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July 31, 2024
Teaching the Teachers: Subject Expertise Comes First
Recent polling by College Pulse for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) reveals that college-aged Americans are abysmally ignorant of our rich historical heritage and knowledge of our most important civic institutions.
An implication is that the colleges neglect to instruct students to remedy that scandalous deficiency. While that is no doubt correct, the problem is even bigger, and the universities are doubly complicit: primary and secondary school teachers have received their training largely from colleges of education. Historically, the civic literacy we are discussing has been taught to students in high school.
The College Pulse survey asked questions such as “Who was the Father of the Constitution?”—only 31 percent chose the correct answer from four choices—“Who is the current Speaker of the House of Representatives?” or “What is the Electoral College?” Current college students did poorly on questions like these, but overwhelmingly—75 percent—knew that Jay-Z is married to Beyonce.
Who is to blame for these abysmal results?
This foundational knowledge should be taught in high school—or even earlier—and then reinforced in college classes in history or government. But where do the high school teachers themselves get their training? In large part, their studies focused on colleges of education. Typically, to teach high school students, individuals need a teaching certificate conferred by a state agency, and to get that certificate, one has to take a bunch of education courses. The educational reform literature is also replete with stories indicating that colleges of education emphasize student self-esteem while minimizing the teaching of fact-based contact. Tried and true instruction methods, such as phonics to enhance reading comprehension, have been downplayed. Probably at least partly due to these developments, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing data show that U.S. students generally rank below several Asian and European countries in understanding core concepts in mathematics and reading. For example, the 2022 results had an average math score for 15-year-old students in all participating countries of 472, while the U.S. average was only 465—below 25 other participating countries.
A most interesting and arguably hopeful development in modern times has been the sharp decline in the attractiveness of getting undergraduate college degrees in education.
In 1970-71, 21 percent of American bachelor’s degrees conferred were in education, compared with less than five percent in 2021-22. The absolute number of degrees conferred nationally far more than doubled, declining almost 50 percent in education. Yet the number of elementary and secondary teachers increased by over 50 percent: more teachers, but less teacher education at the undergraduate level.
Speaking personally, I had two kids who became teachers during this period. Both of them majored in other academic subjects—geography and the performing arts—but now are teachers or school administrators with advanced degrees in education—one a doctorate. Requiring intensive study in an academic field strikes me as essential.
There are other positive developments: there has been a rise in enrollments in non-traditional public schools, including homeschooling and private institutions, and an increasing number emphasizing old-fashioned learning, including even the study of Latin. Another trend, of course, has been the birth dearth, the sharp reduction in fertility rates—37 percent between 1970 and 2020—forcing some downsizing of urban public schools, which tend to be learning cesspools.
I think a strong case can be made for state governments to outlaw the award of bachelor’s degrees in education at public universities. I once testified before a state legislature that it ought to be a felony for a school superintendent or principal to knowingly hire as a teacher a holder of a bachelor’s degree in education—perhaps that is going too far. As a college professor without a single course in “how to teach” who won enough teaching awards to occasionally be asked to speak to prospective high school teachers on teaching effectiveness, I think graduate programs emphasizing research into effective teaching are highly appropriate, but otherwise, colleges should get out of the business of trying to define and produce fine primary and secondary teachers. Let them learn academic subjects well first.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=15004&omhide=true&trk=title
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Universities need to look closely at how they are perceived
Australia is not the only place in the world where universities are on the nose among a significant proportion of the population. For a sample of feeling in the US, see the speech by Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance that is getting new attention since Donald Trump chose him as his running mate.
The Universities are the Enemy is its unequivocal title, and it comes from a man whose arts degree from Ohio State and law degree from Yale were stepping stones in his journey from a dysfunctional, drug-ridden community in the post-industrial midwest to where he is now.
The anti-university feeling in Australia is not close to the level of sheer venom felt by Trump supporters in the US. But here it’s real enough, both at the level of the general population and in the political arena. Universities’ ability to directly influence political decision-making is minimal. The evidence is there in the casual ease with which the Albanese government has ransacked the international education industry this year without pushback from any political party. The fact that international education earned nearly $50bn in export revenue last year seemingly counted for nothing.
Yet Universities Australia has estimated that the government’s first action last December to restrict the issuance of student visas will cost universities $500m in revenue this year. If the government’s legislation for student caps passes parliament then universities and other international education providers will be hit with a second round of pain when Education Minister Jason Clare puts caps on student numbers with powers that enable him to control numbers down to course level and by geographic location.
How did universities arrive in this invidious position? There are two parts to the story. One is universities’ own blinkered journey to the precipice. The other is the lack of general awareness – both among the public and in political and business circles – as to what universities actually do and why it has importance.
Starting with the former: universities’ mishandling of their relationship with the public reached a peak in their handling of two issues.
One was vice-chancellors’ million-dollar salaries. University governing bodies, and vice-chancellors themselves, acted as if this issue – perceived by the public as an example of the gross indifference of the elites – didn’t matter.
But it did and does matter, and badly damages universities’ ability to be taken seriously by the public when they argue for more resources. Australian university leaders’ salaries are well above those in comparable countries. This was abundantly clear when Brian Schmidt, one of the few university leaders who have acted sensibly in this matter, became vice-chancellor of the Australian National University in 2016. He asked that his salary be pegged to international benchmarks and he accepted a package worth two-thirds the amount received by his predecessor. No other vice-chancellor is known to have followed his example.
There was another telling moment. When Michael Spence chose to leave the vice-chancellorship of the University of Sydney in 2020 to become head of University College London, a university of greater prestige, he halved his $1.5m salary package. What more needs to be said?
The other key issue on which universities have lost public trust is international students. For more than three decades they have been a growing source of revenue for most universities, filling the ever widening gap in research funding.
There has always been an underlying level of public disquiet about international students. There are fears that they take Australian students’ places – they don’t – and more well-founded evidence that too many international students have poor English skills and that some courses are overwhelmed by international students to the detriment of locals. Universities responded to this in the wrong way.
Yes they had a valid reasons to enrol international students. In reasonable numbers they enrich campus life and offer wider benefits to the nation by boosting exports and building strong ties in the region. But most universities reacted to the public disquiet by being secretive about how many international students were enrolled, how they were distributed across various degree courses, and how many came from each student source country.
In the absence of information, speculation and partial truths filled the gap. Parents heard only what their children told them about classes overcrowded with international students with poor English.
What if universities, 10 years ago, had collectively decided to put limits on the total number of international students (say at one-third of enrolments), and limited the proportion of international students enrolled in each course and the proportion from each source country? And then reported each year on these figures and also shared with the public more details of what they were doing to secure housing, part-time jobs and other necessities for international students?
If they had, they would be in a far better position to withstand the heavy pressure today to cut international student numbers. Such self-regulation would have required a revenue sacrifice from the big five universities – Melbourne, Monash, Queensland, NSW and particularly Sydney – which have benefited enormously from the wave of Chinese students coming to Australia. But it probably would have avoided the financial pain universities now are facing, let alone the damage being done to Australia’s reputation among international students.
But let’s be fair to universities. There really is a lack of appreciation of the importance of their role. Even those who buy the extreme Vance line that universities are so dangerously woke they pose a threat to Western civilisation (which I don’t) still have to acknowledge what universities do on a day-to-day basis. They make critical research breakthroughs, they invent new technology and they train the next generation of engineers, teachers, tech workers, nurses and specialists in countless disciplines that modern society is utterly dependent on. All of this has very little to do with woke students, freedom of speech controversies or disputes over Gaza and anti-Semitism.
I’ve come to the end of my nearly seven years as higher education editor at The Australian. It’s 21 years since I first covered the university sector and much has changed in that time. But universities are facing a more difficult outlook now than any I have seen.
What’s the solution? It’s up to universities to take a clear eyed look at what they do and how they do it. It’s not enough for them to cite their achievements. They need to look at their weaknesses and where the public isn’t buying their story.
And it’s up to the rest of us to acknowledge the critical benefits universities produce and ensure that they can continue.
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Australia: Specialist disability schools won’t be phased out, government says
The federal and state governments won’t move to phase out specialist disability schools and have kicked the future of disabled group homes and segregated employment programs down the road in their response to the $600m disability royal commission.
The Albanese government also put a new disability rights act on the backburner, along with a federal watchdog to protect disabled people’s rights, and knocked back a proposal for a new federal minister for disability inclusion.
The commonwealth and state governments outlined their initial response to the 222 recommendations in the final report of the royal commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability on Wednesday, an inquiry that ran for more than four years.
Of the 172 recommendations for which it has primary or shared responsibility with the states, the federal government accepted 13 recommendations and another 117 in principle, while a further 36 were under consideration. Six were “noted”, an indication the government is unlikely to act on them, including the recommendations on segregated education.
The government’s response noted the split among the six commissioners on education, with three calling for special schools to be phased out by 2051 and the others saying they remained a viable option.
Developing Australians Communities Co-founder River Night has weighed in on whether or not the National Disability Insurance Scheme [NDIS] is costing Australians too much.
“The Australian government recognises the ongoing role of specialist settings in service provision for students with disability and providing choice for students with disability and their families,” the federal response notes.
“State and territory governments will continue to be responsible for making decisions about registration of schools in their jurisdictions, with the intent to strengthen inclusive education over time.”
To facilitate some of the recommendations, the federal government said it was committing an additional $117m on programs including improving community attitudes to disability and supporting advocacy.
This was on top of more than $225m previously announced for a new disability employment program and $3bn over the last three budgets to drive greater safety and inclusion for people with disability, social services minister Amanda Rishworth said.
Ms Rishworth said the government was committed to the disability royal commission’s vision “where people with disability are free from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.”
She said many of the recommendations were accepted in principle, meaning more work was required to flesh out the detail, and there would be a six monthly report delivered to monitor progress.
Around 5.5 million Australians have some form of disability, and 600,000 are on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
The royal commission reported in September after more than four years of hearings. While it laid out a broad road map for disability reform, the commissioners were split on key policy areas such as group homes, education and segregated employment.
The commission called for a response from government by March 31, but this was delayed to allow for more consultation with the sector.
The government’s response noted more work would be done on disability housing within the NDIS review framework before a final view was taken on the future of group homes
“The Australian Government and state and territory governments support the development of a diverse range of inclusive housing options for people with disability that support them to exercise choice and control over their living arrangements,” the government’s response said.
It said any consideration of a new disability rights act should be done in conjunction with ongoing work around whether Australia should establish a new federal Human Rights Act.
And it said there was already sufficient representation in cabinet on disability issues through the social services and NDIS ministers in “noting” the recommendation for a new Minister for Disability Inclusion.
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July 30, 2024
Trustees approve policy strengthening IU’s commitment to free speech
The Indiana University Board of Trustees has strengthened the university’s longstanding commitment to protecting and supporting the right to free speech by affirming IU’s existing First Amendment Policy and ratifying a complimentary Expressive Activity Policy. The new policy supports protests and demonstrations that don’t materially and substantially disrupt university operations or hinder the expressive activity of another individual or group.
The Board of Trustees’ vote during a special meeting Monday came after a recent independent report by Cooley LLP assessing the April events in IU Bloomington’s Dunn Meadow. The report included several recommendations, including implementing a new Expressive Activity Policy.
“The Dunn Meadow report validated the need to update policies that were outdated, unclear and inconsistent across IU’s campuses,” Trustees Chair W. Quinn Buckner said. “Indiana University has a longstanding commitment to advancing free speech. In order for free speech for all to flourish, we needed to clarify our policies so people clearly understand the allowable time, manner and place for free expression. We can’t let one person or group’s expression infringe on the rights of others, disrupt learning experiences for our students or interrupt regular university business.”
The Expressive Activity Policy continues to encourage freedom of expression for all, while also setting clear expectations for how members of the IU community and visitors to IU campuses must behave.
More here:
https://news.iu.edu/live/news/37662-trustees-approve-policy-strengthening-ius
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Adelaide woman Brooke Robran exposes issue her generation faces
I do feel sorry for this woman. She is up against it. But where were her parents? By the time she got to university, they should have had enough to pay the fees for her. Parents have been saving for their children's education since the 19th century.
It's cheaper to pay HECS in advance anyway. I paid all my son's fees in advance so he entered the workforce with zero debt and now in midlife has significant assets
And she is attractive so why does she not get a bloke to help share the costs? Everything does not have to be paid for by the government. Too much is already paid -- mostly for nonsense such as windmills. Better spend it on education than superfluous "renewables"
A young Aussie has sparked a fierce debate after calling out older generations and saying they have ruined the possibility for younger generations of buying their own homes.
Adelaide influencer Brooke Robran explained young Aussies were struggling to move out of home due to soaring HECS debts and unattainable property prices.
'How the f**k are people in their early 20s meant to move out of home now?,' Ms Robran asked in a video posted to social media.
'Generations before us have really f***ed us over here.
'When people used to go to uni it was free. Now the people that go to uni have $26,000 on average HECS debt.
'People like me aren't moving out of home until they're thirty now because they can't afford it. I swear you need four different jobs to make the amount you need to buy a house now.'
University was once free for students under Australia's 21st Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam.
During his brief four-year term, Mr Whitlam famously abolished tuition fees in 1974 and introduced a living allowance for full-time students.
Mandated payments returned in 1989 under Bob Hawke's Labor government, which also introduced the HECS programme.
Initially, all degrees had a uniform annual fee of $1,800. This changed in 1996 when the Howard coalition government introduced a three-tiered fee system.
The fees increased from a flat rate of $2,454 to $3,300 for Band One degrees, such as education and humanities, and $5,500 for Band Three degrees, including law and accounting.
Both sides of Australian politics have since agreed students should continue to pay the cost of higher education.
Data from comparison website Finder shows the average HECS debt sits at $40,000 with 21 per cent owing between $40,000 and $100,000 and just over one per cent owing more than $100,000
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The secret probe into university facing foreign student allegations
There have long been allegtions that lots of Indian students get into Australia via fake documents and it is true that many cannot cope with their studies when they get here. But they generally become productive members of the workforce anyway so it is no great grief. Where do you think all the Indian restaurants come from?
The country’s higher education watchdog is probing an Australian university accused of aggressively poaching foreign students from other institutions and for having lax recruitment practices and low English standards for admissions.
Documents obtained by this masthead reveal Torrens University is under scrutiny from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency after the agency became concerned by the university’s recruitment of international students and a rapid increase in its enrolments.
The correspondence also reveals multiple Australian universities enrolled students who were later found to have provided fake documents in their applications, as part of systemic fraud occurring in Haryana state in northern India.
The documents, released under freedom of information laws, show TEQSA has launched a compliance assessment into Torrens to determine whether the university is still meeting the standards required to remain registered.
Torrens, which has campuses in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, has been the subject of 12 complaints since 2022. The watchdog said this was a “large number” for one institution.
Elite unis lower ATARs in favour of special entry schemes
Among the allegations made by complainants was that Torrens pushes education agents to poach from other providers, offering a 35 per cent fee discount for onshore international students.
Separately, an unnamed NSW public university alleged Torrens’ agents had been involved in unethical behaviour and were actively encouraged to poach its students by promising large discounts and other incentives.
Another complainant alleged high visa refusal rates were driven by “corrupt behaviour” in markets such as India, and that Torrens sales staff had made decisions related to student admissions.
The documents also revealed allegations that staff who raised concerns about the practices were forced to resign or had their employment terminated.
A Torrens spokesman said staff were bound by its code of conduct and undertook regular mandatory compliance training, while recruitment agents were also bound by stringent requirements.
“We would terminate – and have done so – any contract where an agent was found to be in breach,” he said.
The ongoing probe into the university’s practices comes as the federal government pushes ahead with a major crackdown on foreign student numbers. Education Minister Jason Clare said “shonks and crooks” were undermining the international education sector.
The government late last year changed its visa processing system to prioritise higher education providers deemed the least risk of recruiting “non-genuine” students, those who come to Australia primarily to work, not study.
University risk ratings from the Department of Home Affairs were updated in April. Federation University, the University of New England and the University of Tasmania were all given level 3 grade, the lowest category. Torrens University remained a level 2 provider.
‘Sudden and significant’ increase in enrolments
The watchdog wrote to Torrens in January last year concerned about its “sudden and significant increase” in international students
“TEQSA is concerned about the risk that students may lack the academic preparation and proficiency in English required to participate in their intended study,” the letter reads.
“The significant increases, particularly from new and existing source countries such as Laos, Kenya, Ghana and Nepal, also raises concerns about the measures taken by [Torrens] to ensure that student agents are only recruiting genuine students.
“In addition, we have identified a number of agents engaged by [the university] who had high visa refusal rates in 2022 and in previous years. This raises material concerns about the efficacy of the agent monitoring framework.”
In July 2023, TEQSA was concerned enough about the university’s practices that it moved to launch a compliance assessment, which is still under way.
It also wrote to at least one other university in 2023, expressing concern over its recruitment practices and formally requesting further information, the documents reveal.
Former TEQSA chief commissioner Professor Peter Coaldrake wrote to universities and colleges in August, warning them of their obligations when recruiting, admitting and supporting overseas students. He revealed the regulator was investigating several institutions’ risk of non-compliance.
However, TEQSA has refused to reveal if those investigations led to compliance assessments into other universities’ practices. Compliance assessments can begin only when the regulator identifies “serious compliance risks”.
Widespread fraudulent applications
The documents separately reveal multiple universities – who were not identified – were in contact with TEQSA in 2022 and 2023, concerned about admissions fraud in Haryana state.
One university informed TEQSA in October it had determined there was systemic fraud in applications coming out of the region. It said students had been using fake academic documents and fake employment records.
It discovered the fraud only after the students were enrolled. This was after it was known that too many applicants from the region were “non-genuine” temporary entrants.
Former Department of Immigration deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said that while smaller operators had been the target of much of the government’s visa crackdown, larger Group of Eight institutions, such as the University of Sydney, needed more scrutiny.
He believes the increase in foreign student admissions has affected universities’ ability to deliver high-quality degrees.
“If I was sending my child to another country to get an overseas education, the last thing I’d want was for my child to be studying in a class full of students from the same country,” he said.
The Torrens spokesman said it closely managed its recruitment of international students, who make up 48 per cent of its cohort, and that it was proud to have maintained a level 2 risk rating.
“Our offshore international student enrolments grew in 2022 compared to 2019 – as borders re-opened post the COVID pandemic. However, this was substantially offset by a decline in onshore international student enrolments,” he said.
“We believe in student choice, and Torrens University works hard to offer a highly competitive and high-quality educational experience with small class sizes, individualised support and an innovative curriculum, that is competitively priced for international students.”
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July 29, 2024
California School District Forces Students to Room With Trans Classmates to Go on Overnight Trips
Students in a Southern California school district could be forced to choose between rooming with a transgender-identifying student or missing out on an overnight school field trip.
If parents complain about their child rooming with a transgender-identifying student of the opposite biological sex, staff in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District listen to the parents’ concerns, then say that the child’s rooming assignment isn’t the parents’ choice, according to emails from 2021 and 2022 obtained by the Center for American Liberty and shared with The Daily Signal.
The only option for students who are uncomfortable staying in a room with transgender students is to opt out of the trip, Sarah Coley, the school district’s administrative director, said in an email to school district employees regarding a sixth-grade science trip.
“You would say to the students/parents, ‘If you have questions about the assignment, please feel free to discuss with me,’” Coley wrote in the email. “Then, if a parent says ‘hey, I don’t want my student with [who],’ you could provide an ear to listen and consider whether the student is a good fit, but the eventual response would be, ‘If you / your student is not comfortable with the rooming assignments and process of staying with other students in a room, then they can elect not to participate in this optional trip.’”
Coley’s email continues: “Parents and students do not get to pick, and saying I don’t want to stay with ‘Susie’ because ‘Susie isn’t a real girl,’ is no different than saying, ‘I don’t want to stay with Sara because Sara is [white/older/non-religious, etc.]’”
Coley, a 2018 graduate of California State University Long Beach, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
A mother who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about threats to her family told The Daily Signal that parents should be able to assume their child is safe with school officials, but they can’t in the Newport-Mesa district. The mother said she chose to take her children out of the district and homeschool them a few years ago.
“You just have to assume that my child is not safe, which is really scary,” she said. “The school does not have your child’s best interest at heart. They are more concerned with social justice issues.”
Mark Trammell, executive director of the Center for American Liberty, the group that conducted the public records request, criticized what he called the Newport-Mesa school district’s inconsistency in using privacy rights to hide gender identity from parents while ignoring privacy rights in making rooming assignments.
“It is ironic that school districts cite a student’s right to privacy as justification for schools keeping secrets from parents, but completely disregard student privacy rights when forcing girls to room with a boy pretending to be a girl,” Trammell said in an email to The Daily Signal. “Either the right to privacy exists or it doesn’t; schools cannot selectively apply it when it advances their woke political narratives.”
Newport-Mesa is the same school district where a high school promoted an LGBTQ organization that helps minors find referrals for irreversible transgender surgeries and hormone regimens.
Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California, has scannable QR codes in its hallways that take students to an “LGBTQ+ Resources” webpage, including a link to “LGBTQ Affirming Therapy.”
The high school took down its resource page after the publication of The Daily Signal’s report on Wednesday.
Coley also championed “Sexuality and Gender Galaxies” in emails to school district staff members that provide definitions of terms, including “two spirit,” “asexual,” “polysexual,” “clear platonic,” and “androgynous.”
According to the emails, Coley also is the point of contact for “Gender Support Plans,” which ask the person filling out such a form to indicate the level of support of a student’s parents for his or her gender identity. Students ages 12 and older may formulate gender support plans in the Newport-Mesa school district without parental knowledge or consent.
The district hides these Gender Support Plans in a “locked drawer in the admin’s office,” emails show.
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Labour’s VAT Plan for Private Schools Will Raise Less Money Than Previous Estimated
An analysis has revealed that Labour’s plan to charge VAT on private school fees may generate significantly less revenue than previously estimated. The Mail has the story.
Prior to the General Election, Sir Keir Starmer vowed to end tax breaks for private schools in order to fund a series of manifesto pledges.
This included the recruitment of 6,500 extra teachers in the state sector, among other measures such as providing 3,000 new nurseries.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies previously estimated that removing tax exemptions from private schools would raise about £1.6 billion a year in extra tax revenue.
But, according to the Sunday Times, research by HMRC in January showed – in the most extreme case – the policy would bring in far less. …
Data from the Independent Schools Council’s 2023 census found there were 554,316 pupils at private schools in the U.K., representing about 5.9% of all pupils.
Under their worst-case scenario, HMRC planned for 17% of private pupils, about 94,000, moving to state schools.
This would see the policy of removing tax exemptions for private schools raise just £650 million in extra revenue in 2025-26 because of the added cost of funding children in the state system.
In a second scenario, HMRC calculated that if 11% of pupils moved to state education, about 60,000, the policy would raise £900 million.
A 5% shift of privately educated pupils to the state sector, about 28,000 pupils, would raise £1.15 billion.
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/28/labours-vat-plan-for-private-schools-flunks-revenue-test/
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Australia: State’s ‘old school’ switch offers a template for the nation
When a starry-eyed Paul Martin launched his teaching career at a western Sydney high school, he was shocked that so many of his teenage students struggled to read. Thirty-five years later, he has just produced a new primary school teaching syllabus that will revolutionise learning for nearly 1.3 million students in one of the world’s biggest schooling systems.
In a startling confession, the chief executive of the NSW Education Standards Authority now says that for a half-century education systems have been doing a lot of things wrong.
“I started teaching in 1989,” Martin recalls. “I walked into a year 7 class where more than a third of the kids couldn’t read. And I had no idea how to teach them to read because all I knew how to do was what the syllabus said – and it had nothing in it. By the time I’d finished classroom teaching, I had the desire to change all of that.”
The new primary school curriculum for NSW, launched on Wednesday, is a clear and concise document that focuses on phonics and facts, erasing the gobbledygook and feel-good theories that still clutter curriculum documents across the nation. NSW is returning to the old-school method of teaching children vital facts, in sequence. It is based on cutting-edge research that proves children learn best when they are explicitly taught facts and given practice to embed them in long-term memory.
For decades, children’s learning has been sabotaged by left-wing ideologies that regard schooling as an opportunity for indoctrination and social engineering under the cover of “critical thinking and creativity”. Phonics and facts were dirty words for the “child-centred” groupthink.
“Without being too condemnatory of the past, some of the earlier syllabuses were written at a high point of what I would call progressivist ideology – the ‘choose your own adventure’ of education,” Martin says. “Some things were potentially wrong, like whole-language reading, and we took grammar out of syllabuses. Beforehand, some of the syllabuses expected kids to do things in, say, history, in terms of writing expectations, that they hadn’t yet learned in English.”
The flaws in the previous curriculum have produced a generation of children who often struggle with basic reading and mathematics, and have a poor general knowledge.
The “long tail of disadvantage” described in 2009 by Julia Gillard, the former federal Labor education minister and prime minister, has grown ever longer. In last year’s NAPLAN tests, one in three children starting high school failed to meet the minimum standard expected for reading, writing and mathematics.
Australian students are twice as likely to fail than excel in English and maths, despite taxpayers pouring $72bn a year into schools. By 15, one in three teenagers can’t read to the level required for year 9. Is it any wonder so many drop out of school, sucked into street crime and a life of dysfunction?
Martin, 60, worked as a teacher in some of Sydney’s poorest communities and was an education policy adviser for the NSW and federal governments before taking the helm at NESA in 2019, when he initiated a clean-up of what he regarded as a “cluttered curriculum”. A new syllabus for English and mathematics was released last year and this week he delivered teaching materials across all subjects – the bipartisan policy love child of former Coalition NSW education minister Sarah Mitchell and her successor, Labor’s Prue Car.
Car, who also is NSW Deputy Premier, insists teachers must rely on evidence of “what works” to help children learn, just as doctors perform operations based on proven and best-practice surgical techniques. “It’s the bleeding obvious,” she says. “We would never tell a surgeon, ‘Do what works for you, see how you feel on the day and it’s up to you, here is the scaffold.’ No! We say, ‘This is how you do it based on the evidence of what works.’ ”
As the mother of a teenage son, Car has seen first-hand the failures in longstanding teaching techniques. “When my son was learning to read I, like so many other parents, was obsessively reading books to him constantly,” she recalls. “A lot of the conversation at that time was about the use of sight words, and looking at pictures next to the words they’re learning to read.
“Now when I’m in classrooms, I can see that teachers are using a combination of that plus phonics. The kids can actually make the sounds out because that’s the building blocks on which they learn how to read and write and understand. So I think every parent – me included – can see that would have been very useful to us back then. Being able to read changes lives.”
Australia has a national curriculum that was streamlined and updated in 2022 to Version 9. In Queensland, schools have until 2027 to adopt the changes, so many children will go through most of primary school being taught a defunct curriculum.
NSW, Victoria and Western Australia have written their own syllabus materials, which give more detail and guidance to put flesh on the bones of the national curriculum, which is confusing to comprehend given its “three-dimensional” nature with layers of online documents that must be cross-referenced.
The differences across Australia are stark: in NSW, a year 2 student will be taught to locate the seven continents and five oceans of the world, read ancient Greek legends and identify significant Aboriginal sites across NSW.
