|
EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVE
Quis magistros ipsos docebit? . |
The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Greenie Watch, Political Correctness Watch, Dissecting Leftism, Immigration Watch, Food & Health Skeptic, Tongue Tied and Australian Politics. See here or here for the archives of this site
28 March, 2024
Tuition at these elite New England universities will hit eye-popping $90,000 a year this fall
"Soak the rich" prices
Several elite New England universities will cost students a jaw-dropping $90,000 a year beginning this fall — with more schools expected to follow suit, according to a report.
Boston University, Tufts, Wellesley, and Yale — among the top private colleges in the country — will begin charging the nearly six-figure sum a year for tuition, housing and other expenses, according to the schools’ admissions websites, The Boston Globe reported.
Just six years ago, families were in an uproar when the annual price at schools like BU, Tufts, Harvard and Amherst college all topped $70,000 — and costs have continued to skyrocket.
“There’s always a huge psychological impact to these thresholds,” Sandy Baum, senior fellow in the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute, told The Globe. “I remember when it went above $50,000, and people were just in shock.”
A number of other Boston-area colleges have yet to update their already steep tuition and fees for the 2024-2025 academic year, but are also expected to raise their prices for the fall semester, according to the paper.
At Boston University, the price tag includes $66,670 in tuition, $19,020 for housing and food and the cost of books and other fees for a whopping total of $90,207 for the 2024-2025 academic year.
That represents a 42% jump from 10 years ago where the total cost was $63,644, The Globe reported.
Cost of attendance at Tufts in Medford will be $91,888, according to estimates on the school’s website. Yale University in New Haven, Conn. will cost $90,975 next year.
Other schools nearing the eye-popping $90,0000 threshold for the 2024-2025 school year include Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. which costs $89,824; Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. at $88,210; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology at $85,960.
For the 2023-2024 academic year, Harvard charged $79,540 — which reportedly jumped to roughly $87,450 when expenses such as books were factored in. At Boston College, the all-in cost was $89,955 and Northeastern University was $86,821.
Fortunately, most students won’t be paying the full listing price thanks to financial aid and scholarships.
BU, for instance, will dish out $425 million in financial aid for the next academic year, school spokesperson Colin Riley told The Globe.
That need-based aid is “guaranteed for four years with BU Scholarship Assurance,” he said.
About 56% of BU’s students receive financial aid in some form, with the average aid package amounting to around $67,000, Riley said.
“Because this is an average, some of the neediest students paid $0, and others paid more,” he told the paper.
**************************************************
More States Make Progress on School Choice
Several states are making progress empowering their citizens with access to education freedom and opportunity.
Earlier this month, Alabama became the 15th state in the nation to enact a program providing education savings accounts and the 10th state to enact universal education choice.
Last week, South Carolina and Louisiana took steps to become the 11th and 12th states to make every K-12 student eligible for education choice.
The South Carolina House of Representatives voted 69-32 on Wednesday to pass a bill to expand eligibility for the state’s education savings account policy to all K-12 students. Eligibility is currently limited only to students from low-income families.
South Carolina Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver celebrated the bill’s passage in the House, calling it “a HUGE step forward” in a post on X and “a win for students and families.”
That same day, the Louisiana Senate’s Education Committee voted 5-2 to advance a bill that would create a scholarship program called Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise, or LA GATOR.
The bill, SB 313, is sponsored by state Sen. Rick Edmonds and is the companion bill to HB 745 in the House, sponsored by state Rep. Julie Emerson. Both are Republicans.
Louisiana’s new Republican governor, Jeff Landry, campaigned on school choice and his education council proposed that state policymakers should, among other goals, “Ensure that parents are granted flexibility in their child’s education.”
Three other states also are making progress on school choice, although their proposals are not as robust as in Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, or a dozen other states.
Wyoming
With Gov. Mark Gordon’s signature last week, Wyoming became the 16th state in the nation to adopt an education savings account policy. With an ESA, families may choose learning environments that align with their values and work best for their children.
In the Cowboy State, families will be eligible for $6,000 to use for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, school supplies, online learning, and more.
This is a small but significant step in the right direction. It could have been a much larger step, however.
The bill sent by the Legislature to the Republican governor made families eligible for an education savings account if they earned up to 500% of the federal poverty level, or $156,000 for a family of four. That’s the equivalent of the combined average salaries of a Wyoming firefighter married to a registered nurse.
However, Gordon used his line-item veto to modify the eligibility criteria so that families are eligible only if they earn no more than 150% of the federal poverty level, or just $46,800 for a family of four. That means that the typical nurse or firefighter alone wouldn’t qualify.
In his letter explaining his veto, Gordon said a provision of the Wyoming Constitution requires that such programs be limited to the poor. Article XVI, Section 6 states that neither the state nor any local government shall “[l]oan or give its credit or make donations to or in aid of any individual, association or corporation, except for necessary support of the poor.”
However, education savings accounts are neither loans nor donations, but rather a fulfillment of the state’s constitutional obligation to provide citizens with educational opportunities.
As Article I, Section 23 of the Wyoming Constitution declares: “The right of the citizens to opportunities for education should have practical recognition.” No other policy yet devised provides families with greater educational opportunities than education savings accounts.
Georgia
The Peach State is on the cusp of becoming the 17th state to offer education savings accounts.
Last year, 16 Republican state legislators voted against a bill to create education savings accounts. This year, eight of those recalcitrant Republicans switched their votes to support the education choice bill.
After the bill passed both chambers in slightly different forms, a conference committee resolved differences and sent the bill to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature. Kemp is expected to sign it soon.
Unfortunately, the conference committee failed to fix the proposal’s flawed “failing schools” eligibility criteria.
The Georgia Promise Scholarship Act would limit eligibility to K-12 students assigned to the lowest-performing 25% of district schools in the state. As I noted earlier this month, the “failing schools” model for an eligibility mechanism is unsound:
First, a child’s access to a quality education should not depend on the average performance of a nearby district school. A school that is high performing on average nevertheless may not be the right fit for a particular child who is assigned to it.
Why should a child’s access to a quality education be dependent on the average level of performance of his or her peers in that school?
Second, the ‘failing schools’ model is unnecessarily confusing for parents. Parents often don’t know if they live in an area where their students are eligible.
Moreover, as district schools frequently move in and out of the bottom 25%, the eligible zones also will shift frequently, making it even harder for parents to keep track of which areas are eligible. It will be incumbent upon local school choice groups to ensure that families know about their education options.
Three years ago, Kansas state lawmakers changed eligibility for their state’s education choice policy from a “failing schools” model to a means-tested one, precisely for these reasons.
After learning this lesson in the school of experience, Georgia lawmakers probably will do likewise in the coming years.
New Hampshire
Earlier this month, the New Hampshire House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill to expand eligibility for the state’s Education Freedom Accounts.
Eligibility currently is limited to students from families earning up to 350% of the federal poverty level, or $109,200 for a family of four. Under HB 1665, sponsored by state Rep. Glenn Cordelli, a Republican, students from families earning up to 500% of the federal poverty level, or $156,000 for a family of four, would be eligible.
That’s about the equivalent of the income of a typical commercial pilot married to a typical school counselor in New Hampshire.
In his annual State of the State address, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, encouraged the state Legislature to send the bill to his desk in the state capital, Concord.
The state’s families, Sununu said, “are singing the praises of Concord for finally passing Education Freedom Accounts which are now ranked as the most effective and popular school choice program in America—and why passing HB 1665 to expand this program is a great opportunity for families.”
“Let’s get it done!” the governor urged.
Sununu is right to highlight the popularity of the education choice policy. According to the most recent monthly tracking poll by Morning Consult, education savings accounts have the support of two-thirds of Granite State citizens as well as three-fourths of parents of K-12 students.
New Hampshire parents are voting with their feet. Over the past academic year, the number of Education Freedom Accounts has grown a whopping 58%, from 3,025 accounts awarded in 2022-23 to 4,770 in 2023-24. That’s more growth per capita than any other state nationwide.
The state Senate will soon hear the bill, but local school choice advocates are concerned about rumors that some senators are looking to scale back the eligibility expansion. Such a move not only is unlikely to persuade any opponents of school choice to support Education Freedom Accounts, but it is also guaranteed to reduce public support.
In addition to souring supporters of the expansion bill who suddenly would discover that their children no longer were going to be eligible, studies repeatedly have shown that the public favors universal eligibility over targeted eligibility.
The organization EdChoice’s most recent Schooling in America survey found that 76% of the public supports education savings accounts that are available to all families, regardless of income, while only 54% support ESAs that are targeted based on financial need.
Some have argued for limiting program enrollment as a cost-saving measure, but—at best—that’s pennywise and pound foolish. The average value of an Education Freedom Account is currently $5,255, barely one-quarter of the average cost of over $20,000 per pupil enrolled in New Hampshire’s district schools.
Instead of curtailing the proposal, state lawmakers should go all in by making the education savings accounts available to all.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/26/more-states-make-progress-on-school-choice/
*******************************************
Government hostility to religious schools
So it appears that, after several more years of consultation, reviews and inquiries, Australia’s communities of faith will once again be disregarded, cast aside and left to fend for themselves in the land “beyond the wall”.
For those unfamiliar with the imagery, it comes from George R. R. Martin’s popular (and confronting) Game of Thrones literary series. In it, a giant ice wall is built to protect the land of Westeros from the horrors of the wintry north – primarily from the legendary dead army that is rumoured to be on the move. The only problem is that there are still humans who live beyond the wall, simple people, unaffectionately known as “Wildlings”. They are a free folk, a proud folk, with deep history, but fundamentally seen as lesser and cut off from the riches and protections of the mainland.
Such it seems is the view of religious people in Australia at this current point in history. Not only are we largely seen as backward and archaic by the elite ruling class, holding onto outdated superstitious beliefs, but also face repeated legislative raiding parties into our communities by state governments and activist media elements (who I like to refer to as the “Night’s Watch”).
This mentality is perhaps most evident when it comes to faith-based higher education, of which I run but a humble chiefdom. We are a significant minority in the Westerosian university landscape, and the inequality is increasingly blatant. Our Wildling students are forced to pay as much as four times the HECS fees of the city dwellers (despite our institutions often outperforming theirs); we have no access to the Maesters’ citadel (research funding and block grants), and our land rights are rapidly being eroded.
Take the example of the Queensland anti-discrimination bill introduced into the state’s parliament this month which strips faith-based educational institutions of the ability to employ staff who share their religious ethos and values – arguably the most oppressive laws in the land. We thought that those in the northern realms might at least have some empathy, but perhaps their long summers have made them complacent towards their devout Wildling brothers and sisters.
We have always felt, however, that we would be able to endure, particularly when those in King’s landing reassured us that we were indeed an important part of Westeros. We would be respected and left in peace, and when it came down to it, they would ensure our protection and survival. Indeed, the kings and queens on the revolving blood-splattered chair of political swords would even sometimes praise us from afar as we educated their children, looked after their poor and took care of their aged.
However, it now seems that, despite all the promises from the Iron Throne, that the protections will not be forthcoming. The Hand of the King (Australian Law Reform Commission) has advised that exemptions for religious educational institutions in the Sex Discrimination Act should be removed. Additionally, the High King of the eight kingdoms has now also indicated the Religious Discrimination Bill is to be dropped. Roughly translated, this means the Wildlings and their backwards ways are condemned. The long, dark night is upon us.
It is no shame to say that we hold a healthy fear of the army of the dead, or in our case the waves of frozen-eyed lawyers primed to overwhelm our educational institutions with litigation. We have already seen internationally that most cases of religious freedom involve educational institutions – where communities of individual Wildlings who hold the sacred values of marriage, or maleness and femaleness, or that life is sacred, are cast out to wander the wilderness.
One idea that has been discussed in our villages is that perhaps we should all just attempt to clamber back over the wall into Westeros, tell our communities to walk out and enrol in the already underfed public schools south of the wall. I anticipate, however, that there would not be enough food to feed us all.
The real question, therefore, is: does the Iron Throne and its multitude of cunning advisers genuinely want diversity in Westeros? By that I mean diversity of perspectives, cultures and opinion. Or are they seeking a monoculture which ensures every inhabitant bends the knee to whoever controls the ideology of the day?
If it is the latter, then the free folk will always be a thorn in the side of any ruler. Whatever the Wildling tribe – whether it be Christian, Islamic, Judaic or just individuals who covet the free life – the reality is that they won’t ever bend the knee to anyone who is not the True King of Westeros and beyond. Our allegiance and salvation does not rest with men and women – thank God.
All we Wildlings really pray for is the opportunity to live in peace, to educate our young people, freely associate, and serve where our help is accepted. Unfortunately, in this current wintry climate beyond the wall, that is by no means assured.
******************************************************
27 March, 2024
College savings should start in kindergarten and kids should be involved: financial expert
With the cost of college on the rise plus an unstable debt load, the best thing parents can do is to set children up for financial success — and that can start as early as the kindergarten years.
Gregg Murset, CEO of BusyKid, a chore app that provides kids with debit cards and financial education, believes the best way to avoid "digging yourself into a hole of debt" is by starting the saving process much earlier.
And while this may sound like a task for the parents, it's also something the kids should get involved with, according to Murset, who is based in Scottsdale, Arizona.
"I think it's really important that not only the parents start thinking about this, but the kids start thinking about it, too, because who made the rules that it's all up to the parents to pay for college anyway? I don't like that rule," Murset told FOX Business.
The best way to avoid empty wallets or anxiety surrounding pricey college tuition is for parents to consider saving early because kids are not as expensive when they're younger, Murset said.
"Having lived through six children of my own and raising them, and most of them are gone now, they're much cheaper [in] the beginning," said the financial expert.
"So, it's actually smarter to start saving when they're little because they don't cost as much."
For Murset, it's not about how much the family is setting aside — but rather, the fact that consistent saving is taking place.
He suggested putting the amount into a growth mutual fund with a 20-year cut-off, and then start dollar cost averaging, so you can "set it and forget it."
While kids might be more excited about attending soccer camp or dance class and aren't thinking about college, it is still important for parents to start engaging in some sort of savings conversation when they are young. Murset suggested that the ages of 4 or 5 are not too soon to start.
"I'm a big believer that kids learn best about money by doing stuff," he said.
"They can read things, they can watch videos, but at the end of the day, they need that practical, visceral experience."
"You got to start that money conversation very young and let them practice. And they not only have to practice earning the money by actually working, but they have to learn what I call a ‘balanced financial approach.’"
Murset's "balanced financial approach" is about teaching kids to earn money, save, invest from savings — and then give some away.
"I know that seems counterintuitive, but you've got to teach them that the world is a bigger place than just them," he said.
A great place to start teaching your children about earning and savings is in your own home, by assigning them chores, said Murset. He calls this a "work-money connection."
"Not only are they going to learn how to work and get something done, but you're going to get your house clean," Murset said with a laugh.
Once they get the money that they earned, they must learn how to manage it, which is when the "balanced financial approach" comes into play.
For parents getting ready to send their children off to college, it is best to discuss how four years of college will be paid for while they're still in high school — so that they are not left shocked or anxious about their savings. Murset said this is the time to start exposing them to the reality of how much life costs.
"A lot of parents have this little bubble and they don't tell their kids anything, and everything's wonderful. And they're clueless, so you have to start teaching them by being more transparent," Murset said.
"This is easy, and it's actually fun," he added.
Murset advised asking kids to help figure out the cost of dinner at a restaurant, plus the tip, and they will start to realize that all things come with a price tag.
When a household's electric or auto insurance bills come in the mail, parents can show them how they're paying for these necessities — and they will quickly realize that life is not cheap, Murset said.
*********************************************
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee expects a school choice 'revolution,' with parental rights a key 2024 election issue
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says his state is joining what he views as a "revolution in America right now around school choice," as a $400 million bill to overhaul public school achievement testing and implement universal school choice advances in the state legislature.
Lee, who is also president of the Republican Governors Association this term, said the issue of school choice resonates nationally beyond just Tennessee during the 2024 presidential election year.
The governor explained in an interview with Fox News Digital that school choice, to him, is "really about freedom," noting how regarding matters of COVID-19 vaccines, books in public school libraries and classroom instruction, "parents on the left and right have very strong opinions about what that ought to look like."
"The only way to resolve those differences are [is] to give parents the choice so that they're not resolved to live with whatever, you know, some teacher or some classroom or some library or some educational school district believes that they ought to be," Lee said. "Most all of us Americans, not just elected officials, recognize that education is one of the top priorities when it comes to issues and what Americans care about."
"This is not a choice between school choice and public schools. We have a strong commitment in this state toward the improvement of our public school system. The vast majority of our kids are going to be educated in our public schools, even years after a choice initiative like our proposed legislation goes through," the governor added, responding to criticism that the proposal would divert resources from Tennessee's underfunded public schools. "We need to have the best public school systems. They need to be funded well. They need to be innovative and creative and part of the part of the legislation."
Lee said he’s observed an increased understanding among conservatives – but also from Americans more generally – that parents should be given the ability to impact what happens in their children’s education. He credited the pandemic, when remote learning gave parents insight into what gender and racial ideologies were included in public school curricula, as well as the resulting learning loss from keeping kids out of classrooms, as parents seek options to play catch-up several years later.
"I do believe there is a push in this country, especially among conservatives, for understanding how important freedom is – freedom in education, freedom in health decisions, freedom in what we do for our employment," he said. "We talk a lot about Tennessee being a place where people have access to opportunity and security and freedom. And as it relates to education, that is an Education Freedom Scholarship Act. And that's what we are really hopeful passes in this state in the next few weeks."
Despite some objections from state Democrats, the framework of Lee's proposal, included in House Bill 1183, advanced through the state House Government Operations Committee and was recommended to move forward to the state House Finance Subcommittee last week. As Lee enjoys a Republican super majority in both the Tennessee House and Senate, he said he expects a version of the legislation to pass after the final provisions are ironed out between chambers.
The current version of the bill in the House would increase payment for teacher health insurance from 45% to 60% – a measure intended to help rural districts retain quality teachers, as well as provide a $75-per-student infrastructure payment toward school facilities and maintenance and increase state funding for students in small and sparsely populated school districts, The Tennessean reported. It also allows for teacher and principal evaluations and state-mandated student testing to happen less often.
A corresponding version of the legislation in the state Senate, SB 0503, is estimated to cost about $250 million less than the House bill. But the upper chamber’s version would primarily focus on creating the governor's Education Freedom Scholarship program and opening inter-county school enrollment. It excludes the House bill’s provisions on teacher health insurance, evaluations and changes to testing requirements.
As the governor noted, school choice initiatives passed in states like Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas last year and more recently in Wyoming and Alabama. It’s also gaining momentum in Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia, Lee said, and Florida and Indiana have multiple stages of school choice. Though it varies by state, Lee said they have the same premise that "the parent knows best."
In states like Texas, Lee said, it has cost candidates elections to oppose school choice.
Tennessee has one of the fastest-growing populations and one of the top-performing economies among all 50 states in recent years, Lee acknowledged, stating how the influx of families weighs in on school choice.
"We need to give parents more choices. And when we do, children are going to have much more options to be successful. And at the end of the day, that's what this is all about," Lee said. "It's not really political, even though it's a very conservative issue. But hey, look at the states that have Democrat governors are passing that choice now as well, because Americans are beginning to believe that this is about children and the future of our country. And we ought to do everything we can to challenge the status quo and get it and get a better outcome."
************************************************
Torrens University pushes private sector path to higher education targets
Australia’s only for-profit university is besting its sandstone rivals in taking on more Aboriginal, female and poorer students, as its chancellor warns the nation will fail to meet the goals of a landmark review into higher education if doesn’t embrace a new model of private universities.
Torrens University chancellor Jim Varghese said the targets set out in the recent Universities Accord report – that 80 per cent of the population aged 25 to 34 should have at least a tertiary qualification and 55 per cent should have a university degree by 2050 – would not be possible with public institutions alone.
He has called for a shake-up of the tertiary sector, which has been dominated by government-funded institutions, arguing that without competitive private alternatives there will not be enough places. The Accord report estimates an additional 940,000 Commonwealth supported places will be required to reach the university attainment goal by 2050.
“It is not possible unless you get the private sector actively involved,” Mr Varghese said.
“Unless you have a private higher education sector working hand in glove in competition, it will become very bureaucratic, very difficult and we won’t reach that very ambitious and laudable target.”
As Australia’s only for-profit higher education institution with university status reaches its 10-year anniversary, a new Deloitte report has found Torrens University was already leading the way on the access and equity goals set out in the Accord’s final report released last month.
The report found 25 per cent of its students were from disadvantaged backgrounds, compared to 12 per cent of Group of Eight universities; 19 per cent were from regional areas, compared to 9 per cent at the Go8; and 3 per cent were Indigenous, compared to 1 per cent at sandstone universities.
It also found that Torrens University – which is owned by US company Strategic Education – had added $468.9m in value to the Australian economy and supported more than 3000 jobs, all without any investment from the government.
Torrens University president Linda Brown said it was the nation’s fastest-growing university, expanding from 165 to 24,000 students in a decade, and had built its brand by scrapping the requirement for an entry score, attracting non-traditional students and offering flexible study options.
She said the university also focused on offering degrees in high demand areas including health, nursing, hospitality, education and business, and was becoming a leader in artificial intelligence. “I believe that we should be allowing investors to invest in universities, all universities – people should be able to raise private money for public good,” she said.
“I also believe that individuals should put their hand in their pocket because they’re getting the return on investment and the benefit for that, so there should be more individual investment,” Ms Brown added. “And there should be government investment … one plus one plus one is much better than relying on funding from one source for 90 per cent of the market.”
Ms Brown said Torrens had attracted international students from 150 nationalities, warning Labor’s crackdown on student visa holders using the pathway to work rather than study could harm the nation’s reputation.
“We will manage whatever is coming, but this uncertainty or drip feeding of changes is not great for our reputation as a country for being open for business for international students,” she said.
******************************************************
26 March, 2024
College savings should start in kindergarten and kids should be involved: financial expert
With the cost of college on the rise plus an unstable debt load, the best thing parents can do is to set children up for financial success — and that can start as early as the kindergarten years.
Gregg Murset, CEO of BusyKid, a chore app that provides kids with debit cards and financial education, believes the best way to avoid "digging yourself into a hole of debt" is by starting the saving process much earlier.
And while this may sound like a task for the parents, it's also something the kids should get involved with, according to Murset, who is based in Scottsdale, Arizona.
"I think it's really important that not only the parents start thinking about this, but the kids start thinking about it, too, because who made the rules that it's all up to the parents to pay for college anyway? I don't like that rule," Murset told FOX Business.
The best way to avoid empty wallets or anxiety surrounding pricey college tuition is for parents to consider saving early because kids are not as expensive when they're younger, Murset said.
"Having lived through six children of my own and raising them, and most of them are gone now, they're much cheaper [in] the beginning," said the financial expert.
"So, it's actually smarter to start saving when they're little because they don't cost as much."
For Murset, it's not about how much the family is setting aside — but rather, the fact that consistent saving is taking place.
He suggested putting the amount into a growth mutual fund with a 20-year cut-off, and then start dollar cost averaging, so you can "set it and forget it."
While kids might be more excited about attending soccer camp or dance class and aren't thinking about college, it is still important for parents to start engaging in some sort of savings conversation when they are young. Murset suggested that the ages of 4 or 5 are not too soon to start.
"I'm a big believer that kids learn best about money by doing stuff," he said.
"They can read things, they can watch videos, but at the end of the day, they need that practical, visceral experience."
"You got to start that money conversation very young and let them practice. And they not only have to practice earning the money by actually working, but they have to learn what I call a ‘balanced financial approach.’"
Murset's "balanced financial approach" is about teaching kids to earn money, save, invest from savings — and then give some away.
"I know that seems counterintuitive, but you've got to teach them that the world is a bigger place than just them," he said.
A great place to start teaching your children about earning and savings is in your own home, by assigning them chores, said Murset. He calls this a "work-money connection."
"Not only are they going to learn how to work and get something done, but you're going to get your house clean," Murset said with a laugh.
Once they get the money that they earned, they must learn how to manage it, which is when the "balanced financial approach" comes into play.
For parents getting ready to send their children off to college, it is best to discuss how four years of college will be paid for while they're still in high school — so that they are not left shocked or anxious about their savings. Murset said this is the time to start exposing them to the reality of how much life costs.
"A lot of parents have this little bubble and they don't tell their kids anything, and everything's wonderful. And they're clueless, so you have to start teaching them by being more transparent," Murset said.
"This is easy, and it's actually fun," he added.
Murset advised asking kids to help figure out the cost of dinner at a restaurant, plus the tip, and they will start to realize that all things come with a price tag.
When a household's electric or auto insurance bills come in the mail, parents can show them how they're paying for these necessities — and they will quickly realize that life is not cheap, Murset said.
*********************************************
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee expects a school choice 'revolution,' with parental rights a key 2024 election issue
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says his state is joining what he views as a "revolution in America right now around school choice," as a $400 million bill to overhaul public school achievement testing and implement universal school choice advances in the state legislature.
Lee, who is also president of the Republican Governors Association this term, said the issue of school choice resonates nationally beyond just Tennessee during the 2024 presidential election year.
The governor explained in an interview with Fox News Digital that school choice, to him, is "really about freedom," noting how regarding matters of COVID-19 vaccines, books in public school libraries and classroom instruction, "parents on the left and right have very strong opinions about what that ought to look like."
"The only way to resolve those differences are [is] to give parents the choice so that they're not resolved to live with whatever, you know, some teacher or some classroom or some library or some educational school district believes that they ought to be," Lee said. "Most all of us Americans, not just elected officials, recognize that education is one of the top priorities when it comes to issues and what Americans care about."
