEP’s expressly race-conscious application process blatantly violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.”
The Education Department had no immediate comment.
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Over 300 schools including primaries, secondaries and even nurseries told to stop calling pupils 'boys and girls' after signing up to scheme run by controversial trans rights lobbying group Stonewall
More than 300 schools have been told to stop calling pupils 'boys and girls' after signing up to a scheme run by a controversial trans rights lobbying group.
Primaries, secondaries and even nurseries teaching children as young as two receive awards from the charity Stonewall if they 'remove any unnecessarily gendered language' from the classroom.
They are urged to use 'they' instead of 'he'/'she' and 'children' or 'young people' instead of 'boys and girls'.
Other demands include installing gender-neutral toilets and making both boys and girls wear the same uniforms.
Stonewall's new annual report reveals that at least 300 schools around England remain signed up to the 'champions scheme' even though it has been shunned by government departments because of its radical policies, including backing 'self-ID' for anyone wanting to change gender.
Last night former Minister Sir John Hayes, who has tabled questions in Parliament on Stonewall's links to Whitehall, vowed to write to Education Secretary Gillian Keegan about the scheme.
He told The Mail on Sunday: 'Stonewall sucks ever more from hard-pressed schools, and in doing so seeks to distort the language used by teachers and pupils.
'I would urge all schools to avoid Stonewall like the plague.'
Stonewall's website says 'any educational institution catering for pupils aged 2-18' can sign up to the School & College Champions programme, with membership costing £99 for the first year.
Scheme members progress from bronze to silver and then to gold as they adopt more of the programme's advice.
In order to achieve 'Stonewall gold status', schools have to be part of the scheme for two years and provide evidence of their commitment to inclusivity in lessons as well as policies.
One secondary that won the award in 2021 said its activities included 'writing a trans-inclusion policy, adapting the School Journey policy to be LGBTQ+ inclusive, and collating LGBTQ+ inclusive lessons from across the curriculum'.
A guide from 2022 for schools wanting to secure an award gives an example of how a PE teacher could become more inclusive by saying 'boys, girls and non-binary students, pick your team now' or use gender neutral language such as 'students, pick your team now'.
It also urges staff to avoid language that plays into 'gendered stereotypes'.
'Are members of staff using phrases such as 'man up' or 'don't be such a girl'? Is language inclusive of non-binary people or are members of staff addressing groups students using gendered language such as 'boys and girls'?' it asks.
Stonewall made £2.9million in 'fee income' in 2022-23, including 'annual contributions from schools or local authorities joining our School Champions or Education Champions programmes', according to its latest accounts.
It also received £1.2 million in grants, including £101,613 from the Scottish Government and £100,000 from the Welsh Government.
Conservative MP Nick Fletcher, who sits on the Education Select Committee, said: 'The Education Act is clear that partisan and ideological material should not be promoted in our schools.
'Surely Stonewall continually promoting the unscientific and highly contentious idea of 'gender identity' is exactly this.
'Is it time for the Government to draw up a blacklist of organisations that ignore these Education Act provisions and who therefore should not be used by our schools?'
Stephanie Davies-Arai of campaign group Transgender Trend said: 'Stonewall has cynically used their credibility as a once highly respected organisation to become peddlers of an extremist ideology and they have deliberately set out to target children from the start.'
A spokesman for Stonewall said: 'LGBTQ+ children still face high levels of bullying and significant barriers in education, so it is only right for schools to create an environment where they can grow up supported and safe to learn.'
The Department for Education said: 'We withdrew from Stonewall's Diversity Champions programme in 2022 and have not funded any programmes related to diversity and inclusion schemes since to ensure value for money to the taxpayer.'
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Back to School Warning on Forced Marriage of Students
Our charming Muslim population I guess
Australian school communities are being urged to watch out for signs of forced marriage and raise the alarm if they suspect a student is in danger.
Teachers and classmates are often best placed to spot human trafficking, according to Australian Federal Police.
A family history of leaving education early, being uneasy about an upcoming family holiday, concerns about marrying at a young age and being worried about physical or psychological violence are common signs to look out for, the force said.
Red flags also include control outside the home, such as surveillance, having limited control over finances or life decisions and restricted communications.
Commander Helen Schneider said most reported victims are young women and girls but it can also affect men and boys.
“Forced marriage is not limited to any cultural group, religion or ethnicity,” Commander Schneider said.
“Anyone can be a victim of forced marriage, regardless of their age, gender or sexual orientation.”
Police define the crime as person entering marriage due to coercion, threats, deception or without fully consenting due to factors like mental capacity or age.
It’s been a crime in Australia since 2013 and applies to legal, cultural or religious ceremonies here and overseas.
Federal police received 340 reports of human trafficking, including forced marriage and sexual servitude, in 2022/23.
That’s a 15.6 percent increase on the previous 12 months, with Commander Schneider describing the rise as encouraging considering it’s thought to be under reported.
“Disrupting human trafficking represents an excellent outcome, unlike other crime types where we focus on prosecution,” she explained.
“Instead of prosecuting a forced marriage, if we can prevent it from occurring in the first place, then it’s a positive outcome for would-be victims and investigators.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/back-to-school-warning-on-forced-marriage-of-students-5570258
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21 January, 2024
State schools could give THOUSANDS of students full rides if they closed divisive DEI departments
At public universities nationwide, “diversity, equity and inclusion” officials make huge sums while spending even more pushing division and discrimination on students and faculty alike.
They claim they’re promoting disenfranchised groups, but they’re wasting money that would be better spent giving a broader range of students a high-quality education.
In a new report, I reviewed DEI spending at public universities across the country.
I focused on red and purple states since they are most likely to have the political will to reform higher education.
While DEI bureaucracies are generally largest at universities in blue states — see the $25 million the University of California, Berkeley, spends on 400 DEI staff — there’s no chance leaders such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom roll them back.
Blue states would probably allocate more money toward DEI, not less. I conservatively estimate that total DEI spending at state schools is in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But it’s conceivable that America’s roughly 1,600 public colleges and universities are spending more than a billion dollars a year on DEI. Each institution would have to spend just $625,000 a year.
While many schools don’t report their DEI spending or otherwise publish information that can be analyzed, those that do generally show that public universities are spending far more.
The University of Alabama drops $2 million a year on salaries for DEI staff.
Georgia Tech pays $6.7 million a year.
These staff spend additional money running DEI programs and departments.
In South Carolina, Clemson University spends $2.5 million on DEI programs, while the University of South Carolina spends $1.7 million.
Then there’s the University of Michigan, which spends $30 million a year on its DEI team.
Whatever the school, the true cost is likely much higher.
Schools often report salaries for DEI staff but not the cost of the projects they run or vice versa. Regardless, DEI administrators are extremely well paid.
Virginia Tech’s top diversity official makes $391,000, while the University of Virginia’s head DEI honcho makes nearly $375,000.
From Alabama to Kentucky to Louisiana to Ohio to Utah and beyond, DEI administrators routinely make more than $200,000.
The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education brags that 84% of DEI officials make at least $100,000, while more than a third are pulling in $200,000-plus.
A 2021 survey found the average public university employs 45 DEI staff.
That fact alone indicates such schools are likely spending millions of dollars a year on politicized personnel.
Imagine how far that money could go if it went toward helping students instead of hammering ideology into their heads.
The salary of Virginia Tech’s top diversity official would fund nearly 13 full-ride scholarships, based on in-state tuition rates.
At Utah State University, getting rid of the DEI czar would pay for 14½ full rides.
And if the salaries and funding for all DEI staff and programs at public universities were spent on scholarships, huge numbers of students could benefit.
At the University of Michigan, 241 DEI staff are hogging resources that could pay the way for more than 1,700 students.
With so much money at stake, universities should focus on giving more students a better education at an affordable price, not politicized indoctrination at a higher price.
And by dismantling DEI from top to bottom, state leaders can help ensure no student gets indoctrinated at any price.
That’s the most important reason DEI deserves to be driven from campus.
It exists to stifle debate, pit people against each other and control the next generation’s political views.
The taxpayers who fund public colleges and universities (as well as private schools through federally backed student loans) think they’re helping today’s students become tomorrow’s leaders.
Instead, they’re paying hundreds of millions a year — at least — toward the intellectual and moral collapse of higher education and the eventual collapse of our society.
Surely it’s better to fund students instead of the DEI bureaucracies designed to corrupt them.
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Ontario Families Deserve More School Choice
From 1914 to 1925, if you wanted a Model T Ford, you could only get it in black. The company’s founder, Henry Ford, even famously said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it’s black.”
At first glance this sounds restrictive, until we remember that customers still had plenty of other options. Not only could they buy a car from one of Ford’s competitors, but they could also use a horse and buggy or buy one of the earlier models produced by Ford.
Thus, far from limiting the choices available to customers, painting all Model Ts black was part of a concerted effort to mass produce cars and make them affordable. Had customers chosen not to buy the Model T, Ford would no doubt have changed his business model.
However, imagine that the government rather than the private sector had handled both manufacturing and the selling of vehicles. Rather than responding to market pressures, the government would likely keep producing the same vehicle for everyone regardless of what people wanted. In this case, painting all cars black would quickly become a visible reminder that the government does a terrible job of providing people with genuine choices.
Sadly, this is exactly how the government-run public school system operates today. In Ontario, the government builds the schools, selects the curriculum, and sets the catchment area that determines where students will attend. If parents don’t like their neighbourhood school, they must either move to a different neighbourhood or pay out-of-pocket for their children’s independent school tuition.
While some school boards claim to provide parents with school choice, the choices are often more illusory than real. For example, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has a limited number of specialty schools in arts, science, math, technology and athletics. Of course, these schools were always oversubscribed, which meant that the TDSB had to create waitlists.
Unfortunately, TDSB trustees voted in 2022 to use a lottery system to decide which students could attend these schools. Not only does this make it harder for these specialty schools to keep high standards, since admission is no longer based on skills or experience, but it also overlooks the obvious urgent need in Toronto for more of these specialty schools.
This demand could easily be met if the province provided education funding directly to parents and let them decide where to enroll their children. There would be no shortage of independent schools created if parents could direct their children’s education funding to the school they want. This small change would take pressure off the public schools while at the same time ensuring that students attend a school that best meets their needs.
Interestingly, TDSB trustees are becoming increasingly aware that parents want more choice. For example, TDSB is proposing to dissolve the admission boundaries for its technical high schools and commercial high schools (which essentially teach business skills) so all students in the city, not just those living in a school’s catchment area, are eligible to attend.
While this is a sensible change, it will likely lead to more demand in these schools than there are spaces available. Because government moves slowly, there won’t be a rush to build new technical and commercial high schools, even if there’s a huge demand for them.
This is a prime example of the “school choice” breadcrumbs provided by government school boards. Governments are simply not well-positioned to provide parents with genuine choice. They make changes slowly, are dominated by one-size-fits-all thinking, and are not responsive to market pressures.
We shouldn’t leave school choice in the hands of government bureaucrats. Instead, the Ford government should empower parents by letting them decide where to direct their children’s education funding. This would lead to the private sector stepping in to fill the demand. The result would be more satisfied parents and better educated students.
If Henry Ford wanted to paint all Model Ts black, that was his choice as a private businessowner. Customers could go elsewhere if they wanted a different car. Ontario parents today deserve other options than just government-run public schools. Providing affordable access to independent schools would be a good first step
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The Empire Strikes Back During National School Choice Week
National School Choice Week begins Sunday after the school choice movement’s most successful year ever and with the promise of more momentum going forward. But not everyone is celebrating.
A highly organized, well-financed coalition of two dozen national and local left-wing advocacy organizations, teachers unions, and associations of government bureaucrats have teamed up to fight back against parents who seek greater educational opportunities for their children.
In this coalition’s view, families should have the choice of any school they want, so long as it’s run by the government.
The left-wing coalition—under the anodyne-sounding name Partnership for the Future of Learning—is set to launch a disinformation campaign against school choice Monday, according to documents obtained by The Daily Signal.
The campaign includes a glossy website, talking points, shareable graphics, and ready-made messages tailored for different audiences and social media platforms.
Predictably, the Partnership for the Future of Learning is pushing tired, one-sided, and debunked propaganda meant to scare families into believing that school choice policies are destructive, unaccountable, and (of course) racist.
Instead of trusting themselves, the coalition argues, parents should trust “the experts”—the same “experts” who kept schools closed unnecessarily, causing massive learning loss; imposed draconian-yet-ineffective mask mandates; and put boys in the girls’ locker rooms and porn in the school libraries.
These “experts” also divide everyone into “oppressors” and “the oppressed” based on immutable characteristics; segregate students by race: think “individualism” and “objectivity” are white supremacy; teach that there is an infinite number of genders; keep secrets from parents about their children’s mental and emotional health; and can’t tell what a woman is.
The Left has hegemonic control over the government-run district school system. School choice is a threat to the Left’s hegemony because it shifts the locus of control over education from bureaucrats and politicians to parents.
It takes a sustained regimen of indoctrination and social engineering for people to believe some of the Left’s more outlandish orthodoxies, so it can’t afford to allow families to choose schools that teach authentic history and science, let alone traditional morality.
Perhaps that’s why leftists have no compunction about openly lying in their messaging materials. Here are just three of the more egregious examples of disinformation about school choice from the Partnership for the Future of Learning.
1. Disinformation: School choice policies are “spreading despite overwhelming evidence that they are harmful public policy” and “do not have accountability measures that would ensure all students receive an effective and inclusive education.”
Reality: The evidence on school choice is, indeed, overwhelming—overwhelmingly positive.
The coalition’s materials lemon-pick the few studies finding negative effects on student performance from private school choice programs. But the materials ignore the much larger number of studies that find positive effects on student performance as well as numerous other measures, including educational attainment, parent satisfaction, district school performance, civic values and practices, racial and ethnic integration, fiscal effects, and school safety.
The education reform organization EdChoice has compiled every high-quality study on the effects of school choice and found that 84% of the studies find statistically significant positive effects, while only 6% find any negative effects.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/19/the-empire-strikes-back-during-national-school-choice-week
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18 January, 2024
The SIT, a most remarkable institution
Would you believe a fully accredited college situated at the end of the world that charges no fees, offers degrees up to doctoral level and is headquartered in a town of only 54,000 people? And it even has a respectable score in the world university rankings
Such is the Southern Instiutute of Technology, headquarterd in Invercargill, New Zealand. Invercargill is about as close as you can get to Antarctica and still live a normal life. As Invercargill is close to the sea, its temperatures are moderated somewhat, nothing like low Canadian extremes
I have family in town at the moment who live in Invercagill so that has sparked my interest in the SIT
The SIT has a number of campuses in addition to the one at Invercargill, notably one at Queenstown and a small tentacle at Christhurch. And all of them are "free" to NZ citizens. They also have around 2,000 overseas students who pay, but mostly not very much -- around $US15,000 per year. The overseas students come mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines, which are warm countries. Invercargil must be a shock
And the SIT has a rank of 400+ in the world university rankings. Not bad when you know that is out of about 11,000 colleges worldwide. The major NZ universities score around 200+ but none are up to the standard of its big neighbour. There are two Australian universities in the top 50 worldwide. I went to one.
The courses listed on the Invercargill campus offer a wide range of technical subjects plus some degree courses. You can become a degree-level nurse, teacher or accountant, for instance
You could certainly do worse than to take courses from SIT. They are fully recognized by the NZ accreditation authorities
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Rice University unveils 'Afrochemistry' class that will 'explore the intersection of racial justice and chemistry'
Rice University is offering an 'Afrochemistry' class that promises to analyze science through a 'contemporary African-American lens'.
Marketed as 'the study of black-life matter', a play on words merging science jargon with the Black Lives Matter movement, the course begins this semester.
The course description on the university's website explains students will 'apply chemical tools and analysis to understand black life in the US' and 'implement African American sensibilities to analyze chemistry'.
'Diverse historical and contemporary scientists, intellectuals, and chemical discoveries will inform personal reflections and proposals for addressing inequities in chemistry and chemical education,' it read.
Brooke Johnson, a Rice graduate with a PhD in chemistry from Princeton hired last August as part of the university's DEI department, will teach the class.
Her university bio lists her as a 'preceptor' and post-doctoral fellow who was a former track athlete at Rice until her graduation in 2017.
'Dr Johnson is passionate about the intersection of science and social justice and using her unique experiences to teach, support and inspire diverse students,' it read.
A flyer advertising a preview for the class at the private university in Houston used a cartoon of a student with an afro hairstyle pondering questions the course would address.
They included 'what does it look like to do science on ones own terms?', 'what does justice look like in chemistry?' and 'how does our society shape the science we do?'
The flyer explained the course would 'explore the intersection of racial justice and chemistry'.
'We will approach chemistry using a historical and contemporary African American lens in order to analyze science and its impact,' it read.
'In addition, we will be using chemical concepts to better understand Black life in the US. As we consider not only what science is being discovered, but also ask why, how and by whom, etc.
'This course will empower students to consider approaches to STEM that enhance community impact.'