In Queensland, the year 2 syllabus based on the old national curriculum confuses teachers with vague and rambling explanations. “Continuity and change are not only key concepts in history but ones that challenge students to move from simplistic notions of history as a series of events, to powerfully complex understandings about change and continuity,” it states.
“Changes occurs at different rates simultaneously, linking forward and backward in time.”
This is why hardworking teachers are constantly complaining about late nights wasted trying to interpret the curriculum and devise practical plans for the next day’s lessons.
WA’s year 2 naval-gazing history lessons focus on a child’s own family, in line with the national curriculum. While NSW kids will listen in wonder about Roman gods and Dreamtime legends, yawning seven-year-olds in WA will learn about their own name, what they look like and what objects are familiar to them.
Young children who have not learned to read and write fluently are being expected to “analyse and explain” concepts in history or science.
Victoria updated its syllabus last month, mandating that from next year schools explicitly teach children up to year 2 to read using structured phonics – the sounding out of letters and letter combinations to form words. The Australian Education Union’s Victorian branch blasted this change as a “burden” and instructed teachers to ignore the mandate.
In NSW, the Minns government consulted 200 expert teachers and involved the NSW Teachers Federation, which has given a lukewarm endorsement that “curriculum with high levels of subject knowledge and rigour can be positive”. The union secured a compromise that while teachers can start using the new syllabus this week, it won’t be compulsory until 2027.
The NSW reforms are based on a two-year review by Australian Council for Educational Research chief executive Geoff Masters, who insists teachers and students need a clear “pathway” for learning.
“It’s important that it’s clear to teachers what they should be teaching and what students should be learning,” he says. “You need a high-quality curriculum and a clear sequence of learning. The curriculum has to be a pathway that all students will follow.”
Masters says schools must ensure children don’t fall behind on the learning pathway but also let them race ahead if they’re ready.
“We have many students in our schools who are being taught things currently that they’re not ready to learn because they lack the prerequisites,” he says. “The curriculum has moved too far ahead for them. And we have other students who are being taught things they already know, when they need to be stretched.”
Small gaps in basic facts taught to children in primary school can grow into a chasm of ignorance in high school. No one would expect a teenager to become a violin virtuoso without having been taught how to hold the violin and bow, read music and practise musical scales. Yet somehow we expect kids to master algebra even if they haven’t learned their times tables or fractions first.
Young children who have not learned to read and write fluently are being expected to “analyse and explain” concepts in history or science. They end up stressed and struggling. Children who are bored or anxious are likelier to muck up in class or drop out of school.
“Many kids are getting well into their school life before anybody has recognised that they’ve missed some really basic things,” says Masters. “Right at the beginning of schooling, whether it’s reading or mathematics, the curriculum has marched on. Everything is so time-bound currently, where students are required to move on whether or not they’ve mastered what they’ve just been taught.
The consequence of that is many students lack the prerequisite for what they’re to be taught next, and they struggle and fall further behind as the next year-level curriculum gets further and further beyond their reach.”
Knowledge Society chief executive Elena Douglas, who has been driving reforms to teaching methods and curriculum content, hopes NSW has “broken a stalemate” over the best way to teach.
“This is how we get smart and creative citizens,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what postcode, we need the same formula of calm and orderly classrooms, teacher-led instruction, a well-sequenced and ambitious curriculum and lesson plans, and evidence-based reading instruction. I hope this starts a race to the top.”
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28 July, 2024
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY VICTORY: Va. Court Deals Blow to School District’s ‘Unconstitutional’ Pronoun and Bathroom Policies
A Virginia court ruled Wednesday that students can challenge unconstitutional “transgender” pronoun and bathroom policies.
“We are pleased with the court’s decision recognizing that students can, in fact, challenge unconstitutional policies implemented by school boards in Virginia,” America First Legal attorney Andrew Block told The Daily Signal.
Fairfax County Public Schools in Northern Virginia requires all students to refer to “students who identify as gender-expansive or transgender by their chosen name and pronoun, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent pupil record.”
Conservative public interest law firm America First Legal sued the district on behalf of a Roman Catholic student who believes the policy opposes her religious beliefs. The student believes God made only two genders—male and female—and that to reject one’s biological sex is to reject the image of God within that person.
The school district argued that the student, who was followed into the girls’ bathroom by a boy and is compelled to use preferred pronouns under the school district’s policy, did not have standing to sue. In Wednesday’s hearing, the court overruled that motion, recognizing that students can challenge unconstitutional policies.
The court held that the student did not allege “discriminatory purpose or intent.”
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a Fairfax County mom of three who has followed this issue closely, celebrated the decision.
“I’m joining other parents across Fairfax County today as we collectively inhale the fresh scent of common sense with the court’s verdict,” she told The Daily Signal. “We knew all along that it was tyrannical and completely wrong to try to compel our children’s speech with forced pronoun usage in their public schools. It is such a relief that justice has prevailed this time to preserve our children’s constitutional rights.”
Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Brett Kassabian gave the plaintiff 21 days to file responsive pleadings.
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Defense Department Schools’ DEI Agenda Underscores Need for Education Freedom for Military Families
Military families shouldn’t have to worry that their kids are being indoctrinated while they defend our country.
However, for families sending their children to schools funded by the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), which operates domestic and overseas schools for military children, the consequences of a neo-Marxist education are now a troubling reality.
In 2021, DoDEA schools sponsored an “Equity and Access Summit,” which prepared their teachers to instruct their students to engage in emotionally distressing discussions about their race and sexuality and how to be social justice activists.
Two years later, in 2023, the DoDEA diversity, equity, and inclusion department—which facilitated the summit and other, similar initiatives—was disbanded following congressional complaints over anti-white tweets from the department’s chief DEI officer, Kelisa Wing, among other concerns related to what was being taught in schools.
Following the disbanding, DoDEA formed a separate DEI Steering Committee to manage its efforts, and other DEI specialists were integrated into more behind-the-scenes roles at the agency.
This restructuring has led to decreased transparency, as the agency is now also avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests from congressional representatives and parents, or returning them heavily redacted with little information to glean about its DEI-related activities.
This month, Open the Books released a scathing report detailing DEI ideologies in curriculums still in place at DoDEA schools, such as instruction about social-emotional learning, sexuality and gender identity, and the values of social justice.
Open the Books also highlighted concerns about unsafe practices related to student data at DoDEA schools.
Overemphasis on Social-Emotional Learning
The report explains that social-emotional learning instruction, which was also taught at the summit, includes making DoDEA students focus on their “privileges” and disclose their race, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexuality to their classmates and teachers to increase their social awareness and place them within a “hierarchy of ‘power.’”
Furthermore, social-emotional learning forces children to be highly aware of their emotional states. Teachers are instructed to ask students questions similar to “What is something your parents don’t know about you?” or “What do you wish your parents would let you do?” which are meant to “build trust” with their classmates and teachers.
These questions are part of a more extensive process of collecting data on students’ well-being that can be used “to direct students to mental health interventions that parents may not be aware of.”
The Open the Books report also highlights that since the children of military families “are subject to frequent moves and unique family stressors,” they are “particularly vulnerable to … emotionally manipulative pedagogical methods,” such as social-emotional learning, which is being integrated into DoDEA schools.
Teachers Are Trained to Indoctrinate
DoDEA teachers are also being trained to advance social justice values in the classroom. They read the pedagogical book “Coaching for Equity,” which contains “rebukes of capitalism, ‘patriarchy,’ traditions like Thanksgiving, and America’s existence as a country (founded on ‘stolen land’).”
Even worse, four of the 11 teacher-development standards used by the DoDEA directly reference equity, and they encourage educators to “advocate for ‘equitable’ policies in whatever context” they may find themselves.
In addition, texts with “sexual and ‘anti-racist’ themes are available in school libraries from kindergarten up.” Teachers who think existing offerings are insufficient are given additional authority to include more “extremist content” in their classrooms and require it for assignments.
Unsafe Practices in Pursuit of Data
The report also highlights how the DoDEA’s pursuit of students’ emotional data has blinded it to many of the risky practices it employs.
Data on a student’s internet activities is collected throughout the school day and stored on “Google Workspaces for Education,” which all DoDEA schools use based on their contracts with Google.
In 2022, all Google products were banned from a city in Denmark due to security concerns regarding student data collection. Just as concerning, we also know that while using the Google Workspace products, students’ “emotional states are being recorded all day long,” and “teachers are encouraged to provoke student emotions.”
Even worse, DoDEA administrators’ interest in tracking children’s emotions may lead to more overtly harmful practices down the road.
During the Equity and Access Summit in 2021, one counselor suggested using “brain imaging device[s]” to track students’ responses to particular stimuli.
Open the Books warns that giving children access to this technology could easily “encourage [them] to fixate on mental health conditions” or “be used to inappropriately pre-diagnose,” which could further enable medical intervention by school officials.
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Oklahoma School Districts Aren't Complying With Bible Instruction Mandate
Several Oklahoma school leaders have reportedly signaled their opposition to the state’s top education official over a mandate to include the Bible in classroom instruction sent out last month.
While several school leaders have said they are opposed to the mandate or will not implement it and instead rely on previous state standards, school districts have been hesitant to offer official positions.
Several outlets in the state have reported backlash to Walters’ mandate from late last month requiring schools to teach students about the Bible in grades 5-12. The requirement, as Chalkboard previously reported, was also met with criticism from lawmakers.
The Norman Transcript reported earlier this month that superintendent of Norman Public Schools, Nick Migliorino, said that the district in Norman, Oklahoma would not be complying with Walter’s mandate.
The school system would not provide additional comments to Chalkboard News concerning the district’s position and pointed to Migliorino as the source of the comments.
“Norman Public Schools’ Superintendent Dr. Nick Migliorino shared comments on this in The Norman Transcript earlier this month,” a spokesperson told Chalkboard. “We don’t have anything else to add right now.”
The Sand Springs Leader reported this week that more districts are waiting to see what happens instead of flatly refusing to comply with Walters’ order. One of those districts is Sand Springs Public Schools, which told Chalkboard that it is not taking action.
“The district is still awaiting guidance from the state on this matter, so we do not have additional information at this time,” a Sand Springs spokesperson told Chalkboard in a statement. “We will continue to provide a high-quality education to all students by adhering to state standards.”
The Oklahoman reported last week that the two other school districts, Bixby Public Schools outside Tulsa and Moore Public Schools outside Oklahoma City, signaled they would not change their curriculum.
The superintendent of Bixby Public Schools wrote in a letter last week responding to the mandate that it would not teach religious ideologies.
“In summary, the district agrees with Mr. Walters on the importance of studying the role of religion in historical and cultural contexts,” Bixby Superintendent Rob Miller wrote in an update. “However, we also maintain that teaching any specific religious doctrine or ideology is not part of the current state standards.”
“Therefore, we affirm our decision to keep our current BPS curriculum unchanged, providing continuity and stability for our students and staff,” Miller wrote.
Superintendent Walters told The Norman Transcript that schools will be forced to comply.
“Oklahoma students will be taught history and that includes the influence of the Bible as a founding document,” Walters told the newspaper last week. “Any school violating the standards will have swift action taken to get them back on track.”
“Several Oklahoma school districts have shown more concern about keeping porn in schools rather than teaching actual history,” Walters continued, according to The Norman Transcript. “They may not like it, but they will do it.”
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25 July, 2024
Student Test Scores Still Falling Despite Hundreds of Billions in Federal Pandemic Aid for Schools
Test scores are continuing to fall four years after schools moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study released Tuesday by testing company Northwest Evaluation Association.
The study found that gaps in academic performance between today’s students and their pre-pandemic counterparts are widening, despite the record $190 billion in federal aid distributed to schools since the pandemic began.
The findings—which were divulged from an analysis of test results from the 2023-24 school year for approximately 7.7 million students between the third and eighth grades—also come two years after experts had claimed a recovery in education was underway.
“At the end of 2021-22, we optimistically concluded that the worst was behind us and that recovery had begun,” wrote the study’s authors, Karyn Lewis and Megan Kuhfeld. “Unfortunately, data from the past two school years no longer supports this conclusion.”
The Northwest Evaluation Association’s analysis found that the gap with pre-COVID-19 results for sixth graders in math and English grew by 40% and 31%, respectively, between the fall of 2023 and the spring of 2024. The study also found that the average eighth grader today requires approximately nine months of additional schooling to reach pre-COVID-19 levels in the two subjects.
A similar—albeit less extreme—trend was found for younger students, with third graders requiring 1.3 additional months of schooling to catch up in math and 2.2 more months to catch up in reading.
Some researchers believe the continued drop off in academic performance is a result of chronic absenteeism as the mean number of students missing 10% or more of school days has risen from 15% in the 2017-18 school year to 28% in the 2021-22 school year, according to a study from the American Enterprise Institute.
The AEI study also found that “using the most recent data for the 2022–23 school year … even after the pandemic subsided drastically, the elevated rates of chronic absenteeism fell very little.”
Poor academic performance has persisted despite the $122 billion distributed to U.S. public schools in 2021 alone, which schools must spend by September, according to K-12 education news outlet Education Week.
“We’re a long way from pre-pandemic levels of student achievement,” Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the American Institutes for Research and the University of Washington, told The Washington Post.
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California School District Partners With LGBTQ Center That Recommends Transgender Surgeries for Minors
A California high school refers students to an LGBTQ+ nonprofit that helps minors get transgender surgery referrals, documents obtained by The Daily Signal reveal.
The high school in the Newport Mesa Unified School District in Southern California has scannable QR codes in its hallways that take students to a number of “LGBTQ+ Resources,” including the LGBTQ Center of Orange County’s website, according to photos shared with The Daily Signal.
The resources, compiled by the Newport Harbor High School, include a link to “LGBTQ Affirming Therapy” provided by the LGBTQ Center OC.
The link takes students to a form that helps them connect with a therapist who can write a referral letter for transition procedures. The LGBTQ Center’s website also has a form that connects minors with doctors who prescribe sterilizing hormone-therapy regimens and perform irreversible gender-transition surgeries.
The form asks the person filling it out to select what kind of transgender surgery they are interested in. Options include “top surgery/chest masculinization,” “breast augmentation/chest feminization,” “facial feminization or masculinization,” “tracheal shave,” “body contouring,” “hysterectomy,” “phalloplasty,” “vaginoplasty,” “metoidioplasty,” and “orchiectomy.”
Stories of children undergoing transgender procedures then regretting it have become increasingly common. For example, Chloe Cole—now a detransitioner—started identifying as a boy at 12 years old and got a double mastectomy at just 15, only to regret it a few months later.
Newport Mesa proposed a Memorandum of Understanding with the LGBTQ Center OC in 2022 to counsel LGBTQ+ students, but parents persuaded the school board to withdraw it, a local mother who asked not to be identified told The Daily Signal.
In the memorandum, the district would have agreed to provide the LGBTQ Center “a list of student referrals, upon request of LGBTQ Center OC staff.” The LGBTQ Center would have agreed to help students start Gay-Straight Alliance clubs, conduct LGBTQ+ training and workshops, and more.
Employees of the LGBTQ Center have spoken to the Newport Harbor High School’s LGBTQ+ club during the lunch period.
A presentation in the spring of 2022 obtained through a California Public Records Act request and shared with The Daily Signal discussed “Trans Health and Wellness” and advertised the center’s LGBTQ+ groups for children.
Those include the Rainbow Group, a “social drop-in group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and allied youth ages 13-18? facilitated by three adults, and Inbetweeners, which “provides a safe and supportive environment for LGBTQIA and allied youth (or ‘tweens’) ages 10-13.”
After the lecture, the speaker emailed a district employee a list of resources to share with students, including a “Linkage to Care” form for LGBTQ+ kids to find doctors.
The LGBTQ Center offers monthly “Trans Orientation” sessions in cooperation with the University of California-Irvine Health’s Gender Diversity Program. Topics discussed include immigration, hormones, referral letters, getting insurance to cover transgender procedures, and changing one’s name, according to a video on the district website.
“Then we move on to hormones, the exciting part that most people kind of want to figure out,” Miliana Singh, health care and transgender services coordinator at the center, says in a video describing the “Trans 101? course.
“Strengthen[ing] youth” is one of the LGBTQ Center’s strategic priorities.
Later this month, the center will host a “prom” for a wide range of ages, 13 to 20.
The LGBTQ Center OC provides “education, resources, and referrals” to “undocumented migrants.”
The center works with “LGBTQ, immigrant rights, and social justice advocates to fight for the dignity and rights of immigrants and refugees.”
The Newport Mesa Unified School District is largely funded by property taxes. As such, whether or not families who live there send their kids to Newport Mesa schools, they fund them with their tax dollars.
A mother in the district who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about threats to her family told The Daily Signal she doesn’t want to pay for the district to help kids transition.
“I’m in several chats with a lot of moms, and we have had a lot of people pull their kids from the district after finding out all of this stuff, but the district doesn’t care, because they still get your money either way,” she said. “They don’t care if your kids are there or not.”
The mother pulled her kids out of the school system after the COVID-19 pandemic and now homeschools them.
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Anonymous Zoomer. "I was indoctrinated at university"
I recently graduated from one of Britain’s most prestigious universities. But over the last year it’s become increasingly clear to me and many of my friends that despite amassing over £60,000 of debt for the privilege of joining the graduate class, we learnt very little of any genuine value at university.
Unless, that is, you count critical race theory, gender ideology, climate activism, and the ‘new religion’ of wokeness as having any genuine value outside of the increasingly narrow bubble that is filled with members of the liberal graduate class.
And I think this tells us much about shifting political allegiances in the West. At recent elections, many members of the liberal graduate class have watched in horror as large numbers of Zoomers, like me, have moved to the right, expressing support for Donald Trump in America, national populists in Europe, or Nigel Farage’s Reform.
As the Free Press recently noted, in regard to ‘Zoomers going MAGA’ in America:
“New polls show that the Gen Z vote, which Biden won by about 20 points in 2020, is now in play. A recent New York Times/Siena College survey—taken after Biden’s disastrous debate flop—puts Trump ahead of Biden by eight points among registered voters aged 18–29. And Pew research, conducted from February 1 to June 10, 2024, shows the GOP is leading among those under 30.”
But should all this really come as a surprise, given what Zoomers like me were forced to contend with while growing up? While at that prestigious university, for example, I was simply forced by my professors and lecturers to believe many untruths.
I was forced to believe that sex was not binary. I was told, ludicrously, I could be one of 72 genders. I was told that being white meant being racist. I was told that all of my ancestors were colonial oppressors and so, by default, was I.
This was also the time when climate activism on campus ramped up big time. Hero worshipping Just Stop Oil and their aggressive if not illegal tactics simply became a critical part of the university experience.
While Just Stop Oil’s illegal protests were considered legitimate, even fashionable, anybody who protested against Covid lockdowns was labelled ‘far-right’ —a term that students and professors lazily applied to everything to the right of the Labour Party.
Personally, I always thought university should be a time of questioning the established status quo and developing critical thinking skills. That is, after-all, why I enrolled. But applying these same skills to question the left wing orthodoxy that reigned supreme within the lecture hall and on campus was considered strictly off limits.
And once I had finally left the stifling climate on campus I became truly aware of how us Zoomers have been completely screwed over by the mainstream system. My parents, for example, were married, with one child, and onto their second property at the same age that I am now, despite not coming from any kind of wealth at all.
But the reality, today, for Zoomers like me, is that I will likely never be able to afford my own house, nor will I ever be able to pay of my university debt faster than the interest on it grows. Almost half of my monthly salary now goes on rent, meaning it is virtually impossible for me to save any money at all.
There is a listlessness that my peers and I feel – that I think is borne from the fact that we simply do not ‘own’ anything, nor can we put roots down anywhere. We are neither the ‘Somewheres’ nor ‘Anywheres’ British writer David Goodhart talks about; we have neither the means to join the Somewheres by putting down roots nor the desire to join the continually mobile, hyper-liberal Anywheres who eschew these roots for a sort of hedonistic, bohemian, and hyper-individualistic ‘life’. We are simply trapped.
https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/anonymous-zoomer-i-was-indoctrinated
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24 July, 2024
College Kids Without Civics and History
Today’s college aged Americans are probably the first generation in American history that knows less about important consequential things than their parents or grandparents. This was reconfirmed recently in a new study commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). It hired an organization, College Pulse, that surveyed over 3,000 current American college students from a large number of different schools.
The results show that collegiate Americans today are extremely knowledgeable about relatively trivial matters of transitory interest, but rather clueless about important events, laws, and personalities related to our history and civic institutions.
For example, responding to four-answer multiple choice questions, an overwhelming majority know that Jay-Z is married to Beyonce, or that Jeff Bezos is the owner of Amazon (as an Amazon stockholder not related to Bezos, I mildly resent the assertion that Bezos is the owner). But more importantly, big majorities wrongly asserted who was the President of the U.S. Senate, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, “Father of the U.S. Constitution,” or which branch of government has the power to declare war.
They know a good bit about contemporary business or entertainment icons who will become dim historical memories within a generation, but are abysmally ignorant about key facts contributing to making us the most exceptional nation to ever exist.
To be sure, the survey is not perfect. While in this era of the disappearing male from college campuses, having more than twice the number of females as males in the sample struck me as inappropriate, as did having a rather large number (165) identifying themselves as “non-binary” or apparently not declaring any gender at all (70).
Yet the ACTA survey confirms what earlier surveys, such as a Civic Literacy Test administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute show: young college attending Americans have only the foggiest knowledge of their heritage or civic institutions. And the ACTA results are so overwhelming that appropriate tweaking of the sample almost certainly would not hugely change reported outcomes.
Yet one-third of a billion humans are called “Americans” while others living nearby in places like Winnipeg or Mexico City are not. Why? Civic institutions like governments and their constitutional framework, plus the history of the mingling of peoples form the glue that bind hundreds of millions diverse individuals together as “Americans.”
They took people of diverse races, religions, ethnicities, language facility, incomes, etc., and made them into something they have in common—becoming part of a tribe, an extended family. And the knowledge of the creation and current operation of that national framework provides the foundations for national unity and respect, not to mention power and wealth.
On College Campuses
As someone who has been a direct participant in American higher education as student or professor over eight different decades (the 1950s through the 2020s), I have seen the instructional focus on our national identity decline dramatically. Enrollments are down in history departments but up in business and communications, not to mention subjects loved by the Woke Supremacy like gender studies.
And on many campuses, students are asked to apologize for their “white privilege” and other nonsensical concepts with little historical legitimacy. Not only are students made ignorant of their past, they are often being taught in a style reminiscent of the old Soviet Union a factually inaccurate and pernicious secular (indeed, anti-religious) catechism.
Within universities massive government subsidies dilute the operation of market forces, but they do not eliminate them, and the public is now revolting. Some much needed creative destruction is underway, with school closings and a firing of woke college presidents leading to a Counter Reformation.
In Ohio where I live, I think there is a decent chance that like Florida the state government will soon mandate public universities teach some American history and civics to undergraduates. Doggedly traditional and anti-woke schools like Hillsdale and Grove City colleges seem to be surviving, even flourishing. Even amidst falling enrollments, a few new promising traditional schools like Thales College and the University of Austin are emerging as alternatives.
There is an arrogance about the contemporary era that causes much malaise. Today’s Americans think everything important burst forth in the last few years or decades, and are dimly aware of the historical foundations of an exceptional nation.
Yet in reality, in 1776, we were a nation of 2.5 million with total annual incomes of a small fraction of that of our smallest state by population today, Wyoming. Tens of millions made the greatest long-distance migration in world history creating today’s United States. It is a marvelous story, one with which every college educated American should have intimate familiarity. Thanks to ACTA for revealing the magnitude of our historical and civic ignorance.
More broadly, the present generation of adults running our nation is diminishing our cultural capital, endangering national unity and future generations. In a similar way, it is debasing our financial capital by engaging in irresponsible federal deficit spending that, along with the precipitous decline in births, likely will lead to severe financial insecurity to the next generation of senior citizens (around 2050). In less than a century, we have moved from the Greatest Generation to the Most Selfish one.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14994
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California School District Sues Newsom Over New Transgender Law
A school district in Southern California filed a lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) over a new law he signed that forbids schools from notifying parents if their children start to “transition” their gender.
As Fox News reports, the lawsuit was filed by Chino Valley Unified School District, which is being represented by the Liberty Justice Center (LJC). The lawsuit argues that the new law, which was signed on Monday, violates parents’ Constitutional rights.
“PK-12 minor students, most of whom are too young to drive, vote, or provide medical consent for themselves, are also too young to make life-altering decisions about their expressed gender identity without their parents’ knowledge,” said Emily Rae, senior counsel at LJC, in a statement. “But that is precisely what AB 1955 enables, with potentially devastating consequences for children too young to fully comprehend them.”
“School officials do not have the right to keep secrets from parents, but parents do have a constitutional right to know what their minor children are doing at school,” Rae continued. “Parents are the legal guardians of their children, not Governor Newsom.”
A spokeswoman from Newsom’s office issued a statement mocking the lawsuit and vowing to fight it.
“This is a deeply unserious lawsuit, seemingly designed to stoke the dumpster fire formerly known as Twitter rather than surface legitimate legal claims,” said spokeswoman Izzy Gardon. “AB 1955 preserves the child-parent relationship, California law ensures minors can’t legally change their name or gender without parental consent, and parents continue to have guaranteed and full access to their student’s educational records consistent with federal law. We’re confident the state will swiftly prevail in this case.”
The law was crafted by a group of far-left, pro-transgender lobbyists in response to several school districts in the state passing policies that ordered staff to notify parents in the event that their children decide to change their so-called “gender identity.” The backlash to the law has been swift, with billionaire Elon Musk announcing that he would move SpaceX’s headquarters out of California due to the law, instead relocating to Texas.
“This is the final straw. Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” Musk declared in a post on his website X, formerly known as Twitter.
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Australia: Excellent NSW curriculum changes should be national
Reforms to the NSW primary school curriculum will help children who are struggling at school.
This clear and commonsense curriculum will change children’s lives.
Other states and territories must copy NSW’s A+ homework and simplify their own syllabus materials.
NSW’s gutsy reforms will take the guesswork out of schoolwork for students, teachers and parents.
The new syllabus shies away from woke and worthy lessons to focus on giving kids the knowledge and skills they need to grow into successful, educated adults.
One in three Australian kids is starting high school barely literate, having failed to grasp the fundamentals of reading and writing in primary school
This sets them up for failure.
For decades, too many Australian kids have been bored stupid – quite literally – because they can’t comprehend what they’re being taught in classrooms, or find the content dull and irrelevant.
Now NSW has delivered a succinct syllabus co-designed by classroom teachers, instead of ivory-tower academics who think “phonics’’ is a dirty word.
This new curriculum spells out precisely what children need to learn, using plain-English wording and practical examples. It is clear, coherent, carefully sequenced and far more interesting for inquisitive kids. Teachers will no longer have to stay up all night Googling definitions of education jargon, or swapping lesson plans on Instagram.
The scandal is that this fundamental reform has taken so long, and that so many children have fallen through the cracks of a flawed education system.
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23 July, 2024
Putting Public Colleges on a Path to Privatization
Public colleges and universities in the United States will never be as conservative as many conservatives want, nor will they become as progressive as many progressives want. A key impediment is the First Amendment: government officials cannot reach into the college classroom to require or ban any viewpoint. Although both groups of advocates claim to prioritize teaching “how” to think versus “indoctrination,” various unsuccessful efforts to either ban or require “critical theory” viewpoints, for example, demonstrate that many advocates want what the First Amendment will not permit.