"This is not a choice between school choice and public schools. We have a strong commitment in this state toward the improvement of our public school system. The vast majority of our kids are going to be educated in our public schools, even years after a choice initiative like our proposed legislation goes through," the governor added, responding to criticism that the proposal would divert resources from Tennessee's underfunded public schools. "We need to have the best public school systems. They need to be funded well. They need to be innovative and creative and part of the part of the legislation."
Lee said he’s observed an increased understanding among conservatives – but also from Americans more generally – that parents should be given the ability to impact what happens in their children’s education. He credited the pandemic, when remote learning gave parents insight into what gender and racial ideologies were included in public school curricula, as well as the resulting learning loss from keeping kids out of classrooms, as parents seek options to play catch-up several years later.
"I do believe there is a push in this country, especially among conservatives, for understanding how important freedom is – freedom in education, freedom in health decisions, freedom in what we do for our employment," he said. "We talk a lot about Tennessee being a place where people have access to opportunity and security and freedom. And as it relates to education, that is an Education Freedom Scholarship Act. And that's what we are really hopeful passes in this state in the next few weeks."
Despite some objections from state Democrats, the framework of Lee's proposal, included in House Bill 1183, advanced through the state House Government Operations Committee and was recommended to move forward to the state House Finance Subcommittee last week. As Lee enjoys a Republican super majority in both the Tennessee House and Senate, he said he expects a version of the legislation to pass after the final provisions are ironed out between chambers.
The current version of the bill in the House would increase payment for teacher health insurance from 45% to 60% – a measure intended to help rural districts retain quality teachers, as well as provide a $75-per-student infrastructure payment toward school facilities and maintenance and increase state funding for students in small and sparsely populated school districts, The Tennessean reported. It also allows for teacher and principal evaluations and state-mandated student testing to happen less often.
A corresponding version of the legislation in the state Senate, SB 0503, is estimated to cost about $250 million less than the House bill. But the upper chamber’s version would primarily focus on creating the governor's Education Freedom Scholarship program and opening inter-county school enrollment. It excludes the House bill’s provisions on teacher health insurance, evaluations and changes to testing requirements.
As the governor noted, school choice initiatives passed in states like Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas last year and more recently in Wyoming and Alabama. It’s also gaining momentum in Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia, Lee said, and Florida and Indiana have multiple stages of school choice. Though it varies by state, Lee said they have the same premise that "the parent knows best."
In states like Texas, Lee said, it has cost candidates elections to oppose school choice.
Tennessee has one of the fastest-growing populations and one of the top-performing economies among all 50 states in recent years, Lee acknowledged, stating how the influx of families weighs in on school choice.
"We need to give parents more choices. And when we do, children are going to have much more options to be successful. And at the end of the day, that's what this is all about," Lee said. "It's not really political, even though it's a very conservative issue. But hey, look at the states that have Democrat governors are passing that choice now as well, because Americans are beginning to believe that this is about children and the future of our country. And we ought to do everything we can to challenge the status quo and get it and get a better outcome."
************************************************
Torrens University pushes private sector path to higher education targets
Australia’s only for-profit university is besting its sandstone rivals in taking on more Aboriginal, female and poorer students, as its chancellor warns the nation will fail to meet the goals of a landmark review into higher education if doesn’t embrace a new model of private universities.
Torrens University chancellor Jim Varghese said the targets set out in the recent Universities Accord report – that 80 per cent of the population aged 25 to 34 should have at least a tertiary qualification and 55 per cent should have a university degree by 2050 – would not be possible with public institutions alone.
He has called for a shake-up of the tertiary sector, which has been dominated by government-funded institutions, arguing that without competitive private alternatives there will not be enough places. The Accord report estimates an additional 940,000 Commonwealth supported places will be required to reach the university attainment goal by 2050.
“It is not possible unless you get the private sector actively involved,” Mr Varghese said.
“Unless you have a private higher education sector working hand in glove in competition, it will become very bureaucratic, very difficult and we won’t reach that very ambitious and laudable target.”
As Australia’s only for-profit higher education institution with university status reaches its 10-year anniversary, a new Deloitte report has found Torrens University was already leading the way on the access and equity goals set out in the Accord’s final report released last month.
The report found 25 per cent of its students were from disadvantaged backgrounds, compared to 12 per cent of Group of Eight universities; 19 per cent were from regional areas, compared to 9 per cent at the Go8; and 3 per cent were Indigenous, compared to 1 per cent at sandstone universities.
It also found that Torrens University – which is owned by US company Strategic Education – had added $468.9m in value to the Australian economy and supported more than 3000 jobs, all without any investment from the government.
Torrens University president Linda Brown said it was the nation’s fastest-growing university, expanding from 165 to 24,000 students in a decade, and had built its brand by scrapping the requirement for an entry score, attracting non-traditional students and offering flexible study options.
She said the university also focused on offering degrees in high demand areas including health, nursing, hospitality, education and business, and was becoming a leader in artificial intelligence. “I believe that we should be allowing investors to invest in universities, all universities – people should be able to raise private money for public good,” she said.
“I also believe that individuals should put their hand in their pocket because they’re getting the return on investment and the benefit for that, so there should be more individual investment,” Ms Brown added. “And there should be government investment … one plus one plus one is much better than relying on funding from one source for 90 per cent of the market.”
Ms Brown said Torrens had attracted international students from 150 nationalities, warning Labor’s crackdown on student visa holders using the pathway to work rather than study could harm the nation’s reputation.
“We will manage whatever is coming, but this uncertainty or drip feeding of changes is not great for our reputation as a country for being open for business for international students,” she said.
******************************************************
25 March, 2024
The Growing Discontent With American Education
There is a growing discontent with American education. You can sense it swelling like a big wave, evidenced in a mix of troubling stats and trends from waning public perceptions of education to significant declines in enrollment and attendance. Students aren’t just talking about their discontent with education but walking it, too.
Enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities peaked in 2010 and has been on a steady decline since and more than a quarter of students in K-12 schools are now chronically absent. Certainly, many factors are at play here ranging from mental health issues and a pandemic hangover to technological disruption and a series of education policy debacles. But the ultimate culprit of our discontent may be the hardest of all to acknowledge and address. The brutal reality is that education isn’t exciting, engaging or relevant for far too many students.
It sounds harsh to say and even more difficult to write, but ‘exciting,’ ‘engaging’ and ‘relevant’ are not words often used to describe education. When asking students, parents or employers, we are more likely to hear descriptors such as ‘boring,’ ‘outdated,’ and ‘disconnected from the real world.’ Indeed, only 26% of U.S. adults who have experienced higher education strongly agree their coursework is relevant to their work and day-to-day life. And a mere 13% of K-12 students give their school an “A” grade on “making them excited about learning.”
One of the many outcomes of students who find little excitement or relevance in what they are learning is not just declining attendance but also employers of all shapes and sizes who say they can’t find the talent they are looking for. With nearly 10 million open jobs in the U.S. and a mere 11% of business leaders strongly agreeing graduates are well-prepared for work, we cannot afford to have an education discontent crisis.
While we have spent the better part of the last three decades focused on improving students’ standardized test scores, we’ve made effectively zero progress against this goal. The most heralded solution in recent memory for improving schools was ‘Common Core’ - which took a decade to roll-out and then faced repeal and backlash leading to no measurable result. And as we put more emphasis on ‘academic standards,’ we let students’ real world work experience atrophy as the least-working generation in U.S. history. At the higher ed level, less than a third of our graduates complete a work-integrated learning experience (such as an internship or a semester-long project) as part of their degree.
How does school remain relevant when it provides such little exposure to the real world of work? How does school compete with the engaging and addictive content found in modern-day media, video games and bite-size-length mediums such as X, TikTok, and YouTube shorts? How does school remain up to date amidst the fastest-moving technological and social changes in history? Unfortunately, there are no easy fixes to the great discontent with education. But we can start by establishing a new, fundamental goal for education.
Our aim should be to make education more engaging and relevant. This sounds so simplistic. Yet this has never been a stated goal of any education policy reform in the past half century. If we were to make this our driving goal, we would need to put much more emphasis on the art and science of teaching and learning and on the integration of learning and work. And we would need new ‘north stars’ or metrics for which to aim.
We have national institutes for all sorts of important national priorities. But we don’t have one for teaching and learning. We have a U.S. Department of Education and a Department of Labor as wholly separate entities - yet nothing that aims to integrate learning and work. The average U.S. student takes 112 mandatory standardized tests across their K-12 education, yet we have no national measures of student engagement, exposure to experiential education or work-integrated learning.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And the will is developing in the rising swell of discontent with American education.
***************************************
NYC music school seeks to change blacks-only $3M scholarship over fears it will be deemed unlawful
The Manhattan School of Music wants to change the parameters on a nearly $3 million scholarship fund earmarked only for black students — because they fear the race restriction will be deemed unlawful.
The money was bequeathed to the Morningside Heights school by trustee Cate Ryan, a longtime nurse and playwright who died in 2019 at age 78.
Ryan, who was white, left the dough to the school in recognition of her longtime friend and childhood caretaker, Masolinar “Mackie” Marks, who was black. Ryan, who also worked for The New Yorker, wrote her 2012 play, The Picture Box, in honor of Marks.
In her will, Ryan specified the money go to “financially deserving African-American students” in the school’s precollege programs — but in recently filed Manhattan Supreme Court papers, the institution worries the race-based restriction will be found unlawful after the US Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
The school has yet to dole out the money and wants a judge to green light changing the scholarship’s parameters, making it available to “financially deserving students who have experienced social, educational, cultural and economic challenges similar to those experienced by” Marks.
The school did not respond to a message seeking comment.
**************************************************
Government Targeting ‘Ghost Colleges’ in International Student Visa Crackdown
Despite an uptick in net migration, the Australian government forecasts a significant drop due to measures introduced to clamp down on illegal visas in the international education sector.
According to data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on March 21, net overseas migration totalled 548,800 until September 2023, resulting in the total population growing by 2.5 percent.
The new population figure is 26.8 million, an annual increase of 659,800 people.
This latest data does not account for measures implemented by the Labor Party to curb migration, which is expected to halve by next year, primarily due to major restrictions in student visa approvals.
“Net overseas migration grew by 60 percent compared with the previous year, driven by an increase in overseas migration arrivals (up 34 percent), predominantly on a temporary visa for work or study,” said Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil.
Last year, as part of a greater move to drive down migration, the Albanese government implemented a migration review.
This was aimed at ending pandemic-era concessions afforded to education providers to prevent rogue operators from running so-called “ghost colleges” that often recruit international students who are not genuinely coming to Australia to study.
“Instead of pretending that some students are here to study when they are actually here to work, we need to look to create proper, capped, safe, tripartite pathways for workers in key sectors, such as care,” said Ms. O’Neil on March 21 at a press club event.
“More than half of the people who receive permanent skills visas under our current system arrived in Australia on a student visa.”
Over the next week, high-risk providers, referred to as “visa factories” by the government, will be sent warning notices that give a six-month compliance period to eliminate dodgy practices. If standards are not met, the provider runs the risk of being suspended from bringing in overseas students.
“Increased powers for the regulator and tougher penalties will deter dodgy providers who currently see fines as a risk worth taking or merely a ‘cost of doing business,’” Skills and Training Minister Brendan O'Connor said.
A new “genuine student” test will ask students to answer questions about their intentions for study, provide evidence of their current and potential financial situation, and sign a declaration that they understand what constitutes a genuine student.
Additionally, English language requirements for student and graduate visas will increase, with the minimum requirement from IELTS rising from 5.5 to 6.0 and for graduate visas from IELTS 6.0 to 6.5.
Results of the increased enforcement are already starting to show says Clare O'Neil.
“Since September, the government’s actions have led to substantial declines in migration levels, with recent international student visa grants down by 35 percent on the previous year,” she said.
******************************************************
24 March, 2024
To improve America’s school kids, we need to get them moving
Math and reading scores have been declining in American classrooms for years. And this is not just an academic challenge, it’s a matter of national security. According to a Department of Defense brief from late last year, China and Russia are graduating far more math, science and engineering students than the US, compromising America’s defense preparedness.
Hiring more teachers might seem like the most obvious way to help America’s students catch up; so too is reducing classroom sizes. But neither appear to boost graduation rates. What about injecting more movement into class time, instead? The need could not be greater.
Indeed, according to a recent “report card” from the Physical Activity Alliance, barely one-fifth of American children are meeting the minimum physical activity levels of 60 minutes each day. What’s more, average American teenagers are sitting up for upwards of eight hours each day. These behaviors have serious consequences — including obesity, depression, and sleep disturbances; prolonged levels of inactivity are bad for both the body and the mind.
Children need to move — and the US education system is failing to get them on their feet. Instead, students are told to actually stay still, stop fidgeting and remain quietly for hours at a time. This might make things easier for teachers, but for students there are far better options, most notably kinesthetic learning.
For the uninitiated, kinesthetic learning — also known as tactile learning — involves the active engagement through physical sensations or movements. Rather than merely sitting in classes, students learn through practical experiences, exploration, and the process of discovery. The current education system treats children like passive recipients of information; kinesthetic learning, on the other hand, actively engages kids. It works particularly well for boys, who are far more prone to in-class distractions in than girls.
Research demonstrates that while physical activity may improve overall academic achievement, it’s particularly effective in boosting math skills. That’s because exercise activates regions of the brain associated with mathematical cognition. The incorporation of movement can also aid in the development of phonemic awareness and letter-sound recognition, along with the understanding of fundamental concepts.
For instance, when 8-year-olds were instructed to use their hands and bodies to act out the meaning of words in a foreign language — such as spreading their arms and pretending to fly to learn the German word for airplane — they were significantly more likely to remember the words, even after two months, with a 73% higher recall rate.
This effect is not just limited to language. In a 2021 study involving 757 elementary school students in Copenhagen, researchers divided the participants into two groups. One played in basketball while doing math, while the other followed the usual classroom routine and shot hoops as a regular gym activity. Those who paired basketball with math exhibited a six percent improvement in subject proficiency, a 16% increase in intrinsic motivation, and a 14% enhancement in perceived autonomy compared to their peers who learned math solely in the classroom
The brain influences the body, but the body also influences the brain, a process known as “embodied cognition.” For many students, engaging in low-intensity movement helps them regulate alertness levels; with Stanford experiments demonstrating that students generate more creative ideas while walking than when seated.
Incorporating more movement, even micro-movements, into the average school day is not rocket science. For instance, in mathematics classes with younger children, hand and arm gestures can be employed to impart a wider array of complex concepts like tangents and cosines.
Additionally, teachers (and parents) can get children to draw what they have learned. As indicated by a 2018 study out of the University of Waterloo, Canada, children asked to illustrate their lessons were twice as likely to retain the information than children who merely wrote or read about what they had just learned. The combination of cognitive and physiological activities leads to a more profound encoding of learning, making drawing a dependable and easily replicable method for enhancing performance.
Learning is necessary, but it needn’t be a nightmare. The more fun and interactive, the better it is for students — and teachers. Not only does movement influence cognitive abilities, it improves classroom behavior. Children are balls of energy; they are not “designed” to sit for countless hours. Educators must reimagine classrooms accordingly — the future of America’s security depends on it.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/23/opinion/to-improve-americas-school-kids-we-need-to-get-them-moving/
**********************************************
NYC: No one’s telling the truth about the class-size law: It hurts kids and ONLY helps the UFT
All the recent sound and fury over the state class-size law signifies nothing because all the players refuse to say the most important part out loud: This mandate only serves the interests of the United Federation Teachers — and is actively bad for the city’s schoolchildren.
Declining enrollment had the UFT’s ranks steadily shrinking as of 2022; the class-size mandate is purely a gimmick to turn that around.
State Sen. John Liu (D-Queens) and the other Democrats who pushed the law through plainly don’t even believe the mandate is pro-education, or they wouldn’t have imposed it only on New York City.
Note, too, that the city’s lower-performing schools already mostly meet the law’s class-size targets: It’s the schools that largely work that have more kids in every classroom.
So the law’s actual impact is to force those schools to break up classes — and, indeed, if they don’t have enough available classrooms, to admit fewer students.
That is, fewer children being taught by the best, veteran teachers, and fewer kids in the better schools.
This may well mean fewer students getting the chance to learn at the city’s elite high schools: The buildings that house Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science have fixed numbers of classrooms, after all.
Worse, complying with the law requires the city Department of Education to triple its rate of hiring new teachers — which pretty much forces it to hire every warm body that comes along with the right paper qualifications.
Another wrinkle: Under the UFT contract, senior teachers have considerable rights to choose which school to teach at; human nature ensures that many (maybe most) will transfer to any new slots that open up at “nice” schools, and away from schools where harder-to-educate kids predominate.
Yes, some dedicated veteran teachers will always stick it out at the “tough” schools; a few gifted new teachers will be great from their first days on the job.
But the fact is that this mandate mainly harms the education of the city’s needier kids — and everyone who understands how the system works knows it.
That includes Liu, UFT boss Mike Mulgrew, and the City Council members griping about the city’s slow implementation of the mandate: That they posture to the contrary just makes every one of them even more despicable.
Schools Chancellor David Banks knows it, too, though it’s beyond impolitic for him to call out the vile powerbrokers for playing this game.
But, since he cares about the kids, Banks has a moral duty to drag his feet as much as possible.
As for Liu: How does he sleep at night? The only possible answer: Wherever, whenever, and however the UFT tells him.
********************************************
Woke mathematics teaching in Australia: Rather sickening
Cresta Richardson, the head of the Queensland Teachers’ Union, declared that the 1.3 million children in Australia preparing to sit this year’s Naplan test should be spared the ordeal because it is too stressful for them. It is not surprising Richardson is calling for a boycott of testing, because Naplan testing exposes the complete failure of our education sector to teach people how to read, write and add up.
To his credit, federal Education Minister Jason Clare disagrees, stating he believes Naplan should stay. Since being sworn in as minister in June 2022, Clare has often repeated the mantra that we need to get ‘back to basics’. This is an admirable sentiment, but as long as this country’s education sector is controlled by a cohort of progressives who believe education is a vehicle for politicisation, it will remain nothing more than wishful thinking.
The progressive view of education is of course completely at odds with the expectations of most mainstream parents who still cling to the antiquated notion that, at the very minimum, schooling should be about acquiring basic skills such as numeracy and literacy. Nowhere is this difference more vividly illustrated than in the mathematics learning area of Australia’s national curriculum.
Deeply embedded in the K-10 mathematics syllabus is the ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures’ cross curriculum priority, which ensures ‘students can engage with and value the histories and cultures of Australian First Nations Peoples in relation to mathematics’. The consensus seems to be that children should be taught things like statistics and algebra, not because these will furnish them with necessary life skills such as planning budgets or finding the best prices for products bought and sold, but because it will give them a deeper appreciation of Aboriginal dance, corroborees and dreamtime. Not so long ago, this was called anthropology.
Indeed, Aboriginal dance features heavily in the primary syllabus, especially when it comes to addition and subtraction. In Year 1, teachers attempt to explain to the kiddies why 2 + 2 = 4 through First Nations Australians’ dances. In Year 2, the point is hammered home again, using ‘First Nations Australians’ stories and dances to understand the balance and connection between addition and subtraction’.
For those students who still have not caught on, their teachers will explain through ‘First Nations Australians’ cultural stories and dances about how they care for Country/Place such as turtle-egg gathering using number sentences’. In Year 4, teachers explore ‘First Nations Australians’ stories and dances that show the connection between addition and subtraction, representing this as a number sentence and discussing how this conveys important information about balance in processes on Country/Place’. Just in case you thought this might be the last time children are subjected to the silent snake or cassowary dance, think again. The Year 5s are investigating ‘how mathematical models involving combinations of operations can be used to represent songs, stories and/or dances of First Nations Australians’.
As it turns out, these all-singing, all-dancing classes are a bit of a distraction. Not from learning the times tables or how to do a long division, but from something much more pressing, which is Reconciliation. This highly charged political concept is introduced in a Year 3 ‘Number’ class by ‘comparing, reading and writing numbers involved in the more than 60,000 years of First Peoples of Australia’s presence on the Australian continent through time scales relating to pre-colonisation and post-colonisation’. Two years later, they are busy ‘investigating data relating to Australia’s reconciliation process with First Nations Australians, posing questions, discussing and reporting on findings’.
It is in secondary school, however, that the architects of the mathematics syllabus really get down to business. From Year 7 onwards, students studying statistics are introduced to the notion of reconciliation between ‘First Nations Australians and non-Indigenous Australians’. They are told to look at ‘secondary data from the Reconciliation Barometer to conduct and report on statistical investigations relating to First Nations Australians’. The Reconciliation Barometer was invented back in 2008 by Reconciliation Australia to measure, every two years, just how racist non-Aboriginal Australians really are. This racism is confirmed for students in Year 9 as they go about ‘exploring potential cultural bias relating to First Nations Australians by critically analysing sampling techniques in statistical reports’ as well as observing ‘comparative data presented in reports by National Indigenous Australians Agency in regard to Closing the Gap’.
Every Australian parent should know that their children are being subjected to overt politicisation in maths classes courtesy of the national curriculum. They should also know that the technique being used was developed by Brazilian Marxist, Paolo Freire, who proposed that the only true education is political education and that all teaching is a political act. When Freire talked about literacy, he meant political literacy, rather than actually being able to read and write.
His view was that the teacher’s role is not to educate in the traditional liberal education sense of the word, but to bring about what he termed the ‘conscientisation of the student’ by awakening their consciousness to the real political condition of their lives. Freire claimed that conscientisation could be achieved in the classroom by ensuring children are taught to see structural oppression in all aspects of life.
Thus, a potentially dull statistics lesson on standard deviations, random variation and central tendency is transformed into an entirely different, and much more exciting class in which children develop a critical consciousness of Australian society.
They might discuss the devastating consequences of the invasion of this land and colonisation, past and current systemic racism in Australia, the need for truth-telling, the reconciliation processes, or the need for reconciliation action plans. By the end of the session on statistics, all they will see is structural oppression. And by the end of twelve years of schooling, they will be ready and willing to overthrow the oppressive capitalist power structures and replace them with a utopian socialist society of diversity, equity and inclusion.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/03/dreamtime-maths/
******************************************************
21 March, 2024
West Point Military Academy Drops “Duty, Honour, Country” From Mission Statement
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point decided to drop the “Duty, Honour, Country” motto from its mission statement last week in favour of a bland reference to “the Army Values”. The New York Post‘s Paul du Quenoy is not impressed.
“Duty, honour, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.”
So said Gen. Douglas MacArthur in his famous May 1962 address to West Point cadets.
But those words are no longer hallowed. West Point last week removed them from its mission statement, substituting a bland reference to “the Army Values”.
West Point’s Superintendent, Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland, defended the change, suggesting in a damage-control letter addressed to “supporters” that it resulted from a year and a half of discussions held “across” the West Point community and in consultation with unidentified “external stakeholders”.
He said the decision was supported by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, whose last job was director of a centre at the RAND Corp., a research and policy institute that professes to “strive to cultivate a community that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion as central to our culture”.
Gilland also claimed the approval of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, who previously served as Senior Military Assistant to Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, whose department requested $86.5 million in fiscal year 2023 for “dedicated diversity and inclusion activities”.
That would pay for a lot of implicit-bias workshops for men and women who should be trained to lead and kill, but the difference in language is neither subtle nor insignificant.
The words “duty, honour, country”, enshrined at West Point since 1898, have precise meanings that have historically bound our officer corps to timeless imperatives vital to the nation’s defence.
They presuppose our country is worth defending, honourably and as a matter of duty.
Proponents of woke ideology reject this notion.
For them, those very concepts — along with such basic values as merit, hard work, rational thought, respect for authority and even punctuality — are undesirable symptoms of a culture supposedly infused with ‘structural racism’ and ‘white supremacy’.
A country built on them is patently not one they would care to defend.
A March 2022 Quinnipiac poll found 52% of Democrats would leave the country rather than stand and fight against a military invasion of the United States.
“Army Values”, in contrast, can mean anything politicians and their diversity, equity and inclusion commissars want them to mean.
*************************************************
Shutting Down the DEI Racket
The revelation this month that the University of Virginia has been spending $20 million a year on 235 employees who focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion was astonishing.
Thanks to a new report by the government watchdog group Open the Books, we now know that some DEI executives at the university are raking in more than $500,000 a year, including benefits.
For example, the senior associate dean of the business school is also the global chief diversity officer. He is paid $587,340 including benefits. The vice president of DEI and community partnerships takes home an estimated $520,000 in salary and benefits. There is a whole slate of DEI executives—vice presidents, associate deans, directors, assistant directors, managers, etc.—who earn up to $400,000 in salary and benefits.
Open the Books Founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski told me this week on Newt’s World that it takes tuition from 1,000 UVA students just to cover the base salaries of UVA’s army of DEI-focused employees.
Keep in mind, the median household income in Virginia is roughly $87,000 a year, according to the latest U.S. Census data. In Loudoun County, the state’s wealthiest area, the median household income is $147,111. So, DEI executives at a state-run school are making nearly six times more than the median income households in the state—and nearly three-and-a-half times more than median income households in the wealthiest county.
And UVA is not alone. In January, the New York Post reported the University of Michigan is paying more than $30 million to 241 DEI-focused employees. State legislatures across the country are now scrambling to curb DEI spending in their states, particularly in higher education. But the truth is, the DEI racket has gone global. Worldwide, the DEI industry is soaking up roughly $9.3 billion, according to Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
The terrible irony for Virginia is this DEI scheme is fleecing a university founded by Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and famously penned the principle that “all men are created equal.” Since our founding—and through generations of intense civil discourse and serious effort—America has worked toward creating a society in which every American has equal opportunity and can succeed through hard work and determination.