The class does not give any credits for a chemistry major, but does court towards an African and African-American studies minor.
The description noted 'no prior knowledge of chemistry or African American studies is required' and there is no final exam.
Several commentators online, including at the Wall Street Journal, noted the course was the latest example of questionable classes blending science with identity politics popping up at American universities.
What the class would actually teach in practice was not entirely clear from the description, particularly how much hard science it would involve.
Academics discussed whether the course was likely to be geared towards scientific study or the discussion of racial politics in the field of chemistry, or a mix of both.
Some were concerned the study of science would be diluted by identity politics, but others speculated it could be helpful to get black students studying chemistry.
'While the title of the course is a bit wince-inducing, I don’t think the course will necessarily be a bad thing,' one wrote on an online forum.
'I can imagine there being a number of legitimate scientific issues that might especially impact African-Americans and their environments.'
Another pointed out that as a first generation college student in a field with few black scientists, Dr Johnson was an ideal person to discuss how race affected what was studied in chemistry.
'Whose proposals get grants and funding, and what values are represented? Who is positioned to make these influential decisions? Is the possible impact on society considered in these decisions?' they explained.
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Jewish parents in uproar as Ann Arbor school board prepares to vote on resolution calling for Israel-Gaza ceasefire
Parents of young children at a Michigan school are objecting against its decision to vote on a resolution calling for Israel-Gaza ceasefire.
The school board at Ann Arbor Public Schools is set to vote on the resolution today despite parents, taxpayers and community members demanding an immediate withdrawal.
The resolution states that it is 'important for educational institutions to acknowledge global events and their impact on students, staff, and families, especially those from affected regions.'
It also asks that teachers in the school's district begin to conduct 'informed and respectful dialogue about the conflict, aiming to foster a deeper understanding among students and staff'.
Apart from demanding a 'bilateral ceasefire', the resolution also condemns Islamophobia and antisemitism.
Three members of the board said they support the cease-fire resolution, two remain skeptical and the remaining two said they need more time to hear from constituents at the previous meeting.
One of the supportive members is the board president, Rima Mohammad who said that the cease-fire resolution was 'symbolic.'
She said: 'The Israel-Gaza war is definitely something we have to address, especially because I do believe the ongoing conflict abroad is leading to an increase in racism and discrimination locally. The Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Palestinians, Israelis are all hurting.'
One of the board's Jewish members also supports the resolution.
Jeff Gaynor, a retired social studies teacher who wrote his own curriculum on Israeli-Palestinian issues said 'he trusted educators to not venture beyond their expertise'.
But parents such as Sharon Sorkin disagree with the board and say that the school has no role in this.
She said: 'We all want to heal and we all want peace. But I don't believe that a resolution that a local school board passes is going to create peace in the Middle East.
'And what I've seen is that what this board has done this far and it certainly has not created peace in our community. It has actually created a lot of unrest in our community.
'My hope is that we can convince the board no to move forward with it and maybe our community can find its own peace.'
The petition which was launched by Ann Arbor constituents states that the 'board is not the appropriate forum for addressing these international and humanitarian crises'.
It also demand that they return to prioritizing education rather than involve itself in global issues.
The petition clarifies that the proposed resolution is out of the board's scope, creates a dangerous precedent, divisive and is unnecessarily creating a burden on students and teachers.
This comes a month after the University of Michigan prevented student government from voting on several cease-fire statements. The students launched an elaborate pro-Palestine protest in response.
The petition currently has 1,843 signatures out of its goal of 2,500
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12974599/Michigan-board-resolution-ceasefire-parents.html
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17 January, 2024
Democrat Rep. Ritchie Torres urges DOE to prohibit ‘indoctrinating students with anti-Israel propaganda’ after classroom map left out Jewish state
A Democratic Congressman is urging the Department of Education to put restrictions in place to prevent “anti-Israel propaganda” in city schools after a Qatari-funded map that left out the Jewish state was found posted in a Brooklyn classroom.
Rep. Ritchie Torres called the use of the map “irresponsible, reckless and dangerous,” especially given the current political climate following the horrific October 7 attacks by Hamas, according to a copy of the letter to the Department of Education obtained by the Post.
“Anti-Israel propaganda has no place in the NYC public school system, which should be free of politics,” Torres said in the letter to Chancellor David Banks on Friday.
“I am calling upon the DOE to put in place policies and protocols that prohibit DOE officials from indoctrinating students with anti-Israel propaganda.
“The DOE should subject to heightened scrutiny educational content from external entities like the Qatar International Foundation, whose program promoted the image of the Middle East where Israel was nowhere to be found.”
The Israel-erasing map was used as part of a program funded by the Qatar Foundation International (QFI), the American wing of the Qatar Foundation, a non-profit owned by the ruling family of the wealthy Arab state.
Since the revelation of the map, the Department of Education has been scurrying to come up with answers, as educators and local politicians expressed disbelief that the display was being used in a public classroom.
“I am deeply concerned about this issue and we are working to determine why this map is on display,” Rep. Dan Goldman, whose district includes the school, said earlier in the week.
The map, which was exposed in an article by The Free Press Thursday, was manufactured by Arab education company Ruman and features Islamic landmarks in each of the countries in northern Africa and the Middle East.
Photos show the map was posted under the heading “Arab World” with hand-drawn labels marking each country, except for Israel which was labeled “Palestine,” at PS 261. The omission was denounced as anti-Israel propaganda that sought to delegitimize the Jewish state.
Twenty-two K-12 public schools and eight academic programs are known to have received grants from QFI across the United States. The Post has reached out to these institutes to see if they are still funded.
The Department of Education has ignored requests from the Post about QFI funding and when initially questioned about the map’s existence failed to see the problem, telling the Free Press it was “referring to Arabic-speaking countries,” despite 20 percent of Israel’s population speaking the language.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), there has been a 360 percent surge in antisemitism in the wake of October 7th, with antisemitic incidents rising to levels not seen in four decades.
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New Jewish school in Manhattan deluged with applications in wake of October 7 attacks on Israel
A new Jewish school has been deluged with five times the applications it can accommodate in the wake of antisemitism after the October 7 attack on Israel.
Emet Classical Academy — its name is the Hebrew word “truth” — is opening this September on the Upper East Side, and officials say the school had more interest than they have seats.
“Since the announcement a few weeks ago we have received hundreds of admissions inquiries from families with kids … at elite secular private schools, Jewish day schools, public schools and G&T [gifted and talented] programs,” Rabbi Abraham Unger, head of the school for grades 6-12, told The Post.
The school, founded by conservative non-profit religious organization The Tikvah Fund, will accept between 36 and 40 students per grade its first year, according to Tikvah CEO Eric Cohen.
Kira Krieger Senders, 52, has applied for a spot for her 10-year-old son, who is currently in fifth grade at PS6 on the Upper East Side. She told The Post that, while she’s been pleased with her son’s public school promoting shared values, she has concerns as he enters middle school.
“The biggest fear I have is antisemitism. I do fear that my child will be targeted with some type of antisemitic rhetoric or action or sentiment that I don’t want him to have to deal with when he’s in school,” Krieger Senders, who is Jewish, said, adding that she experienced anti-Jewish remarks from a longtime friend following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Emet plans to offer a curriculum rooted in Western civilization and led by Unger, a political scientist and former professor.
“Our laser focus on the core ideas and texts of Western civilization makes us unique in the current educational marketplace — and certainly very different than what is happening in most other New York City public and private schools,” Unger told The Post.
“The goal is simple: to forge citizens who will strengthen American civic life and make great contributions to every field of human endeavor.”
Emet names “the spirit of American citizenship” as one of its seven founding pillars. Students will study Hebrew, Greek and Latin in addition to the arts and sciences, along with “a strong connection to Zionism and modern Israel” and general “military history.”
https://nypost.com/2024/01/12/news/new-jewish-school-in-manhattan-deluged-with-applications/s
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DEIndividualising australia's universities
Treating people unequally on the basis of race is racism
The NBA is the least ‘inclusive’ employer in the world. Its employees look nothing like the wider American population. Some 90 percent of the league’s players are black whereas the black share of the overall US population is only about 13 per cent. In fact, the whole US Olympic basketball team, made up of NBA stars, is 100 per cent black. This is as it should be because they’re the best players. It’s simple. Professional sports is a meritocracy; it is not a top-down HR-engineered ‘equality of outcome’ world. (I refer to the competitors, not the team executives.) No team owner aims for ‘cosmetic diversity’ in sport. And revealingly, no one on the progressive left argues for more white basketball players, or even more Asians or Hispanics.
You see, sport reveals everything that is fundamentally wrong with DEI; its core undermining of equality and its undercutting of the ability to produce the best possible product. This is so obvious in top-level US sport, and there is so much at stake monetarily, that no one with skin in the game dabbles in the idiocies of DEI thinking in terms of the team they put on the court.
Of course, if you find a smart, hard-working Vietnamese (or any other) immigrant who outperforms white candidates you should hire him (or her). That, however, is not what DEI demands. No, DEI is premised on ‘equality of outcome’, on getting the same statistical percentages of a group into some highly desirable job X (it’s only ever good jobs or emoluments) as they represent in the wider population. Let me be blunt. ‘Equity’ is the polar opposite of equality of opportunity. Drill down and you see it seeks equality of outcome, full stop. That’s the game all variations of affirmative action are playing. It’s just that DEI is one of the most malign and pernicious variants.
In fact, ‘equity’ necessarily presupposes that all differences, everywhere, and all the time, are the result of discrimination and nothing else. That’s why it REQUIRES treating people unequally based on race and other immutable characteristics.
One of the most important battles all conservatives (and classical liberals for that matter) have to fight is to eliminate the HR DEI bureaucracies everywhere. We need them gone from the public service, from the big law firms, from the big corporations, and from the universities. Take the last of these, which I know only too well. A recent report in the US revealed that at just two major US state universities (Ohio State and the University of Michigan) there were over 100 DEI commissars (my term) employed. And they earned over US$10 million per year collectively – at just two of hundreds of US universities.
Now don’t kid yourself. Our Australian universities are also chock-full of these massively overpaid DEI bureaucrats whose core remit is to undermine merit and equality of opportunity. So don’t tell me we don’t have an ideological problem in our unis and that this isn’t a core cause! (The search for cosmetic diversity is also a core cause in the collapse of viewpoint diversity, as an aside.)
Well, at least in a few US states we are now seeing Republican legislators doing something about this. Some are completely defunding the DEI bureaucracies in state universities. There are moves to stop state governments from contracting with big companies that enforce DEI policies. My Lord, my kingdom for an Australian Liberal party that might actually do any of those things! I’ll be blunt. The first step to reforming our wholly broken universities (those rankings of world universities are a complete joke, by the way, as every insider knows) is to completely defund the entire DEI bureaucracies. Because as things stand now does any reader really believe that in today’s universities, a young white male gets equal treatment with non-whites and with women as regards available scholarships, consideration for job openings or for promotions, pick your favourite criterion?
It’s time for our right-of-centre politicians to grow a spine and do something about this. That’s a wish, not a serious expectation.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/deindividualising-our-universities/
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16 January, 2024
How one college spends more than $30M on 241 DEI staffers… and the damage it does to kids
DEI is Procrustean. It wants to equalize everyone regardless of any harm that may cause
One day after winning the national college-football championship, the University of Michigan was recognized as a leading competitor in another popular collegiate sport: wasteful diversity, equity and inclusion spending.
Having recently embarked on a new five-year DEI plan, UM is paying more than $30 million to 241 DEI staffers this academic year alone, Mark Perry found in a recent analysis for The College Fix.
That represents an astounding expansion of the school’s already-infamous DEI bureaucracy, which had a mere 142 employees last year.
And the price tag accounts for neither the money spent on programming and office expenses nor the hundreds of other employees who use some of their time to assist with DEI initiatives.
These expenditures are a reckless waste of taxpayer money considering the impact of UM’s last five-year plan.
It cost $85 million, and what did it accomplish?
According to the university’s Black Student Union, “85 million dollars was spent on DEI efforts and yet, Black students’ experience on campus has hardly improved.”
Hispanic and Asian enrollments increased, but black enrollment dropped slightly from 4.3% in 2016 to 3.9% in 2021.
And The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, “The percentage of students who were satisfied with the overall campus climate decreased from 72 percent in 2016 to 61 percent in 2021.”
These results are consistent with findings at other institutions.
A Claremont Institute study of Texas A&M University found that despite an annual DEI budget of $11 million, the percentage of students who felt they belonged at the school dropped significantly from 2015 to 2020: Among whites, the number went from 92% to 82%; among Hispanics, from 88% to 76%.
Among blacks, there was an astonishing drop from 82% to 55%.
At the University of California, Berkeley, whose Division of Equity and Inclusion boasts 152 staffers and a $36 million budget, black undergraduate enrollment dropped from 3% in 2010 to 2% in 2021.
The truth is DEI does not work and frequently makes matters worse.
DEI trainings not only fail to achieve their purposes but often exacerbate grievances and divisions by antagonizing people and teaching them to monitor one another for microaggressions and implicit biases.
DEI often leads to illegal activities too.
The University of Washington recently revealed, for example, its psychology department actively discriminated against faculty candidates based on race, elevating a lower-ranked candidate for a position over others because of a desire to hire a black scholar.
In another case, a former assistant director of Multicultural Student Services at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire recently filed a lawsuit alleging that despite exemplary performance reviews, she was harassed and discriminated against until she resigned simply for being white.
“We don’t want white people in the MSS office,” a student reportedly said during an open house.
Even with the failures and the excesses, Michigan is not the only school ramping up its DEI expenditures.
Another College Fix analysis found that Ohio taxpayers are spending $20.38 million annually on DEI salaries and benefits at UM’s famous rival, Ohio State University, where the number of DEI bureaucrats has grown from 88 in 2018 to 189 in 2023.
Oklahoma’s public universities spent $83.4 million on DEI over the last 10 years.
Florida’s public universities reported spending $34.5 million during the 2022-23 academic year.
The University of Wisconsin was poised to spend $32 million over the next two years.
Why not use all that money to give students a much-needed tuition break? Or why not fund need-based scholarships for promising students instead of giving cash to bureaucrats who are actively damaging our higher-education institutions?
Fortunately, some states are taking action. Florida and Texas passed laws eliminating DEI bureaucracies, and Wisconsin lawmakers recently curbed DEI in the state university system by compelling the board of regents to agree to DEI staff cuts and a hiring freeze.
Many other state systems have ended the use of DEI statements in hiring, recognizing they are used to screen out heterodox thinkers when studies show ideological diversity is beneficial to the search for knowledge, which is a university’s core purpose.
And that points to the greatest cost of DEI: While the financial waste is appalling, the price of expecting everyone on campus to conform to an ideology that undermines free expression and excludes intellectual diversity, two foundational values of the academy, is one we should be unwilling to pay.
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Charter schools have attracted growing number of Black, Hispanic students as parents seek better options
Black and Hispanic families have been flocking to charter schools in recent years, the National Alliance For Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) said on Thursday.
Debbie Veney, who is the senior vice president of communications and marketing of NAPCS and the co-author of the report, said charter schools have made significant gains since 2019, in an interview with Fox News Digital.
"Particularly, Hispanic families and Black families are really big consumers of charter schools," Veney said.
Veney's comments came after the NAPCS revealed last month new data analysis showing charter school enrollment grew 2% while district enrollment plateaued. The report said charter schools enrolled nearly 10 times the number of new students compared to district schools in the previous school year.
Veney added that earlier research about parent satisfaction with school systems showed a tendency of "Black parents, low-income parents, and Hispanic parents" to report that their neighborhood schools "weren't great." "But they just didn't have choices," Veney said.
"You see those polls where they're asking, oh, what do you think? How would you grade public education? Most people say, oh, you know, I think my school around me is pretty good, but Blacks and Hispanics didn't say that. They're like, 'I know my school around me isn't very good.' And we know that they've been looking for options that are better."
Charter schools saw an increase in student enrollment between the 2019-20 and 2022-23 school years in nearly every state, particularly among Hispanic students, as they accounted for half of charter school enrollment growth. Charter school enrollment for Black students also increased since 2019.
The NAPCS report found that since 2019, charter schools gained more than 300,000 new students while district public schools lost around 1.5 million students at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public schools haven't rebounded in the past few years.
Veney pointed to how charter schools have more flexibility and control over what happens at the school compared to the public school that operates under a more centralized structure.
"Charter schools have the flexibility to control a lot of things at the site level that a district public school can control, like extra time on task. So, if you've got kids coming into the fifth grade, and they're on a second-grade reading level, maybe 45 minutes of instructional time and reading isn't going to be enough to get them caught up, and the charter school has the ability to be able to jigger with that and to say, well, I want to put more time on tasks--also to have a longer school day," she said.
Veney added that a charter school is free to do "site-based hiring and firing."
A recent Stanford study showed that charter school students outperformed public school peers in reading and math.
Most states restrict parents to schools within their zip code or the school district that presides over their residential area, yet, charter schools allow parents an option to send their kids to a different school. When charter schools are neighbors to public schools, they compete for per-pupil funding as parents are allowed to opt out of sending their child to the neighborhood public school.