Meanwhile, many moderates critique higher education for the huge success of progressives in creating a culture of speech suppression against not only conservatives but also moderates, particularly on social issues. Public and private universities alike suffer from demonstrated cultures of timidity when it comes to sharing ideas that stand to the right of the prevailing academic regime. That is the opposite of the intellectual life of a great university.
The public pays for much of this and expects accountability, but “academic freedom” concerns have historically featured deference even to blatant activism among professors.
One solution in these circumstances is to stop funding public colleges in the first place, which means to stop having them, and instead, to privatize them.
States could save more than $126 billion per year if they stopped subsidizing higher education. Texas alone would save nearly $14 billion.
Two Paths to Privatization
The straightest path to privatization is to gradually reduce state funding to zero. In return, the state can let each college hold its own title to the land on which it sits. Land grant status is probably no impediment, considering that some private colleges, including MIT and Cornell, are land-grant colleges.
Cutting the cord, though, may be politically difficult for legislators. Such a plan may require legislators to have the same privatization policy for many years in a row, closing their ears as public university advocates cry ever louder that they can’t compete with the nearby private universities unless they get special treatment. But such a plan, after all, frees up millions or billions of dollars for other purposes.
Economists have given me an alternative: the legislature could appropriate to a college about eighteen to twenty times the average appropriation from the past five years. That amount creates an endowment that spins off about the same amount as a normal, annual appropriation, so it would be revenue-neutral for the college. At the same time, the appropriation will be funded by a long-term bond. A bond issue of 18X over thirty years at 4 percent interest, for example, would also be revenue neutral for the state.
In this scenario, the institution immediately becomes private as part of the legislation. The ironclad provision tied into the appropriation and bond is that the university will never again ask for or receive a penny in state funding—though it may compete for state grants on an equal basis with other private entities, and its students may remain eligible for any tuition grants that are offered to state residents. The state would still own the land on which the college sits, providing a ninety-nine-year lease. The college, with enough in the bank to assuage lenders’ concerns, could buy the land from the state at a market price at any time.
From an enrollment perspective, the time for privatization is ripe. Many colleges are naturally losing enrollment due to a decline in the population of college-aged young adults, higher education has suffered a loss of credibility due to faculty activism, and prospective students have a decreasing perception that college is worth the investment. These colleges might jump at the chance to lock in an endowment at the 18X level rather than downsizing along with the student body and then waiting a generation or two for the opportunity to upsize again.
States should not rush into this plan while interest rates are so high, however. States seeking to privatize their universities through an endowment/bond plan should wait for interest rates to return below 4 percent.
Case Study: Fairmont State University
Take, for example, Fairmont State University, a public university in West Virginia, where I live. Fairmont fits the pattern of high access but weak outcomes. It is open to almost anyone, with a 98-percent acceptance rate, and it has a correspondingly high dropout rate, with only 19 percent graduating in four years and 40 percent within six years.
Largely due to state subsidies, Fairmont gives a $10,000 discount to in-state students, charging them $8,708 per year instead of $18,924. Fairmont estimates all other annual expenses at around $12,000 per year. Its first-year retention rate of 69 percent means that many students (31 percent, or nearly a third) decide quickly that they should pursue a different path, and those students lose no more than one year of full-time work while spending no more than $21,000 if they stay for both semesters. It hurts, but they can recover. (Notably, only about 70 percent of Fairmont students attend full time, suggesting that six years rather than four is a fair mark for assessment. Also, part-time students may have significant year-round income to offset expenses.)
For Fairmont students who persist past year one, though, only four out of seven have graduated by the end of six years (69 percent make it past year one, but only 40 percent of the original total finish by year six). Those odds are poor. At $21,000 per year to not finish a degree, these results are not just scandalous, but a waste of taxpayer funding and student tuition.
For the 2025 fiscal year, the State of West Virginia appropriated $20,671,494 to Fairmont State University, considering only the main line item for the university, not other funding streams. Given a student body of about 3,500, this appropriation is about $5,906 per student. Yet, much of that funding is wasted because so many students leave with no degree.
These statistics show the cost of matching high access with low completion. Fairmont is no extreme case, but just one of many examples across public universities in America.
Meanwhile, just sixty miles south is Davis & Elkins College, a private university trying to compete with West Virginia’s subsidized public colleges. Before aid, the average student there accumulates about $45,000 in costs. A student has about $18,000 left to pay after receiving all financial aid. A healthier market in postsecondary education would stop subsidizing Fairmont, letting colleges like Davis & Elkins compete on a level field.
One way to do this is to end the annual subsidy to Fairmont and privatize it—either cold turkey or over time. In fact, West Virginia has already followed this path, reducing the per-student subsidy by $953 between 2001 and 2022.
At the same time, West Virginia could target additional scholarship aid to students who are most likely to succeed in college, and hold a more compassionate line against admitting students who are unlikely to succeed. Currently, Fairmont takes a lot of first-year tuition for students who are reasonably likely not to finish a degree, which Fairmont could predict in part using applicants’ SAT scores. Instead, West Virginia could end Fairmont’s funding and reallocate some funds to students likely to graduate. Funding students is a better economic choice than subsidizing institutions, as education economics expert Andrew Gillen describes in a recent paper. Moreover, with up to $21 million saved, West Virginia also could reallocate some funds to career colleges, where many adults go when they need a Plan B.
In exchange for termination of the subsidy, Fairmont would receive title to its land and become free from many state regulations—the oversight and central planning that make it harder for public universities to innovate and adapt. Although this plan could be enacted in a single budget year, Fairmont’s path to privatization could involve subsidy decreases over a period of five to ten years.
If legislators dislike this privatization plan, there is an alternative: funding a revenue-neutral endowment using a long-term bond. This choice would immediately give Fairmont the benefits of a private university while ending the annual state subsidy.
In Fairmont’s case, 18X its current appropriation is about $372 million. This amount would dramatically increase Fairmont’s endowment from its present $32 million. Considering long-term market returns against inflation, it is not unreasonable for Fairmont to expect the 5.55-percent annual return required for this plan to be revenue-neutral. Fairmont could spend all of the annual interest each year or could choose a smaller annual payout in order to see the endowment grow—or at least match inflation.
In the long run—over the course of a thirty-year bond—the Fairmont area is likely to increase in population, with Fairmont State’s enrollment increasing accordingly. But the privatization deal is that in exchange for its endowment windfall, Fairmont State cannot ever get another appropriation. Due to inflation, the value of the windfall will probably decrease over time. In this scenario, Fairmont’s path to privatization will be effectively realized as the state infusion becomes worth less and less and the playing field becomes level.
Since the deal puts private-sector trustees in charge, it must prevent them from closing up shop and taking the money. Fairmont would be required to maintain nonprofit status into perpetuity. Fairmont would lease or buy its land from the state, with its large endowment providing attractive surety to lenders. Or, if the state gives Fairmont title to the land, it must always be used for an educational purpose. If Fairmont closes for any reason, any remaining equity must go to another nonprofit educational purpose (or back to the state if there is no suitable beneficiary).
To give this deal teeth, there probably should be a third-party beneficiary. In other words, if either party reneges on its part of the deal, a third party should have the right to recover from Fairmont most or all of that $372 million. The third party could be, for example, Davis & Elkins College, which ought to have a reasonable expectation that the deal will be honored as the college makes its own plans. This provision should be a sharp incentive for the state legislature not to renege on its promise to taxpayers.
Public Education Needs the Discipline of the Market
Apart from ideological and academic concerns about university activism, American colleges’ embarrassingly low rates of student persistence from year one into graduation lead to an indisputable conclusion that traditional “four-year” college programs are severely over-enrolled. This problem began with the mid-twentieth century GI Bill, which intentionally put veterans in college instead of the workforce, and massive subsidies to colleges have grown. The cost of greatly improving college access has been millions of students who leave their hometowns and forgo full-time employment for four to six years, only to leave school with debt but no degree.
No one knows the true market for postsecondary education because of the extreme distortions caused by extreme subsidies. These distortions should end. While state actors can do relatively little about federal student loans and the billions of dollars transferred via federally sponsored research, states do control whether to keep their public colleges public.
To better align state postsecondary system enrollment with state needs, far more students should be in career colleges relative to “four-year” bachelor’s programs. Ending state subsidies for programs that provide bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees (the overproduction of advanced degrees is a topic for another time) means putting public universities on a path to privatization.
A path to privatization is not only possible but could be welcomed by many public colleges. One option is to gradually shrink the annual appropriation to zero and to repurpose the funding or let it remain with taxpayers. Another option, which may be particularly desired by colleges likely to shrink with demographic and other trends, is to privatize them outright. States can provide one-time endowment funding to replace state subsidies, funding the deal with a long-term bond and protecting the deal by giving enforcement incentives to a third-party beneficiary.
The large endowment will also give potential lenders and donors more confidence in the long-term viability of the institution. Furthermore, privatizing colleges will not only free them from bureaucratic impediments to innovation, but also will relieve government leaders from the pressure to interfere ideologically.
Postsecondary education in the United States needs the discipline of the market. Putting all public colleges and universities on a path to privatization—and, eventually, removing all forms of public subsidy—is how to get there.
https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/putting-public-colleges-path-privatization
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"Decolonisation" destroys knowledge
Kevin Donnelly
In 1945, British author George Orwell said, ‘One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.’ While written 79 years ago, the current move by activists to decolonise the curriculum illustrates the relevance of Orwell’s observation.
Post-colonial academics argue that instead of being impartial and based on the search for truth, Western universities are enforcing a Eurocentric and white supremacist curriculum. In Australia, the UK, South Africa, and America (but not in Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, or communist Russia and China) activists insist course work must be assessed, deconstructed, and cleansed.
Based on neo-Marxist critical theory and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, we are meant to believe that the way universities define, structure, and assess what is taught is inherently racist and oppressive and guaranteed to disadvantage and oppress black, African, and minority ethnic (BAME) students.
As a result, two UK-based academics, in a recent research paper, argue the white curriculum must be radically reshaped to ‘integrate marginalised voices, diverse cultural perspectives, and non-Eurocentric knowledge systems’.
The two academics are especially critical of STEM subjects, saying their supposed objectivity and impartiality ‘mask underlying colonial influences’ that can be traced to a time when colonial powers ‘used their perceived cultural and intellectual superiority as a means to justify their domination over colonised populations’.
Closed book examinations, in English, with time restrictions and ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers are also criticised as disadvantaging BAME students. Such assessment favours what the two academics call as ‘positivist’ view.
They also criticise a view of assessment where ‘knowledge is only recognised when it can be logically or mathematically proven or scientifically verified’. As an alternative, the academics argue assessment ‘must depart from traditional structures’ and embrace ‘decolonial elements that undo colonial practices and influences’.
Once the university assessment process has been decolonised, students will experience ‘an inclusive learning environment with a contextual awareness of our increasingly connected world, thereby transforming assessments from rigid constructs to adaptable instruments relevant and sensitive to individual students’ backgrounds and lives’.
For those still committed to rationality, reason, and objectivity it’s vital to realise the research paper in question is just one recent example of a cultural-Marxist inspired approach to rid the curriculum of whiteness.
In 2015, academics at a major Australian university argued ‘the dominance of whiteness in the curriculum is associated with systemic problems such as social inclusion, implicit bias, structural inequality, and intersectional discrimination’.
Also in 2015, students at an international university published 8 Reasons the Curriculum is White where they argue privileging Enlightenment science promotes an ideology where ‘people racialised as white are morally and intellectually superior’.
Not to be outdone, academics at another university argue that as ‘UK science is inherently white’ it’s impossible to argue it can be ‘objective and apolitical’. The academics also insist that European science ‘was both a fundamental contributor to European imperialism and a major beneficiary of its injustices’.
Such is the power of post-colonial theory and the push to decolonise the curriculum schools are also impacted. The Australian national mathematics curriculum asks students to study Aboriginal mathematical thinking, including ‘algebraic thinking’.
An outline of the science curriculum states, ‘First Nations Australians have worked scientifically for millennia and continue to provide significant contributions to developments in science.’ So much for Pythagoras, Archimedes, Ptolemy, and Enlightenment thinkers including Kant and Newton.
In New Zealand, controversy recently erupted over the move to include Maori knowledge in the science and mathematics curriculums. Once again, the assumption is that how such disciplines are structured and taught, instead of being objective and impartial, are cultural constructs.
As argued by Winston in Orwell’s 1984, one of the most sinister and effective ways Big Brother and the Party enforce domination is by employing mind control and group think. No matter how illogical or irrational, whatever the Thought Police enforce must be endorsed.
Such is the all-powerful mind control enforced by the Party, Winston concludes, ‘In the end the Party would announce that two and two make five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later.’
The move to decolonise the curriculum (by painting STEM subjects as white supremacist cultural constructs and insisting there is nothing preferable or superior about Enlightenment thinking or Western science) mirrors what Orwell warns about.
If subjects like science and mathematics are nothing more than cultural constructs, then there truly will be a time when four plus four equals five.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/decolonisation-destroys-knowledge/
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Australia: Reforms failed on maths teaching, says new report
Students’ falling maths scores can be stemmed and reversed by focusing on teacher effectiveness instead of dedicating resources to measures such as increasing teacher-to-student ratios or lifting funding for disadvantaged groups, a new report claims.
“There has been limited interaction with the science of learning with key domains, particularly mathematics and mathematical cognition and learning,” according to the report from the Centre for Independent Studies.
Siobhan Merlo, author of The Science of Maths and how to Apply it, said she hoped the report “gives teachers the tools that they need to understand how learning works and what the implications are for the way they teach”.
She contrasted Australia’s faltering performance in international scores compared to peer countries such as Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan.
“I feel like in Australia … we have instructional casualties,” she said, adding the reasons were “multifaceted” including the country was not producing enough maths teachers.
“Teachers generally don’t go into maths teaching as much as they go into other subjects, so we definitely don’t have enough maths teachers. We have a lot of out-of-subject teachers teaching maths in Australia.”
She said focusing on measures such as teacher-to-student ratios and directing funding to disadvantaged students – measures of the kind that had been proposed in the Gonski review – had not worked.
“If these things they did target had worked, we wouldn’t see the results we’ve got now,” she said. “Despite this funding and despite these best efforts, we’re seeing that decline or stagnation. Teacher effectiveness has not been properly addressed in the Gonski review.”
On the topic of teaching effectiveness, Dr Merlo’s report advocates for thinking about it in a “measurable-effectiveness focused” way.
This school of thought focuses on “explicit instruction and developing mathematical competency”, the report states.
“Engagement happens via building competency and setting students up for success, not via relaxing requirements on correctness of answers or refraining from using timed tests.”
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22 July, 2024
UK: Universities Face Cash “Catastrophe” With Threat of Mergers and Course Cuts
Universities are facing a financial crisis, according to the Times, with arts and humanities degrees being targeted for closure as demand tanks. Here’s an excerpt:
Three leading institutions are understood to be in serious peril and ministers are being urged to introduce an emergency rescue package to avert “catastrophe” and prevent bankruptcies.
The Government is considering merging one medium-sized university with another and is drawing up plans to “tackle problems within the sector”.
This week, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, is expected to appoint a new interim head of the Office for Students, the regulator that ensures students get value for money and upholds standards of education, to spearhead the recovery.
It has forecast that 40% of England’s universities will run budget deficits this year and warned of closures and mergers. In a sign of the scale of the crisis, a senior Whitehall source said that it “has been at the top of a list of challenges inherited from the last Government”.
Last week, the University and College Union (UCU) held talks with Phillipson and Jacqui Smith, the Skills minister, to urge action to save jobs.
Jo Grady, its General Secretary, spelt out her concerns to them in a letter. “Anything short of an emergency rescue package for the sector will be insufficient to stave off catastrophe,” she wrote. …
Goldsmiths’s proposed redundancies included half of the History and Sociology department and a third of all English and creative writing academics. …
At Winchester, which describes itself as “the university for sustainability and social justice”, jobs have been lost at departments including the Climate and Social Justice Institute.
Robert Beckford, the university’s only black professor who was the director of the institute, was made redundant this month. He said universities that axed such subjects and focused on vocational subjects could become “little more than glorified FE colleges”.
Arts and humanities degrees are being targeted for closure because lucrative overseas students who pay high fees prefer to study science and technology degrees. …
Official figures released on Friday revealed another slump in the number of both U.K. and overseas students applying to start degrees in September. …
Kent said it had reduced a £25 million deficit to £17.5 million. About 50 staff have been shed by voluntary redundancy, and courses including art history and journalism have been cut.
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Kentucky’s Higher Ed Bureaucrats Mandate Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination. Arbitrary quotas. Top-down mandates from above imposed by unelected bureaucrats. These are the dictates of Kentucky’s Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE)—a powerful body that holds punitive sway over the state’s public colleges and universities.
A new Goldwater Institute report reveals the extent of the council’s power—including the ability to punish those who don’t comply with its arbitrary orders. It’s the latest example of divisive dogma being forced on America’s students through the nation’s higher ed system, even as the U.S. is beginning to reject the discriminatory, politically charged tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Indeed, CPE now uses its power to force DEI practices and programming upon public institutions of higher education in ways leading to deeply troubling—and in some cases, outright bizarre—outcomes.
As documented in this analysis:
CPE misuses its powers of oversight intended to promote “equal educational opportunity” to instead require public postsecondary institutions to engage in racial discrimination and dubious DEI practices.
As required by CPE, institutions must set yearly quotas for student enrollment by race and ethnicity. They must also set quotas for the racial and ethnic makeup of faculty and staff.
CPE evaluates institutions annually on whether they meet these “diversity” quotas and other “diversity” goals. Institutions that fail this evaluation process are prohibited from establishing new academic programs to serve students.
During its 2024 DEI review process, CPE failed just one four-year institution—Kentucky State University (KSU), one of the state’s only two federally recognized historically black colleges and universities—despite the school enrolling an undergraduate student body that was two-thirds African American. In its performance improvement plan following this failure, KSU committed to increasing its enrollment of “Latinx” students.
It isn’t just bad policy—the Attorney General of Kentucky has found that CPE’s requirement that institutions discriminate on the basis of race violates the Constitution.
But there’s a solution: the Kentucky legislature can put an end to CPE’s “diversity” regime by adopting reforms designed by the Goldwater Institute to prohibit the promotion of DEI and racial discrimination in public higher education and to end all curricular requirements forcing students to take DEI courses in order to graduate.
At public universities around the country, DEI is seeping every aspect of university life. But the Goldwater Institute is spearheading the nationwide campaign to fight back, ending discriminatory DEI practices in 10 states.
Taxpayer-funded discrimination has no place in higher education—so we’re putting a stop to it.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/07/kentucky-higher-ed-bureaucrats-mandate-racial-discrimination/
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Australia: Why some parents have swapped school for homeschooling
Heidi Ryan says it took until her eldest child reached year 11 to realise mainstream school was doing her three children more harm than good.
So she turned to homeschooling.
Like her two older children, now 24 and 20, her youngest daughter, 16, is autistic. Each struggled with the teaching style at school and so, six years ago, Ryan decided to become both teacher and mother.
“It was the best thing we ever did,” she said. “For their mental health, us as a family and for their understanding of who they are and how they learn.”
She is one of a growing number of “accidental homeschoolers” who now account for about 85 per cent of the sector, according to Queensland University of Technology education researcher Dr Rebecca English.
“These are families who never intended to homeschool but for reasons such as school refusal, neurodivergence, bullying or just having kids who are different prompted parents to look for alternatives,” she said.
A speech therapist, Ryan said not having to follow standardised assessments took the pressure off and allowed activities and subjects to be child-led. A fan of cosplay, Ryan has included wig styling in their lessons.
“We don’t do any formal assessment, I don’t quiz them on things. I can see and acknowledge their learning is happening in subtle ways.”
Ryan has used open university courses, online apps and programs from support organisations like the Home Education Network, and has tapped into parent-run groups, which organise excursions and other learning opportunities.
She made sure her children kept in contact with existing school friends and encouraged them to form new friendships through their homeschooling network and extracurricular activities, such as volleyball, archery, pottery, cosplay and tennis.
Once the domain of libertarians and Christian families, English said the impact of COVID restrictions on schools had proved a tipping point for many families.
“It was like a risk-free trial,” English said of enforced homeschooling under COVID restrictions. “People got a taste of how family life could be organised, and once they tried it many didn’t go back.”
Department of Education data shows the number of students being homeschooled jumped 112 per cent from 5333 in 2018 to more than 11,332 students in 2022.
As of June last year, there were 10,481 students registered. While it represents an 8 per cent decrease on 2022’s COVID-induced spike, data shows registrations have grown steadily since 2018.
“The numbers were tracking up anyway but COVID was a real shot in the arm,” English said.
Last year 59 per cent of homeschooled students were aged under 12, with the remainder aged 13 and over.
Families who chose to homeschool need to register with the Victorian Registrations and Qualifications Authority, which audits 10 per cent of homeschooling households a year. Parents are not required to follow a prescribed curriculum or provide progress reports, but they do need to submit lesson plans covering eight key learning areas.
If requirements of homeschooling are not met, the authority can cancel the homeschooling registration.
Kirsty James from the Home Education Network said homeschooling suited a range of students, particularly neurodiverse, disabled and high-performing students and those unable to attend mainstream schools.
“Some children with sensory issues can’t deal with noise or uniforms that are uncomfortable or scratchy, or they struggle with bright lighting,” James said. “When a child is in their home they are in an environment that is comfortable to them.”
Asked what she would have done if homeschooling wasn’t an option, Ryan pauses.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think we would have just pushed through because we wouldn’t have had a choice. We would’ve come out of the other end with a dislike of school and learning. Which is a bit sad.”
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21 July, 2024
Trump Shooter’s School Issues Statement To Correct Reporting
The fact that Crooks had a college degree while apparently working in a humble job as some sort of kitchen hand may have led to him feeling angry and resentul and thus caused him to strike out at "society" as he saw it
Bethel Park School District (BPSD), the school district previously attended by 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s shooter, issued a statement Saturday to correct reports of the gunman’s involvements.
The school district confirmed Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot Trump in the ear at a July 13 Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally, graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022. BPSD addressed several “misconceptions” about Crooks, including claims relating to bullying, threats of violence and rifle team involvement through its statement.
The district stated there are no records relating to Crooks being “relentlessly bullied” in school despite several reports claiming this “may have led” to the attempt on Trump’s life.
“The school district maintains detailed records, including academic performance, attendance, disciplinary history, and health records. According to our records, Mr. Crooks excelled academically, regularly attended school, and had no disciplinary incidents, including those related to bullying or threats,” BPSD stated.
The district also clarified that “a different student,” not Crooks, “threatened violence” against Bethel Park High School in 2019. The incident was “thoroughly investigated and quickly addressed” at the time, and the district made clear “it had no connection whatsoever” to the failed assassin. (RELATED: ‘You Owe President Trump Answers!’: Video Shows GOP Senators Confront Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle)
Crooks was also not an official rifle team member, as his school has no record of him trying out nor does the coach “recall meeting him,” according to the statement. The district, however, acknowledged Crooks could have “attended a practice, took a shot, and never returned,” which would not have been documented.
“Mr. Crooks was known as a quiet, bright young man who generally got along with his teachers and classmates,” BPSD stated.
Since graduating high school, Crooks earned an associate’s degree in engineering science from the Community College of Allegheny County, according to the school district. He also worked as a dietary aide at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
“It would be wildly irresponsible for us to speculate on his state of mind in the two years since we last saw Thomas Crooks,” the district stated.
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‘They’re Not Listening To Us’: 100 Muslim Parents Oppose Gender Ideology at Virginia School Board Meeting
About 100 Muslims attended the Fairfax County School Board meeting on Thursday night to protest the school district’s plans to add radical gender ideology to elementary schools’ curriculums.
The Northern Virginia school district unanimously approved changes to its Family Life Education Curriculum on June 27—including teaching kindergartners about the supposed “gender spectrum” and middle schoolers about transgenderism—despite significant parental opposition.
A Muslim woman, Thoraia Hussein, a Fairfax mother of six, spoke against the district’s Family Life Education Curriculum and sexually explicit books in county libraries on behalf of Muslim parents and those of other faiths.
“According to the First Amendment, you may have personal beliefs, but you may not enforce them upon others,” Hussein said. “Referencing last year’s [Fairfax County Public Schools] parent survey, the majority chose not to pass gender ideology education and sex education to school curriculum.”
Hussein spoke about pornographic books in libraries, such as “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Gender Queer,” and “This Book is Gay.”
“Those books are not just sexually exploiting children, but also offend our core values as Muslims,” she said. Hussein’s minute-long speech was met with resounding applause and cheers throughout the packed auditorium.
Muslims have a history of taking a strong stand against radical gender ideology being taught in their children’s schools. Arab and Muslim protesters shut down a school board meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, in October 2022 over sexually explicit LGBTQ library books.
Muslims also protested outside the U.S. District Court in Maryland last summer in response to Montgomery County Public Schools’ plan to read LGBTQ “Pride Storybooks” to children without parental consent.
The Daily Signal spoke with Hussein after her public testimony.
While Hussein believes gender ideology is sinful due to her religion, she said she respects people with different beliefs. She just wants the school district to have that same respect for her beliefs.
“It’s not only about that respect,” she told The Daily Signal. “It’s about telling my children, ‘What you believe is wrong.’ I’m not going around telling your children what you believe is wrong. I respect what you choose for yourself. So, I just expect you to respect the same—what I chose for my children.”
Hussein had brought some of the sexually explicit books from local schools to her mosque, the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., to show other families the importance of opposing radical gender ideology in Fairfax County.
“We couldn’t even finish reading [them],” Hussein said of the books. “It was so inappropriate.”
That inspired about 100 Muslims, including the mosque’s imam, to support her public testimony at the School Board meeting.
Since her oldest child was in kindergarten 17 years ago, the district has made decisions based on surveys on parents, Hussein said, yet the district completely ignored parental pushback about adding gender ideology to the elementary school curriculum.
Most parents and community members do not support adding lessons on gender identity in elementary schools, the district admitted in a summary of comments submitted about the Family Life curriculum.
Parents shared concerns about lessons on gender identity not being age-appropriate for elementary schoolers, and expressed the belief that they, not schools, should be the primary educators of their children on such topics.
“Even though parents were really upset, saying that they don’t want their children to be introduced to such explicit sex information, still they said [the community review] is not accurate, and they went ahead, and they want to do a pilot program about it,” Hussein said. “And that’s what makes us feel as parents that we’re not heard. We are supposed to take care of our children, but at the same time, we’re not allowed to do so, because they’re not listening to us.”
The district will implement a pilot program in 14 elementary schools for a coed Family Life Education Curriculum for the 2024-2025 academic year.
As a mother of six and a local youth mentor, Hussein has firsthand experience with how age-inappropriate information about gender ideology harms children.
“I’ve seen a lot of issues with children going to school reading about things, and they don’t find anyone to actually explain to them about it,” she said. “So, they’re getting exposed to information that they don’t know how to process. And most of the time, parents are not there, or they are not aware because of the pressures of life.”