To be clear: Diversity is good. America has been successful largely because it is a melting pot of people and cultures. I am also for making sure people are included and participate in our civil society.
However, I—and many other Americans—have serious concerns about the concept of placing equity over equality. Equity means guaranteeing people equal outcomes. DEI’s disciples will tell you equity is merely an effort to correct past discrimination and persecution. However, in practice, equity means treating people differently—or granting special accommodations—based on their ethnicity, sex, or other intrinsic traits. This flies in the face of everything we learned from the Civil Rights Movement and is the antithesis of the basic concept of equality.
Virginia Gov. Glen Youngkin has begun to investigate DEI programs at some of the largest colleges in the state. His administration is seeking to review curriculum at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University. As the administration told the publication Higher Ed:
“The administration has heard concerns from members of the Board of Visitors, parents, and students across the Commonwealth regarding core curriculum mandates that are a thinly veiled attempt to incorporate the progressive left’s groupthink on Virginia’s students .... Virginia’s public institutions should be teaching our students how to think, not what to think and not advancing ideological conformity.”
In a separate statement, Youngkin’s press secretary, Macaulay Porter, told reporters the governor, “will continue to advance equal opportunities — not equal outcomes — for all Virginians.”
At America’s New Majority Project, we have learned that 88 percent of Americans believe universities should focus on teaching students how to think and succeed in the workforce—not to become social activists.
Gov. Youngkin and other state leaders are right. The DEI industry is a racket that must be shutdown.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/shutting-down-the-dei-racket-5611116
***********************************************
Sydney King's School headmaster Tony George erupts over 'woke' attacks on top boys' schools - and says his students are being unfairly targeted and ridiculed over high fees
The headmaster of an elite private boys school has hit out at what he calls the 'militant victimhood' of 'wokeness' that targets the 'straw man' of 'white privileged males'.
Tony George, headmaster of The King's School located in north-west Sydney, has lamented that 'sections of government and the press seem intent on deriding independent boys’ schools with any story they can concoct'.
HIs remarks follow the recent expose by ABC program Four Corners of another Sydney private boys school, Cranbrook, which resulted in the resignation of its principal.
Writing in The King's School magazine Leader, Mr George stated 'children attending non-government schools [are] being increasingly targeted and ridiculed' in what he called 'identity abuse' and this was especially true of elite boys' institutions.
'Government single-sex schools have seemed to avoid criticism, as have single-sex girls’ schools,' he wrote.
'However, the underlying agenda against the straw man of white privileged males has fuelled the creation of the term toxic masculinity and the religious fervour it subsequently generates.'
Mr George argued 'the practice of linking toxic behaviour to masculinity is to malign all males, just as linking oppression to the West maligns all western countries as oppressive'.
He argued this 'lambasted' men and boys with the same 'tarred brush of paranoia'.
******************************************************
20 March, 2024
UK: Gender-critical teacher, 60, tells tribunal he was sacked after refusing to use trans student's preferred pronouns
A gender-critical teacher has told a tribunal he was sacked after refusing to use a trans student's preferred pronouns.
Kevin Lister, 60, was dismissed for gross misconduct in September 2022 by New College Swindon following complaints by two students.
The maths teacher had refused to refer to a biologically female student, 17, by their preferred male name and he/him pronouns in A-level lessons.
Mr Lister has taken the college to an employment tribunal, claiming unfair dismissal, discrimination or victimisation on grounds of religion or belief, and that he suffered a detriment and/or dismissal due to exercising rights under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.
The hearing was told that the teenager - known only as Student A - had informed the college in September 2021 they wished to be addressed by a boy's name and with the male pronouns.
Giving evidence, Mr Lister, from Wiltshire, suggested the decision of Student A to use male pronouns had the effect of 'compelled speech' - meaning he and fellow students had to follow their wish, irrespective of their own beliefs.
'I took issue with the demand on me to socially transition children who are unable to make an informed decision,' he told the hearing at the Bristol Civil Justice Centre.
'That is the intention of the policy - to encourage children to socially transition and to push them towards transgender lobby groups.
'Why are we not allowed to question why a student is presenting in the opposite sex?
'It is not the role of a maths teacher to confirm the gender transition and social transition of a student.'
Mr Lister said that, as a teacher, he had an 'obligation to teach facts' and said college policies went beyond the Equality Act and claimed they were 'illegal' as a result.
'I do say this is breaching the Equality Act because you are encouraging the idea that a non-binary person can come into class and say she is a boy and by the afternoon she can say somewhere between the two,' he said.
Referring to the college policy, Mr Lister said: 'It doesn't require gender-critical people to change their beliefs.
'What the policy does require is to be accepting in a way that is contrary to our beliefs.'
Jude Shepherd, the barrister representing the college, suggested the policy did not prevent staff members holding gender-critical beliefs from being 'inclusive and treating people with respect'.
Mr Lister told the hearing that, when Student A informed him by email of their wish to be referred to by male pronouns, he immediately raised a safeguarding concern with the college as he was concerned about their academic performance and whether the two were linked.
'She does not have the right to compel teachers and other students who do not share her views,' he said.
'It is the interpretation of the word "respect" which is at issue here.'
The hearing was told that during lessons Mr Lister, instead of using Student A's preferred pronouns, would point at them.
'I gestured. Some people would say I was pointing. I didn't want to use her dead name but I didn't want to assist with her social transitioning,' Mr Lister said.
During one lesson, Student A asked whether they could enter a nationwide maths competition for girls, and Mr Lister replied: 'Of course you can enter because you are a girl.'
Ms Shepherd asked: 'Do you accept that was an insensitive response?'
Mr Lister replied: 'No, that was a factual response. Student A is trying to subject me to compelled speech and the rest of the class to compelled speech.
***********************************************
The Potted Plants of Higher Education
By RICHARD K. VEDDER
Throughout most of the nearly seven decades in which I have had an intimate association with American higher education, I have pondered the question: “Who really ‘owns’ the universities?”
Several groups claim at least partial control on many campuses, hence the oft-cited term “shared governance.” But to avoid chaos, some specific individual or group has to have ultimate authority to make decisions regarding the use of university resources. Almost always, that is a governing board: “board of trustees,” “board of regents,” “board of visitors,” etc. I have worked with several such boards and spoken at statewide meetings to them, so I guess some think I am an expert on the subject.
I recently corresponded with a former student of mine now a trustee at a state university, about his board’s reaction to certain major developments at the school, and he replied, “We need to discuss many things but we won’t, and will continue to be potted plants.” He added that board members literally receive scripts for each meeting, even told when to make a motion or offer a scripted comment. In short, the boards are sort of a ceremonial device to maintain the façade that the university has a group in charge of serving the broader public interest, not just rubber stamp decisions made by university power brokers. Votes are almost always unanimous. In reality, the public is being conned into believing that the universities are getting effective external oversight.
Actually, university governing boards come in all shapes and sizes. Most public boards range from perhaps seven to as many as 20 members, but private school boards often number several dozen. Occasionally, boards have activists who believe that not only should they have a major role not only in determining the general direction of the university but also in making more routine decisions, down to who should be appointed the football coach. Sometimes, boards—Michigan State is a good recent example—have nasty internal warfare over control of the board itself.
That said, the “potted plant” model my friend described is probably the most common one. Boards have one truly important job: appointing the president, but then usually take a mostly ceremonial back seat role similar to that of the King of England—nominally powerful but in reality mostly a figurehead. To be sure, appointed trustees sometimes provide useful services to the school, most importantly by their financial gifts, especially critical at private schools, but also at state schools by using political connections to help win favors in the state capital from the governor, key legislators, or regulatory groups—like a state department of education or higher education, etc.
The growing perceived problems of higher education have ignited greater conversations about the role of governing boards. In the case of state universities, is their role to maximize the interests of the university community or to represent the broader public, ensuring that the taxpayers are getting a good return on their investment? A bill—Senate Bill 506—narrowly passed the Virginia legislature but, at this writing, unsigned by the Governor, seems to explicitly state that the trustees report to the University administration, not explicitly serving the broader public interest—in my judgment, a grievous mistake. Similarly, in private schools, like those in the Ivy League, shouldn’t trustees monitor and occasionally even alter actions of the University community that hurt both the school’s reputation and the broader public good?
When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis summarily removed the entire board of New College and replaced it with new members who indicated they planned to change the nature and direction of the institution, I at first considered the action excessively radical and disruptive, but upon reflection, I feel it served a useful purpose by calling attention to the importance of imposing some external constraints on what campus communities can do.
It is increasingly obvious that colleges and universities need some adult supervision—public confidence is waning, enrollments have fallen, traditional campus support of free expression and robust viewpoint diversity have deteriorated, and increasingly unethical or even illegal behavior has occurred. Governing boards have a legitimate, more than ceremonial role to play, starting with recruiting able administrators who handle most issues, but also by monitoring campus happenings in a mostly non-intrusive way and constraining inappropriate behavior. The precise optimal role should vary somewhat—religiously affiliated schools, elite private universities, non-elite state schools, including community colleges probably require differing forms of external monitoring—but Boards should be more than rubber stamps or potted plants.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14867&omhide=true&trk=rm
******************************************
‘Exorbitant’ fees paid to academic publishers better spent on research and education, report finds
This is certainly a problem. The top journals can basically charge what they like. Any inability to access them would greatly hinder research
Australia’s public research institutions are paying $1bn a year to giant academic publishers, new research shows, amid growing calls for taxpayer money to be redirected away from private enterprises.
The Australia Institute report, released on Wednesday, questioned if more public money should be used for research and education instead of being directed to international academic publishers.
Academic publishes are among the most profitable businesses in the world – raking in massive profit margins approaching 40% – in line with Google and Apple.
The market is dominated by five major houses – Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature and SAGE Publications – and rakes in billions of dollars a year.
The report found Australia’s research institutions and universities spent $300m on journal subscriptions annually, totalling $1bn when additional fees and publication charges were added.
The “exorbitant” fees are charged to institutions and research groups in order to access research that the public largely funds, the report said. One-off access for a single article costs about $50.
Dr Kristen Scicluna, a postdoctoral research fellow and author of the report, said research was being “hamstrung” without appropriate funding and money could be better directed elsewhere.
“This amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars every year – much of it public money – spent on publication and subscription, not research and discovery,” she said.
Australia’s chief scientist, Dr Cathy Foley, has proposed a world-first open access model, recently finalised for the federal government, that would provide a centralised digital library for all Australians to access research papers free of charge, as long as they had a MyGov account or were in education.
Scicluna said Foley’s plan was a “great start” but did not go far enough, instead pressing for reform as to how research grants were awarded.
“It doesn’t do much to disrupt entrenchment publishers have on academic workflow,” she said.
Scicluna’s proposal includes revising grant criteria to reward publication in open access journals that have lower publishing fees and trialling a lottery-based grant system to reduce the power of major journals.
Australia’s two major public grant bodies – the Australian Research Council (Arc) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) – require publications to be open access, with stipulations in place. But receiving a grant depends on an academic’s track record, typically based on whether they have published in prestigious journals.
Scicluna said until grant conditions offered academics alternative avenues for promotion, private publishers would continue to benefit.
The lottery system has been trialled in New Zealand, the UK, Germany, Australia and Switzerland to some success. Grant applications are first screened for eligibility, then awarded randomly to applicants considered equal, to reduce the emphasis on a researcher’s publication record.
“Publishers can just keep increasing prices, so [the] funding universities get through the government to cover the costs of research, salaries and equipment end[s] up going to library subscription fees.”
In Australia, the Council of Australian University Librarians has taken the lead on negotiating open-access agreements on behalf of institutions. The council’s executive director, Jane Angel, said the need for reform came down to equity.
Angel said not advancing open access particularly hindered innovation among people without access to paywalled information – primarily, those outside educational institutions.
“That either predicates that innovation comes or is perpetuated among those who are tertiary educated, or suggests that this is where we expect to find innovation,” she said.
“That is not democratic or progressive, or indicative of the Australia [the education minister] Jason Clare wants where ‘no one is held back, and no one is left behind’.”
******************************************************
19 March, 2024
Berkeley Is a Safe Space for Hate
Thuggish intimidation of Jewish students and teachers is the new normal as leftist brownshirts topple once-heralded free speech bastion
BY DANIEL SOLOMON
If graduate school has any function, it is as a preserve of a serious clash of ideas. But the UC Berkeley campus is the stage for a confrontation of a different kind. Last month, ahead of a lecture by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, a reserve combat officer in the Israel Defense Forces and a regular on the lecture circuit, Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine promised a reprise of the Hamas pogrom, hanging from the campus’ main entrance a pledge to “Flood Sather Gate”—a reference to “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the code name for Hamas’ rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
On the night of the lecture, the group’s undergraduate fellow travelers, Bears for Palestine, made good on that vow, disrupting a pro-Israel event in a protest and quickly escalating into a riot. The mob smashed windows, shouted antisemitic chants, and sent at least one student to urgent care. The attendees, this author included, had to be evacuated, ironically, via a tunnel. We, the Jewish students, had forfeited our right to security after coming to hear Bar-Yoshafat’s lecture. The university had assured the campus Jewish organizations behind the event that police officers would fend off disruptive protest and uphold our First Amendment rights. The administration did little to protect the safety of the speaker and audience, and even less to protect their free speech rights.
The antisemitic riot capped months of harassment, terror apologia, and occasional outbursts of violence from the campus “Free Palestine” movement. The university’s response has been consistently craven. Meanwhile, some faculty members, such as in the history department, where I am a Ph.D. student, have justified and covered for this behavior. My department has been a microcosm of a larger institutional failure, in which “equity” and “anti-colonialism” act as shields for rank antisemitism.
Leading a coterie of Ph.D. students in the UC Berkeley history department is professor Ussama Makdisi, the chapter president of what Harold Bloom labeled the school of resentment. Makdisi wrote his first books on sectarianism in the late Ottoman Empire, and his latest volume rhapsodizes about a 19th-century convivencia in the Levant that Zionism supposedly ruined. Even before the Hamas pogrom, he told a lecture hall full of students that Jews should have founded their state in postwar Germany. The university press office rewarded him for this in an article in which he was lauded, including by Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and inclusion, for creating a “learning space” that exemplifies “what’s possible when we imagine, create and actualize the conditions that support thriving for every member of our campus community.”
The message could not have been clearer: Intimidation and the specter of mob violence carry the day at this institution.
On the day of the Hamas pogrom, Makdisi posted a thinly veiled justification of the slaughter: “Just waking up to the news. Go read CLR James, Black Jacobins, on the violence of the oppressed. And then try to ignore the utterly racist double standard of Western politicians and media when it comes to questions of resistance and occupation and international law.” His online verbiage has since become more florid: He has accused Israel of “hunting” Palestinian children “in the name of Anne Frank,” and mocked diaspora Jews as “narcissists” for fretting over their security. He has addressed the crowds that have gathered on campus for “Free Palestine” marches and participated in a slew of events with Bears for Palestine.
Since the UC Berkeley Feb. 26 riot, Makdisi has defended the campus malefactors in a flurry of posts on X. Lavishing praise on an op-ed in The Daily Californian that attempted to “contextualize” the incident, he charged the whole brouhaha was no more than an attempt to distract from “the genocide” in Gaza. In a missive dispatched on the same day, he hit out at “the campaign of bullying, intimidation, and narcissistic gaslighting occurring across our campuses … all designed to make sure we don’t talk about Israel’s appalling genocide of Palestinians.”
Makdisi had put the light to the touchpaper in our department in the days after the Hamas pogrom. Canceling a mandatory course for first-year Ph.D. students that he taught, he urged the class to attend his “teach-in” (organized with BFP), in which he would “historicize” and “contextualize” the events of Oct. 7. The event was then promoted on our graduate student listserv, on the same email chain as a union organizing session. When I balked at this, pointing out the campus Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter’s vehement defense of the Hamas pogrom, a group organized a letter to the department chair directed at me. “We reject the assertions made, within our very community, that learning the history of Palestine is tantamount to terrorism or terror apologism,” the signatories, numbering about half of the graduate students, wrote. The signatories, who were mounting a defense of their mentor, spiced the letter with the customary accusation of lack of departmental engagement on “white supremacy ... within our community” (that is, those who had deplored the Hamas pogrom), and intoned about our “obligation to listen to the scholars whose research and lived experiences center these issues [Palestine and the Palestinians], and an equal responsibility to ensure that their voices are heard.” Hostage posters in our academic building were soon ripped down by fellow graduate students. Around this time, some members of the department started Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, the group that posted the “Flood Sather Gate” sign.
Protesters bang on windows (shortly before the glass was smashed) to disrupt the Ran Bar-Yoshafat event last month
Protesters bang on windows (shortly before the glass was smashed) to disrupt the Ran Bar-Yoshafat event last month
NBC VIA YOUTUBE
Jewish students’ repeated attempts, over email and in-person, to explain to department administrators and colleagues how these actions were offensive and off-base soon met with escalating ostracism from others and a progressive withdrawal of Jewish students from departmental spaces and events. Antisemitism has battered a Jewish friend out of this department, after the majority of his first-year cohort claimed that “all resistance is justified to anyone with morals.” Another friend told me she would no longer come to our graduate library because “people there want my family dead.” Despite the department’s concern about the situation, administrators have maintained that academic freedom and institutional procedures prevent them from adopting a clear stance against the antisemitism in our midst and the primary instigator thereof. The same administrators have also consistently misrepresented the matter as a question of upholding civility in the course of intense political discord. Jewish students have sometimes felt like we are talking to a brick wall in explaining that this is not the case.
SJP’s antisemitic onslaught began on the same day as the Hamas pogrom. On that day, Bears for Palestine released a statement praising its “comrades in blood and arms” for their operations “in the so-called ‘Gaza envelope.’” The same organization then mounted demonstrations at which participants, wearing masks and Palestinian headscarves, clamored to “globalize the intifada” and “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” The demonstrations sometimes spilled over into minor altercations, such as when an SJP member attempted to rip an Israeli flag from a counterprotester’s hands. The protests took place on the university’s main plaza, right next to the academic building where in the fall I was teaching a freshman seminar on Holocaust memory. I was so concerned for my students’ safety that I moved our meetings to the campus Hillel.
The university’s response to these events was tepid and laden with false equivalencies. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ acknowledged in early November that “fear is being generated by the rhetoric used at some of the recent protests on campus”—a turn of phrase that was telling in its use of the passive voice and refusal to name names. She mentioned worries about antisemitism, which she nullified in the same breath with a condemnation of the “harassment, threats and doxxing that have targeted our Palestinian students and their supporters.” She even noted that one ought not to equate pro-Palestinian campus protests with support for terrorism (which seems at odds with the declarations of these self-same protesters). Christ closed her statement with a lofty call to honor the institution’s “long-lived and unwavering” dedication to free speech. [For Leftists only]
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/berkeley-safe-space-for-hate
***********************************************
University ‘Forces’ Journalism Students to Fork Over Tuition Money for Course on ‘Microaggressions,’ Pronouns
Arizona State University (ASU) forces students to hand over tuition money to take a course that pushes left-wing ideas, according to documents obtained by the Goldwater Institute.
The course, titled “Diversity and Civility at Cronkite,” pushes gender ideology onto students, and one requires students to make a public relations plan for a theoretical popstar who uses “they/them” pronouns, according to the Goldwater Institute, a free-market public policy research and litigation organization. The course is required for graduation from several degree programs at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
“The journalism school at Arizona State forces students to take a course advising them that benign statements—such as ‘I believe the most qualified person should get the job’—are offensive ‘microaggressions’ that make people feel unwelcome. This course also requires students to develop a public relations plan for a nonbinary pop star who uses ‘they/them’ pronouns. This course shows how universities use graduation requirements to force students to sit through lectures in progressive dogmas that add little or nothing to their education,” Timothy K. Minella, a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The course “emphasizes the importance of diversity, inclusion, equity and civility to ensure all Cronkite students feel represented, valued and supported” and “offers training and awareness on cultural sensitivities, civil discourse, bias awareness and diversity initiatives,” according to the online description of the class. The class also “empowers students” to approach reporting “with a multicultural perspective.”
Over 400 students were required to take the course in the fall 2023 semester, according to the Goldwater Institute. The course is required for the completion of bachelors degrees in Journalism and Mass Communication, Sports Journalism and Digital Audiences at ASU, according to several university webpages.
One course document says that the statement “America is a melting pot” is an example of a “microaggression,” which is a minor insult believed to be unconsciously driven, according to the Goldwater Institute. Statements such as “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” or “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough” imply “people of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder,” according to the document.
Another reading required as a course assignment defines “cisgender privilege” as being able to “access gender-exclusive spaces (e.g., a space or activity for women) and not be excluded due to your trans status,” according to Goldwater’s report. The reading does not appear to be associated with the university and is housed on a website titled, “its pronounced metrosexual.”
Colleges around the U.S. have implemented similar classes pushing the tenets of gender ideology and critical race theory.
Princeton University made headlines in 2022 after adding “FAT: The F-Word and the Public Body” and “Anthropology of Religion: Fetishism and Decolonization” to the school’s catalog. Wesleyan University offered one course in the 2023-2024 school year, titled “Queer Russia,” which offers students an overview of how queer people have influenced Russian culture.
The University of Chicago offered one class titled “Queering God,” which questions if God is queer and how queerness is related to the idea of God. “What does queerness have to do with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam?” the course description reads.
******************************************************
Every school in NSW to offer gifted education programs
I am all in favour of this. It will be a great help to many students in crummy State schools. It is probably not important to really high IQ students, however. They will do well in any system. I did not go to school at all for my Senior exam. I just taught myself all in one year. Others in my IQ bracket should probably do the same
High potential and gifted education will be rolled out in every public school in the state under a new plan to challenge the students who are not reaching their full potential.
Such programs were available in only half of the state’s public schools, Education Minister Prue Car told the Sydney Morning Herald’s Schools Summit on Thursday, but fixing that would depend on tackling the state’s teacher shortage.
She said teachers had been “gaslit” by the previous government into thinking there was not a crisis in the sector.
“Parents deserve to see high potential and gifted education inside the doors of every local school,” Car said.
“Parents want confidence that regardless of their choice of school, that the learning environment will bring out the best in their child.
“Our vision is that in NSW, high potential and gifted education will be delivered in every public school, in a high-quality offering, in a way that is valued by students, parents and teachers alike.”
Under the plan, public schools will identify high potential students across four domains: intellectual, creative, social-emotional and physical.
A 2021 policy was supposed to make gifted education training available at all schools to ensure gifted students were extended even if they did not attend a selective school or opportunity class. However, only half of the state’s schools have the programs in place.
University of NSW researcher Professor Jae Jung said the extent to which the current gifted program was being taken up was highly variable.
The Sydney schools that have surged past 3000 students
“There needs to be a follow-up process and assessment to understand to what extent it is being implemented,” he said.
“One way to ensure gifted education practices are implemented is to guarantee all teachers have gifted education training at the pre-service teacher training level. There also needs to be a mandatory requirement that gifted education programs are available in all schools.”
Gifted education can take different forms including grade skipping, gifted classes and curriculum differentiation within the regular classroom, Jung said.
Car told the summit the challenges the public school system had faced, such as a lack of staff or resources, had left some communities wanting their schools to deliver more gifted education programs.
She said teachers felt “gaslit” by those supposed to support them, and that their challenging experiences in the classroom were being dismissed.
“They were told there was no shortage. That it was a beat-up,” Car said.
A research review by the NSW Department of Education previously found gifted children comprised the top 10 per cent of students, but up to 40 per cent of them were under-achieving.
If at least 10 per cent of students are gifted, 80,000 students in NSW public schools have high potential.
It found that without help to turn their promise into achievement, the students might never achieve their potential.
Car also announced at the summit that she had asked the NSW Education Standards Authority to conduct a review into professional development requirements for teachers and whether they were preventing them for undertaking learning that met their individual needs.
“I asked that NESA consider the administrative burden for teachers … as well as the professionalism of teachers in being able to identify their own professional learning priorities,” she said.
******************************************************
18 March, 2024
Sydney University will recruit hundreds of new teaching-focused academics in what it says is a bid to improve student experience and place a higher value on teaching in higher education.
This is just more dumbing down of education. Getting research published is the guarantee that the teacher's knowledge is at cutting-edge level. Take that away and a teacher might have no expertise to share. The students might just as well read the latest book on the subject. I did a lot of research in my academic career and I always had a LOT to say in the classroom that was not in the books
Vice chancellor Mark Scott said the roles would carve out a new career path for teaching specialists in academia, allowing them to fill some of the most senior roles at the university.
However, some are unhappy about the plan, suggesting it creates two tiers of academics by removing a focus on research.
The university will on Monday launch an international campaign to recruit more than 150 tenured academics after an initial appointment of internal applicants across 55 new roles.
The teaching-focused positions will be for every career stage, from lecturers to full professors and senior leadership roles across a broad range of disciplines.
Scott said for students the key engagement with the university is around what happens in the classroom, not in the research lab.
“Our most brilliant teachers should be as famous and revered in the institution as our most brilliant researchers are today,” he said.
“I have a view that we owe every student a transformational experience here at the university.
“They’re paying higher fees than students have ever paid in this country.
“So to prioritise appropriately teaching and learning as important as we do research - that’s what we need to do. I think that’s what the great global universities do.”
Teaching-focused academic roles are controversial among many academics who see the roles as career-limiting and involving intense workloads.