Opponents of charter schools say they siphon off funding from traditional public schools, thus decreasing the resources available to increase teachers' salaries, invest in facilities, and recruit more teachers.
Teacher unions often lobby against charter schools and sometimes make an effort to restrict their expansion. More recently, President Biden's Department of Education released new regulations on how charter schools qualify for federal grants, which proponents of charter schools said would make it more difficult to obtain these federal grants.
In August, a coalition of charter schools filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education over the regulations.
"Why would people try to keep people who need access to get education from having it? I would say that it has to be something that is a separate set of interests that are not about kids and not about families," Veney said. "A lot of times adults are more concerned with adult interests, like maintaining structures, like maintaining certain positions, like having budget control, rather than being able to focus in on what families really need."
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‘F’ for Failing to Train Our Future Teachers Properly
The Australian education system is in crisis. It is failing at a most basic level, which is to teach young Australians how to read and write.
All you have to do is look at this year’s NAPLAN results to see how bad things really are in Australian schools.
One-in-three Australian students are not meeting the basic standards of numeracy and literacy. In contrast, just 15 percent of students are exceeding expectations.
The majority of Australia’s Year 9 students use punctuation at a Year 3 level. To put that into perspective, 15-year-old teenagers have the writing ability of 8-year-olds.
And the majority of those teenagers are struggling to be able to put a sentence together, let alone insert a comma or an apostrophe correctly.
As adults, these Australians will struggle to get jobs or manage their finances. It renders them unable to perform simple tasks such as accurately filling out vital forms, following maps, or reading instructions on a packet of medication. An illiterate and innumerate society is a non-functioning society.
These are truly shocking statistics. And it’s not happening because of a lack of funding for schools.
Every single Australian should be asking why, given state and federal governments are throwing more money than ever at the problem, the 2023 NAPLAN results reveal a system in steady decline.
Each year, all levels of government spend around $120 billion on education.
Australians should know that one of the central causes of this decline is what future teachers are being taught during their training at university.
A new report by the Institute of Public Affairs, “Who teaches the teachers?” has found that—instead of being taught how to master core academic curriculum such as reading, writing, mathematics, history, and science—teachers are being trained by their university lecturers to be experts in identity politics, critical race theory, radical gender theory, and sustainability.
The teaching of woke ideology accounts for 31 percent of all teaching subjects, which is equivalent to one-and-a-quarter years of a four-year Bachelor of Education degree. Meanwhile, fewer than 1-in-10 teaching subjects are focused on literacy and numeracy.
Future teachers are spending far more time talking about gender fluidity, climate change, and how racist Australia is, than they are things like phonics, mathematics, and grammar. It is no wonder that young Australians are hopelessly lacking in basic skills but very good at going to protests.
Universities are not only failing to equip teaching graduates with the knowledge and skills required to effectively teach core curriculum subjects, but they have replaced core skills and knowledge with woke ideology and political activism, which in turn produces legions of poorly educated child activists. And it looks like a lot of trainee teachers do not want this either.
Currently, the average completion rate for students in a teaching degree at universities is 50 percent, while the average attrition rate across all courses is 17 percent. Moreover, 20 percent leave the profession in their first three years as a teacher.
The system is clearly failing both trainee teachers and the students they go on to teach. It is a system in urgent need of reform.
Under the federal government’s “back to basics” plan, there will be a new accreditation regime for teaching degrees.
This means that it will be mandatory for universities to instruct trainee teachers in evidence-based reading, writing, arithmetic, and classroom management practices, based on the proven educational science about what works best to promote student learning.
While the “back to basics” concept is a step in the right direction, it will not solve the related problem of teachers being schooled in woke ideology.
As long as these subjects continue to dominate teaching degrees, the nation’s teachers will continue to be ill-prepared for the classroom.
This does a disservice both to them and their future students.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/f-for-failing-to-train-our-future-teachers-properly-5550003
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15 January, 2024
Snobby Harvard professor issues groveling apology for insulting college's extension school students whom she teaches
Extension is Harvard University's part-time, open-enrollment program, intended to offer courses equivalent in academic rigor to traditional Harvard programs
Hochschild received her undergraduate degree from the frantically Leftist Oberlin College. If Yiddish, her surname means "high shield"
A Harvard professor has apologized for insulting students of the college's extension school where she teaches after discovering that the activist who toppled Claudine Gay is an alumnus.
Jennifer Hochschild was slammed by her students after stating that the Harvard Extension School HES as 'not the same' as the main college.
Her comments came as she attempted to discredit conservative activist Chris Rufo, who was instrumental in exposing plagiarism claims which toppled former president Claudine Gay.
The Professor of Government and African and African American Studies claimed that Rufo had misrepresented his degree from HES.
'On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have "master’s degree from Harvard," which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School?' Hochschild wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
'Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students.'
She added: 'Rufo could have proudly and honorably said, "I pulled myself up by bootstraps to prove it I have master's degree from Harvard extension school, along with other smart and gutsy students."
'Instead he used weasel words to try to attach himself to Ivy status and prestige. Insecurity??' she continued.
But days later she was forced into an embarrassing climbdown amid furious backlash from her students and the HES student association.
'I was asked to clarify, and am glad to do so: HES courses are Harvard U courses (often the same as in FAS, as for my courses),' Hochschild wrote.
'HES bachelor’s and master’s degrees are Harvard U degrees. HES is a school in Harvard U analogous to other schools. HES students are Harvard U students.
'On this maelstrom, mainly to HES students/staff: I regret that you got dragged into a dispute with nothing to do with you, that caused distress.
'I endorse and admire HES’s promotion of an inclusive, engaged, ambitious student body. I'm sorry my writing seemed to suggest otherwise. '
However her apology was rejected by Rufo in a response to the post on X.
'This still isn't an apology,' he replied. 'Try this: "I apologize for denigrating HES in a petty, botched attempt to discredit Christopher Rufo. I was angry that Mr. Rufo scalped my friend Claudine Gay. I shouldn't have reacted this way. I had the facts wrong and I'm sorry".'
Rufo was among the most vocal opponents to Gay in the final days of her tenure during which she was dogged by plagiarism allegations and claims she was not doing enough to protect Jewish students on campus amid clashes between Pro Israel and Pro Palestine supporters in the wake of the October 7 attacks.
Gay stood down from the position on December 2 amid the furor and following a disastrous Congressional hearing where she failed to state that calling for the genocide of Jews would be deemed hate speech on her campus.
Hochschild's apology came after HES's student association said it was 'deeply concerned and disappointed' by Hochschild's remarks.
'We urge the community, particularly HES faculty, to reflect on the far-reaching impact of their words,' the group said in a statement.
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Bipartisan Congress wants to defund colleges over legacy admissions — it’s about time
Time could finally be up for legacy admissions, thanks to a bipartisan bill being considered on Capitol Hill.
“The fact that your parents or grandparents happened to have a sheepskin [diploma] from a particular college on the wall should in no way influence your ability to get into that college,” Senator Todd Young told me.
Young is a co-sponsor of the MERIT Act (Merit-Based Educational Reforms and Institutional Transparency) introduced in Congress last November.
The legislation would ban colleges and universities that receive federal funding from considering applicants’ legacy status in the admissions process.
It’s about time that hard work, determination and excellence are valued over wealth, privilege and special considerations in the admissions office.
“My motivation was to restore what most Americans believe in: meritocracy — work hard, play by the rules, develop your talents, and you ought to be able to get ahead,” Young said.
The Indiana senator, who is a Republican, is co-sponsoring the bill with Democrat Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.
“This is non-ideological, nonpartisan and highly popular among the American people,” Young said. “Republicans, Democrats, independents, liberals, conservatives — all agree with the notion that rich people shouldn’t be able to buy their kids’ and grandkids’ [way] into elite colleges.”
The MERIT Act would amend the Higher Education Act, which provides federal money to colleges and universities, by changing the accreditation standards.
It would ban any “preferential treatment” in the admissions process in order to receive federal funds.
Scrutiny of legacy admissions practices was renewed last year, when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions.
If race can’t be considered in the admission process, why should other factors out of an applicant’s control — like how much money your family has or who your parents are — play a role? Legacy admissions is, effectively, affirmative action for the privileged.
Although Young, who himself is a graduate of the highly selective University of Chicago, had already taken an interest in eliminating legacy admissions before the Supreme Court ruling this June, he says the judgment inspired him to introduce the bill.
“I already decided that this was a wrong that needed to be righted, and I felt like there was an opportunity for success in this area… after the Supreme Court decision,” he said.
Legacy admissions is widespread in academia. According to Education Reform Now, about half of schools considered legacy status in the admission process as of 2020. And the practice is most common at elite colleges — 80% of them consider legacy status
Harvard has come under particular scrutiny for its practices, and rightfully so.
A 2019 analysis of Harvard’s admissions data from 2009 to 2014 by the National Bureau of Economic Research reveals just how much of a leg up connected applicants have in the admissions process at elite universities.
While the overall admissions rate at Harvard was just 6%, 33.6% of legacies were accepted and 42.2% of those on an “interest list,” which often denotes a relationship to a donor, got in.
The researchers also found that 43% of white students at Harvard were legacies, children of faculty, donor relatives or recruited athletes — and that 3 in 4 of those students would likely not have been otherwise accepted.
“”There’s a sense that so many of our institutions are rigged in favor of entrenched interests,” Young said. “And in this case, the entrenched interests would be wealthier individuals who are effectively writing checks to their alma maters to get their children, grandchildren or friends of the family in.
“They’re basically overriding considerations of merit,” he added.
If the MERIT Act takes effect, it would jeopardize Harvard’s federal funding. Despite having a $50 billion endowment, the university received $625 million in federal dollars in 2021 — representing two-thirds of its sponsored revenue for the year.
But the tides are turning. Education Reform Now also found that 100 schools eliminated legacy admissions considerations between 2015 and 2022.
Highly selective schools like Johns Hopkins, Amherst College and Wesleyan University have nixed the practice. And MIT has never considered legacy status or donor relationships in its admissions process.
Local lawmakers across the country have also taken aim at legacy admissions.
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Big switch: The Sydney suburbs rejecting public education
Parents want to avoid the chaos of government schools
More Sydney parents are pulling their children out of the public education system at the end of year 6 and enrolling them in private high schools compared with a decade ago.
The growing exodus of students to private schools comes after years of sustained public focus on teacher shortages and debates over education funding.
Department of Education enrolment figures, which track the progression of public pupils through each year of their schooling, show more than 9000 year 6 students left the public system between 2021 and 2022, equating to 21 per cent of the year 6 cohort.
When schools in the rest of NSW were included, the exodus grew to more than 12,000 pupils in 2022, the latest year for which data is available.
In Sydney, the local government areas Canada Bay, Bayside and Cumberland recorded the biggest declines, with the number of students attending public high schools falling by more than 50 per cent between year 6 in 2021 and year 7 in 2022.
NSW Secondary Principals’ Council president Craig Petersen said public schools perform just as well as private schools in the HSC and other academic tests after socio-economic effects are considered.
“Parents are choosing to send them to the non-government sector because there is a mistaken belief they will get better results, but it is a fact that our public schools perform at least as well as non-government schools,” he said.
Grattan Institute education program director Jordana Hunter said it was important for the state system to make the case to parents that public schools can provide a high-quality education.
“Parents choose school for a range of reasons, one of them is the peer group they’re selecting for their children. Parents from more advantaged backgrounds can seek out schools with children from similar social groups,” she said.
“The consequence of that is the increased concentration of children from disadvantaged backgrounds in public schools, that can create challenges in terms of teaching and learning.”
Anglican Schools Corporation chief executive Peter Fowler, whose organisation oversees 18 schools in Sydney, said successive state governments had not built public schools in growing areas on the city’s fringes.
“There is not as broad a choice for parents, so they’re looking at what the independent schools have to offer,” he said.
On school tours, parents were less interested in the buildings and more interested in the culture and what classes were like. “They liked to speak to existing students about their experiences, they wanted to hear about that, not the facilities in the school,” he said.
Demographer Mark McCrindle said the shift to the private system, replicated around Australia, was in part driven by older millennials (born from 1981 onwards), who were increasingly opting for faith-based schools for their children, despite a declining percentage of Australians identifying as religious.
“They’re not churchgoers or mosque attenders – they’re saying, some of the values which come from that particular educational foundation does work,” he said.
Catholic Schools chief executive Dallas McInerney said his sector had its strongest growth in more than a decade in the past year. “We’re welcoming more and more families from non-Catholic families. It is a vote of confidence in Catholic schools,” he said.
A St Paul’s Grammar School in Cranebrook, which is a non-denominational Christian school in Sydney’s west, principal Ian Wake said parents who were not particularly religious were drawn to the focus on mental wellbeing for their child.
“Across the board, there has been an increase in mental health issues and anxiety. We have appointed a coordinator of wellbeing and a wellbeing framework throughout the school … that appeals to parents,” he said.
Mother of three Liz Henry from Cremorne sent her daughters to the local public primary school. “My experience of public school has been very positive,” she said.
However, she decided to send them to a religious school for their secondary education. She had attended a single-sex private high school and wanted a school for her daughters that went beyond academics.
“It was important to me and to us as parents that there was a code of conduct or a set of values which were going to be instilled into our children … It didn’t have to be religious but there had to be some guiding principles,” she said.
A NSW Department of Education spokesman said there were currently 800,000 students enrolled in public schools– meaning the majority of school-aged children were educated in public schools.
“Through our new plan for NSW Public Education, we are explicitly aiming to make NSW public schools the first choice for young people and their families,” he said.
That plan, released in November, said the Department was addressing staffing shortages in public schools by giving teachers pay rises of up to $10,000 and would bolster student wellbeing via whole-of-school approaches. Success in some areas would be measured via “increasing community confidence in public education”.
“We have taken strides to ensure public schools continue to be the first choice for the majority of families, such as the recent historic pay rise for over 95,000 teachers, making them some of them the highest-paid public school teachers in the nation,” he said.
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14 January, 2024
Missouri college president is put on leave over claims he bullied female colleague to SUICIDE
Candia-Bailey was black so there may have been a culture clash involved. An emotionally warm woman with an austere white boss would not be a happy combination
A complication not mentioned below is that Lincoln college is historically black. But Moseley has had many years in such colleges so should be alert to cultural issues. He was a great booster for the college so was he simply pushing too hard?
A Missouri college president is facing backlash over allegations he drove a female colleague to kill herself, after she cited him in a final letter calling him a 'bully' with a 'callous and evil soul.'
Dr John Moseley, the president of Lincoln University since January 2022, was voluntarily placed on leave this week amid an investigation into the death of Dr Antoinette 'Bonnie' Candia-Bailey, his vice president of student affairs who killed herself on January 8.
The educator's loved ones told HBCU Buzz that her suicide was the result of 'bullying and severe mistreatment' at the hands of Moseley, and their relationship allegedly deteriorated due to his reaction to her anxiety and depression.
Protests erupted across the campus in the wake of Candia-Bailey's suicide and students have demanded Moseley's resignation, with the president put on leave while a third-party review of the incident is carried out for several weeks.
Lincoln University did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Family sources alleged that Candia-Bailey made repeat efforts to call out Moseley's alleged behavior, but was left 'unsupported, disregarded and abused' in her role.
This included a final email written by Candia-Bailey on the day she took her own life, sent at 6:15am, where she reportedly said Moseley had caused 'enough harm and mental damage.'
She claimed that he joked about her struggles with mental health, and outlined a 'series of issues' with the university's leadership including misconduct by the Moseley's advisory council and a toxic work environment.
Feeling she was being 'intentionally harassed and bullied', Candia-Bailey said Moseley 'ignored requests' when she raised issues, and 'when face-to-face, danced around the topic.'
It was also alleged that when Candia-Bailey made complaints about her treatment to the Board of Curators, the board president brushed off her struggles, and merely responded: 'Please be advised the Board of Curators does not engage in the management of personnel issues for Lincoln University and will not be taking further action related to this issue.'
Documents seen by KRCG also detailed her declined requests for Family and Medical leave, in which she reportedly cited issues with anxiety and depression worsened by her relationship with Moseley.
As he takes a voluntary leave, Dr. Stevie Lawrence II, currently the university’s provost and vice president of academic affairs, is set to be interim president.
Those that knew the administrator told the outlet that she was a generous and loving person, with close friend Monica Graham, who knew Candia-Bailey from their time at Lincoln University, saying she 'always smiled and was always positive.'
But after she took on the vice president position in May 2023, Candia-Bailey's loved ones said she noticeably went downhill.
'I was literally just with her at homecoming and she was like ‘I’m just trying to make it through,'' said Shaunice Hill, another close friend of Candia-Bailey's.
'Her whole demeanor had changed. Yes, she was still smiling, but you could tell that something was off - something was different.'
Lincoln University students have reacted with fury after the allegations emerged, forming demonstrations on campus and rallying on social media using the hashtag #FireMoseley.