Hussein is concerned about the confusion caused by children learning they supposedly can be any gender they want.
“In my religion, we have only male and female,” she said.
Hussein’s youngest child, who is in elementary school, walked out of his classroom when his teacher started a lesson on gender ideology. The child told his teacher that it violates his religion.
When asked about the widespread parent opposition to gender ideology instruction, the school district told The Daily Signal that parents can opt their children out of the Family Life Education Curriculum.
“As you know, should any parent wish to opt their child out of FLE, they are able to do so,” said the district’s media relations manager, Julie Allen.
But parents shouldn’t have to opt their kids out, according to Hussein.
“A lot of parents, like immigrants, come from different backgrounds,” she said. “They don’t understand that there is a choice to opt out. And those are the most vulnerable children, because their parents cannot address it. They don’t understand what’s going on.”
Schools should focus on education and leave religion to parents, according to Hussein.
“Let’s leave this conversation to parents, because parents have to have the right to teach their children their values,” she said.
The Muslim families protesting gender ideology in Fairfax County don’t want to cause trouble, Hussein explained, adding they just want to protect their right to raise their kids in accordance with their faith.
“Our religion encourages us to love everyone,” she said. “At the same time, our religion is our life, and anything that touches that is considered a threat to who we are. So, it’s not that we hate anybody. We don’t want to force anyone into anything. And indeed, we don’t anyone to force whatever they want on us.”
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Elite University Profs’ Obstruction Charges Over Pro-Palestinian Protests Dropped
Four educators at Northwestern University had their charges dropped Friday after being arrested on Thursday for obstructing law enforcement during a pro-Palestinian encampment in April, according to ABC 7 Chicago.
The four faculty members were previously charged with a Class A misdemeanor that would have landed them a $2,500 fine and up to a year in jail time, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported earlier this week.
The university created an agreement with the protesters in April before the protest, limiting the encampment to students, faculty and staff to ensure other community members could engage in different activities in the area. The demonstrations occurred on the Evanston campus in April, according to ABC 7 Chicago.
The Cook County State Attorney General’s office cited the policy of not charging peaceful protesters, ABC 7 Chicago reported.
“It’s a pretty mind-blowing experience to have your employer send their own police after you to arrest you within your place of employment,” Alithia Zamantakis, an assistant professor at Northwestern’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing, who previously faced the charges, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Four individuals have been issued Class A misdemeanor citations by the Northwestern Police Department for obstructing a police officer during the protests on Deering Meadow earlier this year,” [University spokesman Jon] Yates told the Daily Caller News Foundation earlier this week.
“While the University permits peaceful demonstrations, it does not permit activity that disrupts University operations, violates the law, or includes the intimidation or harassment of members of the community,” Yates previously told the DCNF
One professor attempted to file a police report during the April encampment against another instructor for shoving police officers trying to make arrests, the DCNF reported. One student was also assaulted by an anti-Israel protester.
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18 July, 2024
The 4-Day School Week: It's a Trend Across America ... Despite Questionable Results
Next month, the Huntsville School District in Arkansas will join the wave of public schools switching to a four-day week.
The shorter school week, which first emerged in a few rural areas decades ago, is now expanding into suburbs and smaller cities. At least 2,100 schools in half the states have embraced the three-day weekend mostly as an incentive to hire and keep teachers, prompting cheers of support from instructors, unions, and many families.
Despite the growing popularity of the shorter week, some researchers and lawmakers are pushing back on the strategy. While its impact on teacher shortages appears to be mixed in different districts, its harmful effects on the academic growth of students – arguably the top priority of public education – is clear. Teams of researchers examining the program in a variety of states have come to a similar conclusion: The four-day week stymies learning in math and English when instructional time is reduced, as is often the case.
The most authoritative multi-state study to date found that students have suffered small-to-medium negative effects, learning “significantly less” than they would have in a traditional five-day program, says co-author Emily Morton of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.
The push for a shorter week comes at a troubling time for public schools. Many districts remain in a tough spot in the wake of the pandemic, suffering from increased teacher turnover as well as classrooms full of students who have recovered only a small portion of months and even years of lost learning. What’s more, an unprecedented $190 billion in emergency federal aid ends in September, adding to the financial pressures on districts.
While superintendents see the four-day week as an inexpensive way to address the need for teachers, they also risk causing further harm to students. “It’s a huge mistake to move to a four-day school week,” said Matt Kraft of Brown University, who co-wrote a paper on the influence of class time on learning. “At this moment we need to maximize instructional time to support students’ academic recovery, not reduce it.”
But a Monday-to-Thursday or Tuesday-to-Friday week is a gamble some school leaders are willing to take.
Huntsville Superintendent Jonathan Warren, who led his district’s move to a four-day week before his recent retirement, has read the critical research. Initially he had reservations too. But he changed his mind after a survey of teachers and families revealed that they favored the shorter schedule by a wide margin over three other options, including the traditional five-day program.
To lessen the risks to students, Warren followed the advice of researchers to lengthen the remaining four school days enough so they receive at least the same amount of instructional time in math and English. He hopes students won’t fall further behind, but only time will tell.
“We recognize the potential risk, and we will be monitoring the metrics to make sure that the risks don’t outweigh the benefits, mostly with teacher retention,” Warren told RealClear. “If student outcomes show a drop, a dramatic drop, then it's a no brainer to go back to traditional calendar.”
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‘Infuriating’: Minnesota Mom Slams School District’s OK’ing of Radical Transgender Restroom Guidelines
On Tuesday night, another Minnesota school district voted to allow boys who say they identify as transgender into girls’ restrooms and locker rooms.
Rochester Public Schools approved the “Supporting Transgender and/or Gender-Expansive Students” policy originally introduced on June 11.
The policy also allows a transgender-identifying boy to share a room with a girl on an overnight trip without the girl’s or her parents’ knowledge.
Though Jeannine Buntrock’s three children are zoned for Rochester Public Schools, she moved her daughters to a different district to avoid policies like these. She told The Daily Signal she hopes the policy will be overturned in the near future.
“It’s infuriating, but not surprising, as Rochester Public Schools have persistently refused to listen to parents on this and other troubling issues,” said Buntrock, who serves as president for her local Moms for Liberty chapter.
The vote makes official what the district and many others in Minnesota already practiced, Buntrock said.
“RPS now officially makes itself accountable for all damage that will result from important information about minors being withheld from the people who care for them most and are charged primarily with their well-being—their parents,” she said.
“It’s a battle for the mind,” Buntrock contends. “While girls are browbeaten into accepting males into what should be their safe spaces in order to be ‘socially acceptable,’ they’ll never see that they are losing their rights.”
Since the policy’s introduction last month, the district also added clarification that the policy does not permit “non-transgender or non-gender-expansive students (i.e., cisgender students)” to “use a facility that does not correspond to their gender identity.” The new language’s purpose is “to enforce appropriate use of facilities.”
The district did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about whether it’s unfair that some students have to adhere to “appropriate use of facilities” while others don’t.
The school board also added guidelines for parents on changing their child’s name, gender identity, and pronouns in the schools’ information system.
The policy permits transgender students to participate in school trips, including overnight trips “in a manner that corresponds with their gender identity or in a manner that allows the student to feel the safest, included, and most comfortable.”
“In all cases, the school has an obligation to maintain the privacy of all students and cannot disclose or require the disclosure of the student’s gender identity to the other students or the parent(s)/guardian(s) of other students,” the guidelines say.
The district works with students to determine what spaces, including restrooms and locker rooms, are most “comfortable” for the student. Students will “in no case” be required to use the restroom that corresponds with their biological gender if they say it conflicts with their so-called gender identity.
“In situations where students are segregated by gender, students have the right to participate in any such activities or conform to any such rule, policy, or practice in a manner that aligns with their gender identity consistently asserted at school,” according to the policy.
Rochester Public Schools will make “reasonable” changes to the curriculum and train staff in order “to accommodate students whose gender identity aligns outside the binary male and female constraints.”
“By pandering to a tiny minority that activists are on record saying they wish to grow, RPS and all schools quietly implementing the same policies are betraying all girls,” Buntrock said. “Parents must help their daughters see that this is not OK, and that safe, single-sex spaces are a right fought for them by women in the past.”
Yet the mom of three says she is optimistic about the younger generation rising up against radical gender ideology.
“Just like girls could put an end to males in girls sports by refusing to participate, so can they put an end to males in female bathrooms and locker rooms by refusing to enter them when a male is present,” she said.
“It’s time for girls and women of all ages to step out in strength and say that enough is enough,” Buntrock said.
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PsiQuantum to help shape Qld university offerings
Queensland’s biggest universities have struck a skills partnership with PsiQuantum that gives the Silicon Valley startup a say in the direction their science, technology and maths courses take.
The memorandum of understanding, which comes as the company looks to secure a pipeline of talent for its attempts to build the world’s first fault tolerant quantum computer, also opens the door to joint research projects with the universities.
Five universities, together accounting for some 110,000 students, are represented in the consortium: the University of Queensland, Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology, the University of South Queensland and the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Announced on Tuesday, the university and research tie-up with PsiQuantum is the first partnership to emerge from the $940 million joint investment by the federal and Queensland governments.
The investment, which includes $370 million in equity, has been mired in controversy since it was announced in April, with key details still to emerge almost three months on.
Under the new partnership, the five universities will work with PsiQuantum to create targeted educational programs that develop the skills required for quantum computing and other advanced technology industries.
PsiQuantum will have input in the development of “study modules, courses, degree, lectures and industry training”, including at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
The programs will also provide “pathways for traditional STEM careers like engineering and software development into the quantum sector”, allowing upskilling of “diverse scientists” to take place.
Roles in the company’s sights include quantum applications engineers, software developers and other technical lab staff, as well as more traditional roles like mechanical, optical and electrical engineers.
“This collaboration will provide a framework for academic institutions in Australia to offer opportunities for academic, postgraduate, and undergraduate placements that will attracts and retain leading Australian and global talent,” PsiQuantum said.
The company has also previously promised PhD positions, mentoring and internship opportunities, although they were not included in Tuesday’s announcement.
PsiQuantum chief executive and co-founder Jeremy O’Brien said the partnership will “help ensure that Australia is developing the necessary skills and driving research to continue leading this field for decades to come”.
Professor O’Brien developed the beginning of the photonics-based quantum approach being pursued by PsiQuantum at the University of Queensland. The approach uses uses photons as a representation of qubits instead of electrons.
University of Queensland vice-chancellor Deborah Terry said the university will “work with PsiQuantum across the education spectrum – from schools, through TAFE, to universities– to prepare our students for future jobs in quantum and advanced technologies.
“Our researchers are also incredibly excited to explore and find projects of common interest with PsiQuantum, taking full advantage of this unique opportunity,” she said.
https://www.innovationaus.com/psiquantum-to-help-shape-qld-uni-offerings/
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July 17, 2024
The Guardian view on the widening attainment gap: poorer children need a boost
The widening gap between the educational attainment of the richest and poorest pupils at English schools is a blow for everyone who wants to see the latter fulfil their potential, and for our society to become less divided and more equal. It is revealed in the latest report from the Education Policy Institute (EPI), which focuses on 2019-23, so its findings are a snapshot of the pandemic and its aftermath. While the declining achievements of children from poorer backgrounds are not a surprise, it is dismaying to see predictions about the damaging and uneven impact of Covid disruption come true.
Shrinking this gap is a longstanding objective, and one that the pupil premium – extra funding for schools with poorer intakes – was designed to further. But with the gap for 11- and 16-year-olds now bigger than at any time since 2011, a decade of progress has been wiped out. For children with special educational needs, the deterioration is even starker (though older pupils in this category are doing better). The report also adds to a concerning body of evidence about the youngest children, with poorer five-year-olds falling further behind. A recent survey of teachers found that growing numbers of reception-year pupils are not toilet-trained and struggle to play with others.
The appointment last week of Sir Kevan Collins as a schools adviser was a positive signal. His resignation in 2021, after the then prime minister Boris Johnson rejected his pandemic catch-up plan, was a low moment. Labour’s promise to recruit 6,500 teachers and open breakfast clubs – funded by taxes on private school fees – are two more steps in the right direction. Staff shortages and food poverty make life in schools far harder.
Inspection of multi-academy trusts, which is also expected to feature in the king’s speech, would have been introduced years ago were it not for market ideologues fixated on their freedoms. The same goes for rules allowing academies to sidestep the national curriculum and hire unqualified teachers. Likewise, a promised register of children not in school should already exist. While some free spirits resent state intrusion into home-schooling arrangements, the risks to children from missing out on education are too great. Councils should keep tabs, not look away and hope for the best.
While such rule changes are important, they do not guarantee improvement, just as getting more children into school is not a magic bullet. Curriculum and workforce problems have built up over years. Conservative reforms to special needs provision have been a disaster. The fact that London is an outlier, where poorer children do better, speaks to the city’s dynamism. It does not make up for weaknesses elsewhere.
A promised cross-government child poverty strategy should make a difference. The two-child limit on benefits should be lifted straight away. The EPI’s recommendation of a new funding premium for 16- to 19-year-olds should also be taken seriously. The lack of focus on alternatives to the A-level-to-university pipeline is a chronic problem, restricting the life chances of millions of young people.
Labour has ditched the levelling up brand, describing it as a gimmick. But however the new government decides to frame it, boosting the chances of less well-off children should be a core objective. Education is a social as well as an economic investment. What happens in classrooms can contribute to a more cohesive and less polarised society.
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NYC schools chief says parents don’t care about class size as he battles against state mandate
It's teacher quality that matter, not class size
New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks claimed Tuesday that parents don’t care if classrooms are overcrowded, as he argued against a billion-dollar-plus state mandate to reduce their size.
Banks testified at a public hearing in Albany in which he asked legislators to adjust the formula used to fund schools around the state so that the Big Apple can fund the smaller-class-size mandate.`
Shortly before, Banks spoke at a Police Athletic League luncheon in Manhattan along with billionaire businessman and Harlem native John Catsimatidis.
Banks drew on his and Catsimatidis shared experience through the city’s public-school system, saying they grew up in “overcrowded” classrooms and turned out more than fine.
Banks noted that according to the state’s guidelines, classes at Manhattan’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School are “overcrowded” — yet “everyone is doing extraordinarily well.”
“And the parents are saying to us, ‘Whatever you do, to meet this law, do not cut off the enrollment number. Don’t lower the enrollment number. We don’t care that it’s overcrowded,’” he said.
“But what is better than class sizes is a high-quality teacher, because I can give you a class with 15 kids, but if you have a mediocre teacher, you’re going to get mediocre results,” Banks said to the packed room at Mutual of America in Midtown.
“But with a phenomenal teacher, everybody learns. I grew up in classes that were packed.”
Banks said he does understand the reasoning for reducing class sizes.
“Science tells us smaller class sizes are good,” he said — before ranting about the costs of executing the state’s mandate.
“It’s going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars from construction of capital, plus to build more buildings and expand more classrooms,” he said of reducing class sizes in the city.
“And we’d have to hire at least another 10,000 to 12,000 more teachers in order to be in compliance with this law — which the Independent Budget Office estimated would add another $1.4 [billion] to $1.9 billion more that we’re going to need.
“So the financial implications are real.”
Earlier this year, Albany gave city schools the ability to expand their capital plans by $2 billion to increase and renovate school facilities.
State Sen. John Liu (D-Queens), who was instrumental in securing the $2 billion capital-plan move, criticized Banks for not using increases in state school aid over the past few years to begin implementing the looming class-size requirements.
“They spent the state aid on other things that they prioritize, which I’m not saying those are bad things, but the foundation aid formula and the mandate that the foundation formula funds should be met first,” Liu told The Post.
“I’ll fight right alongside them to get more state funding, but calling the class-size-reduction responsibility an unfunded mandate and hemming and hawing at every turn and saying they can’t do it and they won’t do it, it’s not going to do them and in turn our school kids [any good] in due course,” he added.
Gov. Kathy Hochul first floated changes to the schools funding formula in her state budget proposal this year, but she agreed to ditch major revisions this time, around opting to punt the issue to next year’s budget.
Tuesday’s hearing was the first in several being conducted by the Rockefeller Institute, which was contracted by the state to make recommendations about the foundation aid formula ahead what is bound to be a bruising fight in next year’s budget negotiations.
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Success Academy’s Regents results again prove charters are a win for kids
State Regents exams, usually given to students in 10th and 11th grade, and beat the 2023 results of nearly 200,000 regular public high schoolers, outperforming them by more than 30%.
The method behind those stunning stats: Success believes kids are capable of meeting high standards and gives them the tools and support to do it.
Most regular public schools keep hiding their own incompetence by lowering the bar for students. Success starts kids on challenging coursework early, setting up students to be college-ready (and often miles ahead of their peers at city-run schools) by the time they graduate.
Meanwhile, the United Federation of Teachers pushes back against any suggestion that teachers are responsible for actually educating their students.
Remember: These are the same Regents exams that New York is making optional in favor of watered-down proficiency tests — one more way the state’s education “leaders” are giving up on teaching kids, even as they rail about “equity” and pretend that standardized tests are somehow unfair to minority students.
The outcomes for the kids at Success pour cold water on that argument.
Of the 2,400 Success scholars who sat for the Regents in June, 56% were black, 31% Hispanic and 74% economically disadvantaged — yet they passed with flying colors.
Success’ model isn’t for every student — but it’s a winner for knowledge-hungry kids, who are proving it works with near-miraculous performances on state tests, time and time again.
These are bright students who, without the chance to attend a charter, would otherwise likely be stuck in poorly run neighborhood schools from kindergarten on — and so never enc
Instead, they’re thriving at Success.
If Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams still somehow need a sign that they should be pushing hard for new charter schools, this is a big, flashing one.
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16 July, 2024
Battle on the Homefront for Military Personnel
It’s no secret that the U.S. military has been slowly pushing left-wing agenda items. This has been happening for years but really hit its stride under President Joe Biden.
Our woke military leaders aren’t only pushing the leftist agenda on our troops. The Daily Caller reports that schools within the Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA), which serve the children of military personnel posted abroad, are actively indoctrinating children in far-left ideologies. The DODEA is notoriously secretive and intentionally makes Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests difficult because of all the redactions and lengthy process.
An organization called OpenTheBooks has published an oversight report exposing some of the radical left-wing rot happening in these schools. The DODEA is using a toxic mixture of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology and “transformative” social and emotional learning techniques to make students worried and incapable of functioning in society.
In March 2023, the DODEA said it disbanded its DEI department because there was significant pushback from the public. However, as with many other public schools across the nation, the DEI agenda is still being taught; it’s just rebranded. Staff get around this by using curriculum that is publicly accessible. Many use the racist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a teaching resource. You can’t get more radical than the SPLC.
For example, the SPLC gives a lesson plan that urges 3rd-5th graders to create an artistic mural or hang posters that spark community discussions about social justice.
Then there is the fact that the DODEA is actively pushing an anti-American agenda. According to OpenTheBooks, both students and teachers regularly engage in DEI struggle sessions. Some of the topics include Thanksgiving/America’s existence being bad because of colonization, the patriarchy, and the evils of capitalism.
How do we reverse this terrible state of affairs in the DODEA? Parents could pull their kids out and homeschool or send them to private school, but that isn’t without financial costs. Unlike the State Department, these Pentagon personnel do not have a government-provided voucher that allows parents to opt out of the terrible DODEA schooling experience.
This is slowly changing, however. Representative Jim Banks (R-IN) has proposed an amendment to a defense spending bill that would hold these schools accountable for their poor academic performance and provide school choice vouchers for service members.
“These military service members are deployed abroad to defend and embody American ideals on the world stage,” OpenTheBooks CEO Adam Andrzejewski told The Daily Caller. “Yet their children are being indoctrinated to a philosophy that places complex racial and gender identities over national pride. In fact, pushing students toward activism and teaching them that their relative privilege dictates their life experience can actually alienate them from the American dream.”
These military mothers and fathers are now faced with having to battle on two fronts. Their first battle line is defending American interests wherever they are stationed. Their second is having to fix what the DODEA breaks as far as indoctrinating their children into hating America and all that they fight for.
The DODEA is a disgrace. Our military personnel and their families deserve better.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108449-battle-on-the-homefront-for-military-personnel-2024-07-15
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How About a Different DEI in Higher Ed?
American universities are more diverse and inclusive than ever, or so we’ve been told.
In reality, though, the academic world is a place where free speech is suppressed, and faculty and staff are forced to take oaths to diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), as well as anti-racism.
“Diversity statements require applicants for jobs, promotions, or grants to demonstrate how they will advance DEI principles as a condition of success,” reports Newsweek. “This requirement discriminates against conservative and classical liberal applicants who, reflecting the views of a majority of Americans, prioritize equal treatment, objective truth, and freedom of speech above equal outcomes and emotional safety for minorities. Diversity statements are loyalty oaths which violate applicants’ freedom of conscience and discriminate on the basis of philosophical belief.”
Those who don’t pledge their loyalty are reprimanded, fired, or not hired in the first place. Those who conform must constantly self-censor, ever fearful they might have their names handed over to diversity officers if they step out of line.
Colleges and universities should be places where faculty and students feel free to share ideas, engage in respectful debates, and seek truth. Now, even those who consider themselves liberal are under scrutiny if they break from the status quo and defend the idea of academic freedom.
Over at the TaxProf blog, Paul Caron writes, “The university’s ideological narrowing has advanced so far that even liberal institutionalists — faculty who believe universities should be places of intellectual pluralism and adhere to the traditional academic norms of merit and free inquiry — are in decline.”
Professors in the 1960s and ‘70s clamored for academic freedom, but their goal was to dismantle and replace the Western canon and replace it with a far-reaching Marxist agenda. Over time, radical professors and administrators became the majority, hiring only like-minded professors and creating an insulated environment hostile to moderate or conservative viewpoints.
In 2022, the Legatum Institute published a study of academics in the U.S. and other countries that found “clear evidence of a strong ideological imbalance on campus” and noted that conservative faculty are more likely to self-censor. It also discovered that 91% of so-called right-wing academics support academic freedom, but only 45% of left-wing academics are “willing to compromise on the principle of academic freedom.” Unsurprisingly, 91% of conservative faculty believe academic freedom “should always be prioritized even it if violates social justice ideology,” compared to only 45% of leftist faculty.
The leaders of the diversity movement are focused more on training students to become activists than educated citizens. They have an agenda, and they need foot soldiers who just happen to be the unwitting students coming to class thinking they’re getting an education. Today, the system ensures those students will have plenty of leftist instructors to lead the way.
The requirement that new faculty and staff pledge their loyalty to DEI keeps independent-minded or conservative scholars from entering the profession. Others remaining in the system face increasing pressure to conform or leave. The result is a system ruled by people who’ve abandoned any semblance of free thought while publicly claiming to believe in diversity and inclusion.
According to the Goldwater Institute, “Americans are realizing that DEI cloaks its radical and discriminatory aims in feel-good buzzwords. The ideology behind DEI divides the world into the simplistic categories of 'oppressor’ and ‘oppressed,’ calling for discrimination against ‘oppressors’ to achieve ‘social justice.’”
The news isn’t all bleak for free thinkers looking to become professors. There is a growing movement to diversify higher education with more right-leaning perspectives. National Affairs reports, “In the face of these daunting challenges, it is encouraging that at least some moderate and liberal professors have recently expressed their support for more political diversity in the academy. As of this writing, more than 2,000 professors and graduate students have joined the Heterodox Academy, an organization that is expressly concerned with the absence of center-right thinkers in many areas of the social sciences and humanities.”
There’s more good news. The tide is beginning to turn in other ways as institutions across the country are scrapping diversity statements and closing diversity offices.
At the same time, we can’t rest on these recent developments. Many schools are simply rebranding their diversity programs, focusing on the term “engagement” instead of diversity or inclusion.
Let’s work to ensure the trend continues in restoring our nation’s colleges and universities and making sure they are laboratories of ideas instead of factories of propaganda.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108408-how-about-a-different-dei-in-higher-ed-2024-07-12
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Rep. Donalds Rips Democrats for Not Being ‘Pro-Choice’ on Education
Rep. Byron Donalds made a case for school choice in a speech Monday on the opening night of the Republican National Convention.
The Florida Republican talked about his own story of growing up poor, while his mother pushed to ensure he had a good education. But he said too many children today are trapped in failing schools.
“Don’t those kids who grew up like I grew up deserve the same chance that I had?” Donalds said.
He went on to talk about how the president and vice president live very different lives than struggling Americans.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sent their kids to high-priced private schools,” Donalds said. “Since they are in the pocket of the far left teachers unions they trap poor kids like me in falling schools with no way out.”
He also noted that Democrats are quick to call themselves “pro-choice” when it comes to abortion—but not for education.
“They say they’re pro-choice, but not if you want choice over what your kids are taught,” he said. “Donald Trump believes every parent deserves a choice and every child deserves a chance.”
He added that the policies of President Joe Biden have also made it more difficult for Anericans through increased inflation.
“The massive inflation created by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has only made it worse,” he said, adding:
During my first term in Congress, I served on the Budget Committee and the Small Business Committee. We told Joe Biden that his so-called American Rescue Plan was going to cause inflation.
The Biden-Harris administration told us not to worry. I knew better. I have nearly two decades of experience as a financial professional, and the evidence is in. Go to any grocery store. Buy eggs, buy beef, buy milk. Even housing prices have skyrocketed. All Americans deserve shot at the American dream. But under Joe Biden’s debilitating economic policies, for far too many Americans, that dream has slipped away.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/15/rep-byron-donalds-makes-case-school-choice-rnc/
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15 July, 2024
Education as We Knew It Is Gone
The American public education system is abysmal, and more Americans are aware of that painful fact than ever before.
The increase in dissatisfaction was highlighted in a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. The survey indicated that “about half of U.S. adults (51%) say that the country’s public k-12 education system is generally going in the wrong direction.” A very small group of those surveyed believe it’s going in the right direction, while the rest are unsure.
Even more troubling were the responses from those on the front lines of this learning crisis. In a separate survey, a shocking 82% of teachers believe that “the overall state of public K-12 education has gotten worse in the past five years.”
However, what might be the most unsurprising revelation is that opinions on how the education system is performing and how it is serving America’s students are greatly influenced by a person’s political affiliation. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans don’t like what has been happening in today’s classrooms, while a significantly lower number of Democrats share those concerns.
It might have to do with the growing distinction between what one believes constitutes an education. Conservatives tend to advocate focusing on math, reading, and science in academics, while those on the Left seem to support more lessons on social justice causes, political activism, and gender ideology.
Educational outcomes over the last several years serve as a strong indicator of which of these priorities have been pushed to the top of the list. American students are failing in the basics of reading and writing, yet they can proudly recite countless gender identities. The idea that it’s normal for teachers to request that classroom lessons, activities, and conversations be kept from parents seems to be more widely accepted among students as well.
Destructive ideologies about gender and politics have taken over where reading and writing lesson plans used to exist, forcing parents into constant battles with teachers and administrators over the boundaries for educators and indoctrination. As such, it has become clearer that reversing course may not be an option anymore. The solution might require drastic changes to the entire system.
School choice has become critical for parents of all incomes and working classes, as it keeps their tax dollars from being automatically allocated to failing establishments.