The jobs came about as part of protracted EBA negotiations with staff which concluded last year. The university agreed to introduce 330 new permanent academic roles to reduce casualisation of the workforce but 220 of those were to be teaching-only positions.
It contrasts with the existing deal for academics which guarantees they spend 40 per cent of their time on research, 40 per cent on teaching and 20 per cent community engagement.
English and linguistics academic Nick Riemer, the university’s National Tertiary Education Union branch president, said there was a clear effort from senior management to break the teaching and research nexus.
“There should be more academic jobs at the university because at the moment it has an overreliance on casualisation and that just involves outright exploitation,” he said.
“But we are very seriously concerned that university management seems intent on separating teaching and research, which are academic functions which intrinsically belong together.
“If you’re not researching in your fields you’re passing on doctrine.”
Riemer said the education-focused roles that exist at the university were subject to high levels of overwork.
“And there’s every reason to think uni management see teaching focus roles as just a cheap way of getting staff to do a lot of teaching without giving them the time for the research they need to do to stay up to date,” he said.
But Scott said teaching at higher education level had been undervalued, and the roles would create viable career options for teaching specialists.
“We’re creating a career pathway that says to the very top end of the professoriate, people who are teaching experts can have a career pathway to the very top,” he said.
One of the first internal recruits for the roles, Louis Taborda, senior lecturer in project management, said he chose teaching because he saw it as a noble cause.
He began his career as a high-school maths and computer science teacher, then worked as an IT consultant before moving to academia.
“I felt right at the beginning that getting into teaching was something that was noble, pure and unadulterated,” he said.
“It’s absolutely a pleasure to watch students grow.”
****************************************************
US colleges bring back standardized testing after finding test-optional policies hurt minority students
Testing gives bright kids from poor backgrounds the opportunity to shine -- which is a large part of the reason why they were originally introduced
Universities across the United States are reinstating requirements for undergraduate applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores after previously claiming that standardized tests raised concerns about inequality in higher education.
University of St. Thomas (Houston, Texas) professor and associate dean David D. Schein told Fox News Digital that standardized testing is merely designed to give schools one central index on which to compare students. He said while good grades and extracurricular activities are considered, having a reference source independent of geography is essential.
Schein suggested that competition for students has increased because of the downward birth curve and increasing costs. Therefore, dropping testing requirements may have been viewed as a way to increase the applicant pool.
He also blamed the elimination of standardized testing on a narrative circulating in academia that some minority students do not do as well as White and Asian students because of poor schooling or cultural bias in the test.
"Frankly, I found this narrative racist and offensive on its face," Schein said. "That is because it could be interpreted as ‘certain minorities were too stupid to do well on these demanding standardized tests.’ I have always rejected this narrative. Further, schools should still have the data but can make decisions based on the many factors considered in admissions, not just the SAT."
The University of Texas at Austin announced on Monday they would once again require applicants to submit test scores beginning August 1 and claimed their test-optional approach over the last four years made it difficult to place students in programs they were best suited for.
"We looked at our students and found that, in many ways, they weren't faring as well," U.T. President Dr. Jay Hartzell told The New York Times.
The university added that due to the plethora of 4.0 high school GPAs, the standardized test requirement is a "proven differentiator" that serves the best interests of the applicant and UT.
Many universities dropped the testing requirement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some prestigious institutions, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgetown University, reinstated their admissions process requirements.
Schools have said the tests allow them to identify promising students who might otherwise have been overlooked — students from schools that don't offer advanced coursework or extracurriculars and whose teachers may be stretched too thin to write glowing letters of recommendation.
Dartmouth College was the first Ivy League school to reinstate standardized testing requirements in February, writing, "Nearly four years later, having studied the role of testing in our admissions process… we believe a standardized testing requirement will improve — not detract from — our ability to bring the most promising and diverse students to our campus."
Christopher Rim, the CEO and founder of Command Education (a private Ivy League and elite college consultancy), told Fox News Digital that many colleges created test-optional policies based on the assumption that standardized testing has historically disadvantaged students of color.
However, a study cited in Dartmouth's reinstatement announcement noted that test scores help admissions departments interpret transcripts from high schools about which Dartmouth has less information and identify high-achieving, less-advantaged students.
"Researchers found that test-optional policies unintentionally created a barrier for less advantaged students due to the fact that such students often opted against submitting their scores, even when those scores would benefit their application and demonstrate their preparedness for Dartmouth's rigorous curriculum," Rim said.
"Additionally, it placed greater emphasis on elements of the application (such as GPA and course rigor) that disadvantaged students may struggle with more due to lack of opportunity or support at underfunded public schools," he added.
Rim said that while there is no "perfectly equitable" way to evaluate all applications, reincorporating standardized testing alongside other factors, such as extracurriculars, honors courses and essays, will pave the way for a "more fair admissions process."
Soon after Dartmouth publicized its decision, Yale University announced it would abandon its test-optional policy for 2025 admissions applicants. The institution said not including the tests shifted attention to other aspects of the application, which disadvantaged certain students.
"Test scores provide one consistent and reliable bit of data among the countless other indicators, factors, and contextual considerations we incorporate into our thoughtful whole-person review process," the school said.
Brown University is the latest Ivy League institution set to return to standardized testing requirements for first-year students. The policy will begin with the class of 2029.
A report from the Brown Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions Policies noted, "The committee was concerned that some students from less advantaged backgrounds are choosing not to submit scores under the test-optional policy when doing so would actually increase their chances of being admitted."
Brown determined that higher test scores were correlated with higher grades at the university and suggested there are "unintended adverse outcomes of test-optional policies in the admissions process itself, potentially undermining the goal of increasing access."
**********************************************
Australia: Home Schooling Must Be Consistent With official Curriculum
The syllabus is so wishy-washy that no problems should arise
The Queensland government has introduced legislation in parliament mandating that home education is consistent with the Australian government’s curriculum.
This comes amid an almost tripling of students who are been homeschooled in the state since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Education Minister Di Farmer introduced the Education (General Provisions) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 on March 6, which includes amendments related to homeschooling.
Under the proposed changes, students who are schooled at home are required to follow the government’s syllabus for senior subjects.
The minister noted that more than 10,000 students are currently registered for homeschooling in Queensland.
Ms. Farmer said that given these higher numbers, it is “more important than ever” that students are undertaking a high-quality program.
In addition, she highlighted that the legislation provides “safeguards for student wellbeing.”
“The bill requires a summary of the educational program to be provided at the time of application for home education registration to ensure the child or young person has immediate access to a high-quality program and removes the separate time-limited provisional registration application,” Ms. Farmer told parliament.
“This will provide a single and simplified home education registration process with appropriate oversight by the department.
“Further, the bill removes the need for a certificate of registration and associated obligations, to reduce an unnecessary regulatory burden for parents. Instead, parents will continue to receive a written notice, as they do now, setting out evidence of registration and any conditions on registration.”
Ms. Farmer said the bill establishes a “new guiding principle” emphasising that home education “should be in the best interests of the child or young person.”
“This must take into account the child’s safety, well-being, and access to a high-quality education. This amendment was included in the bill after public consultation on home education amendments was completed,” Ms. Farmer said.
“Using a guiding principle which makes explicit that a child or young person’s best interests must be central to the significant choice of home education is something I am confident Queensland families and home educators will support.”
Home Education Australia spokesperson Samantha Bryan raised concerns with AAP that the mandate may lead to more parents taking home education underground.
Ms. Bryan also told the publication most families registered with the Home Education Unit are succeeding with homeschooling, even if they are not following the national curriculum.
“If children are already receiving a high-quality education, if the system’s not broken, why are we trying to allegedly fix it,” she said.
Ms. Bryan suggested a dual enrolment option allowing families to combine part-time homeschooling with part-time school attendance.
“Families are making great sacrifices because they desperately love and care about the wellbeing of their child,” she said.
“Some of these families would love to put their kids back in school so I think a dual enrolment option—part-time home education, part-time school— would be great.”
******************************************************
17 March, 2024
Australia: Authoritarianism lives in the mind of a Leftist teacher
Brendan McDougall (below) teaches in a government school in country Victoria. He realizes that some parents are prepared to make considerable efforts to ensure that their children get a good education while others are prepared simply to accept what the government offers. He deduces rightly that, no matter the system there will always be at least some people who seek privately-funded education in order to give their children more than the government offers. He wants to stop them doing that. He wants to forbid private education altogether. He would approve of the old Soviet system.
That is a distinctly radical proposal from a distinctly radical website and one with no chance of adoption so why does Brendan argue that? His argument is actually realistic in some ways. He thinks that having private schools diverts resources that might otherwise go to government schools and he wants more resources for government schools. Private schools get all the best teachers, for instance.
What he overlooks is that the existing system greatly expands the share of national resouces that goes into education. Private schools attract private money, which adds to what the government spends on education. He is actually advocating for LESS money to be spent on education
He cannot be unaware of that. It is just Leftist envy that is heaving in his breast. He is aware that many private school users "are paying for their children to have access to a more powerful peer group" and he hates it. He just cannot bear the thought of other people doing well for themelves and feeling happy about it. Their happiness makes him unhappy. He must be miserable a lot of the time.
We can be thankful that there are not enough like him to be influential. When Mark Latham was leading the Labour party, he suffered a crashing electoral defeat after just a mild threat to Federal funding to private schools. Around 40% of Australian teenagers go to private schools so that is a huge voting bloc to threaten.
In case it is of any interest, I went to a small country State school in Queensland and sent my son to a regional Catholic school. Both schools were rather good, I think
Australia’s public schools are in crisis.
Teachers nationwide have been shouting about this for more than a decade. There are no teachers. Our students are falling behind internationally. Many kids are depressed and school refusal is through the roof. It’s become so dire that even Education Minister Jason Clare agrees.
Over the past decade, right-wing responses have been to blame the teachers or claim there are too many soft skills being taught. Those advocating in the media for school reform have tended to argue about the funding disparity between public and private schools, and the fact our schools are many percentage points away from meeting the school resourcing standard.
These arguments ignore the reality that our current system values the education of some young Australians more than others — and the numbers obfuscate and distract from the true rot in the sector: class segregation.
We have one of the most robust private education sectors in the world, and it’s hard to argue, especially following a recent Four Corners investigation into allegations of harassment and discrimination at Sydney’s Cranbrook School, that this is doing our society any good.
Private schools don’t need tweaks or reforming; they need to be abolished.
No teachers, no resources
Our teachers are overworked, overwhelmed, burnt out and undervalued — and the numbers often cited are egregious. In New South Wales and Western Australia, shortages of more than 2,000 teachers were reported at the end of 2023. In Victoria, 800 jobs remained unfilled across the state when students returned from the summer (now reduced to 795 at the time of writing, including 14 principals).
This shortage is being felt across the board, but the pain is sharpest at schools in our most vulnerable communities, such as mine, where six teachers have returned from retirement this year and we still have seven unfilled full-time jobs, with no applicants in sight.
In the decade following the 2012 Gonksi review — which assessed school funding and depicted a system characterised by alarmingly declining test scores and increasing educational inequality — funding of private schools has increased at twice the rate of public. Not only did the review’s warnings go unheeded, but successive governments have worked in tandem to accelerate the trend. In Victoria and NSW in 2021, five elite private schools spent more on new facilities than governments spent on 3,372 public schools combined.
These numbers are shameful, but while they liven up discussions in staff rooms, they’re not effective at creating change. There are deeper issues at play. For every cartoonishly posh school in Kew or Bellevue Hill charging well over $30,000 tuition a year, there are five or more smaller, lower-fee private schools that cost $5,000 a year that compete for teachers and students across Australia’s less affluent areas.
These schools are often as materially scruffy as the fee-free public school down the road, with similar performances in metrics like NAPLAN and ATAR. Despite this, parents flock to these independent private schools in droves, with enrolments ticking up 14.1% over the past five years, while enrolments at Catholic private schools increased by 4.8% in the same period. Yet despite recent cost of living pressures, enrolments in public schools only grew by a measly 0.7% over the past five years, well below the average growth for all schools of 3.5%.
Paying for a peer group
We are certainly not getting richer, particularly those of us young enough to have kids starting school for the first time, so why might cash-strapped parents be willing to spend an ever-increasing portion of their disposable income on a product that isn’t measurably “better”?
One reason is that private schools have marketing departments, but a more potent force is that middle-class parents in Australia consider privately educating their children a cultural norm.
Australia is one of the richest countries in the world, and we have one of the highest percentages of private-school-educated young people in the world — 36%, with an increase of 4 percentage points over the past 20 years. In a country like the United States, where there are roiling debates about school choice and rampant social inequality, only 10% of students attended private schools as of 2022-23.
In Australia, enough parents send their kids to private schools that to do otherwise can feel inadequate or negligent. Parents care about their kids and they don’t want them to miss out, so they work two jobs and send their kids to private school so they can relax knowing they did everything they could.
In doing this, however, they inoculate themselves against needing to care about what happens to those who can’t afford what they can. They tap out, and if a third of our families tap out of public education, there becomes little political will left to make our public schools work. This is compounded by the fact that it’s the wealthier, powerful third — the parents who are also doctors and bankers and lawyers and politicians — who leave the public system first.
This means that in Australia we have two education systems — one for everyone, and one for the students whose parents believe that the one for everyone isn’t good enough. These latter children spend their formative years only associating with people like them, with limited mixing across class lines. Parents who send their kids to private schools aren’t necessarily paying for a better education — they are paying for their children to have access to a more powerful peer group.
This has been true for decades. Parents today who attended public schools grew up knowing the state didn’t care about their education, and so it is with today’s young people. They know this in their bones as they walk through the gates. As teachers, we see it in their eyes, but we also see it in our declining PISA scores, our school refusal rates, completion rates, our problems managing behaviour, and the upticks in youth crime statistics. These kids know that their country cares about other children more than them.
Education for all
In a debate about the value of VCE in my Year 12 English class last week, one student asked me if “a 40 here is really worth the same as a 40 at a private school in Melbourne”. The truth is that it’s worth so much more when it’s been fought for so much harder, but there aren’t the structures in place for us to see that.
The rampant, chronic underfunding of our public schools is a blight on our national identity, especially for a country that lionises the idea of a “fair go”. But simply reallocating funding to be more equitable will not address the class segregation corroding Australia’s school system.
So what can we do? Well, we can start by phasing out the federal taxpayer dollars pouring into the coffers of private schools — a minimum of $17.8 billion in 2024. If someone wants to pay for their child to attend a school where they won’t fall in with “the wrong crowd” or the other classist monikers we reserve for poor kids, they can pay for it themselves. We could then invest that money back into our public schools, targeting funding to the communities like mine who need it most.
We could ban the new construction of private schools that are de facto designed to siphon away from the public sector the families who have the resources to invest in their children’s education, robbing their local school of their assistance. A better-resourced public sector could be designed to provide different educational options for different kids, and we could repurpose some of those three-storey performing arts centres into facilities accessible to everyone.
These solutions aren’t easy — they require long-term thinking, values-based politics and bravery. The issue has been ignored for so long that it is entrenched. Decades of underfunding and neglect have made our public schools less competitive and less attractive to middle-class parents. Decades of conversations during school pick-ups and dinner parties have made parents increasingly anxious that their child might get left behind.
Even if we did manage to abolish the grossly inequitable privatised model we currently have, our schools would still be segregated by postcode; by the capacities of parents to pay “top-up fees” to give their local public school an edge. But unless our leaders dare to acknowledge the injustices baked into the system, more kids will leave the public system, more burnt-out public school teachers will leave the profession, and more of our next generation will leave the education system feeling as though it wasn’t designed for kids like them.
If governments, state and federal, are serious about fixing public education, they must consider the radical choice of abolishing the private education sector. Until they do so, they will never truly ensure that our schools are about every child learning, growing and flourishing.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/03/15/australia-public-school-private-school-funding-class-disparity/
*********************************************
California State University’s Mandate of Ethnic, Social Justice Studies Driven by Hatred of America
Pan-African studies are “the intellectual arm of the revolution,” the unrepentant communist Angela Davis triumphantly told students at California State University, Los Angeles, in a candid moment in 2016. Well, that arm got a lot longer this week.
The entire California State University system just announced Thursday that it was making ethnic and social justice studies mandatory for everyone who wants a degree.
Yes, that means that ethnic and social justice studies will now have pride of place along with English and science as subjects that must be mastered by those brandishing a bachelor’s degree from the vast California system.
Not that ethnic or social justice studies will do one iota to help these young Americans master their fields or become future leaders, which used to be one of the aims of what was formerly called higher education.
No, ethnic and social justice studies are political indoctrination.
Critics would say, hang on, wouldn’t ethnic and social justice studies help Americans get along better in a diverse workforce, body politics, classrooms, etc.? Those critics, of course, would have very little understanding of what actually is taught in ethnic studies or social justice studies.
Ethnic studies teach the members of what in today’s lexicon we call “minorities” (really, any American who belongs to a group that the activists have convinced the bureaucracy to officialize as marginalized) that they have a long list of grievances against the United States, and particularly against whites.
To Americans who have been cordoned off into the groups thought of as belonging to the “oppressor” classes, ethnic and social justice studies classes instruct them to forthwith act submissively, assume the burden of collective guilt for sins in which they have taken no part, listen, not talk, etc.
Who are these oppressor people? It used to be only white male Protestants, but we are seeing the anger turned against white women, who are now dismissed and cruelly disparaged as “Karens,” (anti-racist consultant Robin DiAngelo actually devotes an entire chapter of her bestseller “White Fragility” to “White Women’s Tears”), Jews, and, increasingly, Chinese and Indian Americans.
Why? Well because Chinese and Indian Americans have had the temerity to succeed, which destroys the narrative that we have oppressor and oppressed classes, and individuals cannot do anything about it.
So would anyone want to introduce this witches’ brew into the educational system of anything? Because Angela Davis was right: ethnic studies are a political project.
Ethnic and social justice studies are just one more attempt at demolishing the “hegemonic narrative.” The hegemonic narrative of this country, to those not yet indoctrinated, is the American Way of life. It is the American Dream. It is the promise of liberty and prosperity that has attracted more than 100 million immigrants to our shores in over a century and a half.
That attraction continues to this day. There is a very long line out the door of people seeking to come in and there is no line for people waiting to leave.
As I explain at length in my new book, “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free,” to be published this Tuesday, the hard left wants to strangle this goose that laid the golden egg.
To the hard left, this is not a dream, but a dystopian nightmare of an America that is structurally, systemically and institutionally racist. It is also too individualistic (and at the same time too family-centered), profit-driven, male-ist, etc.
To Davis and the others who understand the political value of ethnic studies, this awful American hegemonic narrative must be replaced with a counter-narrative filled with the aggrieved and the aggressors.
That is why every student who will go through the Cal State system will now receive these lessons, and be hugged more tightly by the intellectual arm of the revolution.
************************************************
School choice wins in Texas — and shows other states how it’s done
The educational-choice movement is a once-in-a-generation political earthquake in America, and politicians in other states should take notice.
The Texas House failed in November to pass Gov. Greg Abbott’s school-choice legislation.
Twenty-one Republicans joined all Democrats to kill a groundbreaking compromise bill that would have created Texas’ first private school-choice program, sent $7 billion extra to public schools and provided $4,000 raises for public-school teachers and support staff.
But instead of empowering families, defecting Republicans voted against their party platform and their constituents.
It looked like the nation’s largest red state would continue to be a stubborn holdout on education freedom, but Abbott quickly and boldly went on the electoral warpath.
He endorsed primary challengers against those members and ultimately deployed more than $7 million of his own campaign cash to make sure voters knew where they stood.
The results were extraordinary.
Of the 16 anti-school-choice incumbents seeking re-election, a stunning six were defeated outright, and another four were pushed into runoffs.
Meanwhile, all five of the seats vacated by retiring members will be filled by pro-school-choice candidates.
This change in the whip count represents the largest shift toward school choice in Texas political history.
It’s difficult to recall another political event in any other state of this magnitude.
It also settled the score on school choice.
On multiple occasions, anti-choice incumbents claimed their constituents are opposed or indifferent to vouchers.
But their actions betrayed the truth.
Until election week, those incumbents still ran advertisements digging in on their vote against school choice.
Ousted Rep. Glenn Rogers wrote multiple opinion articles arguing school choice “isn’t conservative.”
Rogers lost his seat to a school-choice supporter by a 26-point margin.
As Texas’ most popular political figure, Abbott and his endorsements were hugely important to the electorate.
But the governor wasn’t alone.
In the past three months, our affiliated super PAC, AFC Victory Fund, also spent more than $4 million to make sure voters knew where their representatives stood.
All told, this election will be remembered as one of the most significant events in state-level politics in recent history.
Defeating an incumbent lawmaker is the hardest thing to do in politics.
By defeating six incumbents and pushing four more to runoffs, Abbott and AFC Victory Fund blew expectations out of the water with a resounding 77% success rate.
Coming into this year, no Texas Republican incumbents had lost a March primary re-election bid in the prior two election cycles.
Because of school choice, at least six lost in one night.
Thanks in part to the hard work of the governor and several other crucial state and national allies, parents have become the strongest interest group in town.
Texas will now have its best opportunity to pass school choice for every family, which would be the largest Day 1 school-choice program in history.
******************************************************
14 March, 2024
Virginia College Announces Students Can Major in ‘Cannabis Studies’
The sale of marijuana for nonmedical purposes is illegal in Virginia, not to mention at the federal level. But that hasn’t stopped Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, from developing an entire major and minor totally dedicated to training students to participate in the marijuana industry. Students who choose this field of study will graduate with a bachelor of science in cannabis studies. And, no, that’s not a bad joke about students who spend their college years stoned.
When Roanoke College announced the program earlier this year, leaders of the college hailed it for providing education in an area of great need. “I commend the faculty for developing a transdisciplinary academic program that fills a significant educational gap,” said Kathy Wolfe, vice president for academic affairs at Roanoke College.
Students who major in cannabis choose from two tracks. First, they can study the “science” of the marijuana industry, which focuses on the “botany, biology, and chemistry” surrounding growing marijuana. Second, they can explore “the social justice and governmental policy around cannabis legislation.” In other words, they can spend their four years of college either growing marijuana or participating in roundtable discussions about the supposed injustice of the prosecution of marijuana-related crimes. As for the former, the college assures that only hemp varieties with 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), or less, will be used. It claims that these plants will “have no psychoactive effects” so as to comply with federal law. (Students will still, according to the college, be “provide[d] … with the scientific training needed to be successful in the industry.”)
In order to receive a B.S. in cannabis studies, students can take courses such as “Cannabis and It’s Regulation,” organic chemistry, cell biology, “Cannabis and Race,” “Cannabis and Disabilities,” “Cannabis and Pop Culture,” “Insects and Cannabis,” “Ethnobotany,” “Cannabis and Society,” and “Inequality in Criminal Justice.”
The college uses the term “cannabis” rather than marijuana at least partially because it claims the word “marijuana” is “a racially charged term with a checkered past.”
The college is quite clear that the major will train students to cash in on the marijuana trade. It advertises to students: “Our program, which is the first of its kind in Virginia, will allow graduates to capitalize on a rapidly growing industry.” Roanoke College receives state funds via the Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant, meaning the state of Virginia will be paying to train Virginia students to participate in business activities that are illegal in Virginia. Yet Roanoke claims that its program will benefit the state: “Roanoke College aims to guide the commonwealth to improve understanding and application of knowledge around cannabis.” The college also plans to use federal funding to train students to grow and sell the Schedule I drug.
Roanoke College claims that marijuana shows “great promise as a medical remedy,” yet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve its use for the treatment of any condition, and a 2022 study showed that marijuana is totally ineffective for the treatment of pain, depression, or anxiety.
Studies have shown that about 30 percent of adults who use marijuana recreationally will develop an addiction to the drug. In addition, 44.7 percent of people who use marijuana move on to other illegal drugs
https://spectator.org/virginia-college-announces-students-can-major-in-cannabis-studies/
**************************************************
Academics Embrace New ‘Deficit Framing’ to Justify Underperforming and Immature Students
It is an open secret among college professors and university administrators that college students aren’t what they used to be.
They struggle with lengthy reading assignments and basic vocabulary. They don’t know rudimentary algebra. They can’t add or subtract fractions. They complain that deadlines, hard exams, and required attendance are impediments to their success.
Yet, although some professors view these deficits as problems to be fixed, many in academia have embraced bits of pedagogical fluff intertwined with fashionable DEI that suggest there is something demotivating if not bigoted about acknowledging deficits as deficits and holding students to basic academic or professional standards, while implying bad grades and a lack of maturity on the part of students are simple quirks educators just need to better accept.
One such fluffy concept is that of “deficit framing,” sometimes referred to as “deficit thinking” or a “deficit model lens.” As defined by education researcher Chelsea Heinbach in a 2021 interview, deficit thinking is “the belief that there is a prescribed ‘correct’ way of being — also known as the norm — and anyone who operates outside of that norm is operating at a deficit.”
These individuals, she said, are perceived by those engaged in deficit thinking as needing to be fixed or having to “‘try harder’ and ultimately conform to the practices of the dominant culture.”
Heinbach went on to advocate for “changing the norm to accommodate others,” suggesting that minority, disabled, first-generation, international, and nontraditional students with responsibilities related to work or family are all harmed by the maintenance of such norms.
In 2023, Aaminah Long, a PhD student in higher education and student affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington, echoed similar sentiments on a blog hosted on her university’s website.
Deficit models, she wrote, “are particularly problematic as they subscribe to the notion that students and their environments are responsible for their failures instead of acknowledging the role of dominant power structures in constructing those environments.”