The students are far from alone in calling for Moseley's resignation, as president of the Lincoln University Alumni Association, Sherman Bonds, wrote an open letter to the Board of Curators urging them to make a change of leadership.
'I find myself standing in the state of hopelessness,' Bonds wrote. 'Therefore, my appeal to you and the Board of Curators is to find a resolution that restores that consciousness of peace and healing.
'The university’s institutional care has been breached. The present administration has become a liability to the mission and health of the institution.'
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Harvard students file anti-Semitism lawsuit claiming school is a 'bastion of hatred'
Six Jewish students from Harvard University are suing the school, claiming it has become a 'bastion of antisemitism and hatred' with descriptions of how they have been bullied since the university's president Claudine Gay resigned.
The lawsuit, filed this week in Massachusetts, alleges that President Claudine Gay's congressional comments about campus antisemitism are just the tip of the iceberg of the school's problem.
Gay stepped down on January 2 after sparking fury and threats of a donor boycott with her remarks. By then, she had also been accused of plagiarism.
The school stood by her, refusing to accept that it had an antisemitism problem. In her resignation letter, Gay said she had been the victim of racist threats because she is a black woman.
The lawsuit, filed by student Alexander Kestenbaum and five unnamed others from Students Against Antisemitism, describes how Gay's student supporters bullied them and other Jewish kids after her resignation.
In internal chat rooms, Jewish students were labeled 'pedo loving Zionists', according to the lawsuit.
Some pro-Palestine students said they also supported Hamas' attack and considered it a 'moment of decolonization.'
The students say the issue existed before Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, but became more 'severe' afterwards.
They are now asking for students who have threatened them to be expelled, and for anti-Israel professors to be fired.
They single out Professor Marshall Glanz who, they claim, told them they could not refer to Israel as a 'democracy' in a class project because it would 'offend other students'.
'Mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty have marched by the hundreds through Harvard’s campus, shouting vile antisemitic slogans and calling for death to Jews and Israel.
'Those mobs have occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student lounges, plazas, and study halls, often for days or weeks at a time, promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on campus.
'Jewish students have been attacked on social media, and Harvard faculty members have promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object.
'What is most striking about all of this is Harvard’s abject failure and refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and penalize the students and faculty who perpetrate it,' their attorneys said in their 79-page complaint.
The university's lawyers have not yet responded to the complaint.
Claudine Gay has been temporarily replaced by Provost Alan Garber. He was among Harvard faculty who supported Gay at the congressional hearing, and nodded as she delivered her remarks.
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Make Australian civics education great again
The 2019 National Assessment Program Civics and Citizenship (NAP-CC) results, published in 2021, indicate that only 53 per cent of Year 6 students and 38 per cent of Year 10 students (notably, girls outperformed boys in both year levels) met the benchmark in civics and citizenship education.
This trend is alarming, especially considering Year 10 is the last year civics is taught in schools.
The decline in civic understanding among young Australians underscores the need for education resources that are not only informative but also engaging.
The history of bipartisan efforts in civics education in Australia is noteworthy.
For instance, the Hawke government’s establishment of a parliamentary committee led to the recommendation of incorporating civics and citizenship lessons into history and social science curricula.
Following the 1993 election, Paul Keating initiated the Civics Expert Group to enhance young Australians’ political understanding and engagement.
Subsequently, John Howard introduced the ‘Discovering Democracy’ program in 1997, which extended beyond traditional school settings to higher education and vocational training.
These government measures demonstrate the cross-party commitment to strengthening Australian civic knowledge and participation since the 1980s.
In this context, prime ministerial libraries situated within or affiliated with Australian universities play a pivotal role. Housing rich collections of historical documents and personal letters, these libraries provide tangible connections to the past, making the study of political history more relatable and engaging for young learners.
Such libraries surpass their role as mere archives, functioning as dynamic hubs of education and civic interaction. By hosting exhibitions, conferences, and fostering scholarly publications, the libraries bring historical documents to life, connecting past political decisions to contemporary discussions and learning.
Last month’s 5th anniversary of the official opening of the John Howard Prime Ministerial Library at Old Parliament House underscored the critical role of these institutions in public education.
Other prime ministerial libraries, like the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library at Curtin University, the Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney, the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre at Adelaide University, and the Robert Menzies Institute at the University of Melbourne, act as gateways to Australia’s recent past.
They are more than repositories; they are vibrant educational platforms. Yet, their full potential in engaging new generations in political history remains largely untapped.
Expanding their reach and impact, particularly in making historical knowledge accessible and engaging to a broader audience – including younger Australians – is crucial.
At the very least, they could provide a wealth of teaching resources with a simple online search.
This expansion requires a holistic approach involving a solid national framework, substantial support from both government and private sources, and strong leadership.
Only with unwavering backing from all parties – including national cultural institutions – can these libraries truly thrive and fulfil their mission.
Despite the longevity of civics education in Australia since Federation, its relegation to the back corner of a classroom is a serious oversight.
Neglecting this fundamental aspect of education raises a real risk of depriving future generations of the skills needed for informed democratic participation.
As emphasised by UK educator and political biographer Sir Anthony Seldon, an understanding and respect for the past are vital for making better decisions and fostering better individuals.
This principle is essential for imparting a comprehensive understanding of Australia’s political heritage and its ongoing relevance to the younger generation.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/make-civics-education-great-again/
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11 January, 2024
Higher Ed Attacks Crusading Bill Ackman’s Wife
Bill Ackman, billionaire, hedge fund CEO, and Harvard alumnus who was a driving force behind the removal of Harvard’s president, is facing a witch hunt against his wife and family. Business Insider contacted the couple on January 5 with accusations of plagiarism in his wife’s work. Bill’s wife, Neri Oxman, worked for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for 15 years, where she was a professor whose body of work centered on architectural design, biology, invention, and innovation.
Ackman has a strong suspicion that the “story” (read: personal attack) was started by sources at MIT.
What was the plagiarism that Oxman supposedly committed? Well, according to Business Insider, she “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars, and technical documents in her academic writing.” When one reads further down, though, the article cites only four instances in her dissertation where she forgot to put a paragraph in quotation marks or used Wikipedia as a dictionary to define her terms without attribution. Ergo, the writers call her a plagiarist.
Before we go further, let’s make a comparison to Harvard’s Claudine Gay, whose plagiarism ultimately took her down. Gay had only 11 academic papers to her name. In every one of them, the level of plagiarism was more than just forgetting quotation marks. For example, she stole entire ideas from scholar Carol M. Swain in her writings without reference or accreditation.
Now let’s compare that to Neri Oxman’s body of work. According to her husband: “She has published 74 peer-reviewed papers, 8 peer-reviewed book chapters, and numerous other journal papers and proceedings. But her written work is only a small portion of her life’s work. She has been awarded 15 patents for her technological innovations, not including recent patents pending.” Oxman has a far larger body of work over which to nitpick than Gay, and yet Gay’s plagiarism was so blatant and pervasive that it was enough to eventually get her removed as president of Harvard despite that organization’s best efforts to protect her. She does still have a faculty position at the university and an outrageous salary to go with it.
If the sources for the Oxman accusations did stem from MIT, what is the motivation? Is it revenge? Probably in part, but there is also that good old sports adage to take into account: The best defense is a good offense.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth is the last university head standing whose testimony before Congress was so despicable. Kornbluth is Jewish herself, which leaves the Jewish alumni and terrified Jewish MIT students with this question: Who will stand up for us when our fellow Jew won’t?
MIT has been one of the worst college campuses for anti-Semitism, and there has been little to nothing done about it on the leadership’s part. While Kornbluth’s support for MIT’s Jewish community seems to have been staunch until October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, her actions in the wake of the massacre have been an utter betrayal.
Journalist and researcher Heather Mac Donald illustrates in a City Journal piece Kornbluth’s utter blindness to addressing the problems at MIT. Instead of seeking to curb the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy that has entrenched itself at most institutions of higher education, Kornbluth has doubled down and even hired more to that bloat. MIT has lost its mission. Instead, it has succumbed to the idea that diversity is key — and by diversity, it means race and skin color, not diversity of thought. Faculty have resigned over this.
The attack on Oxman and by extension her husband has shifted the focus away from Kornbluth, probably by design. Kornbluth and others in positions of power at our higher education institutions (particularly the elite ones) should be held to the standard that they purport to uphold. As president of an elite university like MIT, protecting all students from harassment, bullying, political attacks, and threats should be a priority, not this moral garbage that is DEI (i.e., Racial Marxism).
So no. You leftist elites who are enshrined in your seemingly protected ivory towers of the Ivy League are and should be the focus of scrutiny. The position you hold is too important.
You may have tarnished the reputation of Bill Ackman’s wife, but it is you who will ultimately need to answer for your words and deeds. Reformers like Ackman are not in charge of teaching, training, and leading the next generation of scholars, makers, and innovators. You are. The fact that you thought this would be a good strategy and not further make you an object of contempt by the public at large is a severe misstep.
But that is no surprise. This whole exercise — from the shameful public testimonies of the three presidents of MIT, UPenn, and Harvard before Congress to the later attempts to justify the poor choices of the same — is exactly why former alumni like Ackman and the greater public at large are hungry for reform.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103456-higher-ed-attacks-crusading-bill-ackmans-wife-2024-01-10
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State bill would require teachers to inform parents of child's gender identity at school
Republican lawmakers in South Carolina are bringing a bill banning hormone therapy, the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs and gender transition surgery for anyone under 18 years old to the House floor.
During the first two days of the 2024 legislative session, the Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs Committee voted to advance the bill, which is similar to restrictions on health care for transgender minors already in effect in at least 22 other states, according to the Associated Press.
House bill 4624 focuses on preventing health professionals from providing the aforementioned therapy, medication and procedure to minors, and also prevents Medicaid from covering such services for anyone under 26 years old.
It specifies that transgender youth would still be able to seek and utilize mental health services.
Trans youth hormones
South Carolina lawmakers are advancing a bill banning hormone therapy, the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs and gender transition surgery for anyone under 18 years old. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
HB 4624 also states that school employees cannot withhold information related to a student's gender identity from their parents or legal guardians nor can they "encourage or coerce" a minor to withhold that information from their parents or legal guardians.
It also requires school employees who think a student may be struggling with "gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or other psychological conditions that can result in a person identifying with a gender different than that of their sex" to notify the child's parents or legal guardians.
Rep. Thomas Beach, who is on the committee that advanced the bill, told the AP that "parents need to know what's going on in their child's life."
Rep. Jordan Pace, who is also on the committee, echoed those sentiments and, as a former educator, said he would have been neglecting his duty if he had ever concealed such information from a student's parents.
The piece of legislation comes with criticism from parents of transgender children and some health professionals in the state.
Eric Childs, the father of a 15-year-old transgender son, told the AP choosing to undergo hormone replacement therapy should be up to his child, not lawmakers. Childs also said that his family wants the child to have every medically recommended option available and that none of their health care decisions have been made "on a whim."
South Carolina pediatrician Dr. Deborah Greenhouse, who said she has taken care of some transgender children during her three decades in the field, told the AP that minors in the state do not receive gender-transition surgeries and that the treatments they do receive are given with the consent of "fully-involved" parents.
She also said minors do not begin taking medication until puberty begins.
Major medical groups, like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, deem such treatments for trans youth as safe when administered properly.
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Make Australian civics education great again
The 2019 National Assessment Program Civics and Citizenship (NAP-CC) results, published in 2021, indicate that only 53 per cent of Year 6 students and 38 per cent of Year 10 students (notably, girls outperformed boys in both year levels) met the benchmark in civics and citizenship education.
This trend is alarming, especially considering Year 10 is the last year civics is taught in schools.
The decline in civic understanding among young Australians underscores the need for education resources that are not only informative but also engaging.
The history of bipartisan efforts in civics education in Australia is noteworthy.
For instance, the Hawke government’s establishment of a parliamentary committee led to the recommendation of incorporating civics and citizenship lessons into history and social science curricula.
Following the 1993 election, Paul Keating initiated the Civics Expert Group to enhance young Australians’ political understanding and engagement.
Subsequently, John Howard introduced the ‘Discovering Democracy’ program in 1997, which extended beyond traditional school settings to higher education and vocational training.
These government measures demonstrate the cross-party commitment to strengthening Australian civic knowledge and participation since the 1980s.
In this context, prime ministerial libraries situated within or affiliated with Australian universities play a pivotal role. Housing rich collections of historical documents and personal letters, these libraries provide tangible connections to the past, making the study of political history more relatable and engaging for young learners.
Such libraries surpass their role as mere archives, functioning as dynamic hubs of education and civic interaction. By hosting exhibitions, conferences, and fostering scholarly publications, the libraries bring historical documents to life, connecting past political decisions to contemporary discussions and learning.
Last month’s 5th anniversary of the official opening of the John Howard Prime Ministerial Library at Old Parliament House underscored the critical role of these institutions in public education.
Other prime ministerial libraries, like the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library at Curtin University, the Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney, the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre at Adelaide University, and the Robert Menzies Institute at the University of Melbourne, act as gateways to Australia’s recent past.
They are more than repositories; they are vibrant educational platforms. Yet, their full potential in engaging new generations in political history remains largely untapped.
Expanding their reach and impact, particularly in making historical knowledge accessible and engaging to a broader audience – including younger Australians – is crucial.
At the very least, they could provide a wealth of teaching resources with a simple online search.
This expansion requires a holistic approach involving a solid national framework, substantial support from both government and private sources, and strong leadership.
Only with unwavering backing from all parties – including national cultural institutions – can these libraries truly thrive and fulfil their mission.
Despite the longevity of civics education in Australia since Federation, its relegation to the back corner of a classroom is a serious oversight.
Neglecting this fundamental aspect of education raises a real risk of depriving future generations of the skills needed for informed democratic participation.
As emphasised by UK educator and political biographer Sir Anthony Seldon, an understanding and respect for the past are vital for making better decisions and fostering better individuals.
This principle is essential for imparting a comprehensive understanding of Australia’s political heritage and its ongoing relevance to the younger generation.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/make-civics-education-great-again/
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10 January, 2024
NYC students forced to go remote as city houses nearly 2K migrants at their school
Students at a Brooklyn high school were kicked out of the classroom to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants who were evacuated from a controversial tent shelter due to a monster storm closing in on the Big Apple.
The city made the move amid concerns that a massive migrant tent at Floyd Bennett Field would collapse from torrential rains and gusting winds — packing them instead into the second-floor gym at James Madison High School five miles away.
The school’s neighbors were not keen on the last-minute decision.
“This is f—ed up,” said a local resident who identified himself only as Rob. “It’s a litmus test. They are using a storm, a legitimate situation, where they are testing this out. I guarantee you they’ll be here for the entire summer.
“There’s 1,900 people getting thrown into my neighborhood, half a block from where I live and we don’t know who they are,” he said.
“They’re not vetted. A lot of them have criminal records and backgrounds and we don’t even know.”
One irate mom even went off on the migrants as they pulled up inside a line of school buses in the pouring rain shortly before 6 p.m.
“How do you feel? Does it feel good?” the woman, who only identified herself as Michelle, screamed at the buses.
“How does it feel that you kicked all the kids out of school tomorrow? Does it feel good? I hope you feel good. I hope you will sleep very well tonight!”
Said a local dad, “How do you feel stealing American tax money?”
The school announced online earlier in the day that classes would be held remotely on Wednesday due to “the activation of James Madison High School as a temporary overnight respite center” for the migrants.
The decision to clear the migrants out of the field came as city officials feared for the safety of the tent city at the field with heavy rains and winds gusting up to 70 mph forecast for later on Tuesday and into Wednesday.
“To be clear, this relocation is a proactive measure being taken out of an abundance of caution to ensure the safety and wellbeing of individuals working and living at the center,” City Hall spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said.
“The families are already in the process of being temporarily relocated and will continue to be provided with essential services and support,” Mamelak added.
“The relocation will continue until any weather conditions that may arise have stabilized and the facility is once again fit for living.”
By midday, officials were already prepping the high school for the migrants’ arrival from the airfield about five miles away, with 10 marked NYPD vehicles and a half-dozen Emergency Management trucks parked outside.
“They told us we had to get everything out by 5 [p.m.],” gym teacher Robyn Levy said outside the school.
“They sent us the email at 6 in the morning. I don’t know when we’ll be able to back.”
“What I want to know is why here?” Levy said. “Why not send them somewhere where students wouldn’t be disrupted, where students learning wouldn’t be disrupted?”
The migrant move began shortly before 5 p.m. as more than two dozen school buses lined up at the field for the short drive to the school.
It wasn’t the first time extreme weather has been an issue at the 2,000-bed tent facility, which took a pounding last month when heavy rain and gusting, 55-mph winds shook metal bolts and hinges loose from the ceiling.
The ferocious storm on Dec. 18 dropped up to 4 inches of rain in the region and had migrants inside the tents fearing for their lives, they told The Post at the time.
“The wind was so strong, it looked like the tents were going to give way and be blown apart,” Venezuelan migrant Reibi Rodrigues said.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/09/metro/migrants-evacuated-from-floyd-bennett-field-due-to-high-winds/
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Christian school in heartland to arm, train staff amid concern with 'threats' coming 'on a regular basis'
A private Christian school in Iowa announced some of its staff will be armed while on campus in a bid to better protect the school from potential attacks.