Once opposed to the idea of school vouchers, professor Jonathan Turley has made a notable shift in his position: “Florida is moving to allow residents the choice to go to private or public schools. Other states like Utah are moving toward a similar alternative with school vouchers. I oppose such moves away from public schools, but I have lost faith in the willingness of most schools to restore educational priorities and standards.”
The call for change has also been heard and acted on in Nebraska, as State Senator Lou Ann Linehan and a “long line of women leaders … pushed education freedom across the finish line,” according to Erica Jedynak and Shannon Pahls in the New York Post. This determined group of community members was able to secure a win for school choice, as Governor Jim Pillen, joining 11 other states to take similar action, signed a law that includes “education savings accounts that empower families, enabling them to spend thousands of dollars a year on the alternatives to traditional public schools that are best for their kids.”
Understandably, as public schools are the most easily accessible for most families, they will likely continue to be the first choice for many parents and their children. However, the option for families to take their money and their children elsewhere will hopefully motivate school administrators to return to actual teaching in the classroom, as they would face the looming threat of losing their funding if they fail to deliver (a standard that most workers accept on a daily basis).
Activist teachers have been given countless opportunities to change course. Despite the hostile tone that far too many of today’s school staff seem to have toward parents, many of those parents would like to have that trust and that relationship rebuilt and to have teachers with a passion to educate be able to do so. However, that trust has been shattered, and parents are now demanding action.
There is nothing about celebrating Pride Month, about telling children that they can pick their gender, or about telling them that America is irredeemably racist that furthers this vital educational mission.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108372-education-as-we-knew-it-is-gone-2024-07-11
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The Trade School Boom
THOMAS GALLATIN
According to a new Gallup poll, just 36% of American adults have “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of confidence in higher education. This is down from 57% in 2015.
Why? The main factor for this downturn in confidence is the skyrocketing cost of college. Many Americans simply don’t believe that higher education is worth the cost.
The student debt “crisis” is emblematic of this problem. Too many college graduates are finding that employment after college doesn’t pay enough to cover their tens of thousands (or more) in student loan debt. Waiting for Joe Biden’s phony “generosity” isn’t always an option, either.
Another factor is what’s being taught at too many colleges and universities. Many of them have become little other than indoctrination centers for leftist ideology. They are not focused on teaching students how to think but rather what to think. Why would anyone want to go into debt to be indoctrinated in diversity, equity, and inclusion? It’s a recipe for stunting genuine intellectual curiosity, scientific innovation, and personal development.
These are reasons why a growing number of high school graduates are opting for trade schools. “More students are gravitating towards the trades because it’s hands-on and you can make a lucrative career for yourself right out of high school without financing $150,000 of debt to attend a four-year college,” says Vince Gregg, principal of Blue Ridge Technical Center in Front Royal, Virginia. He observes that over the last few years, enrollment in the technical school has been booming.
Down in Clearwater, Florida, Pinellas Technical College has seen similar growth, with annual enrollment having increased by 4% over the last two years. The trade school offers seven apprenticeship programs and 30 certifications. The trade school’s director, Jakub Prokop, noted that this growth is unusual. “Historically, technical colleges experience an enrollment decline in times of low unemployment,” he said, “but we’re seeing the opposite for the first time in at least 30 years.”
The likely reason for this is twofold. The first is financial. Trade school graduates not only make money as they learn, thereby avoiding a mountain of debt, but they also command higher starting salaries: an average of $50,000. Second, there is an opportunity to learn and develop valuable hands-on work skills. Whether a plumber, electrician, HVAC technician, computer technician, or construction worker, to name a few, the opportunities in the trades have never been better.
Our Pop Culture Contrarian Podcast team, of which I am a part, discussed this issue in a recent episode: “Gen Z: The Tool Belt Generation and the Evolving World.”
Since the pandemic, trade schools have seen enrollment numbers jump. From Spring 2023 to Spring 2024, trade school enrollment jumped 4.7%, totaling 4.4 million students. Meanwhile, traditional four-year colleges saw only a 1.7% growth in enrollment over the same period.
The numbers show that a growing number of high school graduates are making a more fiscally wise decision. For many, it’s also a more satisfying one.\
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108374-the-trade-school-boom-2024-07-11
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There's been another rise in homeschooling in Australia's capital
Homeschooling continues to grow in popularity with the latest ACT Schools Census showing a 6.5 per cent increase in the amount of students being taught outside traditional schools.
In the year to February 2024, the amount of students being homeschooled increased to 495. In the same period, private school enrolments increased by 2.1 per cent and public school enrolments fell by 0.6 per cent.
An Education Directorate spokesman said the numbers in the ACT reflected nationwide trends, with many jurisdictions experiencing larger increases in homeschooling numbers.
"Families have the choice to enrol in alternative educational pathways outside public/non-public schools," the spokesman said.
"The increased level of enrolment in home education may be attributed to both increased awareness of alternative pathways, as well as ongoing impacts that arose from the pandemic."
Queensland University of Technology education researcher Dr Rebecca English said the ACT's regulatory environment was kind to parents seeking homeschooling options. "It's much easier to homeschool in ACT than NSW or Queensland. Registration is geared towards parents' needs," she said.
"In the ACT because of the way the regulators have worked with advocates it's a really positive environment for homeschooling."
In her home state, by contrast, advocates assume between 50 to 80 per cent of homeschooled children may not be registered.
"[In Queensland] it's just a bit of a blind spot. The government doesn't have a strong relationship with the community."
Dr English said homeschooling could often be a positive option for students. "I think the research shows us that it is at worst benign and at best a better option than traditional schooling, in terms of students' reports of satisfaction with their education and civic engagement," she said, noting that much of the research comes from the United States.
Sydney Home Education Network president Vivienne Fox said conditions for homeschooling in the ACT are hugely favourable.
"The ACT already allows for kids to do part-time homeschooling. The regulatory system is the best in the whole country," she said.
Ms Fox, who homeschooled her five children and has worked with various homeschooling organisations, said the option was growing in popularity even before COVID-19.
"During COVID it got a kick in the pants, so many people got the opportunity to see what their kids were really doing at school," she said.
"I thought schools would become more flexible and there would be more recognition of the value of a tailored form of education but NSW hasn't improved at all in that way.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8689115/homeschooling-rises-in-canberra-post-covid-pandemic/
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14 July, 2024
British Empire Must be Presented Like Nazi Germany, Curriculum Guidelines Insist
The British Empire should be taught to school pupils like Nazi Germany, curriculum guidelines from the “leading provider of support for schools and trusts” insist. The Telegraph has more.
Guidance created by school support organisation The Key and offered to teachers across the country provides tips on how to make the history curriculum “anti-racist”.
Teachers are advised to present the British Empire to secondary pupils like Nazi Germany, as a power that “committed atrocities”.
Pupils should also not be taught about the balance of “good and bad” aspects of Empire, the guidance states.
The “anti-racism curriculum review” guidance was created by The Key, which began as a Government pilot and now provides teaching resources to more than 100,000 school leaders.
The guide for teachers works as a series of prompts, to which answers are provided.
If “topics such as the British Empire taught impartially (i.e., as if the British Empire was an equal mix of good and bad)” while other topics are not, teachers are told to “re-frame” the subject.
Guidance seen by the Telegraph states that teachers should “teach colonialism as ‘invading and exploiting’ other countries, and present the British Empire as you would other global powers that committed atrocities, e.g. Nazi Germany”.
It adds that staff should “avoid presenting the British Empire as an equal balance of good and bad”, explaining: “The problem with the ‘balance sheet’ model is that the beneficiaries of Empire were one group of people (i.e., the colonisers) and the losers were those who were colonised.”
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Academics mock free speech threats because their speech isn't threatened
Jon Stewart
"The First Amendment Is Out of Control." That headline in a recent column in the New York Times warned Americans of a menace lurking around them and threatening their livelihoods and very lives. That menace is free speech and the media and academia are ramping up attacks on a right that once defined us as a people.
In my new book "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage," I discuss how we are living in the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history. An alliance of the government, corporations, academia, and media have assembled to create an unprecedented system of censorship, blacklisting, and speech regulation. This movement is expanding and accelerating in its effort to curtail the right that Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called "indispensable" to our constitutional system.
It is, of course, no easy task to convince a free people to give up a core part of identity and liberty. You have to make them afraid. Very afraid.
The current anti-free speech movement in the United States has its origins in higher education, where faculty have long argued that free speech is harmful. Starting in secondary schools, we have raised a generation of speech phobics who believe that opposing views are triggering and dangerous.
Anti-free speech books have been heralded in the media. University of Michigan Law Professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has written how dangerous free speech is for the nation. Her book, "Attack from Within," describes how free speech is what she calls the "Achilles Heel" of America, portraying this right not as the value that defines this nation but the threat that lurks within it.
McQuade and many on the left are working to convince people that "disinformation" is a threat to them and that free speech is the vehicle that makes them vulnerable.
It is a clarion's call that has been pushed by President Joe Biden who claims that companies refusing to censor citizens are "killing people." The Biden administration has sought to use disinformation to justify an unprecedented system of censorship.
As I have laid out in testimony before Congress, Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over "critical infrastructure" to include "our cognitive infrastructure." The resulting censorship efforts included combating "malinformation" – described as information "based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate." So, you can cite true facts but still be censored for misleading others.
The media has been running an unrelenting line of anti-free speech columns. Recently, the New York Times ran a column by former Biden official and Columbia University law professor Tim Wu describing how the First Amendment was "out of control" in protecting too much speech.
Wu insists that the First Amendment is now "beginning to threaten many of the essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens." He bizarrely claims that the First Amendment "now mostly protects corporate interests."
So free speech not only threatens your life, your job, and your privacy, but serves corporate masters. Ready to sign your rights away?
Wait, there is more.
There is a movement afoot to rewrite the First Amendment through an amendment. George Washington University Law School Professor Mary Anne Franks believes that the First Amendment is "aggressively individualistic" and needs to be rewritten to "redo" the work of the Framers.
Her new amendment suggestion replaces the clear statement in favor of a convoluted, ambiguous statement of free speech that will be "subject to responsibility for abuses." It then adds that "all conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons."
Franks has also dismissed objections to the censorship on social media and insisted that "the Internet model of free speech is little more than cacophony, where the loudest, most provocative, or most unlikeable voice dominates . . . If we want to protect free speech, we should not only resist the attempt to remake college campuses in the image of the Internet but consider the benefits of remaking the Internet in the image of the university."
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Australia: International students deserve more bang for their extra bucks
The federal government’s doubling of application fees for international students may smack of a blatant rip off, but it also provides a rare chance to make the whole visa processing system more transparent and efficient.
Lifting the fee by 125 per cent from $710 to $1600 gives Australia an unenviable reputation as the most expensive place in the world for international student application fees. Canada is a relative bargain at $CA150 ($A164), while New Zealand’s fee is $NZ375 ($A343), the UK charges 490 pounds ($A930) and United States $US510 ($A765).
The fee hike has rightly generated a torrent of criticism from the International Education Association of Australia, Universities Australia, and International Education Association amid fears there’ll be a steep drop in applications from prospective students.
But surely those who still apply despite the increase are entitled to expect more bang for their buck?
For example, if my local cafe increases the cost of my daily coffee by 125 per cent, I’ll be OK with that if they throw in a croissant as well. If not, I’ll go elsewhere. It’s a no-brainer.
With all the extra revenue the federal government will generate from the higher visa application fee, there is no excuse not to use the money to make the visa processing system more efficient.
The government has repeatedly cried foul that it doesn’t have the resources to improve the system.
But now there is no excuse.
Prospective international students paying the highest application fees in the world should expect a superior service in exchange.
There are two crucial changes the government could make to ensure this happens.
The first is straightforward: use the extra revenue from higher application fees to employ more public servants to process visa applications. This would ensure a faster turnaround and provide more certainty for applicants and agents. Ideally, visa applications should be processed in less than four weeks.
The second change would involve making all visa criteria transparent so students have a better indication of whether their application will succeed before they hand over $1600.
Currently, only some of the criteria students must meet are measurable. This includes their English language skills and ability to financially support themselves while in Australia. However, the process to determine whether an applicant is a “genuine” student is opaque.
Many prospective students have their visa applications rejected because they are deemed not to be “genuine” students.
However, given there is no specific criteria outlining what constitutes a “genuine” student it is difficult (if not impossible) for the applicant to know whether they will meet the requirements.
This could be made fairer and more transparent by clearly specifying criteria an applicant needs to meet in order to be deemed a “genuine” student.
Making these changes would attract more quality international students into Australia’s education system. It would help students determine whether to proceed, giving them confidence that they can satisfy all the criteria and not be at risk of losing their $1600.
Australia has spent years establishing its reputation as a world leader in international education.
But this increase in visa application fees – on top of the reduction in international student numbers as part of the government’s new migration strategy and tighter rules around temporary graduate visas – is putting that reputation severely at risk.
If Australia insists on making itself the most expensive country in the world for international student visas, it must provide better value for money.
Failing to make these changes would be a missed opportunity that heightens the risk of talented students looking for enrolment opportunities in other countries.
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11 July, 2024
‘Completely Ignored’: Parents Outraged After Va. County Disregards Objections, Unanimously Approves Gender Identity Lessons
A Northern Virginia school district will teach kindergartners about gay parents and middle schoolers about transgenderism in the wake of a unanimous vote late last month—despite significant parental opposition.
The Fairfax County School Board unanimously approved changes to its Family Life Education Curriculum on June 27 that include “broadening examples of family structures to be more inclusive of the many different families in our schools.”
The approved changes—set to take effect at the start of the upcoming school year—include showing seventh graders a PBS video titled “Puberty 101,” which introduces transgenderism.
“But let me take a minute here and say that in addition to girls’ parts or boys’ parts, there are also people who have different parts, or intermediate parts. People who don’t fit within a traditional binary gender system of male or female,” one of the video’s two narrators says. “There are people who are trans, or people who don’t have a gender.”
The public school district adopted the Family Life Advisory Committee’s recommendation to include both “sexuality and gender” in 10th grade Family Life lessons. Board members voted for 10th graders to learn to “recognize the development of sexuality and gender as aspects of one’s total personality,” a change to the curriculum first recommended during the 2022-2023 school year.
The school district in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., will further review another proposal to add instruction on the “gender spectrum” at the elementary school level. The advisory committee will compile research on elementary school gender identity lessons and conduct another community review prior to a vote.
An overwhelming majority of parents and community members do not support adding lessons on gender identity in elementary schools, the district admitted in a summary of the comments submitted to the district from May 10 to June 10.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, says parents should be able to weigh in on their children’s education, his press secretary, Christian Martinez, told The Daily Signal.
“Since his first day in office, Gov. Youngkin has been advocating for parents and students, emphasizing that school boards must not only allow parents to provide input on important school decisions, but also make it easy for them to engage and participate, especially when it directly impacts their child’s learning environment,” Martinez said.
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a Fairfax mother of three, said she wonders why the district solicited parent feedback if it only intended to ignore it.
“When the survey results and community’s comments are counter to their initiatives, which they often are, we are completely ignored,” she told The Daily Signal. “When we tell them that we don’t want school teachers exposing our children to gender ideology, they are effectively patting our heads and covering our mouths. The way they see it, they know what’s best for our children, but parents know that’s ridiculous.”
Lundquist-Arora suggested that the board may have scheduled its June 27 vote on the controversial Family Life policy on the night of a presidential debate to distract concerned parents.
“It is the board’s modus operandi to wait until we’re not paying attention to pass the things that we object to the most,” she said.
A spokesperson for Fairfax County Public Schools told The Daily Signal that parents will continue to be able to opt out of Family Life lessons. Virginia law requires schools to notify parents when instructional material contains “sexually explicit content” and allow parents to opt into non-explicit material.
The district offers a form on its website for parents to opt their child out of all or some Family Life Education lessons.
“Parents/caregivers will have the option to opt-out of gender-combined instruction and have their child receive instruction in an all-boys or all-girls class,” the spokesperson said.
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Australia: La Trobe Not Planning to Rename University Following ‘Aboriginal Dispossession’ Demands
The great renaming fad lives in Australia too
More than 50 staff and students are calling for a name change at La Trobe University due to the “dispossession of Aboriginal peoples” in colonisation.
The group wrote to Yoorrook Justice Commission proposing the university be renamed due to Charles La Trobe’s role in Victoria’s colonisation.
“Charles La Trobe played an integral role in the dispossession of the Aboriginal peoples of south-Eastern Australia from their lands,” the group argued.
Born in 1801 in London, La Trobe became the first lieutenant governor of the colony of Victoria when it separated from New South Wales in 1851.
A La Trobe University spokesperson told The Epoch Times it has “no current plans to change its name” although it is aware of the petition.
“Although the university has no current plans to change its name, we are always willing to hear feedback from our community, and particularly from First Nations students, staff, and communities that surround our campuses in Melbourne’s north and regional Victoria,” the spokesperson said.
“La Trobe University is aware of a petition to the Yoorrook Justic Commission calling for the university to change its name from ‘La Trobe’ because of Charles La Trobe’s role in the colonisation of Aboriginal lands.”
The group arguing for the change said, “it must be acknowledged that La Trobe was the chief government official in Victoria during a period of genocidal violence.”
They noted the Indigenous population of Victoria declined by 80 percent between 1836 and 1853.
The spokesperson said the university recognises Australia’s colonial history and its ongoing impacts, including the history of the institution’s namesake.
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Failure of maths teaching in Australia
Students’ falling maths scores can be stemmed and reversed by focusing on teacher effectiveness instead of dedicating resources to measures such as increasing teacher-to-student ratios or lifting funding for disadvantaged groups, a new report claims.
“There has been limited interaction with the science of learning with key domains, particularly mathematics and mathematical cognition and learning,” according to the report from the Centre for Independent Studies.
Siobhan Merlo, author of The Science of Maths and how to Apply it, said she hoped the report “gives teachers the tools that they need to understand how learning works and what the implications are for the way they teach”.
She contrasted Australia’s faltering performance in international scores compared to peer countries such as Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan.
“I feel like in Australia … we have instructional casualties,” she said, adding the reasons were “multifaceted” including the country was not producing enough maths teachers.
“Teachers generally don’t go into maths teaching as much as they go into other subjects, so we definitely don’t have enough maths teachers. We have a lot of out-of-subject teachers teaching maths in Australia.”
She said focusing on measures such as teacher-to-student ratios and directing funding to disadvantaged students – measures of the kind that had been proposed in the Gonski review – had not worked.
“If these things they did target had worked, we wouldn’t see the results we’ve got now,” she said. “Despite this funding and despite these best efforts, we’re seeing that decline or stagnation. Teacher effectiveness has not been properly addressed in the Gonski review.”
On the topic of teaching effectiveness, Dr Merlo’s report advocates for thinking about it in a “measurable-effectiveness focused” way.
This school of thought focuses on “explicit instruction and developing mathematical competency”, the report states.
“Engagement happens via building competency and setting students up for success, not via relaxing requirements on correctness of answers or refraining from using timed tests.”
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10 July, 2024
Police Arrest 80 at Israel-Hamas War Protest at UC Santa Cruz
Police in riot gear surrounded arm-in-arm protesters Friday, May 31, at the University of California–Santa Cruz, to remove an encampment and barricades where pro-Palestinian demonstrations have blocked the main entrance to the campus this week. Dozens were arrested, the university said.
Campus, local and state police swarmed the protesters, and video from local news stations showed officers telling people to leave, then taking away signs and part of a barricade. There appeared to be some pushing and shoving between police and protesters. Officers carried zip ties and appeared to detain a few people.
“For weeks, encampment participants were given repeated, clear direction to remove the encampment and cease blocking access to numerous campus resources and to the campus itself,” Scott Hernandez-Jason, a spokesperson for the university, said in a statement Friday.
“They were notified that their actions were unlawful and unsafe. And this morning they were also given multiple warnings by law enforcement to leave the area and disperse to avoid arrest. Unfortunately, many refused to follow this directive and many individuals are being arrested,” Mr. Hernandez-Jason said.
Approximately 80 demonstrators were arrested, said university spokesperson Abby Butler. Chancellor Cynthia Larive said in a letter to the community Friday that some demonstrators remained at the entrance.
She said that the road blockades, “with fortified and chained barricades made of pallets and other materials, and other unlawful actions, disrupted campus operations and threatened safety, including delaying access of emergency vehicles.”
It wasn’t known if anyone was injured. The university was holding classes remotely Friday.
Graduate student workers at UC Santa Cruz continued a strike that began last week over the university system’s treatment of pro-Palestinian protesters. The strike will expand to three more campuses next week, their union said Friday.
The strikes began May 20 at UC Santa Cruz, and then extended to UCLA and UC Davis. Members at UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego will walk out on June 3 and at UC Irvine on June 5, UAW Local 4811 said. Union members include graduate teaching assistants, researchers and other academic employees. The UC president’s office said the union was violating its contract’s no-strike clause and disrupting students’ critical year-end activities.
Protest camps sprang up across the U.S. and in Europe this spring as students demanded their universities stop doing business with Israel or companies that they say support its war in Gaza. Organizers seek to amplify calls to end Israel’s war with Hamas, which they describe as a genocide against the Palestinians.
The Associated Press has recorded at least 84 incidents since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the U.S. At least 3,117 people have been arrested on the campuses of 63 colleges and universities. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
The confrontation in California came a day after arrests at a pro-Palestinian encampment at a Detroit campus and a student walkout during commencement at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On Thursday, police in riot gear removed fencing and broke down tents erected last week on green space near the undergraduate library at Wayne State University in Detroit. At least 12 people were arrested.
President Kimberly Andrews Espy cited health and safety concerns and disruptions to campus operations. Staff were encouraged to work remotely this week, and in-person summer classes were suspended.
The camp, she said, “created an environment of exclusion—one in which some members of our campus community felt unwelcome and unable to fully participate in campus life.”
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Supreme Court’s Chevron Ruling Is a Major Victory for American Higher Education
The Supreme Court’s recent Chevron ruling, while rightly focusing on central issues like presidential immunity, also brought a potential boon for American higher education. This decision, which I believe holds promise for the future, has yet to be fully grasped by the higher education establishment.
Specifically, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court invalidated the doctrine of Chevron deference prevailing since 1984. In the Chevron case, the Court dramatically curtailed the power of courts to rein in the actions of independent agencies and executive departments to overturn federal administrative diktats, which some think led to the creation of the modern administrative state.
The recent Supreme Court decision has had a profound effect on universities. As Jon Fansmith, the chief lobbyist for the American Council of Education, aptly pointed out, “Almost every aspect of running a modern campus is dictated in some way by federal regulations or guidance—whether that’s how you make staffing, compensation, training, or enrollment decisions, all the way down to the level of what you put on your website.”
I contend that the golden age of American higher education came in the generation before the rise in federal higher education activism, which began after obtaining statutory authority with the Higher Education Act of 1965 but most notably after the creation of the U.S. Department of Education in 1978.
America’s role in creating the world’s best universities dates back to before 1965, when both private dollars and state governments helped finance the planet’s best universities. Aside from obtaining resources, these schools benefited from competition and academic diversity—different kinds of schools, some progressive, some conservative, some religious, others militantly agnostic. We did not have stultifying schools teaching a uniform curriculum with little diversity, the model in much of the rest of the world.
But as Fansmith says, the Feds took that away, especially strongly beginning with the Obama Administration in 2009.
The modern federal administrative state has robbed most universities of much of their individuality, with a few schools of the Hillsdale or Grove City College variety that have completely severed ties with the Feds escaping that fate, generally with great success. The modern-day Department of Education’s sins include the lamentable declaration of war against college men and Anglo-Saxon rules of judicial conduct with the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter that led most colleges into adopting an almost “guilty until proven innocent” attitude regarding allegations of male student sexual misconduct. The jihad towards men has contributed to a significant decline in male enrollment.
A second significant sin came with the Obama era: “gainful employment rules” applied against for-profit colleges, not against mediocre or worse public colleges, and were designed to annihilate a small but often vibrant sector.
But the biggest problem relates to the terrible federal student loan program. In its best days, the program was a disaster, as it is the primary culprit in the tuition fee explosion of modern times. But with the Biden loan forgiveness programs, it has taken on unjust and costly dimensions of truly Titanic proportions. Aside from its policy inappropriateness, the contempt for the rule of law shown by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in the light of adverse court rulings has been shocking.
The Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision may have great, long-term positive effects on higher education by giving the courts greater ability to block outrageous administrative fatwas that contradict American legal traditions. Yet that outcome is far from assured. Judicial adherence to stare decisis—deferring to Supreme Court decisions—is somewhat spotty.
Interestingly, when the Chevron case was decided in 1984, conservatives were mostly happy since it was seen as curtailing the power of liberal judges. Yet today’s conservatives also love its reversal because it reduces the power of agencies adhering to a predominantly liberal administrative agenda. The political orientation of both judges and powerful bureaucratic apparatchiks changes with time.
To be sure, the fate of America’s universities depends on many things, and not all their ails are federally inflicted. To cite just one example, the rise in debilitating grade inflation roughly coincides with the growth in federal involvement, and while there may be links between those two things, they are not obvious or strong. Still, my tentative assessment is that the Supreme Court’s recent action improved the environment where higher learning occurs in America.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14986&omhide=true&trk=title
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Australia: Despite growing need, psychology ‘almost impossible’ to study at university
This is a bit of a surprise. There are always a LOT of students studying psych at the undergrad level. You would think that would carry over to postgrad. It is however true that modern psychological therapy can be hard work. It is not just sitting and talking these days
University psychology course closures are leaving desperate students – and a nationwide backlog of patients – caught in a bottleneck, as aspiring new clinicians struggle to enter the industry.
Psychology has become the most in-demand postgraduate degree in NSW and the ACT, but 79 of the 187 courses offered nationally have stopped new intakes, the majority shutting all together.
The demand for clinical psychology appointments has steadily risen since the pandemic. The health burden represents a $10bn loss in productivity for employers, as part of the $220bn in losses cited by the Productivity Commission’s mental health inquiry report
Australian Psychological Society president Catriona Davis-McCabe said students were falling victim to an underfunded tertiary sector. “There are thousands of students who want to be psychologists and want to go on and do the training, and they’re being turned away,” Dr Davis-McCabe said.
“It’s a very, very expensive course to run because there are placements and there’s a high lecturer to student ratio.”
According to the APS, Australia meets only 35 per cent of its psychology workforce target.
“When we reduce the training to what we have now, there’s a massive shortage of psychologists,” Dr Davis-McCabe said.
“The government has looked at some really good initiatives, like introducing digital platforms and digital support for people. But that is not going to help people with complex mental health issues.”
In specialised areas of practise like forensic or community psychology, the university offerings are even more dire.
“We’re seeing those programs close one after another. Some of these postgraduate programs only have one left in the country, and we’re losing them,” she said. “It’s almost impossible to get in.”
According to the University Admissions Centre, psychology postgraduate courses topped the preferences in NSW and the ACT, taking five of the top 12 courses. This included the first and second most lucrative offerings.
Provisional psychologist and forensic psychology student Nita Roschanzamir was locked out of her masters and PhD in psychology despite securing dual scholarships for her research.
“I fell in love with psychology in high school, and with what makes people the way they are,” Ms Roschanzamir said.