“Instructing from a deficit model lens,” wrote Long, “is especially harmful to marginalized students, overlooking their cultural strengths, diminishing the value of their lived experiences, and invalidating their communities’ sense of agency by assuming that educational institutions are the only ‘valid’ sources of knowledge and rejecting long-standing cultural practices and ways of knowing.”
One of Long’s recommendations for instructors to move away from such deficit models was to embrace another fluffy idea and “[f]oster a growth mindset.”
In its simplest form, the notion of a growth mindset may be innocuous if not beneficial, as it suggests students should view academic challenges as opportunities for growth and see their intelligence and class performance as things that can be improved with effort.
Yet, in practice, some educators who seek to cultivate a growth mindset in students can take the endeavor to rather absurd places.
Stephanie Erickson from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, for example, has decried “[p]olicies such as not accepting late homework, deducting points for late assignments, and not allowing for revisions on large stakes assignments” as these policies “go against a growth mindset” and “implicitly value specific norms surrounding work ethic, time management, and learning approaches.”
In practice, such interpretations of a growth mindset merge with another bit of pedagogical fluff known as ungrading, which holds that grades can be demotivating to students and has spurred some professors to do away with due dates, stop penalizing late work, and start allowing students to self-grade.
Collectively, when these kinds of fluffy ideas are translated into policy at a university, department, or even just a classroom level, they at best provide a pseudo-intellectual justification for taking unprepared, underperforming, or immature students and moving them along without ensuring they develop the basic academic and professional competencies they lack.
At worst, however, the embrace of such pedagogical fluff, given its overlap with DEI, can disincentivize those in academia who notice deficits in their students from acknowledging the problem publicly and penalize those that do thus ensuring obvious deficits in student ability and character remain.
For example, in a recent incident at my own academic institution, Northern Illinois University, when philosophy Professor Alicia Finch stated at a faculty senate meeting, “I’m just not convinced they [intro students] know how to do college. And I sometimes think, well, maybe we need a coordinated effort to teach them,” she was inevitably and publicly dressed down by our Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Carol Sumner, for her “deficit framing” of students.
“We just had a conversation yesterday at looking at how we’re student-centered and what are we doing for student success,” stated Sumner prior to reading a quote on her phone from a source she didn’t bother to name.
“It says,” she began, “‘Using an asset-based approach to student success requires more than the institution simply identifying that the students are having challenges, but explores the ways to which structural and systemic issues impair and derail student success. It does not position the issues or challenges being due to deficits within the individual students.’”
Sumner suggested “practices, policies and pedagogies” that focus on fixing student deficits, actually “reinforce colonialism, subjugation and the inferiority of minoritized students.”
She then went on to “reposition” Finch’s question as “How are we as institutions identifying the challenges and structures that we put in place where students are not successful.”
In other words, there isn’t a problem with students entering college grossly unprepared. The problem is college is too challenging. Those that say otherwise are colonizing subjugators.
Anyone who seriously might want to address student deficits should think twice. And the students that enter college unable to handle lengthy texts, basic vocabulary, or rudimentary algebra may very well graduate that way.
*****************************************************
Why abolishing boys schools is an act of woke madness
Greg Sheridan
The campaign to abolish single-sex schools, especially boys schools, is a sign of the madness of ideology and the badness of groupthink.
It reflects the dreary, dull, lifeless, joyless, small “S” Stalinist bureaucratic conformity that progressive ideology routinely attempts to impose. It’s a rush to insanity, where pressure will come on every successful boys school to become coeducational.
Let’s state the obvious. Boys schools, girls schools and co-ed schools can all be extremely good, mediocre or terrible. It’s a good thing for our educational environment, and for countless families and students, that different types of schools flourish.
Gender Equality Advocate Michelle May says. “The argument is that currently it is not done on merit,” Ms May said. “It’s still very much a boys club. “As long as we’ve got More
It seems a pity that some boys schools with long, good traditions now feel obliged to go co-ed. They may be feeling cultural pressure.
Let me confess. I spent the majority of my schooling at a Christian Brothers school in Sydney that was for boys only. It was a great school, with wide socio-economic and racial diversity, and certainly taught its students respect for women and girls, and respect for everyone.
It wasn’t an exclusively male environment. There were female teachers, librarians, admin staff, mothers in the tuck shop. To be rude, much less sexist, towards any of these would have been unthinkable and would have earned draconian punishment.
The contemporary debate is too ideological. If a particular school has a behaviour problem, that needs to be fixed. Abolishing boys schools generally would be wretched iconoclastic vandalism.
In the Financial Review last week an anonymous business executive called for ending single-sex schools and said boys schools should stop trying to make “men” out of their students.
How weird is this? What is it that boys are supposed to become if not men? Giraffes? Oranges?
The piece reflects the confused and counter-productive campaign against masculinity. Men, like women, can do terrible things. Men are responsible for much more violence than women. I agree we’re living through a plague of domestic violence that we must stop. But you won’t make men decent, respectful and successful by telling them masculinity itself is bad.
Seventeen years ago, in central Melbourne, about 7.30am, a biker, who had been on an all-night binge, was beating up his girlfriend. Two men came to her aid. One was killed in the process. In giving his life to the instinct to protect a woman under assault, that man was displaying masculinity, and it wasn’t toxic.
At the school I attended more than 50 years ago, the brothers, and all the teachers, stressed that men had certain obligations to women – politeness, consideration, respect, courtesy.
The brothers taught that when walking down the street with a girl the bloke should try to walk between the girl and the road. That’s so any danger coming from the road, such as a car crashing off the street, hits the bloke first.
That may all seem hopelessly outdated. But men and women are still different. Completely equal but different. The idea that the differences are mainly the result of socialisation is contemporary ideology waging war against human nature.
Almost no one really lives their life according to the new ideology. Is there a household in Australia where, if a married couple hears a strange noise in the middle of the night, the husband turns to the wife and says: “Now, darling, why don’t you go and see if that noise is a burglar. I’ll stay here by the phone. I would go myself but I don’t want us to be trapped in gender stereotypes.”
It’s good that women’s sport is increasingly seen as the equal of men’s sport. But it’s still different. No one argues that men and women should play rugby league together. The army for a long time included boxing in its training. It’s a tough sport. Maybe its concussion risks render it no longer fit for such training. But you can see it helped soldiers cope psychologically with experiencing a physical blow but carrying on. It has never been the case that men and women enter the same boxing ring and box against each other.
The variety of human experience is vast but boys and girls are different. Co-ed can work superbly, but so can schools that focus only on boys, or only girls. Boys and girls do tend, within all kinds of statistical variation, to learn a bit differently, so boys schools can focus on the way boys learn.
Girls tend to mature earlier than boys and in that early adolescent period a single-sex school allows a boy to remain a boy for as long as necessary. And then become a man.
Cardinal George Pell once remarked that “self-confidence, directness and an instinct for struggle and competition” characterised Christian Brothers schools. That’s pretty accurate.
But boys schools also offer boys a distinctive diversity. At a boys school, if there’s going to be a choir it has to be the boys singing.
The school I went to was exceptionally strong in sports. My one season as a junior rugby league player led to a broken shoulder; my parents decided I’d dispense with footy. I wasn’t very good at sport anyway but the school offered multitudes of other activities. I was always in the debating team, the chess club, sometimes the drama performances, sometimes music groups, briefly in the science club, in Christian youth groups and a million other things.
Even though I didn’t play football or cricket, and hardly excelled at the sports I did participate in, I never felt out of place. Books, learning, contention, energy, purpose, competition – it was a pro-life environment.
The teachers occasionally gave us the strap for our malefactions. Some of life’s antipathies are irrational. I greatly disliked one teacher, who warmly returned my sentiments. No doubt unfairly, I thought him a dogmatic smart alec. Perhaps we were too much alike.
I persecuted him with many pedantic questions and points of order while staying well within the rules and norms. One day, nonetheless, he sort of gave in and gave me the strap. I went home that afternoon immensely chuffed, feeling I’d won a moral victory.
There were times, of course, when we were louts and hooligans, and needed strong direction. The school was pretty strict. Sensibly so. And it had a great tradition. Wearing its uniform meant something. We cared about it. No doubt it struck other kids entirely differently.
But it gave me wonderful treasures. In its library, in primary school, I met PG Wodehouse, my lifelong companion.
We moved house and I finished at a co-ed school. It was good, too. Diversity is good. The urge of ideological censors to hammer everything into a single monotonous conformity is as misbegotten as their demonisation of masculinity, and of the need to turn good boys, indeed, into good men.
******************************************************
13 March, 2024
House Education Committee Demands Documents Related to Elite University’s Handling of Antisemitism
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is demanding documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology related to the school’s handling of antisemitism on campus, according to a Friday letter.
The House committee is requesting all reports of antisemitic and discriminatory acts at the university since Jan. 1, 2021; documents outlining the school’s processes to respond to “allegations of hate crimes, discrimination, bias, or harassment”; and documents related to the outcome of disciplinary processes, among others, according to the letter addressed to MIT President Sally Kornbluth and MIT Corp. Chair Mark Gorenberg.
The committee is investigating several elite universities after their presidents testified in December and refused to say if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the schools’ codes of conduct.
“The Committee on Education and the Workforce (the Committee) is investigating the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT or the Institute) response to antisemitism and its failure to protect Jewish students. We have grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of MIT’s response to antisemitism on campus,” the letter reads.
The committee alleges that the university has ignored antisemitism on its campus since Oct. 7 and cited several incidents, including a pro-Palestinian activist group disrupting classes and allegedly harassing students. Kornbluth is also alleged to have told MIT Israel Alliance President Talia Khan that the school could not evenly apply the code of conduct due to fear of “losing faculty support.”
“MIT has cited its supposed commitment to free speech as limiting its ability to take action against antisemitism on campus. However, the Institute has demonstrated a clear double standard in how it has tolerated antisemitic harassment and intimidation by acting to suppress and penalize expression it deemed problematic. In October 2021, MIT’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Department canceled University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot’s planned John Carlson lecture over Abbot’s views on diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the letter reads.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is also demanding documents related to the amount of foreign donations to MIT, as well as donations to MIT from Qatari sources, including the Qatar Foundation, since Jan. 1, 2021, according to the letter.
Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania are also under investigation by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Harvard President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned from their roles after the Dec. 5 hearing on antisemitism on college campuses.
***********************************************
At the CREATE Conservatory, an Alternative to Public Schools
Nikki Duslak says she never fit in as a public school teacher. “I have a background in theater—a bachelor’s degree in fine art and musical theater—and I always carried that love with me in the classroom. I was constantly doing crazy, off??the??wall things and other teachers would look at me like I had six heads,” she explains. “I had always had that passion to integrate art into my classroom, and I saw firsthand what it could do for students.”
She remembers sitting in the teachers’ room at lunch hearing people complain about the state of things. “If I was a school principal, I wouldn’t do things this way,” she thought. So, she went back to school and got her masters in educational leadership and policy studies. “I became a school principal, and I constantly found myself saying, ‘Gosh, this is awful. Someday I’m going to open my own school, and I’m going to do things differently.’”
But a “someday” dream doesn’t always become reality. “It was very challenging to even think about because there were so many loose ends. There is no handbook or guidebook; it’s different depending on what state you’re in. And it was just a very overwhelming thought,” Nikki says.
Eventually, it was her own child’s needs that gave Nikki the push she needed. Her son was reading at a third??grade level and solving Algebra problems at age three, so she knew it was going to be tough to find the right school for him. After trying a few options—including having him in classes with 13??year??olds when he was five—Nikki realized it was time to start a new kind of school. The result is CREATE Conservatory, which opened in Florida in 2020.
“People think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I found a book called Nonprofits for Dummies, and I sat down with the book and a bottle of wine. I thought, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to do it,’” she recalls. “I decided that the fear of what would happen if I tried to open the school was less than the fear of what was going to happen to him if I didn’t.”
Nikki’s public school career gave her a realization that the public system is about mass producing. “If you’re a mass production kind of student, then that might work great for you. If you’re the kind of student who can sit down and be quiet and listen—and you can show what you’ve learned through a very specific methodology—that system might work for you. But it doesn’t work for so many of our children,” she says.
What I was really trying to create was an environment where students were able to show what they know as opposed to being caught with what they don’t know. And an opportunity to teach children how to think; I believe so much of the modern education system has removed opportunities for children to think. We’re asking them to memorize information. We’re asking them to spit it back at us. But we’re not teaching them how to be critical thinkers. We’re not teaching them how to solve problems, especially how to solve problems creatively, which I believe is a massive part of your eventual success, whether it’s college or career or the workforce or military. Being able to look at a problem and solve it in a creative way is just something that doesn’t exist in the system right now. So for me that became, ‘How do I do that?’ I was immediately drawn back to all those times in a classroom where I saw arts integration be so wildly successful. And that was with students that you’d never think. I was teaching in a very rural, very low income school, and I was using arts integration.
Nikki and her team write the curriculum themselves. “I think part of why we don’t see arts integration as a more widespread methodology is because it is incredibly hard,” she says. “You have to have a really deep understanding of the arts. You have to have a very deep understanding of curriculum, curriculum writing, and scope and sequence. And you also have to have an incredible knowledge of your students who are in front of you. Because if you don’t have all three of those things, it’s not going to work.” Nikki uses Florida state standards as the basis and then finds ways to incorporate the arts into various topics.
“We don’t have textbooks here. We learn everything through videos or articles I find online,” Nikki says. “If we want to study the solar system, if we want to learn about space, why am I going to use a 10??year??old textbook when I can go to NASA’s website right now and we can talk about the comet they discovered this morning? We can pull it up on the screen and read the website right now. The kids feel like they’re cutting edge because they’re learning about it, and it just happened yesterday. And they’re excited about it.”
After the struggles of Nikki’s own gifted children trying to fit in a standard classroom, differentiation is a key aspect of CREATE. “The way that we differentiate here is either through content, product, or process,” she explains. She currently has 4th grade through 9th grade in one classroom, and she acknowledges that’s a challenge. She’ll do a group lesson on a subject and then break them into smaller groups to work on specific aspects at more individualized levels. This allows students to work on mastery at their ability level rather than an arbitrary metric based on their age.
Nikki has been approached about creating a curriculum that can be replicated in other schools, but she hasn’t figured out a way due to the creativity and personalization she incorporates throughout all of her classes. “I find that the curriculum piece is becoming that someday dream of mine. Someday when I have time, I’m going to sit down and flesh this out a bit because I do think it’s something that we need,” she says. Considering her last “someday” dream became a flourishing microschool that was a semifinalist for the Yass Prize, it’s probably safe to keep an eye out for her curriculum in the future.
When she first started planning CREATE, Nikki was a school choice skeptic because she saw the state as part of the problem when it came to public schools. But then she realized she would retain autonomy with Florida’s scholarship programs, so she now happily participates to ensure students in her rural, low??income area can attend CREATE Conservatory.
“As adults, it’s rare that we have the opportunity to sit back and reflect on a decision that we made and be able to say I’m very proud of myself. But I do with this because I really was very opposed to it at the beginning. Then the more I sat down and read, the more I looked into it, and the more I talked to people, I thought, ‘Well, I think I was wrong about this. And I think if the school’s going to survive, we have to go this route.’ And so every day I’m thankful I was smart enough to realize that I didn’t know what I didn’t know and to change my opinion about it all,” she says. “I couldn’t be more thankful for Step Up and for AAA and for all the things that they do because we wouldn’t exist at this point without them.”
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/03/create-conservatory-alternative-choice-public-schools/
********************************************
Australia:Christian schools under fire from official body
Tax deductibility for Greenie bodies is OK but not for Christian ones.
The insidious influence of Catholic schools was a matter of no small concern to the colonial establishment in the late 19th century, not least because of their devilish power to corrupt the youth.
“Large numbers of children are perverted to Popery before their parents are aware of the true character of the teaching,” The Protestant Weekly reported in 1886, arguing that Catholic schools should be barred from government funding. Romanist education was “a false mean deceit” propagating “a religion degrading to the intellect and the heart as its design was simply to extract money”.
Such narrow sectarian prejudice would be deemed inappropriate in the 21st century by the guardians of diversity and inclusion, whose job is to make everybody feel comfortable.
Today, their intolerance extends to all forms of Christian education and, indeed, to any private school that undermines the monopoly of the state system. The Productivity Commission fired a particularly nasty salvo against religious schools, out of character for an organisation that once anchored its findings in data rather than the fashionable preconceptions of the intelligentsia.
In November, the Commission published a draft report recommending that donations to Christian school building funds should no longer be tax-deductible. The draft argued that the Deductible Gift Recipient status granted by the Australian Taxation Office to a wide range of registered charities was inappropriate since religious education had limited claim to a broader public purpose.
The PC argues that DGR donations require co-investment from taxpayers since a $100 donation from someone in the top income bracket saved them $35 in tax. This, the PC argues, is unfair since the priorities for public investment in schools should be decided by the government, not God-bothering tax dodgers.
They were not the exact words the PC used, but how else should we read a passage like this? “The Commission does not see a case for additional government support for the practice of religion through the DGR system.”
Or this? “Providing indirect government support through school building funds means government funding is not prioritised according to a systemic assessment of the infrastructure needs of different schools.”
The naive proposition that the government knows better where to spend public money than the public themselves sits awkwardly with the lessons from the Rudd government’s Building the Education Revolution program, a $16.2bn splurge on school infrastructure projects to stave off the recession that never was. The official report into the implementation of the BER by Brad Orgill found public schools in Queensland, NSW and Victoria paid 25 per cent more than Catholic schools and 55 per cent more than independent schools for near identical projects.
Yet the Commission doggedly insists that tax deductibility for donations to school building projects is unfair. It bolsters its argument with a peculiarly perverse interpretation of what constitutes private benefit. Potential donors are most likely to be people directly involved with the school, it claims, and are likely to reap the fruits of their donations as the parents of students or as alumni.
The Commission does not oppose tax-deductible donations per se. Indeed, it argues that they should be extended to a broader range of charities. Nor is it opposed to charities that want to build things, just those who like to build buildings that could be used for religious purposes.
It declares the building of social capital to be a worthy charitable ambition. Ditto is the building of bonds between individuals and communities, however loose that goal might be defined. Capacity-building activities for organisations and individuals get a tick, particularly the building of empowerment and self-determination by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations. Indeed, the Commission recommends the establishment of an independent philanthropic foundation controlled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for that very purpose.
It is religion to which the Commission seems to object. Not all of the 5000 school building funds that are currently endorsed are religious. Some three-quarters are for charities, and a quarter for government entities, such as public schools.
Yet the Commission wears its prejudices on its sleeve by mounting arguments exclusively against Christian schools rather than private schools. The concerns about tax-deductible proselytising do not extend to the 148 environmental charities with tax-deductible status.
The Commission does not question the broader public purpose of Boundless Earth Limited, which attracted $30.6m in revenue in its most recent annual report lodged with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.
Boundless Earth gained its tax-deductible concession in 2021, stating its purpose is ”to accelerate climate solutions at the scale and speed required for Australia to do its fair share to avert the climate crisis”. Boundless Earth’s registered address is 13 Trelawney Street, Woollahra, the site of the former German consulate now owned by Mike Cannon-Brookes.
The Commission makes no recommendation that the projects and organisations Boundless Earth funds should be put on the public record, or suggest that Boundless should be declared an associated entity by the Australian Electoral Commission under the disclosure rules for political donations. And this would not be an unreasonable recommendation since Cannon-Brookes has made no secret of his financial support for the teal campaign at the last federal election.
The granting of DGR status to Boundless, Greenpeace, Lock The Gate, the Australian Solar Energy Society (which operates as the Smart Energy Council) the Climate Council, Farmers for Climate Action, Veterinarians for Climate Action and other members of the renewable energy cheer squad reinforces the growing concern that privileges of charitable status should be reviewed.
The Albanese government has prudently distanced itself from the Commission’s recommendations. “It’s not something we’re considering,” Assistant Education Minister Anthony Chisholm told a Senate committee last month.
The Commission is right to complain that the DGR system is poorly designed. It is piecemeal, overly complex and lacks a coherent policy rationale. It is responsible for inefficient, inconsistent and unfair outcomes for charities, donors and the community. It is badly in need of review.
Yet the draft report of the philanthropy inquiry is a small-minded, mean-spirited document unworthy of an organisation with a reputation for forensic and impartial examination of public policy. For the sake of their own reputation, the commissioners should find the courage to send the report back to its authors and ask them to start again.
******************************************************
12 March, 2024
A Fraudulent Attack on Education Choice
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has indicted former government employees hired by a fellow Democrat, then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman, for defrauding the government. Now she’s desperately trying to use the story as a cudgel against families benefitting from the state’s popular Empowerment Scholarship Account policy.
On Thursday, Mayes’ office announced the indictment of five people, including three former Arizona Department of Education employees, for “allegedly engaging in fraud, conspiracy, computer tampering, illegally conducting an enterprise, money laundering and forgery” related to the ESA.
“My overarching concern here is this is a program that is easy to target for fraud,” Mayes claimed.
But these were no ordinary scammers. This was an inside job.
According to the grand jury indictment, the three former ADE employees, “admitted minor students, real and fictitious into the ESA Program by using false, forged, or fraudulent documentation,” including falsified special-education evaluations from public schools, and “awarded said student funds from the ESA Program, and approved expenses for reimbursement or funds for distribution of behalf of said students for their own benefit.”
Had the scammers not been working at the Department of Education, this would not have been possible. As ESA director John Ward explained to the Arizona Capitol Times, the ESA program already has proper guardrails in place: “ADE employees are trained to review birth certificates and look for anything ‘strange’ or ‘unusual’ in assessing authenticity of disability evaluations.”
Unlike the Arizona’s Health Care Cost Containment System scandal—which has seen dozens of scammers indicted for stealing more than a billion dollars from the state’s Medicaid system—ordinary scammers could not have gotten away with this without help from inside.
Moreover, the scammers were caught. Contrary to Mayes’s telling, the Arizona Education Department was investigating its own employees before the AG’s office got involved. “The Attorney General is not telling the truth when she states that the alleged criminal activities of former ADE employees did not raise flags in the department,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne clarified in a press release. “In fact, the opposite is true. Our office did alert the Attorney General’s Office to concerns we discovered regarding” the former employees.
Mayes’s attempt to smear the ESA program as having a “lack of controls and regulations” is belied by the facts. The most recent review by the ESA by the Arizona Auditor General found an improper payment rate of nearly zero. During their “review of all 168,020 approved transactions identified in the Department’s Program account transaction data” over the prior fiscal year, they “found only 1 successful transaction at an unapproved merchant totaling $30.”
In other words, the rate of improper payments to unapproved merchants was only 0.001 percent.
That’s far better than other government programs. According to a 2021 analysis by the federal Office of Management and Budget, the improper payment rate across federal agencies is 7.2 percent. Some of the worst offenders are the federal school meals programs. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “the school meals programs have reported high improper payment error rates, as high as almost 16 percent for the National School Lunch Program and almost 23 percent for the School Breakfast Program over the past 4 years.”
Opponents of school choice like Mayes and Save Our Schools Arizona are predictably using the indictments to attack the popular ESA program. But anyone who is really concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse should start in the district school system.
As the Goldwater Institute documented, “just 10 percent of Arizona’s school districts have managed to accumulate almost $26 million in documented fraud” over two decades. If the attorney general is really concerned about fraud, perhaps she should investigate the 13 school districts that the Arizona Auditor General has reprimanded for failing to comply with the state’s financial reporting requirements.
The district schools aren’t immune from hiring people who commit fraud either. In just the last two years, employees at school districts in Glendale, Hyder, and Wilson have been indicted for theft, fraud, forgery, and misuse of public funds, while an Eloy School District employee pled guilty to theft and forgery.
Any fraud or theft should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But no one has proposed eliminating AHCCCS or the district schools over the financial misconduct of external or internal swindlers.
Politicians and special interests are exploiting the ESA indictments to push an agenda that would cheat children out of a quality education and punish parents for the misdeeds of bamboozling bureaucrats. The public should recognize their fraudulent smears for what they are.
https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/fraudulent-attack-education-choice
************************************************
Embattled Ivy League Professor Amy Wax Alleges School is Attempting to ‘Punish’ Her for Conservative Speech
She's a hero of straight talk
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) law professor Amy Wax alleged that the university does not adhere to free speech standards and is targeting the scholar because of her conservative beliefs.
Wax, who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation, has made several controversial statements outside of the classroom, and the university has claimed that her speech created “a hostile campus environment.” Former UPenn President Liz Magill signed off on sanctions against Wax, which Wax said was an attempt to sanction her for extramural speech, which is speech outside the classroom, and said that the school is “flagrantly in violation of the principles of academic freedom.”
“Penn has zero interest in developing and adhering to principles of a consistent position on free expression, zero interest. They can protect the people they basically agree with or favor, like the pro-Palestinians, anti-Israeli, antisemitic, and they can punish people like me. They have never articulated a consistent position,” Wax told the DCNF.
“Everybody says after October 7, universities are on the run, they’re going to change the way they do things or after the affirmative action case, they’re going to change the way they do things. I don’t see any evidence of that. I hear people doubling down on their conviction that everything they’re doing is right and good,” Wax continued.
Universities are dominated by left-wing professors, with one 2018 review of over 60 top colleges in the U.S. revealing that the professoriate is over ten to one Democratic to Republican. Wax pointed to the left-wing dominance of the universities as a reason she was being targeted for her more conservative speech, while radical left-wing speech had largely gone unquestioned.