"The staff who have been selected and trained will remain anonymous, and with God’s help this layer of protection will never need to be deployed. We expect no changes to the day to day experiences of students and staff," the superintendent of Siouxland Christian School, located in Sioux City, Lindsay Laurich said in a letter to the school community last week, which was provided to Fox News Digital.
The school is not detailing how many staff members will be armed while on campus, or their identities, "in order to protect the staff who are taking this courageous responsibility," Laurich told Fox News Digital. She added that the school had been considering the policy for a year before the official announcement last week.
"I would just add that we have been working on this plan for over a year. However, we felt that this was a necessary step that was needed for our school community," Laurich said.
The announcement comes after a mass shooting at Perry High School in Iowa left a sixth grader killed, and four other students and a staffer injured.
"It is an unfortunate reality that schools have become the target of those who wish to do evil. Around our nation and sadly more close to home we see threats emerging on a regular basis. We pray for the community of Perry, Iowa, which experienced an active shooter event," Laurich’s letter to the school community last week states.
Laurich told Fox Digital that following the shooting, she read a Wall Street Journal article on the tragedy and learned of the K-12 School Shooting Database.
"As of this email there have already been 4 incidents and 7 victims. That adds up to more days than we have been back in school since the new year began," Laurich told Fox News Digital in her email on Monday.
Laurich’s letter to the school community detailed that "school safety is our highest priority," and that training and arming certain staffers to directly take on an immediate threat will better protect students in the event tragedy strikes.
"Certain members of SCS staff who have been specifically trained will be armed on campus. The School Board and Administration have developed the process for selecting and training staff with input from law enforcement, our insurance carrier, legal advisors and industry experts. This has been a serious and diligent process over the course of the past year," the letter states.
"In the event of an active shooter event these armed SCS staff are trained to go directly to the threat. Their response will allow teachers and students to get to safe positions and will provide an active response until law enforcement is able to arrive," she added.
school hallway, lockers on left, open door to class at right
Image of an empty classroom from a hallway. (iStock)
Laurich added that the local sheriff, Woodbury County Sheriff Chad Sheehan, has been a great resource amid the policy roll-out.
Schools across the nation have increasingly begun arming certain staffers in recent years to help combat potential threats. A Fox News poll from August 2022 shows that 48% of people favor arming teachers, while experts have previously told Fox News Digital that "hardening" schools with armed guards, armed teachers and additional safety measures, such as security cameras and heavy doors, help better protect students and staffers from potential tragedy.
Laurich noted in her letter to the school community that arming certain staff, though a difficult decision, was "necessary."
"On a personal note, I want you to know that this decision was a difficult one. When I entered the teaching profession it was unimaginable that someone would shoot students and teachers in a school. But the landscape has changed. If a tragic event were to occur at SCS, I need to be able to stand in front of you and say that we have done all that we can do. This is a necessary step we must take," she wrote.
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Australia: University degree dropouts reach record
The rate of students completing their degree within six years hit a record low in 2022 as cost-of-living pressures and plentiful job opportunities pushed up dropout rates.
Federal Education Department data shows 25.4 per cent of students who commenced their studies in 2017 had dropped out by the end of 2022 – the highest rate since records began in 2005 – and 1.3 percentage points higher than the previous corresponding period.
Record attrition rates are running in parallel with decreased interest in university study, with overall numbers down 13 per cent since 2016.
More than 50,000 students drop out each year. High attrition rates come with huge personal costs, including student debts, which rise in line with inflation. Such indexation pushed debts up by 7.1 per cent in June 2023.
Experts also point to opportunity cost – the career paths and full-time work that were sacrificed in favour of a study route that didn’t work out – which is almost impossible to calculate.
“On average, students pay [more than] $12,000 for their incomplete course,” said Andrew Norton, a higher education expert from Australian National University.
“They miss out on the additional lifetime earnings that university graduates typically receive. The time they spent at university could have been used working or studying at TAFE. And the online survey [by the Grattan Institute] shows that most people who drop out feel they have let themselves or others down.”
The pandemic would have kept students at university since there was little hope of getting a job, Mr Norton said. But since the economy opened up and with skill shortages rife, many students would have been attracted into full-time roles to help counter the cost-of-living bite.
Government data points to poor and disadvantaged students as being far more likely to drop out and carry the burden of student loans.
“It is possible that the strong labour market in 2022, in conjunction with increasing costs of living, had a greater influence on decision-making about higher education for [those] students,” a report from the Education Department says.
Incongruously, it is those universities that tend to have the highest student satisfaction ratings that have the highest dropout rates. This is especially the case for regional universities.
“The bottom three performing higher education institutions remained unchanged from 2020,” the report says. “Southern Cross University, the University of New England and CQUniversity have attrition rates 1.5 times more than the average.”
University of NSW, University of Melbourne and Monash remain the top three performing universities, with attrition rates of about 5 per cent or lower. It is even lower for those dropping in second or subsequent years – about 1.5 to 2 per cent.
Ian Li, director of research and policy at the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, said four-year completion rates at some Group of Eight universities were artificially low because of large numbers undertaking double degrees and longer undergraduate programs, such as veterinary science, medicine and dentistry.
An explanation for the low student satisfaction, but low attrition at these universities is probably a combination of too-high expectations and a sense of entitlement countered by high academic ability, Professor Li said.
These universities enrol large numbers of full-time, city-based, often privately educated school leavers with high ATARs, compared to regional and outer metropolitan universities.
School results are important. Students with ATARs below 60 are twice as likely to drop out of university as students with ATARs above 90.
Just over two thirds of students – 69.8 per cent – complete within nine years of starting. Three universities – Charles Darwin, Swinburne and University of Tasmania – have just one in every two students graduate within nine years.
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9 January, 2024
How to Get Better Teachers in America’s Schools
Yes. I too think subject expertise is a better criterion for hiring teachers. Teaching certificates have always been of little use. Now that teaching cetificates mostly come from woke universities, that is even more so. I taught high school economics and geography for two years running without any teaching certificate and my students all did well in their final exams
One rather overlooked reason why subject expertise is desirable is that the person who specializes in a particular subject often does so because he/she is enthusiastic about that subject. And teacher enthusiasm tends to rub off on the students and make them more involved. So they learn nore.
Twenty years ago, when I was hiring teachers for the private K-12 school I founded, I knew better than to recruit certified teachers.
From my previous work as a college history professor, I know that the people least prepared to teach a subject are education majors. Requiring an embarrassingly low minimum of credit hours to be certified to teach a subject—just four courses in some states—education majors encounter the least substance and rigor, but the maximum of racialist theory and left-wing ideology in their program.
If my new school was going to succeed in teaching at the highest levels, then I would have to find subject-matter experts with a heart for teaching. That’s what we did—and what thousands of schools across this country do, because of the humiliating, yet expensive, reality of teacher licensure.
But don’t just take my word for it; the evidence is unequivocal: Traditional public schools have an abysmal education record. Not only are scores as low as ever on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but internationally, our math scores remain poor and uncompetitive.
Much of the blame lies with teacher education programs and state certification mandates that bolster education schools’ enrollment and subject teachers to radical activist ideology.
Education schools are besieged by critical race theory and identity politics, stereotyping everyone as part of oppressor groups or oppressed groups. They prefer ethnic studies and historical studies that denigrate America or anything patriotic.
And while states have been offering alternative routes to teacher certification, the vast majority of teachers are educated and certified through university-based colleges of education. This ought to stop.
States should end requirements for prospective teachers to be certified, and instead empower schools to hire based on subject-matter expertise. At the same time, on the national level, we can take the Trump administration’s reform of college accreditation as a model.
In higher education, accreditation is a de facto federal system of regulating the quality of colleges. And it has a poor track record of quality assurance, a problem exacerbated by a cartel-like group of regional accreditors that split the country into regions and conspired not to encroach on each other’s territory. There was no competition, so accreditors began abusing their power, which included requiring leftist ideology in their standards.
The Trump administration changed all that. Suddenly, any college could choose any accreditor, and states began introducing market competition into accreditation.
The next administration could follow this model for teacher certification.
Congress should also rescind the federal charter of the National Education Association. It’s a teachers union that voted to promote critical race theory nationwide and advocated to keep schools closed during the pandemic.
The organization’s charter should be reviewed and revoked. In its place, Congress could shift that charter to one of the many private, parent-focused groups fighting to right the ship in K-12 education.
Meanwhile, in states that lack the political support to eliminate teacher certification altogether, states should recognize or charter additional private organizations to certify which teachers are ready to teach, outside of the broken system of college of education certification.
Introducing market competition in the validation of teachers will have untold benefits. Some certifiers may focus on patriotism, while others may focus on classical education or the ability to train students for the workforce, science careers, music careers, or a variety of life pursuits.
American teachers are almost as vital as parents in educating the next generation. Let’s stop facilitating anti-American activism and instead ensure we recognize the teachers who are best for America.
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Diversity Ideology Persists at Harvard Despite President’s Departure
Numerous and compounding reasons led to Claudine Gay’s removal as president of Harvard University. Her departure, while a necessary first step, does not solve the problems that required her departure and that continue to plague Harvard and much of higher education.
Gay was manifestly unqualified for the position, with only a fraction of the scholarly accomplishments of her predecessors at Harvard and peers at other universities. She was obviously selected as a symbol for the diversity, equity, and inclusion—or DEI—ideology that Harvard wishes to promote, not because of her merit as a scholar. Gay even used DEI as a cudgel to eliminate rivals—much more accomplished black professors, such as Roland Fryer and Ronald Sullivan—with manufactured charges that they had created hostile work environments.
But the use of DEI as a departure from academic merit and as a weapon for organizational combat is not eliminated with Gay’s departure. The DEI bureaucracy that she helped build and use for her ascent remains intact at Harvard and throughout higher education.
The growing number of plagiarism charges against Gay focused more attention on her lack of scholarly merit as Harvard’s president. Like the old Catskills joke about the food being horrible and with such small portions, academic fraud characterized the meager research output Gay had produced.
These plagiarism charges were more than sufficient reason for her removal as president, but the fact that she remains as a Harvard professor does not resolve the lowering of research standards that her misconduct represents. In addition, Harvard’s willingness to keep Gay as president until the instances of plagiarism became too numerous raises concerns about the double standards with which Harvard and other universities enforce their rules. They would have sanctioned a student immediately—and for far less.
Critical attention on Gay gained momentum after her disastrous testimony before a U.S. House committee investigating antisemitic protests on university campuses. Her unwillingness to say that chanting genocidal slogans would violate Harvard’s code of conduct while the university regularly punishes much more benign speech highlighted Gay’s own use of double standards. But Gay’s removal does not resolve this double standard nor does it mitigate the rampant Jew-hatred found at Harvard and other elite institutions.
Lastly, it should be noted that there have been no sanctions for the members of the Harvard board who hired Gay despite her obvious lack of qualifications, defended her plagiarism, threatened those investigating the matter, and embraced the DEI ideology and double standards that foment Jew-hatred on campus. They should be held accountable, too.
Progress toward resolving these issues at Harvard and elsewhere could not be done without the removal of bad actors like Gay and the board members who enabled her. But the public campaign to fire Gay has not really fixed any of Harvard’s serious problems.
Bloated DEI bureaucracies continue to promote the discriminatory ideology that people deserve different treatment depending upon the racial, ethnic, or sexual identities that place them in “oppressor” or “oppressed” categories. Standards for research integrity continue to weaken and be upheld differently depending on the preferred status of researchers and their findings. And the selective enforcement of codes of conduct that make universities more hostile to anyone deemed to be an oppressor, including Jews, white men, and believing Christians.
The same public campaign that ousted Gay now needs to turn its attention to the policies and practices that allowed her to become Harvard president and produce enough disastrous publicity to force her removal.
We need to dismantle DEI bureaucracies and uproot the ideology they promote on campus. We need to reestablish high and consistent standards for academic research. This would almost certainly require the elimination of academic departments that are characterized more by political advocacy than rigorous inquiry, such as ethnic and gender studies departments.
We also need to get universities to adopt and consistently enforce strong protections of free academic speech while also fully prosecuting violations of their codes of conduct, including physical harassment, trespassing, and the use of the heckler’s veto to drown out disfavored speakers.
Gay’s removal as the president of Harvard, following Liz Magill’s departure at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that the tide is turning in academia. But much still needs to be done to bring these institutions back to serving their original and laudable missions.
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Yonkers HS basketball coach ousted after antisemitic incident at game says he was ‘scapegoat’
The ousted coach of a Yonkers high school girls basketball team said school officials made him a scapegoat when they fired him after some of his players allegedly yelled antisemitic slurs at a visiting team from a Jewish school.
Former Roosevelt High School coach Bryan Williams of New Rochelle told The Post he did an “excellent job with those girls” during his three-year tenure with the team.
But he was canned Sunday after last week’s game against the Leffell School, a private Jewish school in Hartsdale, which took an ugly turn when some of his players allegedly tossed antisemitic slurs at their opponents — including one who allegedly said, “I support Hamas, you f–king Jew.”
That was news to Williams, who said he did not hear anyone jawing at each other or making threats.
“I personally did not hear any of it on the court,” Williams told The Post. “I do not condone what was allegedly done … I do not condone that. I focus on my team and what we have to try to do to win and be successful.”
The coach also said he felt the Yonkers school district — which announced Sunday it had fired him and booted one of his players off the team — “treated me very unfairly.”
“They needed a scapegoat, and I was it,” he said. “They needed a fall guy.”
The Jan. 4 game ended early after the antisemitic slurs, and security guards had to escort the Leffell School players off the court after what the players described as an increasingly hostile contest.
The Yonkers kids played rough, and throughout the contest they yelled “Free Palestine” or other anti-Jewish statements, senior player Robin Bosworth wrote in an op-ed for the Lion’s Roar, Leffell’s student-run newspaper.
“I support Hamas, you f–king Jew,” a Roosevelt player snarled at a Leffell opponent, according to the New York City Public Schools Alliance.
Eventually, the Leffell players walked off during a timeout as the coaches spoke with each other, then the refs. Eventually, they canceled the game, and Roosevelt agreed to forfeit.
On Sunday, Yonkers Public Schools Interim Superintendent Dr. Luis Rodriguez and city Mayor Mike Spano issued a joint statement denouncing the hatred and apologizing for the vitriol the visiting team faced.
“Collectively, we do not and will not tolerate hate speech of any kind from our students and community,” the statement said. “The antisemitic rhetoric reportedly made against the student athletes of The Leffell School are abhorrent, inappropriate and not in line with the values we set forth for our young people.”
But Williams says the game didn’t happen like that. He said his kids played the game the proper way, which included tough defense.
“We were just playing basketball,” said Williams, who is also the CEO, founder and program director of Hoopers NY, an “elite girls national travel basketball program,” according to its website.
He also said he warned his kids to “act appropriately,” since they’d be playing against a Jewish team.
“I told them that — everyone,” he said.
When he found out that the Leffell school kids were accusing his team of being racist, he told his girls to apologize for whatever they said, immediately. But they didn’t get the chance because the game ended abruptly.
He added that he doesn’t believe Yonkers did the investigation properly, and he wished he got to finish out the season with his team. Especially because some are seniors, and he’s worked with them for several years.
“I can’t say who did what,” Williams said. “All I was focused on was my team and how we’re playing, what we need to do to be successful and win.” “We were winning by a lot, so I was shocked because, again, I don’t think my girls would do that.”
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8 January, 2024
Connecticut teacher sues after being disciplined for criticizing 'identity, privilege' training
A Connecticut teacher is suing Hartford Public Schools for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights after he disagreed with an "Identity and Privilege" training.
John Grande claimed in a federal lawsuit that Hartford school officials "fabricated" evidence during a "witch hunt" investigation against him after he disagreed with the training. The Hartford Public Schools district implemented the training in 2020 titled "Identity and Privilege" via Zoom as mandatory professional development.
Grande was a gym teacher for the school system for over 30 years.
"I was targeted for punishment by school district administrators because I refused to endorse their agenda to push critical race theory on teachers," said Grande, who is filing the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
"They launched a witch hunt against me and ran a kangaroo court to convict me for exercising my free speech rights. They threatened my career to silence me, but with this lawsuit, I’m leveling the playing field and forcing school officials to answer for trampling my rights."
The "Identity & Privilege" training, Grande believes, was part of an effort to push critical race theory in the school system.
Per the lawsuit, the Privilege Presentation provided "examples of privilege" and used language that would prompt Grande, a "straight, white, Christian male," to mark "yes" in a section of his "identity wheel."
"Based on those prompts, Mr. Grande believed that the Privilege Presentation targeted a certain class of people, including him, and was an exercise in critical race theory, rather than one aimed at improving the education of students," the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit alleges that the school district attributed language to him that he refutes saying. The gym teacher faced accusations from fellow participants that he made statements about the training that were false as well as a survey response he alleges was altered to include language he had not attested to.