The 27-year-old successfully enrolled in UNSW’s Bachelor of Psychology, before passing her honours with a 90 per cent assessment average.
When she applied for the Master’s and PhD combined program, she secured both the government Research Training Program scholarship and a Westpac Future Leaders scholarship.
“This was like $200,000 worth of scholarship money. That’s highly competitive to get,” she said. “But when I applied for UNSW, I didn’t get in, because that year, they were only taking six students out of about 800.
“I just had to keep trying year after year. I tried for three years.”
She now works in provisional psychology, a more restricted profession, and warns aspiring students of the slim prospects.
“It’s just become harder, and harder, and harder to get in,” she said. “I’ve spoken to so many people in the university sector … about this issue, and they’re all on the students’ side.
“They want to admit these students, and they feel like they’re making a decision between a rock and a hard place.”
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9 July, 2024
Three Columbia Staff Removed From Posts Over Antisemitic Allegations
Three Columbia University staff members have been permanently removed from their positions and are on leave due to their involvement in some text messaging that has been characterized as anti-semitic, Columbia University officials announced on July 8.
“The three staff members involved have been permanently removed from their positions at Columbia College and remain on leave at this time,” Columbia University Provost Angela Olinto said in a statement on Monday.
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and Ms. Olinto addressed the campus community on Monday about incidents that occurred during a Reunion Weekend event in late May.
Specifically, Ms. Shafik referred to “troubling” and “unprofessional” text messages between several senior administrators of Columbia College.
The texts, exchanged during an event, titled “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present, and Future,” were found to include sentiments that Ms. Shafik said were “ancient antisemitic tropes.”
In a message to the community alongside Ms. Olinto, Ms. Shafik expressed deep regret and condemned the behavior, emphasizing that such sentiments are antithetical to the university’s values.
“Whether intended as such or not, these sentiments are unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community that is antithetical to our University’s values and the standards we must uphold in our community,” Ms. Shafik said in the statement.
Four Deans Involved in Antisemitism Message Exchange
The university did not directly mention the names of the three university officials involved, and The Epoch Times cannot independently verify their identities.
A previous action taken by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce mentioned that four deans were involved in the antisemitic message exchange.
While releasing the text messages, House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) mentioned that the messages came from four deans: the vice dean and chief administrative officer of Columbia College Susan Chang-Kim, the dean of undergraduate student life Cristen Kromm, the associate dean for student and family support Matthew Patashnick, and the dean of Columbia College Josef Sorett.
Ms. Chang-Kim, Ms. Kromm, and Mr. Sorett are still listed as “officers” of the Columbia University administration. The profile webpage of Mr. Patashnick has been removed.
Mr. Sorett has since acknowledged his participation in the message exchange and apologized.
“I am deeply sorry that this happened in a community that I lead and, that I was part of any of the exchanges, and I pledge to spearhead the change we need to ensure this never happens again,” he said on Monday.
Ms. Olinto wrote in her statement she would be working with Mr. Sorett “to mend relationships, repair trust, and rebuild accountability.”
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Pro-Palestinian Protest Camp at UBC Has Been Dismantled
A pro-Palestinian protest camp that had occupied a sports field at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus for more than two months has been dismantled.
Dozens of tents had been removed by July 8, although barricades and fencing around the site remain in place.
A UBC security guard who declined to be named says the protesters vacated the site without giving any notice on Sunday evening.
Guards were manning the entrance to the fenced site to prevent unauthorized people from entering on July 8 afternoon.
On July 5, more than 35 tents and a small handful of people were visible at the site that had been occupied since late April by protesters demanding that UBC end any financial or academic ties with Israeli companies or institutions.
Neither UBC nor protest organizers immediately responded to requests for comment.
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University of Sydney students and staff blast new ‘draconian’ protest crackdown
Academics and students at the University of Sydney have blasted the vice-chancellor for a “draconian” protest crackdown that requires explicit permission for megaphones to be used or posters to be put up on campus.
The policy, quietly introduced last week, demands three days’ notice for demonstrations to be held and approval for putting up “materials, banners or structures” on campus, using megaphones or amplifiers, erecting temporary structures and using cooking equipment.
It follows last month’s dissolution of the university’s pro-Palestine encampment, which was the longest running in Australia and faced sustained criticism from some Jewish groups and the Coalition.
In an email sent to staff on 4 July after the changes were implemented, the vice-chancellor, Mark Scott, said the encampment had “challenged” the university in many ways and ensuring campus was a safe environment was his “top priority”.
“At its core – this policy upholds our commitment to free speech – while recognising we need to be able to manage our environment for the safety and security of all,” he wrote.
“As we engage with each other during times of great challenge and polarity in broader society, it’s important we have the right settings in place.
“The university … will of course continue to support and give permission to activities that contribute to our campus life, including stalls run by USU clubs and societies.”
Open fires, camping, and demonstrations without notice were also banned, as was “any activity that presents an unacceptable health or safety risk” and indoor demonstrations.
Students and staff faced removal from campus or disciplinary action if they didn’t comply with the measures.
President of the university’s branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Nick Riemer wrote to Scott on Saturday warning the branch committee would be meeting imminently to decide ways to respond until the policy was rescinded, adding preliminary advice suggested it may be illegal.
He told Guardian Australia the university was mirroring crackdown on speech that was associated with “authoritarian regimes”.
“Open and unobstructed protest is essential to any functional democratic community, particularly one which is oriented to the creation and promotion of knowledge,” the letter read. “The casualness with which you have just attempted to repress it is, frankly, extraordinary.
“I am giving you notice now that, in the name of the defence of elementary civil liberties, I refuse to be bound by the policy and will ignore it, regardless of the consequences. I know I am far from alone.”
A spokesperson for the University of Sydney told Guardian Australia the institution had a rich history of activism and protest but the campus was “not a camping ground”.
“All students and staff have the right to express themselves freely as long as it’s done safely and in accordance with our policies and the law,” they said.
“We uphold our students’ right to express their opinions in a respectful way and safe demonstrations are still very supported, but this policy makes it clear that our campus is not a camping ground.”
The spokesperson said the university “considered relevant legislation in the updating of this policy which still protects the legal right to protest. We consider the policy to be lawful and appropriate.”
A student at the University of Sydney and member of Students Against War, Jacob Starling, said Scott was “waging a war” on the democratic right to protest and would be challenged.
“This policy must be withdrawn immediately, and if it isn’t withdrawn it must be defied,” he said.
“Students and staff will not be silenced and we will continue to stand in solidarity with Palestine, no matter what draconian policy the university introduces.”
Student Representative Council (SRC) president at the University of Sydney, Harrison Brennan, said the policy was a direct response to the sustained campaign against the university’s ties to weapons manufacturers and Israeli academic institutions.
The university’s encampment was peacefully disbanded last month with some concessions agreed to by Scott. Multiple students were facing disciplinary action for participating in protests, including suspensions for interrupting classes.
Brennan said university campuses “must be places for students to exercise their democratic right to peaceful, lawful protest”.
“This is a repulsive full-scale offensive on the right to protest at the University of Sydney,” he said.
“Students shouldn’t need permission to protest on their own campus. Students shouldn’t need permission to use a megaphone or set up a stall, and students absolutely shouldn’t need permission to challenge their university’s connection to genocide.”
David Brophy, historian of China and Inner Asia at the University of Sydney, said the policy was adopted “without any notice or consultation”.
“[The] new policy … is an astonishing attack on political freedom at the university,” he posted on X.
Greens deputy leader and higher education spokesperson, senator Mehreen Faruqi, called on Scott to reverse the policy.
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8 July, 2024
Selective school students were asked if they were satisfied with life. Then they were scored
Hmmm... this is a tricky set of numbers. The first thing you need to know is that happiness levels (aka life-satisfaction) seem to be set at a level which changes little in response to life events -- sometimes amazingly so. To oversimplify a little, you are born sad or born happy and where you are on that continuum never changes much and soon reverts to type. So looking for long-term changes in it is perverse. See:
http://jonjayray.com/happines.html
But what is also true is that amid our general background feelings, we can all experience events which we really like or really dislike. So a much more interesting number would be how many of those events we experience. I think there is no doubt that people from advantagous backgrounds experience many more "like" events and fewer "dislike" events.
It's complicated but that's people
Sending a child to selective school makes little difference to their life satisfaction, employment and educational outcomes by the time they reach 25, a major study of Australian pupils has found.
The findings have triggered concerns about the academic segregation of students in selective schools and raised the prospect of rolling them back in a push to make the education system more inclusive and equitable.
The Victoria University study tracked 3000 students over 11 years at three stages, starting when they were 15. It included non-selective and selective school students across a mix of sectors.
Selective school graduates recorded a 0.19 point increase in general life satisfaction at age 25, a figure the report authors deemed insignificant.
“These very modest findings indicate that attending an academically selective school does not appear to pay off in large benefits for individuals,” the report said.
At age 19, 77.6 per cent of non-selective school-educated graduates were either employed or in education, compared to 81 per cent of selective school graduates– but that difference disappeared by age 25. Individuals used for comparison in the study were matched to peers who attended a different type of school but came from a similar social background.
Other research into UK selective grammar schools found employment and life benefits may emerge after age 25, with students who graduate from a selective school more likely to work in a job with higher occupational status, obtain higher level educational qualifications, earn higher incomes and own a home at age 42 compared to government school students.
The research did not measure the prestige of their subsequent university degree, other training or the quality of their employment.
NSW is the selective school capital of Australia, with 21 fully selective and 26 partially selective schools. By comparison, Victoria has four while Queensland and Western Australia have one. Previous research has found selective schools in NSW are dominated by children who come from the country’s most educationally advantaged homes.
The report’s findings prompted the researchers to call for further examination of selective schools in Australia.
“Rather than tweak some aspects of the enrolment processes, we see greater value in conducting a thorough and critical examination of fully and partially selective schools, and scaling back selectivity if the supposed benefits are not found,” it said.
Report author Melissa Tham said applications for selective schools were increasing every year.
“We need a full review of selective education, and we need a critical examination of whether these schools actually improve our students,” Tham said.
“Some could get into a selective school, and then they could go on to get a great ATAR and go on and become a doctor. But you just don’t know whether they would have been able to achieve that if they just went to a regular school.”
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Don’t Let the Department of Education Silence Our Kids
The Biden administration, in thrall to radical gender ideology, would erase women’s progress in pursuing their dreams and expanding their athletic, academic, and economic opportunities. (Photo illustration: RyanJLane/Getty Images)
Kimberly Hermann
Kimberly Hermann is executive director of Southeastern Legal Foundation, a national, nonprofit legal organization dedicated to defending liberty in the courts of law and public opinion.
The Founding Fathers recognized that an educated citizenry was vital to the survival of our republic. Thomas Jefferson, for example, saw education as essential to giving every citizen the opportunity to participate meaningfully in a free society.
Writing in 1818, our third president described public education as “the means to give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business … to express and preserve his own ideas … to improve his morals and faculties … to understand his duties, and to exercise his rights.”
In 1972, Congress—recognizing certain inadequacies in the law for women that didn’t fully live up to that Jeffersonian vision free from harassment and discrimination—passed Title IX of the Education Amendments.
For 52 years, Title IX has protected women’s pursuit of their dreams, expanding their athletic, academic, and economic opportunities.
Now the Biden administration and its Education Department, in thrall to radical gender ideology, would erase that progress.
In deciding to reinterpret the statute by replacing “sex” with “gender identity,” the Biden administration would transform a statute meant to protect women into one that would punish them. From kindergarten to college, girls would be unable to raise their voices to protect the very rights Title IX affirmed for them for more than five decades.
The ramifications are deeply unsettling.
Last year in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, parents sounded the alarm when a fully intact male coach, who goes by the name Sasha Yates and identifies as a woman, regularly changed in the girls’ locker room, exposing his male genitalia in front of 15- and 16-year-old girls. In West Virginia, a group of girls was banned from a track meet after refusing to compete against a male in a shot-put competition.
Under the Biden administration’s proposed rule change, those girls could be cited for sexual harassment for expressing extremely natural and justified concerns about their mental and physical well-being.
These rules operate in conjunction with academic curricula and counseling programs that are meant to drive a wedge between children and parents. They are also deliberately designed to undermine our children’s ability to use logic and reason to understand the world, which was, until recently, the real purpose of education.
Once again, compelled speech and censorship come into play.
Elementary school students who plainly see their teacher as a man in a dress are told to defy their senses and pretend that adult is a woman. Students who might feel uncomfortable accommodating someone else’s ever-changing personal pronouns or sharing a restroom with someone of the opposite sex are pushed to seek mental health counseling.
Then these students are emotionally manipulated into believing that if they speak the truth, they are driving trans students toward self-harm. Teachers who reject this newspeak are cowed into submission, facing disciplinary action should they stand up for the truth.
We once had a school system where children developed the tools to make up their own minds and navigate the world. We now have one where children are trained to submit to the gender ideology du jour.
Such a model is incompatible with the maintenance of a free society. But, of course, that’s the point.
This is a war on our families, our children, and the First Amendment. And make no mistake, the Biden administration is taking steps such as this because it is losing.
Across the country, organizations such as Moms for Liberty, Leadership Institute, and Moms for America are mobilizing concerned parents to run for school boards and push back on this madness.
Louisiana recently became the 11th state to pass universal school choice, giving parents more authority over where their children attend school. At the behest of groups such as the American Principles Project, states are passing laws to protect girls sports and ban the social and physical gender transition of our children.
And here at Southeastern Legal Foundation, we are working tirelessly both in and out of the courtroom to challenge these Biden administration measures and protect the rights of our students to speak the truth.
Everywhere you turn, engaged parents and grandparents are bridging the partisan divide to restore and preserve an educational system that gives our kids the skills they need to be upstanding citizens in a free republic. They are bravely guarding the ability of our children to reason, to dream, and to speak the truth without fear of retribution from some Orwellian Ministry of Truth.
Now, more than ever, we must come together to support and learn from each other, to share our stories and to show the Washington bureaucrats that we will not sit idly by while they rob our kids of their birthright.
That’s why I’ll join the March for Kids on Aug. 31 on the National Mall, demonstrating peacefully with thousands of families to remind the government that we won’t let the bureaucrats steal our children’s right to speak freely.
Parents and grandparents who care about the education of their children should join us
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/03/dont-let-the-department-of-education-silence-our-kids/
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America’s Teachers Are Unhappy. Here’s How We Can Turn That Around
All is not well with America’s teachers.
Surveys published this spring paint an alarming picture of the reality teachers face every day in our country’s classrooms.
Inflation has hit their earnings. Top-down regulation has smothered their creativity and motivation. Union-driven, one-size-fits-all contracts thwart career advancement. Teachers complain of a lack of control over discipline policies, verbal abuse and threats of physical violence.
According to the Pew Research Center, more than four-fifths of teachers surveyed by the RAND Corporation said public education has gotten worse in the past five years. More than half say it’s likely to keep getting worse over the next five, and a majority would not recommend their profession to the class of 2024.
A Brown University analysis shows that since 2009, the number of parents who say they want their child to grow up to become a teacher has fallen by half.
High school students considering future careers say better pay is the no. 1 factor that could make a teaching job more appealing. Next on the list are meaningful opportunities for career advancement, more autonomy on the job, and more professional prestige.
Effective teachers deserve these perks. But they won’t get them from existing public school systems.
We need to increase teachers’ ability to choose where they work.
As a Certified Public Accountant, I had a choice of career paths. I could have applied to an international Big Three accounting firm, joined a smaller specialty firm, taken an in-house job with a company or government agency, or gone into business for myself.
Right now, nearly nine in 10 American teachers are stuck with the first option —working for a large institution, usually a school district. Some take the second option, working for smaller private or charter schools. But for most educators, that is where the options end.
We must make it easier for teachers to go into business for themselves, creating their own schools or offering their own courses, tutoring or other educational services.
In my home state of Florida, more teachers are going this route, serving families who use the nation’s largest education choice program. As one teacher said after founding her own small academy for 16 middle school students: “I am 100 percent free. And I love it.”
Every teacher should have the freedom to design their own education solutions and market them directly to families.
Imagine Uber or AirBnB for education: An online platform that allows educators to offer their services to as many families as are willing to pay. One teacher could offer Advanced Placement English to hundreds of students at a time, and be compensated based on the popularity of their course, instead of a flat district salary schedule.
Websites like Outschool are moving in this direction, offering tens of thousands of courses, most of them electives or enrichment options.
When school districts have to compete to attract the most talented teachers, the best teachers’ pay will rise and excellence will be rewarded. Studies have found that expanding school choice options can create a bidding war for excellent teachers, pushing salaries higher.
To make this a reality, we also need to stop forcing new teachers to jump through pointless hoops. Teachers fast-tracked into classrooms during the pandemic performed about as well as their colleagues who cleared the usual bureaucratic hurdles to get traditional teaching certificates.
Economists recently ran the numbers on the value of different degrees, and found the return on investment for a traditional teaching credential is close to zero.
It’s no wonder. Teacher preparation programs can be money makers for colleges, but they offer little practical guidance on how to manage a classroom or deliver a lesson.
Certification requirements mostly serve to detract candidates with agency from pursuing the teaching profession. Those who persist are forced to take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to sit through hours of abstract theorizing and ideological indoctrination — only to walk into class on day 1 of their first year ill-equipped to handle the student who won’t take his seat.
Teachers deserve better. They deserve to be “100 percent free.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/07/americas-teachers-unhappy-heres-we-can-turn-around/
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7 July, 2024
Clever Pupils Don’t Need to Attend Academically Selective Schools to Thrive, Study Finds
This is undoubtedly true. A clever kid will do well in any school. I taught myself for the two final years of High School but still got good grades so you in fact don't need to go to ANY school if you are smart enough
Findings published in a new peer-reviewed paper in the British Journal of Educational Studies challenges the idea that academically selective schools are necessary for clever pupils to achieve good outcomes.
Selective schools are government-funded schools that enrol only the highest performing students. Pupils take a standardized entrance exam, from which the best-scoring are enrolled.
Some argue that selective schools are necessary for bright pupils to reach their full academic potential. Selective schools can outperform or perform just as well as elite schools in final year exams, but without the high fees charged to parents. Hence, selective schools can offer a means for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds to receive a first-class education.
However, others argue that selective schools disproportionately benefit high socioeconomic children whose parents can afford private tutoring to prepare them for the entrance exams.
“Studies show that parents wish to enrol their children into selective schools, because they believe it will increase the chances of their children getting into a prestigious university, and securing a well-paid and high-status job,” says Melissa Tham, a research fellow at the Mitchell Institute at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.
To find out whether there are benefits associated with selective schools, Tham and her colleagues Shuyan Huo, and Andrew Wade tracked almost 3000 pupils from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), a nationally representative survey program that follows young Australians over an 11-year period. The survey started when respondents were aged 15 in 2009.
As expected, the selective schools featured in the study had a higher proportion of academically high-achieving students, as measured by mathematics and reading scores.
However, at ages 19 and 25 there was little difference between the educational and employment outcomes of children who attended selective schools versus non-selective schools. For example, the study found that while 81% of selective school students went on to secure a job or university place at 19 compared to 77.6% of pupils from non-selective schools, this difference disappeared when the students were matched on key characteristics, including socioeconomic background, gender, and geographical location.
At age 25, all outcomes between selective and non-selective school students were not significant, except general life satisfaction. Attending a selective school increased a student’s general life satisfaction score by just 0.19 points. Meanwhile, students who attended non-selective school were just as likely to go on to study at university or secure a job as their peers who attended selective schools.
“These very modest findings indicate that attending an academically selective school does not appear to pay off in large benefits for individuals,” says Andrew Wade, co-author of the study.
“We argue that academically selective schools in the government sector therefore contradicts the principles of inclusive and equitable education which underpin Australia’s school system.”
According to the authors, the findings suggest that more research is needed to determine whether selective schools offer any benefit to academically able students.
“Rather than tweak some aspects of the enrolment processes, we see greater value in conducting a thorough and critical examination of fully and partially selective schools, and scaling back selectivity if the supposed benefits are not found,” says Huo.
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Teachers this year saw the effects of the pandemic’s stress and isolation on young students: Some can barely speak, sit still or even hold a pencil
The pandemic’s babies, toddlers and preschoolers are now school-age, and the impact on them is becoming increasingly clear: Many are showing signs of being academically and developmentally behind.
Interviews with more than two dozen teachers, pediatricians and early childhood experts depicted a generation less likely to have age-appropriate skills — to be able to hold a pencil, communicate their needs, identify shapes and letters, manage their emotions or solve problems with peers.
A variety of scientific evidence has also found that the pandemic seems to have affected some young children’s early development. Boys were more affected than girls, studies have found.
“I definitely think children born then have had developmental challenges compared to prior years,” said Dr. Jaime Peterson, a pediatrician at Oregon Health and Science University, whose research is on kindergarten readiness. “We asked them to wear masks, not see adults, not play with kids. We really severed those interactions, and you don’t get that time back for kids.”
The pandemic’s effect on older children — who were sent home during school closures, and lost significant ground in math and reading — has been well documented. But the impact on the youngest children is in some ways surprising: They were not in formal school when the pandemic began, and at an age when children spend a lot of time at home anyway.
The early years, though, are most critical for brain development. Researchers said several aspects of the pandemic affected young children — parental stress, less exposure to people, lower preschool attendance, more time on screens and less time playing.
Yet because their brains are developing so rapidly, they are also well positioned to catch up, experts said.
The youngest children represent “a pandemic tsunami” headed for the American education system, said Joel Ryan, who works with a network of Head Start and state preschool centers in Washington State, where he has seen an increase in speech delays and behavioral problems.
Not every young child is showing delays. Children at schools that are mostly Black or Hispanic or where most families have lower incomes are the most behind, according to data set to be released Monday by Curriculum Associates, whose tests are given in thousands of U.S. schools. Students from higher-income families are more on pace with historical trends.
But “most, if not all, young students were impacted academically to some degree,” said Kristen Huff, vice president for assessment and research at Curriculum Associates.
Recovery is possible, experts said, though young children have not been a main focus of $122 billion in federal aid distributed to school districts to help students recover.
“We 100 percent have the tools to help kids and families recover,” said Catherine Monk, a clinical psychologist and professor at Columbia, and a chair of a research project on mothers and babies in the pandemic. “But do we know how to distribute, in a fair way, access to the services they need?”
What’s different now?
“I spent a long time just teaching kids to sit still on the carpet for one book. That’s something I didn’t need to do before.”
David Feldman, kindergarten teacher, St. Petersburg, Fla.
“We are talking 4- and 5-year-olds who are throwing chairs, biting, hitting, without the self-regulation.”
Tommy Sheridan, deputy director, National Head Start Association
Brook Allen, in Martin, Tenn., has taught kindergarten for 11 years. This year, for the first time, she said, several students could barely speak, several were not toilet trained, and several did not have the fine motor skills to hold a pencil.
Children don’t engage in imaginative play or seek out other children the way they used to, said Michaela Frederick, a pre-K teacher for students with learning delays in Sharon, Tenn. She’s had to replace small building materials in her classroom with big soft blocks because students’ fine motor skills weren’t developed enough to manipulate them.
Perhaps the biggest difference Lissa O’Rourke has noticed among her preschoolers in St. Augustine, Fla., has been their inability to regulate their emotions: “It was knocking over chairs, it was throwing things, it was hitting their peers, hitting their teachers.”
Data from schools underscores what early childhood professionals have noticed.
Children who just finished second grade, who were as young as 3 or 4 when the pandemic began, remain behind children the same age prepandemic, particularly in math, according to the new Curriculum Associates data. Of particular concern, the students who are the furthest behind are making the least progress catching up.
The youngest students’ performance is “in stark contrast” to older elementary school children, who have caught up much more, the researchers said. The new analysis examined testing data from about four million children, with cohorts before and after the pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/01/upshot/pandemic-children-school-performance.html
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Another Federal Court Rules Against Teen’s ‘Only 2 Genders’ T-Shirt
Liam Morrison, a Massachusetts middle schooler, wanted one thing: to wear a T-shirt declaring simply, “There are only two genders.”
After the Middleboro school’s principal and a school counselor pulled Liam, then 12, out of class last year and ordered him to remove the shirt or go home, Liam took his case against the town and school officials to court.
Liam requested a preliminary injunction blocking Nichols Middle School from enforcing its policy restricting his free expression.
Liam asserted that the school’s actions in May 2023 violated his First Amendment right to freedom of expression, particularly as a form of “viewpoint discrimination.” Although his speech was censored, the speech of those expressing a different perspective on the same issue was not.
But after a disappointing loss in federal trial court and a denial of his request for an injunction, Liam appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit—only to lose again.
Both courts made the same determination—that Liam’s speech, while not necessarily disruptive, interfered with the “rights of others.”
At the lower court level, the Massachusetts federal district court held that Liam’s school was within its rights to prohibit him from wearing the T-shirt.
The court noted that the school’s dress code was undertaken to “protect [against] the invasion of the rights of other students to a safe and secure educational environment.” Among other things, the dress code prohibits clothing depicting hate speech or imagery targeting groups based on gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
The district court went on to write that transgender students have “a right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking their identities.”
The court reached this conclusion by relying on the Supreme Court’s longstanding precedent on school speech, Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), in which the high court held that First Amendment protections extend to students in public schools.
In that case, the Supreme Court clarified that school authorities who want to censor speech must show that permitting the speech would interfere significantly with the discipline needed for the school to function, or that the particular speech is in “collision with the rights of others to be secure and be let alone.”
On appeal, the 1st Circuit affirmed the lower court’s holding, relying on the “material disruption” test—established by the 7th Circuit in Nuxoll ex rel. Nuxoll v. Indian Prairie School District (2008)—to inquire as to whether school officials may prohibit passive or silent expression that doesn’t target a specific student.
In Liam’s case, the appeals court determined, they could.
Citing the Nuxoll case, the 1st Circuit wrote that “adolescent students subjected to derogatory comments about such characteristics may find it even harder than usual to concentrate on their studies and perform up to the school’s expectations.”
And, the court continued, “speech demeaning the characteristics of personal identity” that was covered by the school’s rule “could be prohibited under Tinker’s material-disruption limitation if school authorities could reasonably forecast that the speech would have ’psychological effects’ on ‘students with those characteristics’ that would yield such ‘symptoms.’”
The 1st Circuit went on to say that the message on Liam’s T-shirt was demeaning to transgender and gender-nonconforming students and could reasonably be forecasted to “poison the educational atmosphere,” which would substantially disrupt the administration of the middle school. The court held that school administrators should be given deference in deciding what is conducive to the learning environment.
Although schools generally know best what conduct may prove most “disruptive to the learning environment,” the 1st Circuit’s holding that speech resulting in “psychological effects” on other students can be restricted is too deferential.
The decision allows the political or cultural whims of school administrators to dictate what is appropriate one day and perhaps inappropriate the next—so long as those school administrators believe (without providing any evidentiary support) that the speech likely would make other students feel “uncomfortable” with a classmate’s expression.
In Liam’s case, the appellate court acknowledged that both the town of Middleboro and school officials were unaware of any prior incidents or issues caused by the message on Liam’s T-shirt. But in the court’s view, the school had made a sufficiently reasonable forecast of the serious nature of the struggles that some students might experience based on gender identity, which might be severe enough to disrupt their ability to learn.