As recently as 2015, UPenn awarded Wax with the school’s top teaching prize, the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, according to a UPenn news article. “Cancel culture really started accelerating around, I think, around 2015, 2016,” Wax told the DCNF.
The Penn Law Council of Student Representatives held a student body meeting with then-UPenn Law School Dean Theodore Ruger in September 2019 to discuss “issues regarding Professor Amy Wax,” according to an email obtained by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech legal organization.
“The objections to me had nothing really to do with the quality of my teaching. It had to do with my openly expressing views and opinions and discussing facts that were forbidden and deviated from this very narrow catechism,” Wax told the DCNF. Wax said that many of the ideas and thoughts she had expressed were discussed in mainstream conservative circles but are forbidden at universities.
Wax previously made controversial statements, including saying that America should let fewer Asians immigrate to the country due to their “indifference to liberty,” and that different racial “groups have different levels of ability” and that unequal outcomes are “not due to racism,” according to a June 2023 UPenn memo obtained by The Washington Free Beacon. She also said that diversity, equity and inclusion officers “couldn’t be scholars if their life depended on it,” and that they are “true believer bureaucrats.”
“People are afraid now to express a lot of this stuff in public because they will be censured or even lose their job or their livelihood,” Wax told the DCNF. “There is a myth, a fairy tale in the universities that all people are equal in their latent ability, whatever that means, and their achievement, and that is just completely contrary to fact.”
Wax said allegations that she made students uncomfortable in the classroom were unfounded and that Ruger targeted her for extramural speech. She pointed out that the recently leaked memo of the faculty senate didn’t list any speech in the classroom.
The memo recommends that Wax receive a public reprimand from university leadership, a loss of her named chair and a requirement to note when she publicly speaks, she is not speaking for the university. It also recommends a one-year suspension at half pay and a loss of summer pay in perpetuity. The memo claims that Wax’s speech should be treated as “major infractions of University behavioral standards.”
Magill, who signed off on the recommendation to sanction Wax in the leaked memo, argued at a Dec. 5 congressional hearing that the university had been lenient on antisemitic speech due to the school’s adherence to free speech principles. Magill also defended the Palestine Writes Festival at the school, which involved one speaker who likened Zionism to Nazism and one who said “most Jews” are “evil.”
“Liz Magill lied to Congress because it has never adhered to First Amendment standards,” Wax told the DCNF. “But the fact that they’re bringing this case against me is directly contrary to First Amendment standards.”
Free speech issues on college campuses have been a source of fierce debate since the Oct.7 terrorist attacks against Israel. Former Harvard President Claudine Gay wrote that students “had a right to speak” after over 30 student groups signed a letter blaming the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel and also alluded to free speech at the Dec. 5 congressional hearing on antisemitism.
Harvard University previously rescinded an offer to a student in 2019 for alleged racist comments made when he was 16 years old, and disinvited feminist philosopher Devin Buckley from campus in 2022 because of her views on trans issues.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth allegedly told MIT Israel Alliance President Talia Khan that the university could not evenly apply the code of conduct due to fear of possibly “losing faculty support.” MIT previously disinvited speaker Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, due to his criticism of affirmative action.
“The far left holds power in the universities, and they are not about to relinquish it,” Wax told the DCNF.
************************************************
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin Signs Bill Banning Legacy Admissions
This will put a few noses out of joint
Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bill Friday banning legacy admissions at public colleges in the state.
Several states have moved to eliminate legacy admissions, which are admissions based on prior familial attendance to a school, after the fall of race-based admissions at the Supreme Court in June 2023. The bill passed the Virginia Senate with bipartisan support, 39-0, and passed the state’s House of Delegates 99-0, and has now been signed by Youngkin.
“Governor Youngkin has consistently advocated for merit-based admissions to Virginia’s colleges and universities. In Virginia, students can be encouraged to know their hard work and academic career will be recognized on its merit,” a spokesperson for Youngkin told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“No public institution of higher education shall provide any manner of preferential treatment in the admissions decision to any student applicant on the basis of such student’s legacy status or such student’s familial relationship to any donor to such institution,” the bill reads.
“It’s about fairness. It’s about higher ed being available to everybody,” Virginia Democratic state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, the bill’s sponsor, said in an interview before the Senate vote, according to The Associated Press.
The Connecticut legislature’s education committee said it plans to look into legacy admissions during this upcoming legislative session, according to the Connecticut Mirror. Federal legislation was also introduced in November to eliminate legacy admissions in Congress by Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young and Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.
Nearly 56% of the top 250 colleges and universities in the U.S. used legacy admissions in the enrollment process.
******************************************************
11 March, 2024
Outrage grows after Nevada college oversight leader asked if state's universities have any men 'masquerading as women' on sports teams and hurting girls
A Nevada college oversight leader is facing calls to resign after referring to trans athletes as 'men masquerading as women.'
Patrick Boylan has been slammed for making the comments during a meeting of the Nevada System of Higher Education's Board of Regents on Friday.
He said he had 'one simple question' for the athletic directors who were presenting to the board before asking, 'Do we have any men masquerading as women playing in any of our teams and hurting any of the women?'
The question was shut down by board attorney Michael Wixom, who advised it was against federal privacy laws to collate and disclose that information. He cautioned the directors not to respond and said any question would need to be brought on a separate agenda.
Boylan's remarks were also blasted by The Nevada Faculty Alliance which said it was, 'deeply angered by repeated anti-transgender comments.'
The alliance said it was 'especially appalled' by the regent's 'aggressive response' to a student leader who upbraided his remarks in the public comment portion of the meeting.
In the public comment section Kevin Osorio-Hernández, president of the Nevada State Student Alliance, told Boylan he was disappointed by the rhetoric and that he hopes he can 'expand and change your paradigm'.
Boylan told the student he had freedom of speech and continued to make inflammatory remarks.
'If he has not had his "you know what" cut off or anything, he's still a man,' Boylan said.
But Boylan has stood by his position and confirmed to the Las Vegas Review that he has no plans to step down.
He asserted that 'safety and freedom of speech' are more important than the feelings of the faculty alliance headed by Jim New, which he said had 'totally misconstrued' his comments.
Boylan insisted he was doing the right thing by talking about women's safety in sport and claimed to have been confused about the proper way to refer to trans people.
The regent defended his position and maintains he was just trying to speak up for women in sport. 'If I used the wrong terms, then OK,' he said, adding he had received emails of support since the meeting.
'They're tired of all of this woke nonsense,' he said. Boylan also told the outlet he believes trans athletes should get to compete in their own separate category.
He admitted during the Friday meeting his comments came on the heels of high-profile incidents across the nation of trans athletes competing against women and leading to injuries of the girls. One recent incident happened in Massachusetts when a trans athlete competed in a high school basketball game.
The faculty alliance argues that Boylan's conduct goes against the board's anti-discrimination policy.
'In the March 1 meeting, Regent Boylan also questioned the qualifications of students from underrepresented minority groups,' their statement added.
'These are not isolated incidents. Regent Boylan has a history of racist and discriminatory remarks that have been condemned by a number of Nevada System of Higher Education students, including the Senate of the Associated Students of the University of Nevada.'
However, not everyone is supportive of the calls for his resignation.
Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Victor Joecks came to Boylan's defense, saying he was being asked to step down, 'for stating that a man is a man.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13167293/Nevada-colleges-trans-athletes-leader-resign.html
*******************************************
Classroom Warfare
While COVID-related school violence may have subsided, too many teachers and students are still not safe in the classroom.
About 857,500 violent incidents and 479,500 nonviolent incidents were recorded by public schools in 2021-22, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. (Nonviolent incidents include theft, vandalism, drug possession, etc.) About 67% of public schools reported having at least one violent incident.
Hence, it’s hardly surprising that almost half of all teachers reported they “desire or plan to quit or transfer their jobs due to concerns about school climate and school safety,” per a 2022 study by the American Psychological Association,
The ongoing question is what to do about this egregious problem. The National Education Association claims that to deal with it, we must hire more counselors and interventionists.
While additional counselors who can reason with youthful offenders may help in some cases, it is not a fix that will always work.
Corporal punishment?
While there may be something to be said for the “spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child mentality” (18 states still permit corporal punishment), this approach is fraught with problems. Schools benefit from a school-wide discipline program, and not all teachers are comfortable whacking kids. I know that when I taught a middle school, it would be unthinkable for me to paddle a 13-year-old, especially a girl. Also, many parents might not want to send their kids to a school with a designated flogger.
Cops
Having a campus cop is helpful. A law enforcement officer surely is a deterrent to some miscreants. It’s important to note that while many teacher union leaders want to defund the cops, many boots-on-the-ground teachers disagree. A 2021 Heritage Foundation survey asked if defunding school resource officers will make schools safer and just 7% of teachers responded affirmatively. Additionally, an Ed Week Research Center poll from 2020 showed that, when asked if armed police officers should be eliminated from our nation’s schools, only 20% of teachers, principals, and district leaders completely or partly agreed.
But the racially obsessed equity crowd maintains that a cop’s presence “increases the number of students facing suspensions, expulsions, and arrests, particularly if they are black.” The same bunch, howeve
The race hustlers in the Windy City are acting on the issue. The Chicago Board of Education has just voted to approve a resolution to remove police officers from its schools by the beginning of next school year.
Restorative justice
Promoted by the teachers’ unions and other leftwing education establishmentarians,this touchy-feely new-age malarkey is dangerous. It emphasizes “making the victim and offender whole” and involves “an open discussion of feelings.” Restorative justice came into being because blacks are far more likely to be suspended than other ethnic groups. The suggestion here, of course, is that white teachers and administrators tend to be racist. But the bean counters never get around to explaining why the racial disparity exists even in schools where black principals and staff predominate.
https://heartland.org/opinion/classroom-warfare/
*********************************************
Forget the school bus — these kids are flying first class
A private tutor to the ultra rich and famous — including the Jenners and Dr. Dre — is lifting the lid on what its like to work with their kids and how some parents fork out as much as $32,000 a month in fees.
Celebrity tutor Tiffany Sorya — who once dissected Catcher in the Rye with Kylie Jenner as she had her makeup applied — told The Post homeschooling demand soared during the pandemic and has now entrenched itself as an increasingly appealing path.
“This started in LA,” said the founder of Novel Education Group. “Families of a certain type — celebrities, high profile CEOS who were traveling a lot — they needed something that fits their lifestyle.”
The richest families find private tutors are much more flexible than traditional schooling options, and for the right price elite educators can be at their beck and call around the clock as they jet set around the world.
Others harbor security and privacy concerns for their children at regular campuses — no matter how exclusive or expensive.
“The idea of being locked into one location for ten months out of the year is not going to work for them,” Sorya said.
The private educator was tasked with supervising the homeschooling of Dr. Dre’s daughter, Truly, whose creative pursuits made a traditional education unappealing and largely unfeasible.
“The parents still want standards, they want structure,” she said. “But they also want to have the ability to nurture their kids’ interests outside the classroom. They aren’t so interested in the prom and football games. They’re busy making albums.”
Demand for high-end homeschooling has become so intense that some of Sorya’s clients are withdrawing their children from some of New York and Los Angeles’ most prestigious private schools to pivot to remote education.
The costs of top-tier homeschooling, Sorya said, have rocketed accordingly.
While her packages vary, a full-time tutor costs roughly $16,000 a month. Those instructors are available at all times and will jump on a plane to meet with their students as needed.
Some clients, Sorya said, hire two such tutors to work with their children at a cost of $32,000 a month.
Typically, clients have their assigned in-home teacher sign airtight non-disclosure agreements to guard against leaks and loose lips.
Other especially demanding clients have asked Sorya to find them tutors without any personal attachments so they can focus solely on their children.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/05/us-news/ultra-rich-spend-up-to-32k-a-month-on-kids-private-tutors/
******************************************************
10 March, 2024
Is the ‘Test-Optional’ Racist Scheme Under Threat?
Elite colleges are engaged in a balancing act: They are trying to maintain their reputation for having the best students while also giving an admissions advantage to their preferred races. In recent years, the desire for racial diversity has trumped academic excellence. This reality was clearly demonstrated in the Supreme Court cases Harvard v. Students for Fair Admissions and University of North Carolina v. Students for Fair Admissions. The cases numerically showed the extent to which these universities choose less-qualified black and Hispanic students over better-qualified Asian and white students. At Harvard University, for instance, black applicants in the fourth-lowest decile of academic achievement had a greater chance of admission than Asian students in the top decile of academic achievement.
In reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling that racial preferences in college admissions are illegal under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, many colleges have moved to permanently eliminate standardized testing requirements so as to continue preferring less-qualified black and Hispanic students over better-qualified Asian and white students without getting caught.
Some colleges that have eliminated standardized testing requirements have been quite clear that they intend to surreptitiously continue using race. For example, the president of the University of Louisville, which has gone test-optional, stated in the wake of the Students for Fair Admissions decisions that the university would instead use “experience with race” in admissions decisions. “[W]e’re going to drive a truck through experience with race in terms of our admissions,” said President Kim Schatzel. In addition, the University of California voted in 2020 to totally remove standardized testing from admissions decisions in the name of equity.
While going test-optional gives colleges license to continue racially discriminating without getting caught, it has a negative side effect: It decreases the quality of a college’s student body. This is because standardized testing is the best predictor of academic success and a strong predictor of post-college success. Eliminating this accurate predictor makes it difficult for colleges to choose the best students.
While numerous colleges have opted to forego standardized testing requirements in order to evade allegations of racial discrimination, there is now a small movement among elite universities to reintroduce standardized testing requirements. These schools are recognizing the fact that standardized testing is critical to achieving their goal of building an elite student body. This goal is important to them because the value of the degrees they grant lies in the perception that their students are talented and successful (and less in their ability to actually teach their students).
This week, Brown University announced that it will require students to submit standardized testing scores in the upcoming admissions cycle. In doing so, Brown joins Yale, Dartmouth, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in ditching pandemic-era test-optional policies. In making the announcement, Brown cited the benefit of standardized testing for building an excellent student body: “Our analysis made clear that SAT and ACT scores are among the key indicators that help predict a student’s ability to succeed and thrive in Brown’s demanding academic environment.” When Yale made its announcement that it would restore its testing requirement, it stated that standardized testing is actually the best indicator of academic success at Yale.
Brown also sought to claim that standardized testing is beneficial to its goal of achieving racial diversity. “The committee was concerned that some students from less-advantaged backgrounds are choosing not to submit scores under the test-optional policy, when doing so would actually increase their chances of being admitted,” the university said. Similarly, Dartmouth has claimed that standardized testing is helpful in identifying low-income students who will be successful in college.
Brown’s decision to restore its testing requirement even though doing so will make it accountable for whether it fairly judges students of all races shows that the ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion has not totally overtaken the university. It still maintains a drive to produce students who are academically talented, regardless of race. However, while merit has triumphed over racial bias in regard to Brown’s standardized testing policy, this does not mean that the university will not practice racial discrimination in admissions. The school is simply not so wildly ideological as to eliminate the best indicator of merit.
The decisions of these top schools to restore testing requirements could put pressure on other schools to restore their requirements. This is because standardized testing’s ability to most accurately predict student success will mean that schools that require it will be more effective at admitting the best students. In addition, these schools’ standardized testing policies could give them a reputation for admitting the best students, given that it is well-known that standardized testing is highly effective at identifying people who will be successful. Thus, in elite colleges’ race to enroll the best students and better their reputations in comparison to one another, the ones with standardized testing requirements will have an advantage over the ones that do not.
This could mean that more elite schools will shift back toward requiring standardized testing. However, the incentive to compete will also be tempered by college administrations’ preferences for certain races over others, as well as their ideological commitment to equity over merit.
Brown’s decision to restore its standardized testing requirement gives hope that merit will still be valued in higher education. However, it remains uncertain whether this is a minor gesture by a school seeking to increase its competitiveness or a genuine progression toward the prioritization of merit over equity.
https://spectator.org/is-the-test-optional-racist-scheme-under-threat-admissions/
*****************************************************
When Classical Learning Meets Public Education, the Dialogue Isn't Always Socratic
The future of the controversial classical education movement will be showcased later this month when Columbia University senior lecturer Roosevelt Montás is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at a national symposium hosted by Great Hearts, the biggest classical charter network.
The views of Montás, author of the widely praised memoir "Rescuing Socrates," are well to the left of many in the classical charter movement, which is rooted in Christian conservatism. What makes Montás’ upcoming speech so notable, then, is the signal it sends about the movement’s effort to diversify its brand and project a welcoming attitude as it seeks to expand beyond conservative strongholds and suburbs where it began.
But not everyone is enamored of the effort, neither educational conservatives nor local school officials, unions, and progressive advocates. The latter liken classical charters to a Trojan Horse, sneaking quasi-Christian right-wing dogma into public education under the cover of liberal arts.
That makes classical education perhaps the biggest culture-war flashpoint in the current disruption of traditional public education prompted by the historic exodus of students during the pandemic – even though the movement's numbers are small.
In all, there are about 250 classical charters today, according to one study, making them a small niche within the broader charter sector of 8,000 schools and campuses focused on everything from STEM subjects to art to special needs. They have produced both notable successes and scandalous failures in bringing innovation to public education.
Classical education, whose name gained traction in the 1980s to evoke the movement's focus on liberal arts and the Western canon, is struggling to overcome local political opposition and open schools in lower-income communities where most students reside. By making common cause with a range of prominent black and Latino thinkers and educators like Montás, classical charter leaders hope to show that their style of moral education is valuable to students from all backgrounds and beliefs.
“Our experience has been that the bar for opening a classical charter school that serves disadvantaged students is much higher, and that the process gets extremely political early on,” said Kathleen O’Toole, who heads the K-12 program at Hillsdale College, a Christian school at the center of the wrangling. “The opposition paints us as if we're trying to do political things with children, which we are not.”
Some of the movement’s top leaders are outspoken Republicans and have Ph.D.s from the conservative Claremont Graduate University. And some classical charters convey a patriotic zeal in their marketing as a counterpoint to the social justice zeal found in some traditional public schools.
But classical leaders reject the accusation that they are running a partisan enterprise, saying they aim for something higher, in line with Aristotle’s teaching – to nurture in students a desire to find their own answers to the big question of what constitutes the good life.
“We base ourselves in the West, in the culture of freedom that produced the Magna Carta, the founding documents of this country, and the civil rights movement,” said Dan Scoggin, co-founder of Great Hearts and a Claremont alum. “We read Marx, Rousseau – writers who push back on the Christian tradition, but it’s also a big part of Western culture. To those who try to pigeonhole classical charters as pseudo-Christian, no, we are not.”
Robert Jackson, who arranged for Montás to address the symposium in Phoenix, is at the center of the effort to mainstream classical education. After teaching at a Christian college and working at Great Hearts, Jackson started Classical Commons, a new platform to unite educators from different political and religious camps and support the recruitment and training of classical teachers – a key to expansion.
“There is an impulse among the classical leaders that this time-tested education should also be available to students from disadvantaged backgrounds who haven’t had the opportunity,” said Albert Cheng, who runs a classical education research lab at the University of Arkansas. “There’s a social justice vibe to it. Everyone isn’t marching lockstep to a conservative ideology.”
To enlarge the tent of classical education, scholars like Cornel West, the progressive independent presidential aspirant, are giving talks at events and making podcasts about the liberating power of classical education for all students. Classical Academic Press, run by white Christian writer Christopher Perrin, published “The Black Intellectual Tradition,” highlighting how the classics inspired leaders from Anna Julia Cooper to Martin Luther King in the quest for justice.
Change is also coming to the classrooms. Professor Anika Prather, a co-author of “The Black Intellectual Tradition” and founder of the Living Water Christian school, has made many presentations to teachers at classical charters. Leaders are also debating whether to add more diverse authors to their Great Books reading lists after the Classical Learning Test, an assessment group, did so. (Related article here.)
But reappraising the Western canon doesn’t sit well with hardline conservatives in the movement like David Goodwin, president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools. He has issued several warnings, in his writings and to RealClear, about the dangerous waters classical charters are entering.
Goodwin says it was bad enough that charters removed the moorings of Christian truth from education. Now they are succumbing to the intense pressures for diversity, which he calls antithetical to the mission of classical education – the Platonic pursuit of “truth, goodness and beauty in a meritorious way.”
Josh Herring, a professor who helped run the Thales network of private classical academies, adds that the movement’s attempt to find a middle ground that no longer exists in America will fail. Instead, he says, it should embrace its fundamental conservatism and accept the fact that all education is inescapably political. “For classical education to continue to thrive, it has to know its own essence and defend that essence,” he says.
Squeezed from both the left and right, classical charters are nonetheless charging ahead in their effort to grow. Their biggest assets are families that form long waiting lists to enroll at the many high-performing classical charters. Some parents are attracted by their conservative reputation, but mostly it’s their rigorous curriculum that focuses on core academic subjects in the tradition of liberal arts, according to a study by Arkansas’ Cheng.
Classical education, a term the movement adopted to suggest its ancient lineage, reemerged first with private Christian schools in the 1980s. They provided the inspiration and part of the curriculum for the first classical charter, Tempe Prep, in Arizona in 1996.
Scoggin, a Christian like most of the charter movement leaders, worked as head of school at Tempe before setting up Great Hearts. He capitalized on Arizona’s school choice law, which made it possible to bring the classical model into public education and reach more families that couldn’t afford private tuition. Starting in 2003, Great Hearts now has 44 academies in Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana and expects to get to 70 in five years.
Classical charters are not as antiquarian as the name implies. College prep courses and state test scores still matter, but they also focus to varying degrees on canonical literature, ancient history, philosophy, religious texts, and Latin and Greek. A few schools, like St. Croix Prep outside of Minneapolis, have even resurrected a medieval form of teaching called the trivium that breaks up every subject in three stages over 12 years – facts first, then argument, and finally persuasion.
Put simply, the charters want students to grapple with what it means to be human before they create their LinkedIn page.
Many add a modern touch. Washington Latin, one of a handful of urban classical schools, mixes Latin and student-led Socratic seminars in every subject with a modern twist to the reading list. Students read ancient and contemporary books on similar themes, such as Plato’s “Symposium” and the black scholar bell hooks’ seminal 2000 feminist work, “All About Love,” to create a dialog between the two worlds, says Diana Smith, the charter’s chief of classical education.
“We have a long waiting list to enroll because of our willingness to talk about the true, the good and the beautiful that goes beyond what came from Western Greece and Rome,” Smith said.
*******************************************************
Universality and the university
More selectivity needed for admissions, not less
Recently, the Australian University Accord met to discuss the manifest failings of our tertiary education system. The result has been a predictable raft of recommendations, couched in the langue de bois of our modern class: equity, innovation, agility, et al. In other words, all the things that got us into this mess to start with. These are words that, once they start tumbling from someone’s mouth, indemnify them against the risk of being identified as a genuine mind.
Established by the Labor Party, we should expect the Australian University Accord’s report would reflect Labor values. Those Labor values now apparently include the annihilation of the working man, with the recommendation that 80 per cent of Australians should pass through the hallowed doors of the university system. They, like everything else in a society driven by data-as-God, mistake quantity for quality.
In one respect, they are addressing a genuine problem. As a nation we are perhaps stupider than ever; PISA results continue to decline, and our primary and secondary education systems are mutual reflections of our tertiary system. Literary references, a command of basic mathematics, a sense of history, and the ability to write coherently: these all seem blue remembered hills.
However, furthering universal education is unlikely to fix the problems the proliferation of universal education created. For reasons entirely predictable, education proved vulnerable to the law of diminishing returns. An elite education cannot be made available to everybody; it is far easier to ensure that nobody receives an elite education. This is the cost of equity-above-all-else as a governing principle. People are not equal, and cannot be made equal. People cannot even be made to regard one another as equal. Equality, along with our obsession with data, is another false god of our age.
The problem with the university system is not one of scarcity, but one of inflation. We bend every possible requirement to allow people the opportunity to enter university, and do everything possible to prevent them failing once they’re there. We’re one step from conscripting the population into tertiary education, and the credentials required for entry-level jobs have changed to reflect this. This is to say nothing of adolescence extended, family delayed, and earning prospects limited for several years of study. A bachelor’s degree today is the equivalent of the school leaver certificate of yesterday; people collect master’s degrees today like they collected Pokémon as children. Credentialism for most of the population represents a ticket to the middle class and social respectability, as much as potential earning power in the future. These are powerful incentives, which explain why 60 per cent of the population has been pressed into the ivory tower at some point in their lives. Yet careerism is not the only purpose the university is supposed to serve.
Among those giving, everything produced by the university sector – certainly in the non-empirical world – has been through a peer-reviewed strainer to prevent anything original or novel emerging. They reference one another like incestuous monks and write in a bizarre argot to demonstrate their membership. Some faculties, and some universities, are worse than others. They bring to mind the scholasticism of earlier centuries, but without the rigour. And, as was the case in the Reformation, genuinely new ideas will emerge from outside the walls of what we consider epistemologically established. Many academics are reincarnations of apocryphal medieval theologians arguing about the quantity of angels that can fit on a pinhead. It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for your average academic to produce something interesting.
On the receiving end, the university system is no better. Every second person has a Mickey-Mouse degree from a Mickey-Mouse university, and few of them could hold an intelligent conversation with a secondary school graduate from half a century ago. Whatever the university is producing, it is not minds. But I’ve long held the suspicion that this is exactly the point. The last thing the postmodern West is interested in is a population with minds, and for most people what passes for wisdom today is browsing Wikipedia and calling out logical fallacies on Reddit. The snarky intellect of the educated Millennial or Zoomer, like a shallow and unbearably noisy stream, lacks blue water. We produce sophistry among those who should be passing on the knowledge of our civilisation, and encourage cynicism among those who receive it.