In October 2021, school board members conducted a pre-disciplinary hearing to discuss Grande’s statements. After deliberations in the hearing, the Board issued a disciplinary letter about Grande’s "inappropriate and unprofessional" conduct.
Grande who is represented by the Fairness Center, urged the court to rule that the Hartford Public Schools officials’ conduct was unconstitutional under the First Amendment and to rescind the disciplinary letter from his employee file. The physical education teacher also requested that the court "award him compensatory and punitive damages."
This came after the Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations ruled in Grande’s favor in August 2023 when he brought the issue to the Hartford Federation of Teachers (HFT). According to the CT Insider, the Hartford Federation of Teachers refused to hear Grande’s complaint about Hartford Public Schools because he was not a dues-paying member.
He also claimed that the HFT supported the "Identity and Privilege" training.
The Board of Labor Relations declared that the HFT illegally discriminated against him based on his membership status. The decision enshrined all workers in Connecticut the right to fair representation.
Hartford Public Schools sent Fox News Digital a statement in response to Grange's lawsuit.
"Hartford Public Schools remains committed to creating safe spaces and robust professional learning opportunities regardless of staff background, beliefs or ideology," a spokesperson for the district said.
"While we respect the right for all to seek representation, we disagree with the allegations included in said lawsuit. Due to the pending nature of the litigation, we will not issue further comment."
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Everything Is Racist, Crows Higher Ed
The pinheads who run our institutions of higher education want us to believe that racism is everywhere. In fact, The College Fix reports, 2023 apparently saw 72 items that academics are calling “racist.”
Of course, “racism” has become a catch-all phrase for Democrats that typically just means something they don’t like. For academics, there’s an ideological undergirding — a.k.a. Racial Marxism — that’s based on critical race theory and manifests under the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) banner. Under this cornucopia of bad ideas, there is a victimhood hierarchy that ranks people based on race, sex, and sexual orientation. The more “oppressed” boxes one can check off, the less racist one can be.
If you are gay, black, and a woman, you are the least racist person around because you are historically the most oppressed. But if you are straight, white, and a man, you are the greatest of oppressors and a racist by default. In fact, being white at all just means you’re racist. This sort of thinking is trash, but academics push it because it is advantageous to do so.
If you want a perfect example, look no further than former Harvard President Claudine Gay, a pusher of DEI initiatives who believes that anti-Semitism is bad only if threats turn into actions. Despite her refusal to stand against anti-Jew racism, her school would have let her stay as president. But as donors began to pull their financial support, and as Gay’s extensive record of plagiarism in her academic papers came to light, she finally was forced to step down as president. She still works at the school, however, and will continue to make $900,000 per year as a professor. She blames racism for the fact that she had to step down at all. Yet poor, oppressed Claudine Gay continually fails upward because Americans ostensibly are so racist.
Going back to the list of 72 things that academics called racist last year, here are a few of the most ludicrous ones:
The Body Mass Index is considered racist because black people tend to score a higher BMI than whites or Asians. Last year, the Associated Press compiled articles describing the larger issues of health disparities based on race. But much of what the AP tried to explain as “inequity” and “racism” are really cycles of poverty, genetic predispositions, or poor personal responsibility. The issues of poverty and personal responsibility are particularly malleable to the new definition of “racism.”
Then there are petty items like the new film “Wonka” that is supposedly racist. That’s because the titular character Willie Wonka is the focus of the story, not the other black female lead.
If you keep reading the list, you might be astounded to see that fast food, clowns, classical music, Shakespeare, and even the Apostle Paul make the list of “racist” things or people. It’s beyond parody.
Racism, under the machinations of the woke, has lost its true meaning and is a token for perpetual victims to use as an extortion tactic. Real racism — acts of exclusion, job discrimination, verbal abuse, and violence based on race or skin color — is a relatively rare thing in this era. It’s also illegal. Yet it doesn’t count anymore if the racism is against whites, Asians, or Jews.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103287-everything-is-racist-crows-higher-ed-2024-01-04
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Harvard’s Identity Politics Roulette Wheel
Americans owe a debt to Harvard University’s leadership – not for its obvious decision to oust the school’s president, Claudine Gay, this week – but for hiring her in the first place.
Harvard’s presidential search committee named Gay to her position in December of 2022 after five months of interviews and deliberation – the shortest selection period for a leader of the school in 70 years.
In doing so, the committee’s 15 members chose Gay from a pool of 600 candidates, and its chair, Penny Pritzker, praised Gay as “a remarkable leader…devoted…to expanding opportunity” and who, in her previous leadership roles at the school, “brought…a rare blend of incisiveness and inclusiveness.”
Pritzker emphasized that Gay “has a bedrock commitment to free inquiry and expression, as well as a deep appreciation for the diverse voices and views that are the lifeblood of a university community.”
Liberal alumni groups such as The Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, which counts as its mission “to fight for diversity, equity and inclusion” at the school, gushed at the “historic appointment” of Gay as the university’s first Black woman president.
“We believe that a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion [(DEI)] and racial justice must be at the fore of Harvard’s goals, and this appointment is an important strategic and symbolic step,” the group raved.
Against this backdrop, Gay’s resignation this week after testifying before Congress that calls by Harvard students for the genocide of Jews do not constitute bullying and harassment. Revelations of nearly 50 allegations of plagiarism in her meager academic writings have done more than any event in recent memory to expose the DEI cancer metastasizing in so many prominent societal institutions today.
Had Harvard’s leaders taken their normal time to select a president with unassailable academic credentials rather than focusing on breaking demographic barriers, the same weak Congressional testimony and surrender to anti-Semitism by its chief executive would have done nothing to spotlight the bankruptcy of non-meritocratic identity hiring that forms a central pillar of the DEI grift.
Harvard’s decision to spin the identity roulette wheel with Claudine Gay has cost the school dearly. Investor Bill Ackman, a prominent alum, told Harvard’s leadership last month that her “failures have led to billions of dollars of canceled, paused, and withdrawn donations to the university.”
In addition to Gay’s testimony, Ackman called out Harvard’s DEI racket specifically for its decline, arguing that the university’s diversity office, formed in 2019 under Gay’s leadership, has “led to preferences and favoritism for certain racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ groups at the expense of other groups, and made some members of the Harvard community feel included at the expense of others that are excluded.”
Harvard’s swift financial and reputational freefall under Claudine Gay’s leadership is just the latest confirmation of how the American public sours on once-mighty brands that prioritize woke virtue signaling rather than staying in their lane of excellence.
Bud Light, Target, and the NBA have cratered in public opinion and lost tens of billions in revenue through identity-politics grandstanding. They represent only a few of the more prominent poles holding up the DEI circus tent following the 'Defund the Police' riots in 2020.
Indeed, under President Biden, the federal government has become one of the DEI movement’s biggest cheerleaders.
In addition to rolling out Claudine Gay-esque marquee identity hires in his Cabinet and White House, Biden bragged early in his term, “On my first day in office, I signed [an Executive Order that] charged the Federal Government with advancing equity for all, including communities that have long been underserved, and addressing systemic racism in our Nation’s policies and programs.”
Among other actions, Biden established “the federal government’s first-ever Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council…as a coordinated effort to embed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility principles across the federal government,” reminiscent of political commissars in the Soviet and Chinese militaries.
The result of Biden’s DEI push across the federal government mirrors that of Harvard and Bud Light in their respective spheres, whether in a historic drop-off in military recruitment or the rewriting of President Lincoln’s words at the Department of Veterans Affairs to conform to woke speech codes.
The good news is that Claudine Gay’s public and spectacular dive this week has unmasked the universal damage that DEI has wrought across American society in a few short years, and an opportunity remains to reverse course.
Gay said it best three short months ago in her inaugural address after becoming Harvard’s president: “Rebuilding trust in the mission and institutions of higher education won’t be easy…It lies partly in our courage to face our imperfections and mistakes, and to turn outward with a fresh and open spirit…”
No doubt about it – the DEI-driven sabbatical from our standards is over, and for that, we can thank Harvard’s leaders and their shoddy presidential selection process.
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7 January, 2024
Harvard stands by board chair Penny Pritzker despite growing calls from alums for her resignation
Harvard Corporation’s senior fellow Penny Pritzker will stay put for now as calls for her ouster grow following the immediate resignation of Claudine Gay as Harvard president Tuesday.
Pritzker, who has led the Ivy League school’s corporation since February 2022, will remain in her position, a Harvard spokesperson told the student-run Crimson Wednesday, despite backlash to the controversy that has besieged the elite school and its leaders since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The corporation, which is similar to a board of trustees at other colleges, stood by Gay during the weeks of contention that included immense criticism of her statement to Congress addressing antisemitism last month and questions about the integrity of her academic record.
Following Gay’s resignation, the ire quickly turned to the Harvard Corporation and Pritzker, who also served as commerce secretary under President Obama.
Pritzker, whose brother is Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, was the chair of the search committee that picked Gay to take over for Lawrence Bacow when he left the job last June.
She is expected to be part of the search for a new permanent president, the Crimson reported.
Billionaire and Harvard alum Bill Ackman, who led the charge to dump Gay, called on Pritzker and the rest of the board to step down early Wednesday morning in a 4,000-word essay posted on X that also went into universities’ DEI mission.
“The Board Chair, Penny Pritzker, should resign along with the other members of the board who led the campaign to keep Claudine Gay, orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done,” Ackman said.
“These are the minimum changes necessary to begin to repair the damage that has been done,” he also said.
Peter Malkin, a Harvard donor and the namesake of the Malkin Athletic Center, wants members of the corporation involved with hiring Gay to step down.
“I do think that the relatively hasty action by the Corporation in the search process indicated to me that not a full review was made of qualified candidates who are out there,” Malkin told the Crimson.
Another big donor, Kenneth Lipper, urged the university to reflect on what went wrong during Gay’s tenure as president.
“When we suffer a great loss,” Lipper said, “we must analyze the whys, repair what we can, and accelerate into a fresh performance phase reflective of our 300-year history of scholarly achievement and national leadership.”
Frank Laukien, a visiting chemistry scholar at Harvard, singled out Pritzker as the problem, and told the New York Times she should “share accountability and resign immediately.”
Laukien added in an email to the paper: “We need multiple new independent members of the Harvard Corporation that are not tainted by recent events and failures, and who are not part of the long-standing cronyism at the top of Harvard.”
Pritzker, a 1981 Harvard grad, has been a fellow on the board since 2018 before she rose to its senior fellow. She donated $100 million to the university toward a new economics building months before the appointment, the Boston Globe reported.
Pritzker’s net worth is estimated to be more than $3 billion with much of the family fortune coming from the Hyatt hotel chain, according to Forbes.
The business outlet named her one of the most powerful women in the world in 2009.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/03/news/harvard-stands-by-penny-pritzker-as-calls-for-resignations-grow/
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Harvard -- Out the Frying Pan Into the Fire
Harvard may assume the forced resignation of its president, Claudine Gay, has finally ended its month-long scandal over her tenure.
Gay stepped down, remember, amid serious allegations of serial plagiarism --without refuting the charges. She proved either unable or unwilling to discipline those on her campus who were defiantly antisemitic in speech and action.
But Gay's removal is not the end of Harvard's dilemma. Rather, it is the beginning.
In the respective press releases from both Gay and the Harvard Corporation, racial animus was cited as a reason for her removal.
Gay did not even refer to her failure to stop antisemitism on her campus or her own record of blatant plagiarism.
Yet, playing the race card reflects poorly on both and for a variety of reasons.
One, Gay's meager publication record -- a mere eleven articles without a single published book of her own -- had somehow earned her a prior Harvard full professorship and presidency. Such a thin resume leading to academic stardom is unprecedented.
Two, the University of Pennsylvania forced the resignation of its president, Liz Magill. She sat next to Gay during that now-infamous congressional hearing in which they both claimed they were unable to discipline blatant antisemitism on their campuses.
Instead, both pleaded "free speech" and "context" considerations.
Such excuses were blatantly amoral and untrue. In truth, ivy-league campuses routinely sanction, punish, or remove staff, faculty, or students deemed culpable for speech or behavior deemed hurtful to protected minorities --except apparently white males and Jews.
Yet Magill was immediately forced to resign, and Gay was not. Also noteworthy was Magill's far more impressive and extensive administrative experience, along with a more prestigious scholarship that was free of even a suggestion of plagiarism.
Academia's immediate firing of a white woman while trying desperately to save the career of a less qualified and ethically challenged Black woman will be seen not as a case of racial bias but more likely of racial preference.
Indeed, to keep Gay's job and to defend her from plagiarism charges, both Harvard and Gay herself were willing to say things that were simply absurd, if not patently untrue.
Harvard invented a new phrase, "duplicative language," to euphemize the reality of Gay's intellectual theft.
Even after Gay resigned, Harvard jumped the shark by further downplaying her plagiarism by dubbing it as mere "missteps."
Harvard and its supporters further embarrassed themselves by alleging that if the victims of Gay's plagiarism didn't object, then why did her expropriation matter that much?
Are we then to assume that plagiarism is not a serious violation of the entire ethos of scholarship, quite in addition to the aggrieved plagiarized party?
The university descended even further by suggesting that they were somehow less serious if anonymous scholars lodged the complaints.
Has Harvard ever heard of the reasons why whistleblowers are often protected from retribution by grants of anonymity?
Liberal Harvard, through its lawyers, even threatened the New York Post with legal action if it aired charges of Gay's plagiarism.
Yet only days later, the university was swamped by further proof of Gay's scholarly misconduct, involving improper use of data and more plagiarism extending back even to her dissertation.
Harvard, remember, claimed that it had conducted a thorough investigation that had cleared her of actionable plagiarism -- even as more charges arose of her prior culpability.
But more importantly, what happens to ex-president Gay now?
Does resigning from the Harvard presidency and returning to a full professorship mean that charges of plagiarism disappear?
Would any other Harvard professors continue to be employed without addressing over two dozen separate charges of plagiarism lodged against them?
Do Gay, the Harvard Corporation, and the more than 700 Harvard professors who closed ranks and wrote a letter supporting Gay now argue that plagiarism is no longer a serious offense at the nation's supposedly most preeminent university?
Will students who emulate Gay's habit of copy-and-paste, failure-to-footnote, and misuse of data now be exempt from dismissal or suspension?
After Gay's embarrassing December 5 congressional testimony and her resignation, what now is the Harvard policy toward antisemitism?
If next week, anti-Israel students once again call for the destruction of the Jewish people in Israel all the way "from the river to the sea," or if they again storm Harvard's Widener library, screaming support for the October 7 massacre and intimidating Jewish students, what will the new -- or old --Harvard do?
Again nothing?
Finally, Harvard insinuated that Gay was fired by racist outside pressure --despite the fact that many of her critics were large donors furious about the diminution of the reputation of their alma mater.
Is Harvard suggesting that its own mega-donors are racists?
What then might come next? The resignation of the entire board of the Harvard Corporation?
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California School District Forces Children to Watch Films on Transgenderism and Puberty Blockers
A school district in the heart of wokeland, California created extensive lesson plans and resource lists aimed at pushing gender theory and normalizing child transgenderism with its LGBTQ agenda.
According to documents reviewed by the Daily Wire, Hayward Unified School District made the district's 19,000 students watch disturbing films and documentaries to promote transgenderism and highlight how treatments such as puberty blockers work.
One of the films is a 12-minute short called "I'm Just Anneke," which is recommended for grades 5 to 12.
"Anneke is 12. She loves ice hockey and is a hardcore tomboy. Everybody who meets her assumes she's a boy, but she's not sure if she wants to be a girl, a boy, or something in-between when she grows up," the description read.
A synopsis of the film says that to give Anneke more time to decide if he wants to be a girl, doctors put her on a medication that will suppress hormones that are causing his body to change before he is ready.
Other films include "Gender Matters: Transgender Youth," recommended for grades 6 to 12 and described as "short films about transgender and gender non-conforming young adults."
In addition, children in grades 8 to 12 are being directed to watch a film on how "gender messages shape young people's daily decisions."
The school district also plans to hold a "Pride Flag Ceremony," with one speaker reading "aloud with LGBTQ identities represented" about a "local, impactful historical figure who is LGBTQ and their contributions to the community." Young students will receive ribbons, stickers, flags, posters, and "Protect trans kids shirts."
Teachers and staff have also been given documents on "LGBTQIA+, Gender, & Pride in HUSD," which contain over 90 different pro-LGBT resources, ranging from "Lesson Plans to Create Gender Expansive Classrooms" to "Trans-positive picture books" for children in kindergarten and up.
The Daily Wire revealed that the same school district had previously drafted a lesson plan that presented the Black Panthers as a misunderstood civil rights group despite the Marxist organization openly calling for the use of guerilla warfare tactics against the United States.
They also reportedly spent $57,000 to collaborate with an organization called "Woke Kindergarten," which taught Critical Race Theory that aimed to "disrupt whiteness." Another $23,000 went to a group with Quetzal Education Services, an organization that taught "anti-racist math pedagogy."