But the Supreme Court never has held that abstract forecasts, speculative outcomes, and psychological effects are an appropriate basis for censoring a student’s speech.
To the contrary, in an earlier school speech case, then-Justice Stephen Breyer called American schools the “nurseries of democracy.” And the Supreme Court has held (albeit in a trademark case, not one concerning school speech) that even offensive speech, considered “disparaging” to others, is a form of protected expression that survives First Amendment scrutiny.
These dictates are hard to square with the 1st Circuit’s determination that “demeaning” another’s characteristics is enough to censor even silent forms of expression.
English philosopher John Stuart Mill once wrote: “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
In the T-shirt case, Liam was the “one” in the town of Middleboro. And yet he was silenced for expressing what he believed to be a statement of fact.
In the midst of increasingly divisive cultural orthodoxy on gender identity and expression, particularly in America’s classrooms, it seems there is no room for debate or dialogue if individuals hold politically unpopular or traditional views on the immutable nature of sex and the unyielding reality of biology.
The appellate court’s holding in Liam’s case is unfortunate and indicates that, at least in some states, censorship cuts only one way.
Liam’s attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom have indicated they are eyeing an appeal.
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4 July, 2024
The story of an "estranged" student
I too was one of those. At University I was neither living with my parents nor receiving a cent from them. But I had a full-time government job for the first two years while studying part time so I had no stresses at all. And I saved a lot.
I then got a government scholarship which enabled me to go full-time. So I feel sorry for the guy below. I had a ball (literally on some occasions)
Story by Niall Hignett
‘Yeah, three-hundred-fifty quid mate.’ Standing in my uni’s car park, the stranger handed me the cash, and drove off in my ‘06 Renault Clio. It got wet inside when it rained, and the speakers only worked if I drove over a pothole, but I was sad to see it go.
Just a few hours prior I’d driven myself to university in Durham to study law. I didn’t need my car anymore because I wasn’t driving back home, but I needed the money.
That’s because I’m an estranged student – someone who has little or no contact with their parents while in higher education. There are roughly 10,000 of us.
It was an awkward few weeks starting uni from this position – everyone I’d met was fixed on socialising, and getting the most out of the experience. But my focus was finding work so I could afford to be there.
In the first few weeks, I needed a deposit for my next year’s housing, and had been quoted a few hundred pounds for a guarantor scheme – that was on top of my rent, food, and textbooks, which already amounted to more than my loan.
The bank of mum and dad wasn’t going to pay for me, like many of my peers.
I got the max loan after a laborious process of submitting evidence to Student Finance England, with the university confirming I’d flogged my car upon arrival as proof I met the narrow definition of estrangement.
But it still wasn’t close to enough.
It’s not just covering living costs that I was worried about. Without the obvious back-up plan to return home, I needed to create a financial safety net for myself.
That meant earning as much as possible, and spending as little as possible.
For example, I haven’t ever been to an expensive ball or college formal – or even bought one of those Hogwarts-esque gowns.
Thankfully, the posh-boy aesthetic wouldn’t suit me anyway – but it’s isolating nonetheless.
And I had financial anxiety, constantly.
But that’s not uncommon in my situation with 84% of estranged students reporting worrying about money ‘all the time’ while at uni.
So, a couple of weeks after arriving, I got a job as a bartender – working evening and weekend shifts.
I spent more time serving drinks than I did in lectures or seminars in that first year of university.
This took a toll on me. I got hit-and-miss grades, mainly doing worse in the subjects where the lectures and seminars were on a Tuesday, since I worked Monday nights to 3am.
Having worked so hard to be the first in my family to go to uni, it was deflating to feel ‘not good enough’.
I’m not unique in this sense. Compared to the average student, 13% less estranged students get the 2.1 or above needed for most grad schemes.
The feeling that I must work harder, with the added mental health strain, makes it difficult to do a degree well.
Financial strain wasn’t my only problem. Seeing other students able to enjoy the experience, and engage more with their degree, was isolating.
After overhearing me complaining to the bouncer that I was tired on hour 12 of my shift, a student approached me.
‘You’re tired? I’m doing a law degree!’, he jeered.
The bags under my eyes clearly hid my identity because while I recognised this student as being on my course, in my year, he didn’t clock me.
Instead, he wanted to let me know he worked harder than he could possibly imagine me, a mere bartender, doing.
It was the early hours, a few days after a big piece of coursework was due and my peers were presumably celebrating.
Of course, most aren’t like that, but sitting out on social events to save cash while others get the most from their uni years is pretty miserable.
The feelings of isolation peaked a few months after arriving in Durham, when the winter break was starting, and people were heading home for Christmas.
But, I wasn’t as I had nowhere to go back to. My maximum dose of antidepressants didn’t touch the sides of quite how lonely and upsetting this was.
After my shifts, I would walk home, with a lump in my throat, and collapse into bed
I had to find a way to get through it, so I had a game plan: work as much as possible over the break, and if anyone asked about my plans, change the subject.
I was mostly successful in evading peers’ questions. A few awkward conversations about ski trips, M&S turkey collections, and nuclear families passed by without much aggro.
But, when a customer at work would probe, jolly and unassuming, about what I was doing over the holidays, it was unavoidable.
You can’t really exit a conversation when you’re pouring someone’s pint in front of them.
‘Oh, nothing special, you?’ was my go to. The anxiety I felt when saying those words was immense – it was emotionally draining.
After my shifts, I would walk home, with a lump in my throat, and collapse into bed.
I was, however, usually up a few hours later for the next shift. Looking after myself was second to racking up paid work. There was no time to come to terms with my isolation.
In the months that followed, I considered dropping out. I no longer felt like I belonged there.
This wasn’t unusual for estranged students who are three times more likely to drop out than the average student.
A part of me thought that if I was meant to be there, someone would have provided something by way of extra targeted support.
But it didn’t happen and so, I set about applying for full-time jobs.
I made my decision – I was going to leave university.
After a few applications I landed a role I enjoyed as an election organiser, which paid well on a 12 month contract.
I deferred a year, worked full-time, and saved up. I lived relatively cheaply in a house-share, in a ‘bedroom’ that was actually a living room with a bed put in it – the landlord special.
People usually assumed I just found my degree too difficult, and had decided to pack it in – even when I explained my circumstances.
More broadly though, there are so many talented people who just cannot make university work, despite being more than good enough to do top degrees at top unis.
After a few months, when my savings started growing, I decided I had to go back and finish my course. I’m now back doing my law degree, with much less financial worry than I had before.
But the reality is, I’m exceptionally luckier than most estranged students.
I never faced prolonged periods of sofa-surfing and homelessness, unlike the 30% of estranged students who were registered as homeless before starting their degrees.
Unlike many others, I’ve never had to use a food bank or live in mouldy housing.
Yet – as you can probably tell just from the picture of me in my teens – it’s been a tough journey to get to where I am.
Financial pressure mixed with social isolation is a toxic combination – and it negatively impacted my mental health, social life and education.
There are so many ways it could be – and should be – easier for students in my position to get by in uni.
Measures like guarantor schemes removing a financial burden for those without a homeowner parent are easy wins. These hidden costs add up and have a massive impact on people’s wellbeing.
An incredible student group – the Estranged and Care Experienced Network – are working on setting up support networks – but it shouldn’t be on us to fix this, and funding is needed.
Research by the Unite Foundation found that when money worries are removed, the attainment gap closes to just 3%.
If there were more targeted bursaries and grants, and better mental health provision, students who’ve worked harder than most to get to where they are could be supported.
With a change of government potentially imminent – it’s time to take warm words about social mobility and levelling up, and turn them into action.
And that way, young people like me wouldn’t have to unnecessarily suffer.
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No, We Don’t Need Federal Homeschooling Standards
Some of you may remember that four years ago this week I debated Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet who called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling. The online event was hosted by the Cato Institute and drew thousands of participants, including many homeschooling families who were incensed by Bartholet’s proposal.
Now, Scientific American is joining the crowd of busybodies eager to constrain a family’s right to raise and educate their children how they choose. “The federal government must develop basic standards for safety and quality of education in homeschooling across the country,” read a recent editorial in the magazine.
Beyond the obvious point that there is no constitutional role for the federal government in education, the proposal for top-down, national mandates on homeschoolers assumes that the government knows best when it comes to education. Yet, the vast majority of school founders I interview are former public school teachers who grew so disillusioned with the rigidity, standardization, and coercion of government-run schooling that they left to create their own schools and spaces.
Many families are also leaving government-run schools for similar reasons, seeking more joyful and enriching learning experiences for their children. “It’s a virtually untapped market,” said Amy Marotz of the growing demand for homeschooling, microschooling, and other innovative educational models. On Tuesday’s LiberatED podcast, she shared her entrepreneurial journey: from Minneapolis public charter school teacher, to homeschooling parent, to microschool founder who is now helping others to launch their own schools.
The Scientific American piece calls for “federal mandates for reporting and assessment to protect children,” such as background checks on all homeschooling parents and regular reporting requirements to prove that children are learning. Yet, many parents choose homeschooling because government-run schooling is not protecting their children, who may be bullied or abused by peers or school personnel. As for reporting requirements for homeschoolers to demonstrate learning? That’s a pretty brazen request given that in the federal government’s own backyard of Washington, DC, only about one-third of public school students are reading at or above grade level, and only 22 percent are performing at or above grade level in math. For DC high schoolers it’s even worse, with only 11 percent of them proficient in math.
Homeschooling families don’t need more regulations—and certainly not from the federal government, which should have no role in education policy. Perhaps those who think the government knows best on education should work on improving government-run schools rather than coming after the millions of homeschooling families choosing something different.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/06/26/federal-homeschooling-standards/
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UK: Labour’s private school tax raid ‘likely illegal’
Sir Keir Starmer’s planned VAT raid on private schools is likely to breach human rights law, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Labour leader risks falling foul of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) law over his party’s flagship policy, one of Britain’s top constitutional and human rights lawyers has warned.
Lord Pannick, who has taken on some of the UK’s most high-profile court cases, backed legal advice warning that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach ECHR law.
He told The Telegraph: “It would be strongly arguable that for a new government to impose VAT on independent schools would breach the right to education.
“That is because all other educational services will remain exempt from VAT and the charging of VAT on independent schools alone is designed to impede private education, and will have that effect.”
The KC and crossbench peer said that the Labour policy risked breaching two articles in the ECHR which protect the right to education.
He referred to legal advice written in response to Labour policies as far back as the early 1980s, when the country’s most senior lawyers warned that plans to end tax exemptions for private schools or abolish the institutions altogether would likely breach international human rights law to which Britain is signed up.
Previous leaders of the party have floated the idea of taxing private schools as part of plans to integrate them into the state sector. Under former party leader Michael Foot, the Labour manifesto of 1983 pledged to “charge VAT on the fees paid to [private] schools”.
The policy to abolish the schools was eventually shot down by senior lawyers, who argued it could be at odds with the ECHR and spoke specifically about the risk of imposing VAT.
While Sir Keir has ruled out abolishing private schools, he plans to force the institutions to pay business rates and 20pc VAT on tuition fees.
In an unearthed legal opinion from 1987, seen by The Telegraph, the late Lord Lester and Lord Pannick, prominent human rights lawyers, concluded a government “could not lawfully prohibit fee-paying, independent education or remove the benefits of charitable status or impose VAT in respect of such education” while a member of the court.
A foreword to the opinion written in 1991 by Lord Scarman, who served as a Law Lord in the precursor to the Supreme Court, said it would “encourage a challenge which could be mounted by taking the argument to the [ECHR]… if ever a government should seek to abolish or discriminate against [private schools]”.
The opinion was jointly written by Lord Lester and Lord Pannick as advice for the Independent Schools Council (ISC) and later published in its journal. Lord Pannick confirmed his belief that the argument still stands today.
It has been suggested previous Labour proposals to impose VAT on private schools under Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot’s leadership of the party were dropped following an earlier legal warning in 1982.
Writing in The Times in 2019, Lord Lester said: “In 1982 [Lord] David Pannick and I advised the school governing bodies that Labour’s plan would violate the European Convention on Human Rights and its first protocol. Our opinion was published. No one disputed our advice and the policy was dropped.”
The policy failed to appear in Labour’s next manifesto at the June 1987 election under Neil Kinnock’s leadership. The legal opinion was given in April of that year.
Lord Kinnock, however, told The Telegraph he did not recall any such proposals and that he was unaware of the legal opinion.
The legal advice was issued before a New Labour government passed the Human Rights Act 1998 which enshrined into UK law the rights contained in the ECHR.
The revelations call into question whether Sir Keir is prepared to battle the courts over the controversial policy. Labour had previously said it would look into abolishing private schools under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
Sir Keir, who opinion polls say is poised to enter Downing Street next week with a large majority, has long been an ardent supporter of ECHR and criticised Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for suggesting he would quit the court were it to rule against the Rwanda plan.
In a speech in December, Sir Keir said the ECHR was an “achievement, not just of this nation, but of Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party that brought peace and protection to the world”.
But it is believed Sir Keir’s headline education policy is likely to contravene two key articles in the ECHR. These are Article 2 of the First Protocol to the convention and Article 14, which protect the right to education and against attempts to remove or impede the right to access a broad range of schools.
Jeremy Hyam KC, a human rights lawyer, said: “It is clearly arguable that if the state imposes VAT and removes [the] charitable status of private schools without proper analysis of the likely effects on the sustainability and economic viability of such schools, the effects may be so destructive of the ability of such schools to continue to exist that it is a disproportionate and unlawful interference with the right of plurality of educational choice protected under the ECHR.”
Lord Pannick was asked by the Government to help draft the bill to support its plan to deport channel migrants to Rwanda last year, but reportedly warned its chances of securing the flights would be severely limited.
In 2020, Lord Pannick appeared on behalf of Shamima Begum in the Supreme Court’s judicial review brought against then home secretary Sajid Javid, who banned her from returning to the UK for legal proceedings regarding the removal of her British citizenship.
The KC also successfully represented Gina Miller in her case against the Government over whether the prime minister first needed approval from Parliament before triggering the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, called in Lord Pannick at the height of the Partygate scandal in March 2023 to advise on his assessment by the House of Commons Privileges Committee of whether he knowingly misled MPs.
Gillian Keegan, the secretary of state for education, said: “Labour have already admitted their ideologically motivated tax on education will arbitrarily lead to larger class sizes and now it has emerged they have been warned their policy is discriminatory and breaches human rights law.
“Make no mistake, taxing education is unprecedented in this country.
“No one who cares about our children’s education would ever put politics before pupils, but it is clear that for Labour no price is too high in their pursuit of the pernicious politics of envy.”
A Labour Party spokesman said: “We do not agree with this assessment, and we are confident that our plans are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Labour will invest in delivering a brilliant state education for children in every state school by recruiting over 6,500 new teachers, funded by ending tax breaks for private schools.
“Independent schools have raised fees above inflation for well over a decade and do not have to pass Labour’s proposed change on to parents.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/labour-private-school-tax-raid-likely-illegal/
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3 July, 2024
Oklahoma public schools will teach about the Bible and the Ten Commandments
State Superintendent Ryan Walters (R) announced Thursday that teaching the Bible and the Ten Commandments will be mandatory in all public school classrooms effective immediately, The Wall Street Journal reports. The plan is to incorporate both into history lessons.
Every teacher and every classroom in the state will have a Bible. Teachers will be required to teach from the Bible in the classroom. The Bible will be displayed prominently in grades 5-12.
“This is a historical argument,” Walters told the WSJ. “The left can be offended, but that’s our history.”
“The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system, and frankly, when we are talking about the Bible, one of the most foundational documents used for the constitution and the birth of our country,” Walters wrote on X.
Walters has been an outspoken critic of “woke” ideology, often expressing concerns for its negative effects on public education. State Superintendent is an elected position in Oklahoma, and Walters campaigned on the promise to fight back against the radical Left and the indoctrination of Oklahoma school children. He easily won his election, with 57 percent of the vote, in 2022.
Other states are also taking action. A new law in Louisiana mandates the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, as Heartland Daily News reported. Texas officials also plan to put a copy of the Ten Commandments in every public-school classroom.
While there is strong support among conservatives to bring the Ten Commandments and the Bible back into the classroom, opponents, such as the ACLU and the teacher’s unions, are pushing back and taking action.
A group led by the ACLU has already filed a lawsuit against the new Louisiana law. The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation issued a joint statement.
“We are preparing a lawsuit to challenge H.B. 71,” the statement reads in part. “The law violates the separation of church and state and is blatantly unconstitutional.”
“The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government. Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expressed his support for the new law in his home state of Louisiana, The Hill reports. Although the law is being challenged in court, Johnson says he thinks the law will stand the constitutional scrutiny.
“And I think it should pass court muster,” Johnson told reporters. “I think there’s a number of states trying to look to do the same thing, and I don’t think it’s offensive in any way. I think it’s a positive thing.”
“It’s not an establishment of religion,” Johnson said. “It’s not. They’re not trying to enforce any particular religious code. They’re just saying this is part of the history and tradition.”
“The modern interpretation of the establishment clause in the First Amendment has been an unmitigated disaster,” writes Auron MacIntyre in an opinion article for The Blaze.
“By expelling biblical education from public schools in the name of secular neutrality, we effectively banned Western culture,” MacIntyre writes. “Now, our children speak the shared language of gay race communism instead.”
“When Christianity was purged from American public life through a radical interpretation of the First Amendment and civil rights law, an ideological void was left at the center of our institutions, and nature abhors a vacuum. LGBTQ ideology stood ready to fill that void.”
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/07/oklahoma-public-schools-will-teach-about-the-bible/
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Schools Arbitrarily Giving Days Off
The world seemed to almost stop in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted nationwide lockdowns and school closures that thrust students into remote learning situations en masse.
While the lockdowns happened quickly, the reopenings did not. Due to the decentralized structure of America’s public education system, the federal government could not order schools to return to in-person learning. With the decision left up to the discretion of each school district, the date when students returned to in-person classes varied greatly.
Since the lockdowns, some schools have adopted a more lenient attendance policy, starkly contrasting the pre-2020 education environment.
In October 2021, a North Carolina school district voted to close campuses for a “day of kindness, community, and connection,” essentially a mental health day that would not have to be made up at the end of the year.
The following month, two Virginia school districts sent students home early on select Wednesdays to combat teacher burnout, per NBC News.
In November 2021, sudden school closures for various reasons affected 858 districts and 8,692 campuses around the country, according to Burbio, an organization that tracks school district websites, per KERA News.
Legislators in parts of the country have passed laws allowing students to take mental health days, including states such as California, Maine, Washington, and Oregon.
More recently, schools announced they would let students stay home to watch the total solar eclipse on April 8 instead of using the opportunity for an in-class learning experience. Some school districts in North Texas closed their doors, including Waxahachie ISD and Greenville ISD.
Frisco ISD announced that while it would not cancel classes, student absences with a parent note would be excused.
It almost seems as if schools can now shut down at any time for any reason.
Alongside the chronic cancellation of classes, student absenteeism remains high across the United States in the aftermath of the pandemic lockdowns.
“Our relationship with school became optional,” said Katie Rosanbalm, a psychologist and associate research professor with the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University, according to The New York Times.
Quintin Shepherd, the superintendent of Victoria ISD in Texas, told NYT, “If kids are not here, they are not forming relationships.”
He went on to note that the lack of relationships on campus has led to discipline issues, academic struggles, and even violent behavior.
Students’ lack of attendance and schools’ habits of canceling classes present a dangerous combination. Some experts suggest that a cultural shift occurred in the wake of the pandemic lockdowns and school districts’ transitioning to online learning, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
At Dallas ISD, only 41% of students scored at grade level on the 2021-2022 STAAR exams, according to the Texas Education Agency’s accountability report. Meanwhile, nearly 20% of its graduating Class of 2022 did not earn a diploma within four years.
https://dallasexpress.com/education/schools-arbitrarily-giving-days-off/
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Chicago Public Schools Announces Pay for Laid-Off Employees as Teachers Union Decries Staff Cuts
Facing a murkier financial outlook and a budget deficit, Chicago Public Schools has launched “layoff prevention pools” that will guarantee displaced employees positions at other schools — and pay through the next school year.
The district said approximately 600 staffers lost their positions earlier this month. This year, it extended the layoff safeguards — previously in place for teachers — to teaching assistants and other support staff as well. The Chicago Teachers Union held a press conference Thursday to decry at least 330 layoffs of its members, which leaders said disrupt key relationships they build with students and leaves staff in limbo over the summer.
The summer shuffling of staff is a common practice, as student enrollment fluctuates on some campuses. But this year it comes amid a change to the district’s funding formula and as CPS officials have delayed releasing a full budget proposal until July, even though the fiscal year ends this week. Typically, the Chicago Board of Education votes on its annual budget in June.
Instead at their regular meeting Thursday, school board members got an earful from CTU members, as well as some assurance from district officials that school-level funding will stay stable despite an almost $400 million deficit as federal COVID recovery money runs out.
District CEO Pedro Martinez told board members his team needed more time to do due diligence and communicate about the new funding approach, which provides key staff positions to all campuses and uses their level of need to allocate additional dollars.
“There’s no denying that CPS is facing a challenging financial outlook,” Martinez said. “But I remain confident that when our 2024-25 budget is complete, the overall level of funding provided to schools will be maintained or likely increase from what we experienced compared to the last school year.”
The district, which has added thousands of new positions to its payroll in recent years, said it will maintain roughly $500 million in funding increases for schools made since the 2021-22 school year. It stressed that overall, schools will employ more people in the fall compared with this past school year, including 500 more teachers, 600 additional special education paraprofessional positions, and almost 90 more restorative justice coordinators. The district has more than 39,000 employees.
The union said it received a list of laid-off members earlier this week.
Union leaders said most would likely be rehired at other schools, but they argued that the district can do more to avert uncertainty for its employees and disruption to school communities when educators who have bonded with students are reassigned over the summer.
Grisel Sanchez has been working as a bilingual teacher assistant for the past two years at Mark Twain Elementary, supporting and translating for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
“I translated almost every assignment that was given to (eighth graders) to make it easier for them to understand the material so they could pass their class and graduate,” Sanchez said during the CTU press conference.
On June 7, however, Sanchez said she was called into the office and told her position was being cut and that she could apply for jobs at other schools.
Edward Ward was laid off as a restorative justice coordinator at Sherman School of Excellence this month. He was also let go last year from Beidler Elementary from a similar role. The repeated layoffs, he said, are damaging to the relationship building that a restorative justice coordinator does.
“We are not disposable, and you’ve made a huge mistake to cut those positions, because at the end of the day, it’s our students who suffer,” Ward said.
The district, which has added thousands of new positions to its payroll in recent years, said it will maintain roughly $500 million in funding increases for schools made since the 2021-22 school year. It stressed that overall, schools will employ more people in the fall compared with this past school year, including 500 more teachers, 600 additional special education paraprofessional positions, and almost 90 restorative justice coordinators.
Officials said the district adjusted support staffing to reflect enrollment changes. About 300 of the 595 employees affected are teaching assistants, representing a 0.5% reduction of all employees.
“The district is committed to guaranteeing a job for any of the impacted teaching assistants, and historical data confirms that those who choose to remain in the district will have employment within the district,” Chicago Public Schools said in a statement.
The statement said the district worked closely with the CTU and the SEIU, the union that represents some district support staff, on this effort to ensure laid-off staffers are assigned vacant roles before the start of next school year.
“This assertive initiative is crucial for sustaining our educational gains and providing much-needed school stability,” the district said.
The board approved a resolution Thursday that would allow principals to dip into 2024-25 funds in July ahead of the full budget’s approval so they can line up staff and other resources for the fall.
The layoffs of around 20 restorative justice coordinators comes as the district is overhauling its approach to school safety in a way that centers restorative justice and reduces punitive discipline.
“You can’t say that we are going to move in a direction that honors and respects the humanity of our young people and cut 20 restorative justice coordinators,” said Stacy Davis Gates. “Those two things do not match.”
Addressing the school board, teachers union vice president Jackson Potter said the district has made some headway in addressing disruption from the summer reshuffling of employees — but needs to do more.
“This has now become an annual bloodletting ritual that we hope will end or at least become more humane and thoughtful,” he said.
Potter and educators who addressed the board to protest the layoffs took aim at the district’s Skyline curriculum — an in-house $135 million curriculum the district developed during the pandemic. He argued that the district should use some of the money it spends on rolling out the curriculum to ward off support staff layoffs.
“You should ask people, ‘Do you prefer a TA, or do you prefer this curriculum?’” Potter asked, adding that teachers have called Skyline “a dumpster fire.”
But district officials insisted later in the meeting that school teams led by principals voluntarily adopt Skyline, and they said it has been key to a push to roll out high-quality curriculums in all schools. They said 462 schools have chosen to use Skyline in at least one subject.
“While Skyline might not be a perfect system,” said chief education officer Bogdana Chkoumbova, “it’s definitely a system worth iterating and investing in.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/07/chicago-public-schools-teachers-union-decries-staff-cuts/
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2 July, 2024
Schoolchildren Are Being Indoctrinated With Hard Left Ideology Under the Guise of Teaching Them to be ‘Inclusive’
Not so long ago I rewatched the original Jurassic Park and was struck by Ian Malcolm’s monologue in which he says to John Hammond, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” It struck me that this unintentionally captured the essence of a growing problem in today’s education system: EDI. School managers and teachers are so eager to rush into whatever is trending in EDI. So convinced are they, without any evidence, of EDI’s supposed moral, ethical, educational and societal benefits that they neglect to consider whether they should be promoting it.
The virtues of EDI are extolled throughout the education system and my own school is no different. Schools openly bow down to EDI and an entire industry has developed to ensure EDI is embedded across the education system, despite evidence that it has had detrimental effects in the workplace. It is commonplace now to see schools advertising themselves as “inclusive” and numerous websites have popped up to promote EDI, such as the Inclusive Schools Network. The EDI approach has ostensibly been embraced because Britain is now a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society and it’s supposedly essential to help tackle discrimination, break down stereotypes, facilitate better communication and foster social cohesion. However, I think the push for “inclusivity” distorts education, disempowers the individual and poses a threat to a free society.
One assertion that’s frequently made these days is that “inclusive language” should be used in lessons. But what, exactly, is it? Who defines it? And how can such a thing exist in any case? The economist Ludwig von Mises observed in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis how Marxism thrived on “dialectic artificialities” and a “word-fetishism” which made it “possible to unite incompatible ideas and demands” (e.g. Queers for Palestine). This linguistic sleight of hand can be used to brainwash the broader population, and this is exactly what “inclusive language” does. Those who advocate for “inclusive language” claim it’s a tool for promoting open conversations. But for “inclusive language” to exist and function, it must by its very nature be at odds with intellectual diversity, free speech and democratic values. It requires a central authority to dictate what is or is not inclusive, thereby strengthening that authority’s power, while discriminating against those who are deemed to have said something offensive.
The drive to use “inclusive language” and to be “inclusive” is in reality exclusionary and intolerant. A cursory glance through some typical ‘guidance’, such as that produced by the University of Leeds, reveals that it usually focuses on what not to say rather than on what to say. The implications of this are worrying as it’s a method of importing identity politics and ideological authoritarianism into schools. As John Stuart Mill noted in On Liberty, “all silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility”. By pursuing “inclusive language”, school managers are going along with this linguistic totalitarianism and, in my experience, are never open to any discussion about whether they are embarking on the best approach for pupils and staff.