Aside from the turgid careerism of academics and the acquisitiveness of students – perhaps sellers and buyers of indulgences is a better term – there are two obvious reasons why The Powers That Be encourage this. The first is for financial reasons. Education is big business in Australia. Only mining has a larger output share. The university system doubles as a means of laundering citizenship and immigration, and siphoning money from overseas elites adds to the cash paid over the span of their working lives by native-born graduates. The government collects more revenue from HECS than it does from the petroleum resource rent tax. No government that values its bottom line is going to advocate for less tertiary education.
The second reason is an ideological one. The universities are captured institutions: an American report estimated that the ratio of conservative to liberal professors shifted 350 per cent in the latter direction since 1984. Even if you enter to study STEM or something vocational, they’ll still get you with the mandatory modules on diversity and Indigenous perspectives and all the rest of the postmodern religiosity we now accept as normal. The result is a braindead middle class composed of eunuchs and temple priestesses. If this sounds hyperbolic, remember how the university sector responded to the Western Civilisation courses offered by the Ramsay Centre. You’d think they’d like more money and more students, but to give them credit, occasionally their principles get in the way. Both ANU and the University of Sydney weren’t interested. They value the message above the money. Today’s liberal-Marxist elite, who live in constant terror afraid of their own shadows, will broker no competition in the world of ideas. They know it was thanks to that they got their stranglehold to begin with. They also suspect, in their heart of hearts, that their cherished ideas are terrible, anti-natural, and essentially anti-human.
The postmodern university is a house of cards. It would be too much to expect the Australian Universities Accord to admit as much.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/03/universality-and-the-university/
******************************************************
My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
******************************************************
7 March, 2024
Is there hope for Harvard? It matters more than you think
By Carol M. Swain [who is black]
Harvard University squandered its brand as a world-class institution dedicated to hiring the world’s best and brightest.
It’s not a problem we can ignore: Ivy League graduates make or break policy in America.
Just look at the ranks of White House staffers.
The state of our nation’s oldest institution is tied to our nation’s well-being, so we must ask: Is there hope for Harvard?
Many of us who have watched Harvard’s handling of the antisemitism on its campus and the steady string of plagiarism cases among its faculty and administrators blame the social-engineer class that’s elevated diversity, equity and inclusion above academic excellence defined by the pursuit of truth.
The brief and controversial tenure of the university’s recently resigned president, Claudine Gay, serves as proof.
Gay confirmed at Harvard Divinity School’s September convocation what we’d all known or suspected for quite some time: Harvard University had “expanded well beyond” the pursuit of truth to the pursuit of social justice.
The irony is not lost on me, one of the victims of her career-long use of plagiarism to secure the coveted title of “first black president” of the university last summer.
But by December, Gay’s plagiarism was found out.
It was the unspoken rules of the very world the social-engineer class crafted for her that opened her up to the scrutiny prompting her downfall.
It all unraveled quickly following her disastrous congressional testimony.
Rep. Elise Stefanik gave Gay multiple opportunities to offer moral clarity about Harvard’s disciplinary procedures for those harassing Jewish students with chants of “From the river to the sea” or screams of “Intifada,” which is a call for their deaths.
Yet Gay’s dedication to the relativism that social justice demands left her unable or unwilling to state any penalties for threatening Jewish students.
While onlookers were reeling from her shocking testimony, bold reporters gave Gay an embarrassing caveat to her coveted title of “first black president”: Some embraced my “serial plagiarist” phrasing.
No fewer than 47 instances of pilfering other people’s work made her worthy of that description.
Despite Gay’s serious moral failings, Harvard retained her as a faculty member with about the same pay — $900,000.
To cut her loose completely would further embarrass the once-world-class institution: It would be even clearer she was hired in the shortest presidential search in Harvard’s illustrious history with relaxed standards that did not include an examination of her scholarship.
Gay is not Harvard’s only DEI disaster — City Journal’s Chris Rufo identified two other Harvard administrators who plagiarized their dissertations or other scholarly publications: Chief Diversity Officer Sherri Ann Charleston and Office for Gender Equity Title IX Coordinator Shirley Greene.
Unfortunately, these women also happen to be black women.
But Harvard has had plagiarists of other races, and some remain in their positions.
Does the school have any clear standards for enforcing its own prohibitions against plagiarism?
When Gay stepped down, the university issued a puzzling statement that mocked academic integrity and contradicted its motto: “First and foremost, we thank President Gay for her deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and to the pursuit of academic excellence.”
Harvard’s motto is “Veritas,” Latin for “Truth.” Certainly, there was no truth in Harvard’s statement and its subsequent decision to describe Gay’s actions as merely “duplicative language.”
That’s entered the lexicon as an excusable offense less egregious than old-fashioned plagiarism.
To add insult to injury, both Harvard and Gay blamed racism and right-wing extremists for her transgressions.
Gay made seven corrections to three of her published works, per the latest reporting.
That still leaves 40 instances of duplicative language that haven’t been touched, including her pilfering of my ideas in her dissertation and early work on black representation in Congress.
Harvard’s brand suffers because Gay and other plagiarists remain on the faculty instructing students and interacting with the campus community.
What will it be like to take Gay’s African American Studies courses?
Can she teach her students anything about academic integrity and standards that will help prepare them for the positions of power Harvard graduates have historically enjoyed?
No, I am afraid the students will be fed the standard fare of black victimization and systemic racism.
High-achieving black and Hispanic students will suffer the most, at first, from the lowered academic standards and social engineering at the root of Harvard’s decline.
Then all the rest of us will suffer, more than we have already, unless Harvard and other Ivy League institutions correct course.\
https://nypost.com/2024/03/05/opinion/is-there-hope-for-harvard-it-matters-more-than-you-think/
***********************************************
Manhattan College cuts spark protest against president: ‘He even fired the nuns’
Riverdale’s beloved private Catholic liberal arts university is facing drastic cuts to its staff and course offerings amid on-going financial struggles. Last June, Milo Riverso, a former CEO of an engineering and construction management firm, was appointed president. In the months since, he’s laid off 63 faculty members — nearly 25% of the staff. The most recent round of brutal staffing cuts, which occurred in January, included two nuns, Sr. Remigia Kushner, 82, and Sr. Mary Ann Jacobs, 69.
“If you are committed to the Catholic mission, why would you fire two of its most important guardians?” asked Maeve Adams, 46, an English professor who has been teaching at the school for more than a decade.
“Sr. Remigia Kushner, was on every committee — she’s 82. It was totally shocking to her. Marlene Gottlieb, a Spanish professor and former chair of the languages department who was also laid off in January, told The Post. “She was a fixture at the college. She did all the graduate work for the educational program.”
The small college, which has 3,495 students, most of them undergrad, counts former New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly and novelist James Patterson among its alumni. Patterson has been a vocal and active supporter of its liberal arts program, but some of of the cuts have been particularly devastating to those offerings.
In November, it was announced that the college’s six schools – Engineering, Business, Education, Liberal Arts, Health Professions, and Continuing and Professional Studies – would be merged into three to cut costs. Under the new restructuring, Education, Liberal Arts and Health Profession will now be grouped together as the Science and Liberal Arts school. Even more drastic, in January the school nixed 20 majors and minors including religious studies and French, Italian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese languages — without consulting any faculty chairs or curriculum committees.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/05/us-news/manhattan-college-cuts-and-nun-firings-spark-protest/
*************************************************
Wesleyan University Faces Federal Investigation Over Anti-Semitism Complaint
The Department of Education opened an investigation into Illinois Wesleyan University over its response to anti-Semitism on campus since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, 2023.
The complaint, filed by Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Dr. Zachary Marschall, accuses the university of not responding to anti-Semitism on campus.
An investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights was opened on Tuesday into Illinois Wesleyan University.
The complaint cites Campus Reform coverage of a “Free Palestine” display at Illinois Wesleyan University which justified Hamas “rockets” and compared Israel to a “rapist.”
Pictures of the display obtained by Campus Reform contain a sign which states: “BLAMING HAMAS FOR FIRING ROCKTS IS LIKE BLAMING A WOMAN FOR PUNCHING HER RAPIST.”
Illinois Wesleyan University didn’t appear to initially comment on the display.
Weeks after the October 7, 2023 attack, students at the university protested at Illinois Wesleyan University’s campus, making chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea,” according to The Pantagraph.
******************************************************
6 March, 2024
Why grants to students primarily benefit colleges
Econ 101 instructors take note—a new illustration of the important microeconomic concept of incidence just dropped. Economists emphasize that there is a world of difference between legal and economic incidence. Legal incidence specifies who, on paper, has the right to claim a benefit or the obligation to bear a liability. Economic incidence analyzes which party receives a benefit or bears a cost in actuality. Who gets to command more or fewer resources?
Here’s how Art Carden and I discuss the incidence of a subsidy in a forthcoming book manuscript:
Subsidies follow the same logic. Whether the subsidy lands on the buyers or sellers is irrelevant. It sticks to whoever is the less price-sensitive side. Subsidies to corn consumers, for instance, often end up in corn growers’ pockets because they raise corn demand. Food stamps raise demand for approved foods: browsing Amazon.com for foods people can buy with funds from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), we find Corn Flakes, Corn Chex, Corn Nuts, Corn Pops, corn chips, corn tortillas, cornmeal cornbread mix, corn salsa, canned corn, creamed corn, and popcorn, plus all sorts of other corn derivatives like corn syrup-sweetened soft drinks and candy corn (first ingredient: sugar. Second ingredient: corn syrup). The loud part of the food stamp program is that it helps poor people buy food. The quiet part is that it passes the taxpayers’ money to corn farmers through the pockets of the poor. It’s no accident that the Department of Agriculture administers SNAP while Congress funds it through the Farm Bill.
Economic incidence was also unintentionally illustrated via a recent Time article on the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Grove City College v. Bell. Grove City, my alma mater and employer, had long sought complete independence from government entanglement with higher education. When Title IX was passed, as Time puts it, “complications arose.”
The Time article reads, “On four occasions between 1976 and 1977, Grove City College refused to sign an Assurance of Compliance form needed for students to receive Basic Educational Opportunity Grants (BEOGs) and Guaranteed Student Loans (GSLs). It contended that students received federal aid, not the college.”
The government responded by saying the quiet part out loud: Legal incidence is not synonymous with economic incidence.
The Time article continues, “The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW, later ED), argued that the college was the ultimate beneficiary of the federal funds and needed to sign the compliance for students to receive those fund as of 1977.”
In other words, the federal government admitted what economic analysis already knew: Student loans are “ultimately” a handout to colleges and universities. More concretely, the loans increase the incomes of college administrators, faculty, and other employees.
Yes, subsidies pass through the “pockets” (legal incidence) of students, but they end up in the “bank accounts” (economic incidence) of schools. Put another way, student loans increase the demand for higher education, ultimately increasing its sticker price.
In the long run, once the dust has settled, some students pay more, some pay less, resources flow to higher ed (what’s the opportunity cost?), taxpayers’ wealth falls, and society overall is poorer. A benefit to some (e.g., higher ed employees) is not a benefit to all—and in this case it’s not even necessarily a boon to students themselves.
https://blog.independent.org/2024/02/29/saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud/
******************************************************
Rhode Island School District Sends 8,800 Pages of Emails to Leftist hate site
When concerned mom Nicole Solas requested all emails from her Rhode Island school district to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the request turned up more than 8,000 pages of communications, and the district told her it would cost $6,629.25 for it to process the SPLC documents.
A brief refresher: The SPLC began as a civil rights nonprofit, but has morphed into a far-left fundraising machine and smear factory. As I wrote in my book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” it weaponized its history of suing KKK groups into bankruptcy to smear its political and ideological opponents, placing mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a “hate map” alongside Klan chapters.
Solas, a Rhode Island mother, had briefly enrolled her daughter in kindergarten in the South Kingstown School District. She withdrew her daughter after the school district sued her on account of Solas’ multiple public records requests to reveal whether the district taught kids the principles of critical race theory, a lens that teaches kids to view white people as oppressors and black people as oppressed.
Solas told The Daily Signal that she requested “emails sent by [South Kingstown School District] employees” to “weed out spam emails automatically sent by SPLC to schools.”
The SPLC runs an education program long known as “Teaching Tolerance.” In 2021, after the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis, the SPLC apparently decided that “tolerance” wasn’t woke enough, so it rebranded the program to “Learning for Justice.” The program has advocated for lessons that inculcate critical race theory, transgender identity, and pornographic books in schools. Last year, the SPLC added parental rights groups, including Moms for Liberty, to its “hate map,” in part demonizing those groups for opposing sexually explicit books in school libraries.
The SPLC has bragged that it sent “over 400,000 educators” the “Teaching Tolerance” magazine, “reaching nearly every school in the country.” This language disappeared from the website, however, as more Americans look critically at the SPLC.
The SPLC hides its radical agenda behind benign-sounding initiatives such as celebrating diversity and inclusion. Many on the Left have adopted its rhetoric.
The SPLC’s “hate map” has caused real-world harm. In 2012, a terrorist targeted the Family Research Council for a mass shooting using the “hate map.” He told the FBI he aimed to kill everyone in the building, but the building manager prevented the slaughter, in the process sustaining bullet wounds. The shooter pleaded guilty to terrorism charges and is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence.
Early in the 2000s, the SPLC began branding some activist groups that opposed illegal immigration “anti-immigrant hate groups” and putting them on the “hate map.” The SPLC maintains that hatred drives the movement calling for the enforcement of immigration laws, even as the Biden administration sets new records for the number of illegal aliens encountered at the southern border.
In the past two weeks, the SPLC has demonized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for attempting to close the border when the Biden administration refuses to do so. Abbott is attempting to enforce federal laws that President Joe Biden will not enforce, yet the SPLC claims Abbott is seeking to establish “state supremacy over the border.”
The SPLC noted Abbott’s attempts to install razor wire between Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, and the southern border, the Biden administration’s decision to cut the wire, and the Supreme Court ruling allowing the Biden administration access.
“This is part of Abbott’s broader anti-immigrant agenda, which includes an attempt to stop a supposed ‘invasion’ of Texas by migrants,” SPLC’s Caleb Kieffer and Rachel Goldwasser wrote. “Claims of ‘invasion’ have become a trope among right-wing lawmakers and the hard right despite dangerous similarities to the racist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory.”
The SPLC did not acknowledge that border agents encountered a record 3.2 million illegal aliens in fiscal year 2023 (a number larger than the combined populations of Hawaii, Alaska, and Vermont), nor that Democratic mayors are requesting help to deal with the large numbers of aliens in the country. This isn’t a “great replacement conspiracy theory”; it is a blatantly obvious fact that millions of illegal aliens are taking root in the U.S., and the SPLC’s move to dismiss critics as racist in the face of that fact should set off alarm bells across America.
The SPLC also demonized the effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for failing to enforce immigration law and prevent mass hordes of aliens from entering the country. In an article focused on a militia group’s efforts to take border enforcement into its own hands, Goldwasser claims the militia’s action represents “a product of the anti-immigrant environment produced by the xenophobic posturing of hate groups and politicians, and the controversial impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latinx and immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security.”
Goldwasser suggested that Mayorkas faces an impeachment effort not because he has failed to enforce immigration law and prevent the border crisis, but because he is the first Latino to head the Department of Homeland Security. She used “Latinx,” a transgender neologism, in order to avoid the clear masculine ending in Spanish for “Latino.”
The SPLC did not reserve all its vitriol for Republicans, however. Kieffer and Goldwasser noted that Biden has supported a Senate bill that included minor border security measures and changes to the asylum process in exchange for funding to Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion.
“The bill worried immigration advocates, who viewed it as being extremely harsh and out of step for the needs of border communities,” they wrote. “The Senate relief package debacle shows the same anti-immigrant animus undergirding impeachment of Mayorkas and the standoff in Eagle Pass.”
It seems the SPLC’s partisan attacks against pro-enforcement groups have so unmoored the organization from reality that it is unwilling to accept the blatantly obvious truth. Recent polls have showed former President Donald Trump, who currently leads in the Republican presidential nominating proces, ahead of Biden in key swing states. Americans give Biden poor marks on the border, which helps explain the president’s belated support for some immigration restrictions. Biden knows he has to make up ground on this issue, and he’s furiously working to make it seem like the border crisis is Republicans’ fault.
Yet the SPLC hasn’t gotten the memo. It’s so focused on branding as “hateful” anyone who dares to speak the plain truth about the border crisis that it turns against Biden, the very president the SPLC brags about influencing and with whom SPLC leaders have met at least six times personally.
The SPLC’s radical agenda of critical race theory, transgender lessons, and apparent hatred for the very idea of national borders has no place in America’s classrooms. Solas is right to demand answers from her Rhode Island school district, and parents across the country should be on the lookout for the SPLC’s influence in schools.
****************************************
"Accord" proposals won’t do anything to fix Australia's universities
JUDITH SLOAN
Through the years I have become something of a dab hand at reading government reports. They are almost always far too long, badly argued and littered with carefully chosen photographs. I figure I can save my readers the trouble of wading through these tomes by simply cutting to the chase.
The final report of the Australian Universities Accord, at around 400 pages, is dubious and unhelpful. It is built on a highly unconvincing premise and works its way from there. On the basis of a bit of arm-waving by a consultant and asking around, the panel concludes the tertiary education attainment rate must rise from its current figure of about 60 per cent to at least 80 per cent of the workforce by 2050. For those aged 25 to 34, the proportion with a university education must rise from 45 per cent to 55 per cent by 2050.
Let’s face it, other guesses are equally plausible. After all, artificial intelligence is about to cut a swath through the workforce, meaning many university-educated workers may be out of jobs as machines replace their roles. And just in case you think it’s simply those who undertake repetitive, low-level jobs who are in the firing line, it seems AI can be highly creative and solve problems, to boot.
There is also the important issue of credentialism. It’s not as though jobs always require a university education – or indeed completion of school. But university education creates its own momentum by giving a head start to other applicants without qualifications. It doesn’t actually add to productivity, it simply alters the pecking order. To the extent that this is the case, the government – aka taxpayer – shouldn’t be investing even more in university education, particularly certain courses.
The accord makes much of the lack of equity in the admission to universities. Those from poor socio-economic backgrounds, those from regional areas and First Nations students are much less likely to go to university, let alone complete a course, relative to their better-off city-based cousins. Reflecting the backstory of federal Education Minister Jason Clare, who was the first in his family to attend university, the panel makes several suggestions to “expand opportunity to all”.
But here’s the rub: many students simply are not suited to university study and it is selling them a pup to suggest university is the best post-school pathway for them. I once taught economic statistics to university students with low entry scores – it was a nightmare. Most of them struggled, many lost self-confidence and a reasonable chunk failed. My advice to many of them was to consider alternative opportunities, such as becoming a tradie.
We have had a recent experiment with allowing universities to enrol any student they deem to have the necessary qualifications – the so-called demand-driven system of enrolments. Of course, “necessary qualifications” is a rubbery concept and allowing self-serving universities to set the entry standards is really akin to handing the keys to the chook house to the fox.
It is clear what happened when the demand-driven system was in full flight: the participation in higher education of marginal groups increased but the rate at which they completed courses was significantly below those with higher marks. According to higher education expert Andrew Norton, “students with ATARs (year 12 ranking) below 60 are twice as likely to drop out of university as students with ATARs over 90”. He estimates that those who fail to complete a university course are, on average, stuck with a debt of $12,000 to pay off.
Working backwards from the accord’s arbitrary targets, students with an ATAR as low as 45 will now be expected to go to university. And this in the context of sliding school performance across the past two decades.
Rather than accept that most of these students simply are not suited to university study, the panel wants additional funding, foundation courses, study hubs and the like. On the face of it, this just looks like a waste of resources given there will be plenty of jobs in the future that don’t require a university education.
Is someone with a bachelor of arts in cultural studies really more qualified than a plumber?
The one recommendation of the report that gave me a good laugh deals with the establishment of a higher education future fund. At this rate we’ll have future funds for everything. The source of funds will be a tax on our best universities – probably the Group of Eight – with the federal government matching their contributions. It’s a bit like how the Australian Football League operates: penalise the top teams to level out the competition. It’s really a form of socialism.
While this might make some sense for a football code, it makes no sense for a university system that should be focused on attaining global excellence. Why would we want to tax the best universities to spray money around with unknown outcomes? If I were heading up one of the Go8 universities I would be objecting in the strongest and loudest terms.
As is the case with most government reports, there are suggestions for more reviews and new bureaucratic agencies. There should be a centre of excellence in higher education and research (refer to previous paragraph); a survey on the prevalence of racism in higher education; and a First Nations-led review of higher education.
The most significant is the proposal to establish an Australian tertiary education commission, “a statutory, national body to plan and oversee the creation of a high quality and cohesive tertiary education system to meet Australia’s future needs”. You will be pleased to know one of the functions will be to negotiate “mission-based compacts for universities”, whatever that means.
The reality is we have had such agencies in the past and they haven’t worked well. Where does the minister sit in all this, let alone the federal Department of Education? The appointed commissioners often get ahead of themselves and the outcomes are often extremely disappointing.
Don’t get me wrong here: I think there is plenty wrong with the Australian university system.
Many of our universities are too big; they are clones of each other but of highly variable quality; and many offer a very poor offering to domestic students. The links with vocational education are patchy at best.
But the 400-page accord report is not the path to fixing these problems: indeed, most of the recommendations would make them worse and cost the taxpayer a small fortune. Obviously, the notion of opportunity cost has not been front of mind to the panel. The government would be ill-advised to spend even more money on a bloated, poorly performing sector based on made-up targets.
******************************************************
5 March, 2024
Antisemitic teens terrorizing Jewish teacher with Hitler jabs, death threats as NYC school refuses to discipline them
Mainly Muslim students at work, it seems. Islam is a religion of hate
A Brooklyn high school has become a haven for Hitler-loving hooligans who terrorize Jewish teachers and classmates, The Post has learned.
On Oct. 26, just three weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis, 40 to 50 teens marched through Origins HS in Sheepshead Bay waving a Palestinian flag and chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Kill the Jews!” staffers said.
The hateful procession was shocking even for Origins, a school rife with bias and bullying, insiders told The Post.
“I live in fear of going to work every day,” said global history teacher Danielle Kaminsky.
According to interviews with multiple staffers, and a Jewish student’s safety transfer request, recent hate incidents include:
A student painted a mustache on his face to look like Hitler, and banged on classroom doors. When someone opened, he clicked his heels and raised his arm in the Nazi gesture, security footage shows.
Three swastikas in one week were drawn on teachers’ walls and other objects, a manager found.
A 10th-grader told Kaminsky, 33, who is Jewish, “I wish you were killed.”
Another student called her “a dirty Jew” and said he wished Hitler could have “hit more Jews,” including her.
Students pasted drawings of the Palestinian flag and notes saying “Free Palestine” on Kaminsky’s classroom door. One scribbled note that said simply, “Die.”
The teen tormentors have so far faced no serious discipline under interim acting principal Dara Kammerman, who has done little beyond contacting parents in an effort to practice “restorative justice,” staffers said.
“She is perpetuating an antisemitic environment and a school of hate,” said Michael Beaudry, campus manager of the Sheepshead Bay building that houses Origins and three other schools. “The students continue these behaviors because they know there won’t be any consequences.”
In response, the city Department of Education said it will launch a probe: “There is currently no evidence that these claims are true, but we are investigating the claims.”
Teachers allege that interim principal Dara Kammerman perpetuates antisemitism by not disciplining students.
In a disturbing instance in late January, a group of boys came into Kaminsky’s classroom at the end of the day, and cornered her, laughing, she said.
“Miss Kaminsky, do you love Hitler?” one asked.
“I was so taken aback,” she said. “I did not respond, and they all gave the heil Hitler sign.”
Frightened, Kaminsky quickly left her classroom.
One boy waved to his friends to chase her inside the building, a scene captured on security footage, Beaudry said.
Kaminsky immediately reported the harassment to the acting principal — who refused to suspend the boys because she found they did nothing wrong, records show.
“We can’t do anything because the students claimed they were trying to have an ‘academic conversation,’” staffers quoted her as explaining.
Antisemitism at Origins HS has festered for several years, Kaminsky and Beaudry said.
At Kaminsky’s request last March, Kammerman arranged for a group of students to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which had a new program to educate students about antisemitism and the Holocaust.
The museum, in Battery Park City, first sent two female interns to Origins to prepare the teens for what they would see.
Several boys nearly brought the young women to tears with rude and appalling comments, according to emails with the museum and staff accounts.
One student wrote “die” on Kaminsky’s classroom door.
One teen said he would have sex with a dead Jewish woman.
Another said he would “take money from the dead Jewish people’s corpses.”
Others made derisive remarks like “Who cares about the Jews?”
The museum canceled the visit.
When another group of Origins kids went later that year, some stuffed trash in the donation box.
The museum omitted a meeting with a Holocaust survivor because some kids were so disrespectful.
About 40% of Origins students are Muslim. DOE stats list 22% as Asian, 22% Black, 17% Hispanic and 32% white.
The school has many students in families from Middle Eastern nations such as Yemen, Egypt, and Palestine who identify as white, along with those from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in Central Asia.
Several Jewish students bullied because of their religion have fled Origins since last year. In that time, the school’s enrollment of 508 has plummeted to 445.
Currently, no more than a dozen Jewish kids attend Origins, staffers say.
In one case, a Jewish sophomore found three swastikas scribbled on his laptop charger when he returned from the restroom, he wrote in a safety transfer request obtained by The Post.