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4 January, 2024
Universities Symptom of Much Bigger Problem
I have written in the past about the similarities of the stress and tensions in our country today to the stress and tensions that were taking place in the years before the Civil War.
A free country will always have debate and differences of opinion. But that debate becomes dangerous and destructive when the differences strike at the core premises that define the very existence of the nation. When we can no longer agree about who we are, what we stand for, and why we exist, our very existence comes into question.
As Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Then the basic premises of our free country were challenged by the existence of slavery.
The country is divided today by those who see injustice as a problem to be defined and solved by politics and those who continue to see injustice as evil defined by Scripture and dealt with through repentance and self-correction.
When the issue of slavery tore apart our nation, most Americans were church-going citizens. The dividing line then was between those who saw slavery as a sin and those who did not.
As Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, delivered as the Civil War raged, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other.”
But today the division is between those for whom religion is relevant and those for whom it is not. The latter, overwhelmingly, are on the political Left.
The recent Wall Street Journal/NORC polling on national values shows the picture clearly.
Of those who say religion is personally “very important,” 27% of Democrats say yes and 53% of Republicans say yes.
Of those who say patriotism is “very important,” 23% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans say yes.
Of those who agree that schools and universities have gone “too far … taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity,” 6% of Democrats agree and 55% of Republicans agree.
Of those who agree that “Businesses taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity” have gone “too far,” 7% of Democrats agree and 52% of Republicans agree.
Many are now shocked to see how politicized our universities have become. But the data shows that this is not a problem limited to our universities; it reflects broader, deep changes in our society.
Injustice has become a problem relegated to politics as religion has increasingly been purged from our society.
DEI—diversity, equity, inclusion—is a tool designed by secularists, who produce their own definition of injustice and then design their own quantitative tool to solve the problem they have themselves defined.
This is one slice of ideology that is a subset of broader godless movements in social engineering—communism and socialism.
President Ronald Reagan gave one the nation’s great speeches in March 1983 to the National Association of Evangelicals in which he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
Reagan said then, “But we must never forget that no government schemes are going to perfect man. We know that living in this world means dealing with what philosophers would call the phenomenology of evil or, as theologians would put it, the doctrine of sin.”
Speaking about the then-Soviet Union, Reagan said, “Let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State, declare its omnipotence over individual man … they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”
With the surge to the left in our country, and the purge of the influence of religion, we have produced our own “government schemes,” pretending they will “perfect man” and solve our social challenges.
The result is the ongoing expansion of government and a burden of national debt and government spending that is crushing us.
Reagan quoted William Penn saying, “If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.”
This is where we are today.
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Oregon high school cancels 'all-ages family friendly' drag festival featuring local queen 'Poison Waters'
An Oregon high school was forced to cancel it drag festival featuring local queen 'Poison Waters' after the school allegedly received alarming threats.
The event labeled as 'family-friendly' was scheduled to take place on Sunday afternoon in the school's auditorium at Lakeridge High School located in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
It was presented by the school's Gender and Sexualities Alliance with hopes of bringing 'visibility' to the community.
The drag queen performer, known as 'Poison Waters' that was set to perform is entertainer, Kevin Cook, who also describes himself as a community activist, who has been around since the 1980s.
Earlier this week, the school issued a statement stating that the event was postponed out of concern for the safety of the students, teachers and staff, after the school claimed that 'alarming threats were made by known violent and hate-driven organizations.'
On Tuesday, Libs of TikTok shared the drag show for student event on their site being held by @lakeridgepacers claiming that 'a bunch of parents reached out to them about this.'
'Parents are very upset...school doesn’t care,' the post read, in part. They also alleged the school 'completely disregarded all parents’ concerns.'
It remains unclear what groups sent the threatening messages to the school claiming they would incite violence.
When DailyMail.com reached out to Lakeridge High School to get more information about the incident, they were unavailable for comment at the time of publication.
The event flyer, 'Oswego Drag Fest,' shows a photo of Poison Waters. A $15 donation was suggested where proceeds go towards the Trevor Project, Story Time, Drag Show and Performer.
The school's full statement reads: 'With a heavy heart and deep concern for the safety of our students, teachers, and staff, we must regrettably announce the postponement of the DragFest event scheduled for January 7.
'This decision has been driven by the alarming threats made by known violent and hate-driven organizations.
'These threats have arisen due to invitations extended to such organizations by individuals within and outside our learning community who do not align with our core values of inclusivity and belonging.'
The Libs of TikTok post garnered more than a million views with many expressing relief that the event was canceled with many outraged that a drag show was taking place at the school in the first place.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12922835/Oregon-high-school-cancels-drag-threats.html
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NY Gov. Kathy Hochul announces plan to get school reading instruction ‘back to basics’
New York needs to get back to the basics when it comes to teaching kids how to read, Gov. Kathy Hochul says.
The Governor announced Wednesday that she wants to ditch the trendy “whole language” method of teaching English and get back to drilling kids on phonics and reading comprehension.
“Despite the best efforts, it’s showing that it’s not working anymore,” Hochul said of the state’s new reading plan, dubbed “Back to Basics,” at an elementary school in Watervliet, NY.
“I think every child should have the best shot in life, the best shot to learn how to read, the best shot to become completely literate by the time they leave school.”
The whole language approach teaches children to read entire words and try to understand their meaning within context. Proponents of whole language thought that by battering kids with words again and again, they would pick up the meaning within context. The children’s series “Dick and Jane” being a prime example.
Phonics teaches by piecing together or decoding parts of words to connect them together and understand their meaning, but that style was ditched by mainstream educators in the early 2000’s.
“About 20 years ago, they thought ‘it’s whole different way of learning, why don’t we just put kids in a room with books and they’ll figure it out?’ Do you think that’s very smart?,” Hochul asked the audience at her announcement, which included some fourth graders in the front row.
“No,” one tot retorted.
A growing swath of researchers and activist organizations agree with the fourth grader.
An NAACP chapter has gone as far as petitioning Oakland, Ca. schools, demanding they teach traditional phonics, framing it as a civil rights issue, citing disproportionately lower literacy rates amongst Black, Latino and Asian American Pacific Islander students.
“It’s not just science, it’s common sense,” Hochul said.
The Governor’s proposal is backed by the powerful state teacher’s union, school administrators, and the New York State Parent Teachers Association.
“These policies are not merely the results of the latest fad,” NYSUT President Melinda Person said. “I want to be really clear about this. This is the result of decades of research, brain science information from 10s of 1000s of studies, that is driving us toward this change in instructional practice.”
“NYS PTA is excited that Governor Hochul is supporting our great educators, schools, families and children in this important work,” New York PTA President Helen Hoffman wrote in a statement. “The science of reading instruction has certainly changed over the years, and with this new infusion of resources, support for the important work classroom teachers do each day will be expanded.
The proposed state legislation builds off a sweeping overhaul of elementary literacy instruction rolled out by the Adams’ administration in half of the Big Apple’s school districts in May last year.
The program known as NYC Reads requires city schools to choose between three sets of approved curriculums that focus on reading education for elementary school students.
“New York City has begun doing this and is learning that implementation requires buy-in from teachers and principals,” Nicole Brownstein a spokesperson for NYC Public Schools told the Post.
“[The Governor] is also right in her attempt to require teacher training programs at SUNY and CUNY to emphasize reading instruction that has been proven to be effective.”
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3 January, 2024
President Claudine Gay falls at Harvard
She had no instinct for what was right. She was a moral and intellectual wasteland. So much for affirmative action, Destructive action might be a better term for it
Claudine Gay’s resignation Tuesday from the presidency of Harvard is a measure of accountability amid scandals on campus antisemitism and plagiarism. Her leadership had clearly become a drain on the school’s reputation. The question is whether the Harvard Corporation that chose her and presided over this debacle will rebalance by installing an educator who isn’t afraid to challenge the school’s dominant and censorious progressive factions.
In the months since Hamas brutally murdered Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, the atmosphere on Harvard’s campus has been hostile to Jewish students. During one rally, the Crimson newspaper reported, a student “led the crowd in a chant of ‘Long live Palestine; long live the intifada; intifada, intifada; globalise the intifada.” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi of Harvard Chabad said Dec. 13 that a menorah couldn’t be left outside on campus overnight, “because there’s fear that it’ll be vandalised.” Sen. Dan Sullivan described on these pages the intimidating scene inside the school’s Widener Library.
That was only days after Ms. Gay’s disastrous testimony to the House, which also prompted the University of Pennsylvania’s president to quit. Asked about chants to “globalise the intifada,” Ms. Gay said such calls were “hateful,” “abhorrent,” and “at odds with the values of Harvard,” but she would not say that they violated the code of conduct.
Ms. Gay’s focus was what constitutes actionable bullying or harassment under First Amendment principles. But the double standard on her campus is obvious, and the presidents struck many Americans as smugly dismissive. Ms. Gay soon apologised, saying she “failed to convey what is my truth,” a thoroughly modern thing to say at an institution whose venerable motto is Veritas. “Her” truth, as opposed to the truth, which is what veritas is supposed to stand for.
Then came allegations that passages of text in Ms. Gay’s academic papers had been duplicated, sometimes almost verbatim, from other scholars. Harvard initially told the New York Post that plagiarism claims were “demonstrably false,” via a letter from a law firm with experience in defamation lawsuits, before admitting “inadequate citation” after stories about the allegations broke.
The Harvard Corporation has embarrassed itself throughout these controversies, declaring as recently as Dec. 12: “Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.” The process of finding a new president, it said Tuesday, “will begin in due course.” In the interim, the role will be filled by Provost Alan Garber.
The prescription should be clear, at Harvard and beyond. What has been happening on college campuses results from the failure of leaders to support traditional liberal values of free inquiry and debate. Prestigious institutions are racked with ideological protest from a contingent of students and many faculty who seem to care more about activism than learning. Despite the distraction, or worse, that this poses to good academic work, administrators keep flinching instead of drawing hard lines.
It’s time to try the opposite. Perhaps Larry Summers is available to give it another go.
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Why Literature Is Crucial for a Good Education
Imagine flying an airplane without any practice. No test runs. No simulators. No instructor. No preparation. Just you in the cockpit in a misty cloud, unable to see. There’s a good likelihood that you will crash. In order to successfully fly an airplane, you need to be able to practice the maneuvers over and over before you do them in real life, and you need to learn from the wisdom of an experienced pilot before you take to the skies on your own.
The same holds true for living a good life, which is the ultimate goal of education. We need practice and experience if we wish to be successful—in the truest sense—in life. Few of us can perform any action expertly with no practice, and that also holds true for living well.
Experiencing Life Through Literature
But where can we find “practice” for life? How can children and young adults gain life experience when they are still, by definition, inexperienced? The answer is good literature. Through it, you can experience, in a way, multiple lifetimes—centuries worth of the experience of our civilization’s greatest minds, transmitted to us through the classic literary works of our culture. If education is about forming happy and virtuous human beings who have the wisdom and strength to live well, then literature has a key role to play in it.
All art is an imitation of something, as Plato and Aristotle tell us. A painter imitates a landscape. A sculptor imitates the human form. A fiction writer imitates life itself, and the best novels have about them something of the quality and texture of life in all its complexity, grit, and glory. The greatest writers—literary giants such as Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, and Dostoevsky—are individuals with profound wisdom and experience and penetrating insight into human nature, with its glimmering peaks and shadowy depths, who communicate this wisdom through entertaining and moving imitations of life.
When you read a true classic, you enter into the thoughts and feelings of a character. You get outside of yourself. And, maybe most importantly, you see the consequences of that character’s decisions, both the good and the ill, play out dramatically before your eyes. For children and teens, then, this can be a kind of test run for the decisions they will have to make in their own lives. Guided by the wise literary pilots of past ages, young readers learn from the mistakes and triumphs of characters so that they don’t have to learn the same lessons the hard way—by brutal, unforgiving personal experience. Literature provides life experiences without the painful price tag.
Training the Emotions
Although much of education (rightly) focuses on training the mind, literature adds to this the often neglected aspect of training the emotions—that is, forming within students the habits of fitting emotional responses to what they encounter in the world, responses that align with the right reason. As C.S. Lewis says in “The Abolition of Man,”
“Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence, or our contempt.”
Lewis goes on to lament the rise of what he calls “men without chests,” people whose hearts haven’t been properly developed alongside their heads to react to the world in a healthy way.
We need “men with chests” now more than ever—not sentimental people, those who seek emotion for emotion’s sake, but people whose hearts have been ennobled and elevated by contact with visions of profound beauty and truth, enshrined within great works of art. We need people who react viscerally to evil by rejecting it and to good by yearning for it.
In his description of an ideal education, contained in his “Politics,” Aristotle says, “Virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, [and] there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgements, and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble action.”
Aristotle explains that the cultivation of taking “delight in good dispositions and noble action” can be accomplished through music. He points out that certain kinds of music can exercise our emotions, making us feel courageous, hopeful, etc., and “the habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representations is not far removed from the same feeling about realities.”
Modern science confirms Aristotle’s claim that art—like music or literature—can form the emotions to be healthy. It’s been scientifically demonstrated that reading literary fiction actually improves one’s empathy. After all, literature is always helping us to imagine what it is like to be in someone else’s position.
The Holistic Passion of Literature
Literature appeals to the whole person—the mind, the emotions, the imagination, the memory, and the senses. As poet William Wordsworth says of the power of poetry, “its object is truth ... carried alive into the heart by passion.”
Since it engages so many human faculties at once, it has the power to teach truth in a way that nothing else can. It’s one thing to know what fidelity is in theory. It’s another to see it, to live it out, in some sense, alongside Penelope in the “Odyssey.” It’s one thing to know intellectually that murder is wrong and nihilism leads to despair. It’s another to experience, as it were, the profound and miserable psychological, moral, familial, and legal ramifications of these things alongside Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment.”
Literature is truth embodied, truth brought alive, and truth burned into the heart. And isn’t that what we hope for in the education of our children—that truth will be not only a fact they memorize but also a reality they experience, a contact with something vitally alive and meaningful? Can there be a better form of education than this?
The very best literature goes further still. Through its artistic representation of reality, it draws our attention to things we might otherwise miss, things we think we already know, revealing them to us as strange and new, unveiling the beauty of the ordinary. Indeed, a great work of literature opens our eyes to see the grandeur of what is and opens our ears to hear the echo of the infinite resounding through “ordinary” life, which, with a quickening of the heart, we realize isn’t ordinary at all but rather full of beauty, mystery, and wonder.
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Good News: Catholic Women’s School Comes to Its Senses
Saint Mary’s College, an exclusively women-only institution that’s part of the Notre Dame University system, made headlines a few months ago. In a shocking and shortsightedly woke move, the college announced that it would admit male students. No, Saint Mary’s wasn’t technically going co-ed; the policy change it was proposing would allow male students who “identify” as female to be included on the women-only campus.
However, before Christmas, the college announced a surprising turn of events. The college’s board and particularly its president, Katie Conboy, faced fierce pushback from both the student body and the external larger Catholic Church. It was intense enough that the president and board reversed their earlier woke decision. In a letter cowritten by President Conboy and Maureen Smith, a member of the school’s board of trustees, they addressed the initial decision to change the policy to admit males, as well as their reasoning for reverting to the original policy.
The letter was full of astonishment for the backlash they received: “When the board approved this update, we viewed it as a reflection of our college’s commitment to live our Catholic values as a loving and just community. We believed it affirmed our identity as an inclusive, Catholic, women’s college.”
Note how “inclusive” takes rhetorical priority over “Catholic” or “women.” That tells you all you need to know.
Conboy and Smith then went on to say: “As this last month unfolded, we lost people’s trust and unintentionally created division where we had hoped for unity. For this, we are deeply sorry. Taking all these factors into consideration, the Board has decided that we will return to our previous admission policy.”
This is a victory not only for the integrity of Catholic teachings but also for the integrity of a school whose stated purpose is to be a women-only college. It also, perhaps, exposed these college board members and administrators to the reality that their woke ideas aren’t universally accepted or even true.
Sadly, this isn’t the case for other colleges and universities. Women-only safe spaces are systematically being invaded by mentally delusional males. At the University of Wyoming, Kappa Kappa Gamma allowed a mentally ill young man who identifies as a woman to join its sorority. Six members of the sorority sued, but their lawsuit was thrown out. Now other alumnae who have been speaking up for the girls have been excommunicated from Kappa Kappa Gamma. It truly is astonishing.
Overall on the Gender Marxism front of the culture wars, however, there has been a noticeable turn back toward sanity. Physicians of integrity have been coming forward with years of data backing the science that the current treatment methods for transgenderism are disastrous. A study has come out (as if we needed one) proving that male and female biology are accurate predictors of sports performance. I.e., men are bigger and stronger than women, and aside from an anomalous female, men are going to be victorious most of the time in physical activities.
In many ways, it can be said that 2023 has been a rubber band that snapped back. As writer and investigative journalist Abigail Shrier put it: “The coercive tools of social ostracism and censorship were wielded against us with smug pride. Then, in 2023, our positions became conventional wisdom, but we were still unacceptable. It was all so obvious, suddenly, even to members of the MSM. They’d arrived where we’d long been, but seemed to think they’d discovered the land by dint of their own wisdom, preferring to ignore the grotesque inhabitants.”