On one level, the emphasis on “inclusive language” encourages others to find offence where none is intended and in doing so undermines resilience. It feeds a culture of victimhood and is hardly beneficial to learning, where failure is often a necessary precursor to success. On another level, it establishes a right not to be offended. This type of approach is fundamentally unworkable, as we have seen through inane legislation like Scotland’s Hate Crime Act. By seeking to protect certain identity groups from being offended, it introduces a form of bullying into a school since it provides bad actors, both pupils and staff, with the perfect cudgel to attack their opponents.
Offence is, after all, in the eye of the beholder. It requires no evidence other than someone’s claim they were emotionally harmed by something that was supposedly said, regardless of the speaker’s intention. It is extremely easy to make an unfounded allegation because it’s so difficult to challenge without seeming to disbelieve a ‘victim’ about how upset he or she really is, and, therefore, extremely hard to defend against. Besides teaching children to simply accuse, rather than debate, an obvious consequence of this is the sewing of suspicion and distrust. According to the Mental Health Foundation, 20% of adolescents currently suffer from some form of mental illness. Mental Health UK notes that 92% of teachers distrust their line manager and 88% of teachers say there is a negative ‘team culture’, with 86% saying they don’t feel supported at school. One cannot help but wonder whether EDI initiatives, which promote linguistic totalitarianism and thereby create an environment in which one must constantly tread on eggshells, are contributing to this state of affairs.
Besides being contradictory in a theoretical and philosophical sense, the censoring of language is extended into censoring or distorting curriculum content. This is why we see misguided initiatives, embraced by the Historical Association, among others, to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum, as well as a growing tendency to exaggerate the negative aspects of British and Western history and culture. Thus, as many readers will no doubt already be familiar, pupils are spoon fed narratives in which Britain is cast as an evil slave trading nation with few redeeming qualities, if any. Little mention is made of all the other countries that trafficked in slaves, or of Britain’s key role in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade.
This highly selective approach is fundamentally driven by ideological activism and some schools encourage this by engaging in their own types of cancel culture, such as changing the names used within their own house systems for fear that the original names might cause offence. As Doug Stokes points out in Against Decolonisation, this constant denigration of Britain’s history and culture may even have serious implications for national security by virtue of the fact they instil no love and respect for, or understanding of, our country.
The drive towards ‘inclusivity’ and all the associated EDI dogma contributes nothing to education and everything towards indoctrination and the destruction of critical thinking. In my ‘lived experience’, an ‘inclusive’ curriculum often means talking more about LGBTQ+ or BAME people, although the ‘climate curriculum’ is not far behind. Charities with specific ideological or political agendas, such as Stonewall or Schools of Sanctuary, are consulted and sometimes paid to help make lesson content more ‘inclusive’ without any regard to the provisions about not indoctrinating children in the Education Act 1996. This extends into the creation of bizarre extra-curricular activities, such as LGBTQ+ lunchtime and after-school clubs. Schools also embrace various forms of positive discrimination in order to tackle imaginary biases and prejudices, such as girls-only IT competitions. It’s not clear how this sits with the emphasis on ‘inclusion’, given its prohibition on boys’ participation and the lack of provision for a boys-only competition. This is hardly a strategy for improving the performance of the demographic group most overlooked: white working-class boys. But ‘inclusion’ is nearly always about extending perks to officially recognised victim groups and rarely about helping the genuinely disadvantaged.
Furthermore, as each subject on the curriculum is forced to genuflect to the latest ideological fad, less intellectual diversity is tolerated and more groupthink emerges. The push for promoting minority narratives and victimology across every subject means the school curriculum ceases to be about academic exploration and more about ensuring a single message or narrative is instilled in pupils’ minds. Friedrich Hayek observed in The Road to Serfdom that it was “not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought”. Through the policing of language and narrowing of curriculum content, inclusion agendas are facilitating the destruction of individual autonomy by limiting the opportunities for pupils to critically evaluate prepackaged narratives. While this is what we might expect in a Chinese-style re-education camp, it should not be the model adopted by British schools.
A generous observer might conclude that those who signal their virtue on inclusivity simply haven’t thought this through – they mean well, even if their initiatives have terrible unintended consequences. A more critical observer might conclude that those who push EDI initiatives do so with an ulterior motive. I’m in the latter camp, and as I’ve said previously this leads to a perpetual cycle in which victory can never be secured until complete equality of outcome between different identity groups has been achieved. It’s also fuelled by self-interest. Those who work in the multi-billion-pound EDI sector need to keep finding new dragons to slay to justify their funding, often as the expense of the taxpayer. Besides, the very essence of EDI-based initiatives, such as anti-racism and unconscious bias training, is to teach individuals to take offence and actively seek out things to be offended by. This is why we see schools embarking on crusades to eliminate the use of “Sir” and “Miss”. By planting the seed that one may be committing a microaggression and establishing a culture in which speech and expression are policed, the logical response of some may be to avoid interaction altogether. Why take the risk of inadvertently treading on a landmine? Or giving a bully an excuse to persecute you? This type of backlash within the workplace has already been documented by the Government.
Why, then, are schools endorsing EDI? If we were to explore the legal roots of this phenomenon, we might look to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976, the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice in 2001 and the Framework for the Inspection of Schools in 2003. By the late 1990s, a perception had emerged that the colour-blind approach in education had failed. Among numerous other points, the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, published in 1999, recommended that schools develop strategies to prevent racism and for the National Curriculum to be revised so it extolled the virtues of multi-culturalism. But academies and free schools, which as of January 2024 account for nearly 82% of all secondary schools and nearly 43% of primary schools, don’t have to follow the National Curriculum. Independent schools, which constitute nearly 10% of schools, don’t either. Thus, it is the Equality Act 2010 and schools guidance from 2014 which form much of the bedrock of current practice. The relevant parts of this legislation basically set out a duty of care and make it illegal for schools to discriminate against pupils based on their protected characteristics, such as race, religion, sexual orientation or gender.
Where there is a possible misstep legally speaking is in schools’ conflation of, and confusion between, content and delivery. Section 2.8 of the 2014 guidance, which advises schools what they need to do to comply with the Equality Act, says curriculum content is excluded from discrimination law but the manner in which it’s delivered is included. According to section 2.9, schools are “free to include a full range of issues, ideas and materials in their syllabus, and to expose pupils to thoughts and ideas of all kinds, however challenging or controversial”. This is important because the advocates of EDI in schools typically appeal to the Equality Act, claiming they’re obliged to roll out these initiatives to comply with that Act, when, in fact, that’s just an excuse for pushing their ideological agenda.
There is, in other words, no legal obligation or reason why a school should indulge in changing (or removing) curriculum to comply with the Equality Act. Schools may of course do this for a variety of reasons, such as capitalising on teachers’ specific knowledge or appealing to pupils’ interests to promote more engagement. But we ought to be mindful of the predilection many teachers have for engaging in social justice activism. It is in fact something which is implicitly encouraged by those who’ve written the material that finds its way onto teacher training courses. For example, Robert Jeffcoat, who describes himself “with pleasure a radical Marxist” due to his “particular view” on injustice, is cited approvingly in a PGCE textbook that’s still in use today.
However, by pitting of one social group against another, as required by various fashionable teaching resources, and teaching children about concepts like white privilege, some schools may in fact be in breach of the Equality Act, which requires publicly-funded bodies to promote good relations between groups with different protected characteristics, which includes white boys. And by developing a curriculum centred on EDI, schools could well be limiting pupils’ academic opportunities and, as such, failing to provide the broad and balanced curriculum that they’re supposed to, as set out in Section 78 of the Education Act 2002.
At a fundamental level, the whole EDI agenda within schools overlooks one simple, crucial and fundamental issue: the provision of education, not indoctrination, will do far more to help disadvantaged children make socio-economic progress in the long term. A report commissioned by Pro Bono Economics, The National Literacy Trust and KPMG earlier this year found that 30% of five-year-olds were behind their expected reading levels. The National Literacy Trust also found in 2023 that only 43.4% of children aged from 8 to 18 enjoyed reading. Obviously, multiple factors contribute to these findings but one cannot help wondering whether one solution might be for teachers to spend less time promoting ideological fads and more time focusing on actually educating children. And perhaps literature promoting woke narratives just isn’t that inspiring. Why should children enjoy reading books that are constantly scolding them for not being ‘better allies’? Those schools which have embraced woke identitarian dogma are abusing their duties and responsibilities, and failing pupils and society in the process.
The reality is that schools cannot truly be ‘inclusive’ precisely because it is a contradictory, unworkable and illogical idea; exclusionary practices and outcomes are an inherent and inevitable part of education and life in general. Not every pupil will achieve an A* at A-level or a 9 at GCSE. Not everyone who applies to work at a school will be accepted and not everyone within a school will be friends with everyone else, despite the claims made on schools’ marketing materials. And, due to practical considerations, not every school will have the capacity to accept every child. An inclusive curriculum is also itself a unicorn precisely because it must, by definition, exclude certain content that is arbitrarily deemed to be discriminatory or insensitive.
The claim that adopting an ‘inclusive’ approach will prepare pupils for life, as my school and many others do, is a fallacy. Such an approach is based on flawed assumptions, fosters unrealistic expectations and leads to troubling outcomes. It fails to instil resilience, encourages children to abdicate personal responsibility and attacks the individual’s ability to think critically. The only people who gain from such an approach are those looking to carve out easy and lucrative careers for themselves. All EDI does is provide a platform for narcissistic managers to crush dissent and signal their virtue so they can gain the requisite peer approval for career progression. The people who lose are pupils, parents and those teachers who have maintained their integrity.
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School reading assignments sexually harassed my child — despite parent protests
Bill Santiago
Here I am trying everything I can to raise my young daughters right, vigilantly monitoring the assault of content they consume.
What are they watching? What are they listening to? What are they scrolling through? Is it appropriate?
Then along comes Kipps Beyond Middle School, the Harlem charter school that I was originally thrilled our preteen would attend.
And all my protective efforts were brazenly violated.
No, my 12-year-old girl wasn’t peer-pressured into exploring sexually explicit content.
She was assigned to do so by her 7th-grade English teacher — without my consent or knowledge.
“Aristotle and Dante Explore the Secrets of the Universe” is a wonderful title for a book.
The Van Gogh-inspired cover appeared in a slideshow on curriculum night, implying our children were embarking on a philosophical, cosmological journey that would open their minds to a new level of literary and intellectual inquiry.
Sneaky, sneaky: Only after students were done reading this book did parents get wind of what was actually between the covers.
“The boys in the book masturbate to each other a lot,” my daughter’s friend blurted out as several families dined together at a restaurant.
We thought our children were being exposed to philosophy, but at last discovered that the book merely featured characters named after philosophers — who obsess about exposing themselves.
Not to mention the causal heroin use, a 15-year-old hiring a trans prostitute and a prison murder, among other similarly wholesome elements, all featured in the book assigned to my underaged daughter.
Remember how the city cleaned up Times Square to make it family-friendly? It seems everything they swept away has been regurgitated onto the pages of books my child is being assigned to read in class.
If this same sexually graphic content were shared at most jobs, a human-resources SWAT team would be scrambled and heads would roll.
Lawyers would be licking their chops over million-dollar harassment lawsuits.
Why should we look the other way when teachers assign explicit books to children?
“But the book won awards!” the school’s teachers pointed out, when we parents protested.
It doesn’t matter that parents don’t approve, as long as somebody who doesn’t know or care about our kids has slapped their golden seal of approval on the book.
Meanwhile, the English Language Arts director at Kipps Beyond has openly questioned whether Shakespeare is still relevant or should even be taught.
Poor guy never won a diversity award! So naturally classrooms should deprioritize the Bard in favor of lesser authors who check the right social-justice boxes.
A word about the word “diversity”: It is not synonymous with sexually graphic material, nor does it grant immunity to teachers who sexually harass minor children by assigning such content.
After six months of protests, meetings, emails, texts, phone calls and Zoom calls with the principal, teachers, staff and regional directors, what was the response?
The founding principal, spitting in the face of parental values and objections, announced 7th graders would next be assigned “The Poet X,” a book that’s even more explicit and sexually charged.
My daughter’s teachers were repeatedly assigning outright erotica to 12-year-olds.
After one of my endless emails to officials throughout the NYC Department of Education finally got somebody’s attention, the school finally relented and agreed to assign “Lord of the Flies” instead — at least this year.
But the chief schools officer at Kipps NYC subsequently emailed me to affirm that her charter school system is still fully committed to teaching the books we objected to — as well as other sexually explicit books — in the future, because they align with its “core values.”
It amazes me that in the wake of #Metoo, so many educators still don’t understand that no means no.
Nor do parents deserve the educators’ repeated insinuations that our objections must be based on bigotry.
My own family abounds in diversity of every kind, from pronouns to pizza toppings. So spare me the tactical gaslighting.
Am I just one of those parents — a book banner? Hardly.
As a journalist, author and entertainer, none of my professional pursuits are possible without the full employment and defense of the First Amendment.
But I identify first as a father.
That’s why when it comes to accepting that any adult or institution, teacher or school system can violate the boundaries of my young girls and my values as a parent, sorry, this papi don’t play dat.
School systems engaging in these predatory practices will never cop to it.
But if a teacher is providing explicit sexual erotica to a child, somebody should call the cops.
https://nypost.com/2024/07/01/opinion/school-reading-assignments-are-sexually-harassing-my-child/
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Young Australians Even More Unenthusiastic About Going to School: Research
As anxiety and psychological distress levels are increasing among young people, which was accelerated by COVID-19 lockdown measures, a phenomenon of school refusal has also become more prevalent.
Data collected by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority shows the national attendance rate for students in Years 1 to 10 had dropped from 91.4 percent in 2019 to 86.5 percent in 2022.
The figures for attendance level—percentage of students whose attendance rate was 90 percent or higher—saw an even more dramatic drop from 71.2 percent in 2021 to 50 percent in 2022.
However, rather than going to class less often, Australia is seeing an increasing number of children and teenagers distressed at the mere thought of attending school—called school refusal.
Shannon Clark, senior researcher at the Department of Parliamentary Services, explained that school refusal was difference to truancy and exclusion.
“It differs from other forms of school attendance problems in terms of the distress experienced, and in that parents and carers typically know about their child’s absence from school and have tried to get them to attend,” she wrote in a 2023 parliamentary paper on the issue.
“Young people with school refusal are often diagnosed with anxiety disorders.”
Students who experience school refusal are at higher risk of dropping out of school early, and it can also negatively impact their social and emotional development into adulthood.
A spokesperson from the Department of Education told The Epoch Times in an email that every day of school missed, is a day of learning lost.
“Regular school attendance is critical to successful student outcomes and engagement,” the spokesperson said.
Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic
Professor Marie Yap from Monash University’s Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health said student mental health and coping skills, parent-child relationship, supportive teaching staff, and bullying all have an effect on school attendance.
“The COVID pandemic impacted many of these factors for children across the world, with some being disproportionately affected,” she told The Epoch Times in an email.
In particular, neurodivergent children are more sensitive to routine disruption, so switching between online and face-to-face schooling may have tarnished their school experience.
Ms. Yap said the switch may have overwhelmed the coping capacity of neurodivergent children, increasing their distress about attending school.
Additionally, parents whose jobs and financial security were impacted by the pandemic may have struggled to also support their child’s mental health and learning.
The ongoing teacher shortage and high turnover rates are also causing disruptions to the supportive teaching environment students thrive in.
Advice for Parents
Ms. Yap said parents should look for early signs of their child not wanting to attend school and respond as promptly and supportively as possible. She recommends that parents validate their child’s distress about attending school, even if they don’t understand it.
Ms. Yap said parents should try creative ways to help their children express themselves such as drawing or writing.
“Parents need a good understanding of the reasons behind their child’s distress about school—this is important for identifying what types of support and responses would be most helpful for their child.”
Parents should also assure their child that they will help them overcome issues about school.
Meanwhile, Matthew Bach, teacher and former Victorian shadow education minister, believes school refusers need more “tough love” from parents.
“It may ruffle some feathers to say so, but it is the responsibility of parents, not governments, to fix [school refusal],” Mr. Bach wrote in an opinion piece in 2023.
He noted that he saw an increasing number of parents who wanted to be their child’s friend, rather than their guide and corrector.
“School refusal stems from anxiety, which—as we know—is a serious mental health condition. And because of this, parents naturally empathise deeply with their children,” he said.
“Yet what the growing number of children who refuse to attend school need most is tough love. Going to school must simply be non-negotiable.”
Getting Support
Meanwhile, Ms. Yap said parents should record concerns and absences, and communicate these with the school to understand non-attendance patterns, for example, a common day or time of absence.
She said that once they better understand the underlying causes of their child’s distress, parents can work with their child, the school, and other involved professionals to develop a supportive plan.
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1 July, 2024
Harvard Dean Threatens Faculty Who Protest School’s Mistreatment of Jews
“Snitches get stitches” is a threat typically made by adolescents to avoid punishment by intimidating those who might expose their misdeeds. Yet it seems Harvard is a glorified junior high these days, with Lawrence Bobo, its dean of social sciences, threatening faculty who publicly criticize the university for its mistreatment of Jewish students.
Writing in the Crimson, Bobo argued that it is “outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention into University business.”
Faculty who appeal to external actors to reverse gross injustices at Harvard may not get literal stitches, but Bobo could deny them tenure or lower their pay. His piece has not been made official Harvard policy, but more senior administrators have not repudiated his interpretation of “acceptable professional conduct,” and his discretion to punish snitches remains intact.
Bobo’s hostility to “external intervention” is reminiscent of something more menacing than junior high taunts about snitches. It echoes George Wallace’s complaints about “outside agitators.” The segregationist governor of Alabama claimed in a 1964 letter that efforts by him and other Southern leaders to improve the condition of the “Negro citizen” were being undermined by “the national news media and the propaganda distributed by various organizations.” If only outside agitators would avoid stirring up trouble, both “white and colored” could continue to live in “peace and equanimity.”
Bobo similarly expresses a preference for managing Harvard’s problems through “internal discussion on key policy matters,” threatening to sanction “behaviors that plainly incite external actors—be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government—to intervene in Harvard’s affairs.” It’s as if Bobo were saying that Harvard’s Jews could be living in “peace and equanimity” without outside agitators in the media and government stirring up trouble.
Bobo and other Harvard leaders are right to fear outside intervention. Despite its more than $50 billion endowment, Harvard is a financial house of cards built on government subsidy and donor largesse. Harvard’s operating budget last year was $5.9 billion, of which about $650 million came from federal research grants, $55 million came from government student aid and loans, and another $500 million came from the “current use” gifts of donors.
If Harvard’s misdeeds were to motivate the federal government to remove its eligibility for research grants and student assistance, and donations were to dry up, Harvard would be facing the loss of about a fifth of the revenue it needs to cover its operating costs. Harvard has been so flush with cash for so long that it has no idea how to cut 1% of its budget, let alone 20%.
A future Republican, or for that matter Democratic, administration cutting off its access to federal funds alongside a donor strike would be financially catastrophic for Harvard at the same time that it would be enormously politically popular. Stopping the gush of federal money into Harvard would spell the end for Bobo and his colleagues, just as sending the National Guard to Little Rock Central spelled the end for Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus’s political ambitions.
In his Crimson piece, Bobo emphasizes that students “must also learn from the example of heroic figures like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” Bobo himself might benefit from rereading King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In that letter, King rejects the notion that “outside agitators” are somehow illegitimate, noting, “Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
Similarly, no external policymaker, reporter, or donor is an “outsider” regarding Harvard’s mistreatment of its Jewish students, not to mention professors of all faiths, who suffer under administrators such as Bobo who have made Harvard America’s worst university for free speech.
Harvard is facing a reckoning. Bobo is trying to stave off that reckoning by intimidating faculty critics into silence. It’s too late. Even Harvard does not have a large enough endowment to avoid the consequences of getting on the wrong side of a critical mass of policymakers and donors.
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New Brisbane school to focus on classics
The Power family, whose father, James snr, established Campion College, Australia’s first liberal arts tertiary institution, is behind the launch of new school in Brisbane next week.
St John Henry Newman College, initially catering from Prep to Year 3, will be built at Tarragindi, on Brisbane’s southside next year, to open in 2026. One class will be added each year, with a separate campus, later, for secondary school in 2030.
Inaugural chairman and managing director of the Power group of companies, James Power, said expressions of interest from parents were strong.
The school would be geared to the classical, Western tradition, an emphasis in the early years on direct instruction, numeracy and literacy (including phonics), encouraging reading and no devices in the classroom. When history and geography were introduced the subjects would be taught factually, not laced with ideology.
Kenneth Crowther, a teacher at Toowoomba Christian College, who has been appointed principal and is completing his PhD in Shakespeare said classical schools emphasised on introducing students to the “great books’’ – from Dante to Dostoevsky.
“For the juniors, that’ll be Aesop’s fables, Beatrix Potter, Winnie the Pooh and Wind in the Willows, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and Tolkien,’’ Mr Crowther said.
In recent years, many parents have been disappointed to find traditional favourites missing in school reading and English lessons.
As a Catholic school, religion will be part of the curriculum, with the priests of the Brisbane Oratory to serve as chaplains.
The establishment of classical schools by communities concerned about education standards has become a major trend in the US.
Australia’s first classical Orthodox school, the St John of Kronstadt Academy, opened on Brisbane’s southside this year for Prep to Year 3 and will also add a grade a year. Its stated aims are “to provide our children with a classical Orthodox curriculum that will nurture the child’s soul, mind and body, develop Orthodox wisdom and virtue and will be steeped in Orthodox faith and liturgical tradition”.
In Melbourne, the principal of St Philip’s Catholic Primary School, Blackburn North, Michelle Worcester and Parish Priest Fr Nicholas Dillon will oversee the transformation of the local Catholic school to a classical model next year and in 2026. The change has the support of Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools authorities and will be first of its kind under the system.
Based on parental interest and inquiries, which have come from as far away as country Victoria, Fr Dillon expects to the school numbers, which have fallen to 29, to double in the first year.
Similar transformations of schools in the US over the past 40 years had seen small enrolments expand to 300. “Parents are looking for a quality back-to-basics approach and want their children introduced to classical literature and Western civilisation,’’ Fr Dillon said.
St John Henry Newman College will be launched at the Brisbane Oratory on Thursday, July 11. Its patrons include businessman and Brisbane Broncos chairman Karl Morris and retired computer scientist, businessman and former Dean of Bond University business school and author Ashley Goldsworthy.
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The Australian Education Union is miffed about phonics
Kevin Andrews
One of my earliest memories is sitting on the front verandah of my parents’ farmhouse. My two younger brothers and I were sunning ourselves along with my mother. In the years well before the ‘slip, slop, slap’ campaign, she had rubbed olive oil into our skin so that we would tan. She believed – like many others in the late 50s and early 60s – that a tan would prevent sunburn. It was before I attended the local primary school, so I must have been about four years of age.
In addition to the small trikes we rode around the verandah, my parents had purchased a blackboard on which we could draw. It had the letters of the alphabet along the top and bottom of the board, and the numbers from 1 – 20 down the sides. My mother would help us to write words, sounding out the appropriate letters from the alphabet on the board. By the time I attended school, I could read and write basic sentences. I took to reading books with alacrity, reading to my parents each night. Not having a television until I was about 15 also spurred an interest in reading. It is perhaps little wonder that I chose occupations that have required copious reading.
These early experiences were reinforced at school. In addition to reading, we learnt the times tables by rote. I recall chanting the times tables as a class each morning. ‘One two is two, two twos are four, three twos are six’ and so on. It was fun and effective. Legible writing was encouraged. The cursive script of earlier generations had been dispatched, but neat, readable letters and sentences were practised daily. Parents placed great emphasis on their children being able to read, write, and count as the most important skills to master at primary school. I believe that is what most parents still desire.
This is not to deny that many children have difficulties in learning to read and write. Several of my own children were dyslexic. This was a significant challenge which required extra tuition and support, mostly by their mother, with the backup of remedial programs in schools and learning specialists. Phonics played a significant role.
These reflections came to mind as I read that Victoria has finally accepted that phonics should be taught in schools. The state’s Deputy Premier, Ben Carroll, who is also Education Minister, announced that the explicit learning method would be reintroduced into the state’s schools next year. The Catholic system in Victoria has already adopted the changes.
The Australian Education Union has opposed the changes, urging teachers to reject the new approach. ‘The AEU Joint Primary and Secondary Sector Council views with significant dismay the policy announcement by Victorian Education Minister, Ben Carroll, on the misnamed Making Best Practice Common Practice in The Education State, without proper consultation with the profession and the AEU.’ Instead, the Union demanded additional funding to the sector. Moreover, the minister should support teachers to ‘make professional decisions about the content and pedagogies appropriate for the learning programs in their classrooms and schools.’ In other words, teachers should decide what is taught, not the duly elected government.
The Union was clearly miffed that Mr Carroll would make a decision not proposed or endorsed by its members. How dare a minister do his job and a government govern! No wonder it has taken years for Victoria to follow other states and jurisdictions to introduce the changes, despite studies demonstrating the advantages of phonics. Indeed, the statement failed to even use the word phonics!
This is a union steeped in Marxist-inspired ideology. It opposes the funding of non-government schools, opposes any ranking of academic performance and has subscribed to every cause in the modern zeitgeist, ranging from global warming to multi-gender recognition. The AEU and other teacher organisations rail at any suggestion that literacy standards have fallen. Perhaps the fact that Mr Carroll is from Labor’s right faction partially explains the antipathy of the AEU towards his education policies.
Why would the Union oppose the use of phonics when English is a phonetic language? Apart from the ideological nonsense pedalled by the Union, there is a suspicion that some teachers are the victims of the approach to learning that has been favoured for the past few decades. Will the reinstatement of phonics expose the inadequacy of the educational methods, possibly the deficiency of some teachers themselves?
The falling standards of English language are evident everywhere. How many times do you hear someone pronounce ‘nothing’ as ‘nothink’, even some otherwise well-educated people? My wife constantly points out grammar errors in newspapers, such as using an incorrect verb with a collective noun, for example ‘the government are…’
Union chagrin wasn’t confined to the AEU this past week. John Setka, the firebrand secretary of the CFMEU, attracted widespread criticism for his proposal to slow down work on construction sites associated with the Australian Football League while they employed the former Building and Construction Commissioner, Stephen McBurney. Mr McBurney, a distinguished AFL umpire officiating at four grand finals, is now head of umpiring for the League.
His previous employment, as a public official, under legislation passed by the Parliament, should not be subject to intimidation. Thankfully the AFL has rejected the comments, despite its endorsement of Woke culture generally. But the ambivalent response by many Labor MPs and ministers was less robust. Instead of stating clearly that such comments are unacceptable, many dodged the issue, saying that Setka was an effective Union representative. Perhaps the millions that his Union has donated to the Labor Party, and the support for various Labor candidates, influenced their muted response. They could learn something from Mr Carroll, who was prepared to ignore the AEU’s bleating and act in the best interests of the state’s schoolchildren.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/the-australian-education-union-is-miffed-about-phonics/
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