“I feel like in history class I’m always targeted and it’s hard for me to take,” the student wrote,
He also said he heard that a classmate called Hitler “the G.O.A.T.”
Kaminsky, who joined Origins in 2017 after working four years in Long Island, has experienced antisemitism only at the DOE school, she said.
Kaminsky is pro-Israel, but aims for neutrality in lessons and at cultural events, she said: “As history teachers, we know how to discuss controversial and sensitive topics while looking at all points of view, and encouraging kids to become critical thinkers.”
It’s widely known among students that Kaminsky is Jewish, though she doesn’t make a point of it, she said.
Her students routinely draw swastikas next to their names on classwork, engrave the Nazi symbol on their desks, and scribble them on bulletin boards, she said.
An Israeli flag – one of nearly 200 from countries around the world that Kaminsky hangs in her classroom – was ripped down in the spring of 2021. A group of girls told her it was taken across the street and burned.
“I’ve been yelled at, followed, taunted,” Kaminsky said. “I report everything to the principal. I’ve been to a school safety committee. I’ve told my union, the UFT. I’ve told my superintendent,” Brooklyn South high schools chief Michael Prayor.
They’ve offered little help. “Nothing has made me feel safe going to school,” she said.
*******************************************************
Brooklyn Catholic school teacher accused of locking terrified 3-year-old in closet and warning ‘Grinch’ was coming for him
A Brooklyn Catholic school teacher allegedly put a 3-year-old student in a cardboard box inside a locked closet, and threatened the terrified child that the “Grinch” was coming for him, The Post has learned.
Alexis Breeden, the lead 3-K teacher at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Academy in Windsor Terrace, was arrested on Feb. 28 and charged with unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of a child, four weeks after allegedly imposing the twisted timeout, according to a criminal complaint.
“Simply put, there are no imaginable circumstances where this can be called anything but child abuse,” said John Elefterakis of Elefterakis, Elefterakis & Panek, which is working with the family of the child, who have requested anonymity.
“This incident is extremely troubling, and we intend to fully investigate and force accountability,” Elefterakis said.
On Feb. 2, the school nurse witnessed Breeden holding the handle of the storage closet door shut as a child cried inside, according to a complaint filed with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
The nurse told Breeden to open the door and when Breeden unlocked it, the nurse observed “a 3-year-old child crying inside the closet in a large cardboard box,” the complaint stated.
The nurse reported the disturbing discovery and the K-3 program was immediately shut down as the city Health Department and NYPD began probes of child-abuse allegations.
The tax-payer-funded, city-run Universal 3-K program, which is located on Prospect Park West behind Holy Name of Jesus Church, reopened Tuesday.
Breeden, of Castleton Corners, Staten Island, was fired soon after the incident. She was charged with unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the district attorney’s office. She pled not guilty and was released on her own recognizance, according to court records.
The Brooklyn diocese says it “took immediate action upon learning of a safe environment code of conduct violation,” according to the Catholic newspaper The Tablet.
“The child did not sustain any injuries and out of respect for the student, we will not provide any additional details about this incident,” a diocesan statement said.
The $6,600-a-year-tuition Catholic school serves about 280 students.
The shocking incident was allegedly not the only case of alleged bullying toward children at the school, which touts its nurturing parochial environment, according to Elefterakis.
“Unfortunately, our initial inquiry has revealed that this is not the first instance at this school where helpless children were subject to abusive behavior,” he said.
Parents bashed the school in online reviews for a pervasive “culture of bullying” among students and staff, teachers that make kids cry and a harsh “disciplinarian” principal, Stephanie Ann Germann.
Parents tell The Post that there have been concerns about Breeden since she started in 2020.
“It’s just outrageous and unacceptable that this could have happened in the first place,” said one parent, who pulled her son from the school last year over safety concerns. “The principal has been warned about this teacher’s behavior for years now.”
“We’ve had concerns since the beginning of the year,” another parent told The Post. “All the kids in her class started acting differently. They weren’t their usual 3-year-old selves anymore.”
Her 3-year-old is now on a waiting list for another school.
Another class parent said the scenario since February has been “horrific” and will have “lasting psychological consequences.” “It goes beyond one bad apple,” she wrote in a parent Facebook group.
“The school has completely ignored the parents in the affected class,” she added.
*******************************************
Incorrectness of ham sandwiches in Australian schools
How ridiculous can you get?
With one in four Australian children classified as overweight or obese and an Australian state limiting the amount of ham sold in schools, what's on offer at the tuckshop is again in the spotlight.
What is sold in state school tuckshops or canteens is governed, or at least guided, by policies set out by state and territory government departments.
Queensland's is called Smart Choices and is run by the state's education department.
In New South Wales it's the Healthy School Canteen Strategy run by NSW Health and South Australia employs the Right Bite Food and Drink Supply Standards developed by its department for education.
What's central to them all is a "traffic light" system that classifies foods and drinks into green, amber and red categories.
According to most policies, red items like pies, pizzas and pastries should only be supplied twice per school term.
Amber items like burgers, muffins and lasagne shouldn't dominate menus, and green items like fresh fruit, vegetables and reduced fat dairy products should make up most items available.
Debate about healthy eating at school often flares up in term 1, but this year it's been helped along by Western Australia's review of its traffic light system which has resulted in ham being shifted into a new red category.
The Queensland Association of School Tuckshops (QAST) said it's time the Sunshine State's policy, which was written in 2007 and updated in 2016 and 2020, was also reviewed.
Ms Wooden said a QAST audit in 2022 examined the menus of more than 250 school tuckshops and found none were fully compliant with Queensland's traffic light system.
"At the moment, we know that the policy is not being implemented the way it should be [and] there's no incentive or mechanism to make sure that it is."
Principle nutritionist with Health and Wellbeing Queensland Matthew Dick said Western Australia's new rules on ham at school tuckshops were in line with expert advice.
"They want to limit it to two times per week, which is exactly the same message we as nutritionists are giving," Mr Dick said.
"Don't rely on ham all the time. It's okay as an occasional filling in your sandwiches but relying on processed foods like ham, bacon and sausages can start to become a problem."
Mr Dick said ham and processed meats were often high in fats, salt and additives and are considered carcinogens by the World Health Organisation.
"Long-term consumption of processed foods can contribute to cancers in people and that's one of the real concerns with them."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-04/tuckshop-menus-explained-school-food-nutrition/103521758
******************************************************
4 March, 2024
Yale University Employs Nearly One Administrator Per Undergrad
Yale University employs more than three administrators and support staff for every four undergraduate students – roughly one administrator per undergrad, according to a College Fix analysis.
Over the last decade, Yale added 631 administrators and support staff to its payroll, according to data provided by administrators to the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
As the university embraced new DEI efforts, the number of administrators and support staff increased by 13 percent, from 4,942 to 5,573, between 2013-14 and 2021-22, the analysis found.
During this period, the number of full-time undergraduates at Yale increased by about 20 percent, from 5,424 to 6,532. Meanwhile, the number of teaching and instructional positions compared to students decreased by about 6 percent, from 403 per 1,000 to 379 educators per 1,000.
Under the analysis, administrators and support staff include management, student and academic affairs divisions, IT, public relations, administrative support, maintenance, and legal and other non-academic departments.
The growth of administrators and support staff at Yale can be linked in some part to its efforts to grow DEI on campus. Yale’s DEI diversity initiative included a hiring program that aimed to diversify the campus by creating faculty search committees and hosting implicit bias workshops.
“The percentage of Yale managers and professionals from historically underrepresented minority groups has more than doubled in the past decade,” President Peter Salovey wrote to the campus community in October 2020.
But Salovey pledged to do more, and the campus continued to grow DEI efforts after the university pledged $135 million for a diversity initiative in 2020 and moved forward with implementing DEI offices in schools across the campus in 2022.
For example, in 2021, the Yale Child Study Center created a chief diversity officer position. In 2022, the Yale School of Art created a new position: Director of Sustainable Equity and Inclusion. In 2023, Yale’s Cancer Center hired a DEI director to increase efforts to hire faculty of color.
Yale’s Interim Vice President for Communications Karen Peart did not respond to emails from The Fix over the last two months asking how many new administrators and support staff the university hired to support its DEI initiatives.
The Fix found 94 named DEI officials across 10 of Yale’s 19 schools. Numbers varied widely, with only one DEI official reported at the School of Architecture but 45 DEI officials at the School of Medicine’s Diversity Advisory Council.
Yale employs one DEI official in its public health school, three in its music school, three in its environment school, four in its nursing school, four in its divinity school, and 11 in its drama school. Yale also employed five university-wide DEI officials and 17 at its undergraduate school.
The Diversity Advisory Council has five vice chairs for DEI as well as a director of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion; an associate dean for gender equity and deputy chair for DEI; an associate dean for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging; a faculty director of workforce development and diversity; three directors of DEI; a vice chief for DEI; a chief diversity officer; and a departmental director for DEI.
The remaining members of the Diversity Advisory Council have no DEI-specific titles but help the council in its mission of “disseminating DEI-related best practices . . . and enabling department chairs to implement the YSM Diversity Strategic Plan.”
Asked for comment on Yale’s DEI hiring, conservative scholar Heather Mac Donald* said that adding more bureaucrats, diversity or otherwise, will not solve a non-existent racism problem at the school, but it will drive up its “already exorbitant” tuition.
“Faculty bias does not stand in the way of greater black and Hispanic representation among the Yale professoriate,” she said via email. “The dearth of qualified minorities in the hiring pipeline is the problem, whether in STEM or in the hard social sciences.”
“Every college in the country is desperately chasing the same small pool of competitively qualified black and Hispanic Ph.D.’s,” she said. “There is an arms race in salary offers; part of Yale’s latest gargantuan diversity allocation will go to outbidding other schools for the same inadequate supply of satisfactorily diverse faculty faces. This is a grotesque waste of money.”
But, she added, the growth of DEI bureaucrats is not the only problem.
“Conservative critics of higher education risk overstating the importance of official DEI bureaucrats in creating today’s left-wing campus orthodoxies. The faculty, curriculum, and the students themselves are equally to blame,” she said.
“A university’s mission is not to fight alleged racism or other claimed social ills; it is to pass on a cultural inheritance and to create new knowledge through the rigorous testing of hypotheses and evidence,” she said. “Such testing can occur only in an environment of epistemological openness, not in one of ideological conformity. Yes, DEI bureaucrats can enforce such conformity, but so can other actors within a university.”
**********************************************
The Battle To Eliminate DEI in Higher Education Has Just Begun
Proponents of the diversity-equity-and-inclusion ideology may be down, but they’re not out.
Yes, the Supreme Court has forced the practices of race-based college admissions underground. Yes, some state legislatures, most notably Wisconsin, have tied universities’ access to public funding to reductions in DEI staffing. Yes, some wealthy alumni have curbed their giving. And yes, three of DEI’s avatars—the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT—performed so badly at a Congressional hearing about campus antisemitism that two lost their jobs and the third is under a microscope.
But no one should be naïve enough to think that the defeat of DEI in our universities is somehow imminent or inevitable. In fact, in the wake of the developments listed above, many schools have doubled down on DEI.
The University of Michigan, for example, just launched a new DEI program that increases the number of DEI employees from 142 to 500 and increases DEI payroll from $18 million to $30 million. Princeton University, meanwhile, issued a report celebrating the expansion of its DEI programs, grants, lecture series, and administrative positions.
But even if these programs are cut, DEI will still be strong on campuses because DEI bureaucracies are no longer necessary for its propagation.
All that’s necessary is that a critical mass of professors and administrators adhere to it. And they do. More than that, this critical mass uses all sorts of tactics to retain control and silence dissenting voices.
At many schools, the whole process of hiring is soaked through with DEI.
For example, Suffolk University is looking for a professor of Civil Rights at “the intersection of law and race, gender, and sexual orientation” and asks candidates to explain how they’d advance the school’s “commitment to diversity and inclusion through their teaching, scholarship or service.”
Syracuse is looking for a director of “academic & bar success,” whose emphasis is on cultivating “Diversity and Inclusive Excellence” within a school that affirms that “diversity [is] a core value not just in vision but in practice.”
UCLA Law is looking for professors whose prior experience “supports equality and diversity” and includes “significant experience mentoring underrepresented students.” And of course, the school wants an official “statement of contributions to diversity.”
At NYU Law, the Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, seeks a scholar whose entire job is to “lead a new Defending DEI Initiative.” One of the qualifications is a commitment to the “core values” of DEI.
And the University of Washington, in a throwback to the old days of explicit race hatred, refused to hire the #1 and #2 ranked candidates for a professor of psychology for no other reason than that they were white and Asian, respectively.
Diversity statements, ideological screening, and plain racial discrimination are the bluntest instruments in schools’ arsenals. They have more delicate ones, too, like “citational justice.”
Citational justice is the practice of citing the works of scholars simply because the scholar checks an identity box and refusing to cite the works of scholars with “problematic” ideas.
Academia uses citations as a proxy for quality of scholarship, which affects promotion and tenure decisions. A non-white scholar might produce something totally unoriginal (Claudine Gay, for example), but if her work is widely cited, she’s likely to get promoted anyway. But a scholar who produces high quality work that undercuts liberal narratives can be denied promotion if liberal scholars refuse to cite her work.
DEI adherents have ways of dealing with the few heterodox faculty members who snuck through the diversity traps and won’t remain dutifully silent.
Consider David Porter and his employer North Carolina State University. Porter, a tenured statistics professor, raised concerns over his department’s use of DEI-based criteria in course evaluations and faculty hiring. He also criticized his discipline’s drift towards a social-justice agenda. Porter’s colleagues did not defend their decisions; perhaps they assumed the value was self-evident and beyond criticism. Instead, they resorted to administrative sanctions.
Administrators recharacterized Porter’s criticisms in human-resources verbiage: his words were bullying, violations of collegial norms, a cause of discomfort to a small but always vocal subset of students. The department head demonstrated her own collegiality by removing Porter from his academic program, restricting him from advising PhD candidates, and setting him firmly on the descent towards professional irrelevance.
Porter sought help from the courts, and four different federal judges heard his case. Only one thought Porter had viable First Amendment claims against the state university.
Although the Supreme Court has rejected racialized university admissions, legal redress remains elusive for DEI’s victims in the faculty ranks. The result is that the few dissenters who slip past DEI’s gatekeepers are forced into silence.
There are plenty more examples of this.
Although some progress has been made against DEI on campuses, it’s only a beginning. All who oversee schools, including legislators, should continue efforts to defund DEI bureaucracies, but as long as faculty and administrators overwhelmingly support DEI, they will enforce its orthodoxies even without vast bureaucratic apparatuses.
The fight against DEI on campus must expand to replace closed-minded commissars with open-minded educators committed to teaching and training successive generations to bravely pursue the truth.
*************************************************
Sydney University abandons maths prerequisites in diversity push
I think this is a step in the right direction. I was always bad at maths at school but became a capable computer programmer using a demanding language called FORTRAN, which literally means "formula translation". A line of FORTRAN code looks very much like a line of algebra. And I did write programs requiring up to 5-dimensional matrices.
So I was good at something maths-related that would normally have required a maths prerequisite. But I would have been blocked by such a prerequisite these days. Prerequisites are simply too rigid to account for varying patterns of abiity in students
The University of Sydney is ditching the advanced mathematics prerequisites for scores of degrees in response to the declining number of HSC students taking the subject.
Vice chancellor Mark Scott said maths teacher shortages meant too many students could not study the subject in year 12, providing a barrier for diverse students to study at the university.
“Mathematical skills and knowledge are vital for students to succeed at university and thrive in the workplaces of the future,” he said.
“Yet through no fault of their own, many students don’t have the opportunity to take advanced mathematics at school, a situation exacerbated by ongoing maths teacher shortages that affect some schools more than others.”
The prerequisite change, to begin next year, is a reversal of much of the changes brought into effect in 2019 that introduced two unit maths prerequisites for 62 degrees.
That was supposed to address falling enrolments in maths and lift academic standards at the university.
However, the latest data from the NSW Education Standards Authority shows there were almost 10 per cent fewer students taking advanced maths in 2023 compared to 2018.
Scott, a former NSW Education secretary, said the university would provide “bespoke mathematics support” which would include tailored assistance and advice, preparatory workshops and bridging courses to catch students up.
The change will mean degrees including commerce, science, medicine, psychology, veterinary science and economics will no longer require students to have undertaken advanced maths in year 12.
Degrees in engineering, advanced computing and pharmacy will retain the mathematics prerequisite.
From next year, year 12 students who achieve a Band 3 or higher in advanced mathematics will also be eligible to receive an additional point towards their selection rank under the university’s Academic Excellence Scheme.
University of Canberra University associate professor Philip Roberts, a rural education specialist, said a lack of access to advanced mathematics was a huge issue, particularly in regional and low SES areas.
“Our research shows that schools which have larger numbers of low SES students are not studying advanced maths at the same rate as schools which have higher SES students,” he said.
He said teacher shortages were making the issue worse, but that it was also driven by a perception by students they would score better in general maths.
Roberts said even when universities did not have calculus-based mathematics prerequisites, students who did not take HSC advanced maths were still behind their peers who had once they started their degrees.
“Advanced maths also contributes more to their overall ATAR, so a lack of access limits their opportunities of getting into uni,” he said.
University of Sydney deputy vice chancellor (education) Professor Joanne Wright said it was clear it was harder for some students to access higher-level mathematics simply because of where they are from.
“Schools in regional and remote locations are significantly less likely to offer advanced and extension mathematics,” she said.
“Our new approach responds to these realities of the student experience today and ensures we’re better equipping students for their university studies and careers.”
She said new tools were being developed to identify gaps in students’ knowledge, including a pilot of a diagnostic tool designed to match students with the most appropriate learning support services when they enrol.
“Regardless of their starting point, all our students will have the opportunity to complete their studies with the same level of mathematics skills and knowledge,” Professor Wright said
******************************************************
3 March, 2024
NYC public school officials grilled about plan to comply with controversial class-size law
This old, old class size fetish is ridiculous. There are plenty of instances of kids in large classes doing well.
It is teacher quality that matters and good teachers are largely born, not made. There are only so many good teachers around regardlesss of what teacher-training courses they undergo, so class size limitations can cause a lot of barely competent teachers to be hired, thus HARMING, not helping the education of the kids.
Below are links to some of my old posts on the matter that give more detail:
https://edwatch.blogspot.com/2006/11/public-school-class-size-doesnt-matter.html
https://edwatch.blogspot.com/2007/06/class-size-where-belief-trumps-reality.html
https://edwatch.blogspot.com/2008/03/great-class-size-myth-i-note-that-gos.html
City Department of Education officials were grilled Thursday about their plan to comply with a controversial state law that requires Big Apple public schools to reduce class sizes across the board by 2028.
The City Council hearing on the issue came as the legislative body’s education committee introduced legislation that would require the DOE to report data twice a year on the actual size of classes at all schools and special programs.
“Here’s my issue, the people that are making the decisions have never taught in New York City public schools,” Committee on Education Chair Rita Joseph told the panel of DOE officials during the hearing.
“You must apply the law,” added the council member, a veteran educator, challenging the DOE’s argument that it needs more funding to hire more teachers in order to comply with the mandate.
Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks have called on lawmakers to provide $1.4 billion to $1.9 billion — the projected cost of hiring between 10,000 to 12,000 educators — to help the city comply.
According to DOE’s “Class Size Reduction Plan” update, nearly half of all classes currently fall under the size caps set by the law. But the department’s plan noted that more work will be required
DOE Deputy Chancellor Emma Vadehra said the administration supports the goal to lower class sizes but reiterated that more work needs to be done in the 2025-26 school year and beyond to meet the requirements.
“In brief, we are currently fully in compliance with the class size legislation. In the coming years, however, we do have work and we will face some difficult choices to maintain compliance,” Vadehra told the education committee.
The department’s First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg, NYC School Construction Authority President and CEO Nina Kubota and District 23 Superintendent Khalek Kirkland made up the rest of the panel speaking to the committee.
“Our work is not complete without New York City planning to make these changes and enact those changes,” Jackson said.
Liu said he doesn’t “begrudge” Adams and Banks over the mandate being fiscally difficult to deal with, but maintained a plan for compliance needs to be made transparent.
“The reality is, they’re in control of the public schools, and even though they did not make this problem, this problem they inherited, it is their responsibility to fix it,” he stressed.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature — under intense lobbying from the United Federation of Teachers union — approved the law in 2022.
It states that grades K-3 must have a maximum of 20 students, with 23 students in grades 4-8 and 25 students in grades 9-12 by the 2027–28 school year.
Earlier, Joseph held a rally with parents, educators, advocates and elected officials on the steps of City Hall in support of the law.
“The DOE has an incredible opportunity to change the educational lives of students by implementing class laws,” said Michael Sill, the UFT’s assistant secretary, who was at the rally.
“Sadly, the DOE’s engagement thus far has been typified by inflating cost estimates and inventing excuses for not doing what needs to be done,” Sill told The Post.
“While revenues are up, the reserves are overflowing, and the state has invested in New York City’s young people, the city continues to push a false austerity narrative that is designed to frighten the public.”
UFT President Michael Mulgrew claimed the DOE was “trying to sabotage the law.”
“Parents want this. Educators want this. We challenge the DOE to identify the schools that have the space right now to make this change and get started,” he told The Post.
“We ask the City Council to help us hold the DOE accountable.”
*********************************************************
University of Florida eliminates DEI office, will put its $5M toward recruiting faculty
The University of Florida on Friday closed its diversity office and fired 13 full-time staffers to comply with a new state law that bans Sunshine State schools from spending on such ideologies.
“The University of Florida has closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, eliminated DEI positions and administrative appointments, and halted DEI-focused contracts with outside vendors,” the memo issued by the university provost, the general counsel, and the vice president for human resources read.
The $5 million allocated for diversity, equity and inclusion will now be redistributed to faculty recruitment, it added.
The announcement comes in light of a 2023 statute prohibiting the university from spending state or federal funds on DEI initiatives, reported the Alligator, the school’s paper.
The statute was approved in its final form by the Florida Board of Governors on Jan. 24, the outlet added.
Employees whose positions were eliminated will receive 12 weeks of pay and will be encouraged to apply for other positions at the state university, according to its statement.
The memo did not touch on the future of the Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement, which received over $400,000 in the 2022-2023 UF operating budget – 85% of which came from the state, the Alligator noted.
The center includes officers for LGBTQ+, black, Asian and Hispanic student groups, according to its website.
Those who do seek new jobs at the university within the next three months will have their interviews fast-tracked.
“The University of Florida is — and will always be — unwavering in our commitment to universal human dignity,” the memo read.
“As we educate students by thoughtfully engaging a wide range of ideas and views, we will continue to foster a community of trust and respect for every member of the Gator Nation.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who passed the law banning DEI in state schools, cheered the announcement on X. “Florida is where DEI goes to die,” he wrote.
**********************************************************
US Education Dept. opens probe into nonbinary teen Nex Benedict’s Oklahoma school district
The US Education Department is launching an investigation into the Oklahoma school district where a 16-year-old nonbinary student was beaten by bullies in a bathroom one day before dying.
The probe was opened Friday following multiple complaints filed by the Human Rights Campaign alleging that Owasso Public Schools had “failed to respond appropriately to sex-based harassment that may have contributed to the tragic death of Nex Benedict.”
Nex, who used he/them pronouns, died Feb. 8, the day after getting into a fight with a group of girls who allegedly smashed the teen’s head into the floor until they blacked out.
In a video taken after the fight, the sophomore told a school resource officer that the girls had been “antagonizing” them and their friends in the days before over the way they dressed — bullying that the school allegedly knew about but did not address.
The probe was opened Friday following multiple complaints filed by the Human Rights Campaign alleging that Owasso Public Schools had "failed to respond appropriately to sex-based harassment that may have contributed to the tragic death of Nex Benedict."
Okla. schools chief says death of nonbinary student Nex Benedict is being exploited by ‘radical leftists’
“Their death is a gut-wrenching tragedy that exposes the chilling reality of anti-transgender hatred spreading across the United States, and that the Department must investigate as part of Owasso High School’s failure to address harassment and discrimination on its campus beginning in the 2023 school year,” HRC President Kelley Robinson wrote in a plea last week.
“Schools have an obligation to provide equal educational opportunities, including safe and affirming learning environments for the well-being of all students. We are deeply concerned about the failure of Owasso High School to address documented instances of bullying, violence, and harassment against Nex.”
The federal DOE notified the HRC Friday that it would be opening an investigation into the complaint, and would be namely probing whether the school district “failed to appropriately respond to alleged harassment of students” within the requirements of Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act
Okla. schools chief says death of nonbinary student Nex Benedict is being exploited by ‘radical leftists’
Owasso Public Schools confirmed to The Post that they recieved a notice for the investigation Friday.
“The district is committed to cooperating with federal officials and believes the complaint submitted by HRC is not supported by the facts and is without merit,” the district said in a statement.
Although an official autopsy report has not been released, officials said preliminary results indicate Nex did not die from trauma, but have not yet ruled out whether the bathroom brawl may have contributed to their death.
From their hospital bed the day before their death, Nex recounted to an officer the events leading up to the brawl, stating they had squirted water on the group of girls because they were fed up with the bullying.
Friends and family of the teenager have since said the relentless tormenting Nex faced because of their gender identity was an open secret at the school that administrators and faculty allegedly turned a blind eye to.
Nex’s family has opened their own investigation into the teen’s death, stating they are seeking “to hold those responsible to account and to ensure it never happens again.”
The family said some facts about the case have not been released and were “troubling at least” – and called on “school, local, state and national officials to join forces to determine why this happened.”
******************************************************
My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
******************************************************