Shrier goes on to encourage conservative stalwarts to embrace the newcomers. At least the change is coming. If we as parents, teachers, and concerned citizens continue to push for the protection of our kids — even and especially the older and supposedly wise college kids — reality and truth will be reasserted to those with eyes to see.
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2 January, 2024
Ignorance and Apathy: The history departments at many schools need a serious upgrade
The joke is told about a poll taker who asks about ignorance and apathy in the country. “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” says the respondent.
The consequences of that attitude are playing out across America.
There are two questions most reporters never seem to ask when it comes to mass demonstrations like the recent ones over the Israeli-Hamas War. One is whether they are spontaneous, or are they organized and subsidized by outside entities? Second, have large financial gifts from foreign entities and left-wing organizations compromised some universities that fear losing money should they speak up in ways that might offend the donors? Failure to ask these questions contributes to public (and student) ignorance and apathy.
Valerie Richardson of The Washington Times is an exception among journalists. She writes: “The same U.S. universities that increasingly are seen as breeding grounds for antisemitism have taken billions of dollars in previously undisclosed donations from the Middle East.”
This connection between donations and influence is claimed in a lawsuit by the Lawfare Project on behalf of Carnegie Mellon University student Yael Canaan. She says she has been the target of “pervasive anti-Jewish discrimination.” Canaan linked her allegations to the half-billion dollars donated to the university by Qatar since 2021.
Richardson writes about a report by the Network Contagion Research Institute which showed that “universities reported more than $13 billion … in gifts … from foreign sources” between 2014 and 2019. Kenneth Marcus, president of the Brandeis Center, told the newspaper, “What they want is influence.” Shouldn’t that be obvious?
During her recent controversial testimony before a congressional committee, Harvard President Claudine Gay claimed the school has “strict policies” on which gifts and contracts it accepts and that donors do not influence its policies. Is she saying that antisemitism is home grown? If so, what does that say about the biases of the professors who are transmitting ignorance and what some might consider propaganda to their students?
China has infiltrated American universities by making large donations that support “ Confucius Institutes” which promote Chinese language and cultural programs. In 2019, there were a hundred such institutes. Today, there are reportedly fewer than five. Schools commonly “cited the potential loss of federal funding and external pressures as contributing to their decision to close” their institutes.
However, some critics say the institutes that remain are being used as part of a larger effort to advance the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, which include spying and the theft of intellectual property, stealing U.S. military secrets and harassment of Chinese students and others who are critical of the Beijing regime.
Three years ago, a Jewish organization conducted a first-ever survey in all 50 states to discover what adults under 40 know about the Holocaust. The survey, conducted by the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, found “sixty-three percent did not know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and over half of those thought the death toll was fewer than 2 million.” While more than 40,000 death camps and ghettos were established during World War II, “nearly half of U.S. respondents could not name a single one.” One in 10 respondents did not recall ever having heard the word “Holocaust” before.
Deliberate ignorance and false teaching about events here and in the Middle East and China, along with the refusal of American media to pay serious attention to the connection between foreign donations and university policies and teaching, plays into the hands of those who do not wish America well.
Clearly the history departments at many schools need a serious upgrade and a lot of reporters could use a crash course in history at a university that refuses donations from foreign entities that have agendas.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/103115-ignorance-and-apathy-2023-12-26
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Leftmedia Smears Homeschooling as Dangerous
The Washington Post recently ran an anti-homeschooling propaganda hit piece titled “What home schooling hides: A boy tortured and starved by his stepmom.” The article, which is part of a series the Post is running to smear homeschooling, notes the tragic story of a young 11-year-old boy whose repeated abuse by his stepmother eventually led to his death.
The obvious culprit and perpetrator of this crime is the boy’s stepmother, and she is now in prison as a result. The boy’s father was apparently not present, as he is also doing time in prison, but the article does not make clear whether his incarceration is related to the crime against his son.
The Post covers this heartbreaking story at the outset but then takes a rather twisted turn with the following loaded statement: “Little research exists on the links between homeschooling and child abuse.” What? It sure seems that the conclusion the Post wants to infer is that homeschooling is to blame for this boy’s death.
The biggest reason behind the young boy’s abuse and death had to do with his broken home life. But the Post avoids that glaring factor.
Interestingly, after observing that “little research exists” to link homeschooling and child abuse, the article then goes on to state, “But the research also suggests that when abuse does occur in home-school families, it can escalate into especially severe forms — and that some parents exploit lax home education laws to avoid contact with social service agencies.”
Does the research exist or doesn’t it? This game of sleight-of-hand “journalism” is played to inject an entirely unrelated study from 2014 as “evidence” to support the Post’s preconceived conclusion — the strong implication that homeschooling is more dangerous for children than public schooling.
If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable, but the Post notes for the study that of more than two dozen children treated for torture from five different states, “17 victims [were] old enough to attend school, eight were home-schooled.”
Once again, homeschooling is the Post’s implied villain. Logically, one could just as easily point out that more than half of the 17 victims old enough to attend school went to public or private schools. So, we can now blame public or private schools for the abuse these children suffered?
Absent other specific criteria, that statistic is as meaningless as suggesting that more victims were from states with colder climates than warmer ones. Correlation is not causation, no matter how hard the Post plays like it is.
The real reason for this anti-homeschooling hit piece is the fact that homeschooling has become an increasingly popular option for parents, especially since the COVID pandemic, when the vaunted public school system across much of the country bowed to the increasingly extreme and illogical demands of teachers unions rather than parents.
Furthermore, COVID opened many parents’ eyes to the reality of what their children were being taught. In many instances, they saw that their children were being indoctrinated in leftist ideologies like critical race theory. Schools also pushed the gender-bending nonsense of “transgenderism,” which resulted in preferred pronouns and accesses for “transgender”-identifying students to use the bathroom and locker room of their choice. Some schools are even pushing pornography. And don’t forget about all the ridiculous masking rules.
At the most basic level, schools are failing to educate children adequately. And then schools are dropping testing standards because they are “racist.”
Parents have every right to be upset and out of genuine concern for their children’s education and well-being pull them out of public school and homeschool if possible. Far from damaging their kids, the data overwhelmingly shows that homeschooled children test well ahead of their public school contemporaries.
The Washington Post, by contrast, would have readers think that government and public school officials have more love and concern for the welfare of children than their parents. However, the fact of the matter is that stories of parental abuse are far from the norm, as parents naturally have a greater love for their children than even the best teachers.
So why the spate of hit pieces against homeschooling? The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Hennessey says it’s simple: follow the money.
“The lockdowns and lockouts of 2020 dealt a reputational blow to the education blob — that quasipublic syndicate of teachers unions, government bureaucracies, brand-name credentialing institutions and their media allies whose mission is to keep taxpayer money flowing to public schools. Most of that money is linked to students, many of whom left during the plague year and haven’t returned. Now the crisis is over and the blob wants its monopoly back.”
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103062-leftmedia-smears-homeschooling-as-dangerous-2023-12-21
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Maryland county claims school board can create seat only illegal immigrants can vote on
A Maryland county claims under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, it can create a school board seat that only illegal immigrants can vote for, according to reports.
The Washington Times reported that Howard County officials appeared before a federal court of appeals last month and defended its current process of having a school board seat occupied by a student, in which only public school students are allowed to vote for.
Some Howard County residents are challenging the practice on the basis of it being unconstitutional discrimination in voting, particularly against the county general electorate and students at religious schools who cannot vote for the student seat.
An attorney for the challengers, Michael Smith, told the publication it is a "zero-sum game." He explained that empowering students to choose one of the eight school board members takes away power from the general electorate.
"You have 12.5% of the voting authority of that board that’s removed from registered voters," Smith said.
Eight counties in Maryland have a student serving on their respective board of education. In Howard County, officials argue the selection of a student is more of an appointment because, despite students casting a vote for their student candidate of choice, the board and school officials narrow down the candidates.
A county attorney, Amy Marshak, explained to the publication that the election is not just a popularity contest. "While students do vote, they do it as part of a very limited process," she said.
The case has been through several courts at this point.
A lower court sided with the county and determined the process violates the First Amendment religious rights and 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause of those students who are shut out of voting.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, though, questioned the decision, asking if a vote is not being taken, is it really an appointive process?
The appeals court also argued if it is not an appointment, but it is an election, the process gets tangled with voting rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
"You’ve got this additional seat that is not subject to the one-person, one-vote rule," Chief Judge Albert Diaz reportedly said. "That’s a problem."
The seat held by the student does not have the power to vote on the budget or personnel matters, though plaintiffs in the case say a student board member was able to cast the decision-making vote to close school longer because of the pandemic.
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1 January, 2024
Harvard Honor Council student accuses school of double standard, says President Claudine Gay must resign over plagiarism scandal
She is academic garbage. She shames all real scholars by occupying a leadership position. Her only qualification for her position would seem to be her skin color. The usual Leftist racism at work
A member of Harvard’s student Honor Council called for the resignation of university president Claudine Gay over her ongoing plagiarism scandal — accusing the school’s governing body of having one standard for the embattled administrator and another for the student body.
“Gay’s getting off easy,” the student, who sits on the council tasked with deciding sanctions for classmates caught plagiarizing, wrote in a letter published anonymously in the Harvard Crimson Sunday.
“Let’s compare the treatment of Harvard undergraduates suspected of plagiarism with that of their president,” they wrote.
“When students — my classmates, peers, and friends — appear before the council, they are distraught. For most, it is the worst day of their college careers. For some, it is the worst day of their lives. They often cry.”
First time plagiarism infractions — which can stem from omitted quotation marks, and incomplete or absent citations — typically result in one term of probation and the stripping away of the student’s “good standing” status, which prevents them from studying abroad or even graduating, the author wrote.
Repeat offenses can result in students being forced to withdraw from the university for two semesters, according to the letter, published in Harvard’s student newspaper.
“What is striking about the allegations of plagiarism against President Gay is that the improprieties are routine and pervasive,” the letter said.
Gay was found to have used “duplicative language without appropriate attribution” in some of her academic work, the school’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation said after an investigation.
Instead of Gay being forced to step away from the university as students would for similar offenses, Harvard stood behind its president and allowed her to correct the mistakes, the student letter noted.
“That the Corporation considers her corrections an adequate response is not fair to undergraduates, who cannot simply submit corrections to avoid penalties,” the student wrote.
“When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year. When the president of their university is found responsible for the same types of infractions, the fellows of the Corporation ‘unanimously stand in support of’ her,” the letter said, citing the Corporation’s statement about the scandal.
The scandal has left many calling for Gay’s resignation and others shrugging the mistakes off as unintentional.
“A sober-minded assessment of the plagiarism charges indicates that Gay’s behavior constitutes plagiarism, but since the errors do not appear intentional, they do not warrant her resignation,” the Harvard Crimson’s editorial board wrote in an op-ed published Saturday.
The member of the student Honor Council dismissed arguments excusing the plagiarism for being unintentional as ridiculous.
“While a single lifted paragraph could be blamed on a lapse in judgment, a pattern is more concerning,” the student wrote.
“There is one standard for me and my peers and another, much lower standard for our University’s president. The Corporation should resolve the double standard by demanding her resignation.”
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Harvard Should Pay Its Fair Share
What can we do about the corruption of American higher education? Milton Friedman had an idea 20 years ago: Tax the schools rather than subsidize them. That reflected a change of heart. In “Capitalism and Freedom” (1960), he argued that college education had enough “positive externalities” to justify subsidies. But when I was researching a book in 2003, I emailed him (then 91) and asked if he still believed that.
He replied: “I have not changed my view that higher education has some positive externality, but I have become much more aware that it also has negative externalities. I am much more dubious than I was . . . that there is any justification at all for government subsidy of higher education. The spread of PC”—political correctness—“would seem to be a very strong negative externality, and certainly the 1960s student demonstrations were negative externalities. . . . A full analysis along those lines might lead you to conclude that higher education should be taxed to offset its negative externalities.”
The past 20 years have seen negative externalities multiply: discriminatory hiring, promotion and contracting; the exclusion of conservative scholars; the suppression of speech. The case for taxing universities is stronger than ever.
A small move in that direction occurred in 2017, when Congress enacted an endowment tax. But it is small and applies only to some 35 wealthy private schools. House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith wants to increase that levy, but the effect would still be limited, since it would exclude public schools with small endowments.
A far better approach would be for state governments to reduce subsidies and introduce some taxation—local levies on property or state sales taxes for tuition and fees. The feds could help by getting out of the student-loan business and taxing schools’ investment income. Why should ordinary citizens pay a 23.8% tax on capital gains while Harvard, with its $50 billion endowment, pays nothing?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-should-pay-its-fair-share-taxation-higher-education-7ebe95db
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Universities Are Prioritizing Their Health Systems Over Teaching. That’s Killing Academic Freedom
Higher education has had a historically bad year.
In June, the Supreme Court imposed constitutional restraints on how universities select its own students. Throughout the summer, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trumpeted his bullying of higher education in the state, making it a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. And most recently, university presidents were humiliated during a congressional testimony on antisemitism on campus. One central lesson emerging at year’s end is that, more than ever, we in higher education need our university leaders to be bold and articulate defenders of academic freedom. Yet this is precisely what they have not been able to do.
Before we blame the individuals on center stage, however, we should look at the structural causes that brought us to this moment. A big reason for our disenchantment is that the job of a university president no longer prioritizes being a pioneering thought leader, but instead requires the skills of a savvy lobbyist. For most large universities, administrators’ attention has increasingly focused on outside funding and large revenue generators and away from student instruction and traditional scholarship.
One significant reason — one that has been wholly unappreciated but is growing in importance — is the role many universities play in our nation’s health sector. Universities with health systems are better understood as health systems with universities. As such, they are highly dependent on the graces and whims of policymakers, and their leaders are structurally restrained from asserting independence against, or challenging the wrongheaded politics of, elected leaders. In the end, academic freedom is the big loser.
Window into the Politics of Higher Education
It is not just Desantis, the Supreme Court and Congress. Many state legislatures have targeted higher education to advance their political objectives, and my home state of North Carolina offers a vivid microcosm of what might be called the new politics of higher education.
This legislative term, the state’s General Assembly advanced a number of bills this year that targeted academic ventures on the state’s University of North Carolina flagship campus, including a bill that would eliminate tenure, an effort to prescribe how instructors are to teach American history, and a budgetary intervention aimed to promote certain political ideologies.
The UNC faculty protested vocally, as nearly 700 signed a letter decrying the state’s recent actions “violate the principles of academic freedom and shared governance that undergird higher education in N.C. and the U.S.” UNC administrators, however, have not protested. Instead, UNC leaders aggressively sought special favors for its health system. The crown prize was the North Carolina Senate vote, 48-0, to grant the UNC Health system immunity from federal antitrust laws (after public scrutiny, the measure did not pass the state House).
We should be clear: health policy experts — including researchers at UNC’s renowned Gillings School of Global Public Health — agree that this is a horrendous policy move. The federal antitrust laws, designed to prevent monopolies and preserve competition, are gravely needed in the health sector (in the Senate’s limited debate, this much was conceded), and voluminous research has shown that hospital monopolies severely raise health care costs while reducing quality.
The mystery is not why the state considered implementing such unwise policy, since legislatures routinely extend special privileges to favored institutions. The real curiosity is why, with its academic integrity threatened and its independence on the line, UNC invested its limited political capital to ask for such a naked political favor.
The University-turned-Health System Finances
One answer — albeit a distressing one — is that UNC, like many large universities, is really a hospital system with a university appendage. UNC Health has a budget that is about $2.2 billion more than the entirety of UNC’s flagship campus in Chapel Hill ($3.5 billion vs $5.5 billion). This is also true for North Carolina’s private universities that operate health systems, like Duke University, whose health system has a budget $1.1 billion larger than the remainder of the university ($4.5 billion vs $3.4 billion). Moreover, both health systems are growing faster than the rest of both campuses.
These facts are important because the financial health of hospitals is highly dependent on political decisions. For example, the North Carolina General Assembly’s legislative session this year included debates over Medicaid expansion, which would infuse enormous sums of additional dollars into the state’s health sector, and “certificate of need” rules that would govern whether current hospitals could prevent competition from new entrants. The legislature — like all other state legislatures — also routinely makes decisions on insurance eligibility, the array of services that medical professionals may offer (so called scope-of-practice rules) and the tax-exempt status of many health care facilities.
So, perhaps it is not surprising that UNC leaders prioritized legislation that enhanced the financial security of its hospital system rather than measures that would protect its Chapel Hill faculty. And perhaps it is not surprising the University of Pennsylvania, MIT and Harvard — each of which rely heavily on government, foundation and industry funding (UPenn’s health system has a budget that is more than twice the university’s) — might seek presidents who exhibit the cautious effectiveness of corporate leaders, who can assure cooperation with policymakers and compromise with ideologues, rather than visionaries who inspire resoluteness
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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