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30 September, 2022

"Woke" K-12 Schools on American Military Bases

Schools on American military bases, educating almost 70,000 children of service personnel, push the same anti-racism curriculum found in America’s most liberal school districts, with the goal of preparing these students for lives dedicated to a global citizenship meant to displace American citizenship and the American way of life.

The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) employs thousands of teachers, and its budget exceeds $3.2 billion. Reflecting Department-wide priorities, the 2022 DoDEA “Blueprint for Continuous Improvement” strategic plan was recently updated to emphasize “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as “Core Values” for the system.

As part of delivering on the Defense Department’s diversity agenda, the Pentagon sponsored an “Equity and Access” conference in 2021, where teachers from around the military system delivered talks about promoting queer theory, “antiracism,” global citizenship, and left-wing activism generally. Antiracism was the dominant topic of discussion, but we must understand that “antiracism” does not mean, “not being racist.” On the contrary, the new working definition of “antiracism”—given to us by Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi—means assuming that all American society is shot through with racism, that every white person is racist, and that denial of racism is evidence of racism.

Thanks to a whistleblower, the Claremont Institute received more than fifty presentations from the 2021 DoDEA conference. The content was, to put it gently, enlightening. Military base teachers instructed their colleagues how to insert antiracist ideology into their classrooms through a simple, two-step process. First, cultivate a sense of guilt and discomfort in students through subtle accusations. Second, replace the previous complacency and comfort with a commitment to activism and a sense of mission about restructuring society and the world. 

Trainers emphasized the first step of cultivating “critical conversations” and discomfort in more than a dozen presentations. They hued closely to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Let’s Talk” handbook, which describes critical conversations as discussions “about the ways that injustice affects our lives and our society” and explorations about “the relationship between identity and power, that traces the structures that privilege some at the expense of others, that helps students think through the actions they can take to create a more just, more equitable, world.”

Such conversations can begin in countless ways, but they must always take place within the antiracism framework. Injustice means disparities between group outcomes—disparities to the disadvantage of favored minorities. Blacks suffer from some health problems at rates higher than whites—so DoDEA has a presentation on health equity—“We All Have Shoes: But Do They Fit? Health Education Equity.” In “Be Well Do Well,” a presenter emphasizes questions like “what aspect of your racial or ethnic identity makes you the proudest?” and “Have you ever experienced a situation where your racial or ethnic identity seemed to contribute to a problem or an uncomfortable situation?”

Once students are saddled with white guilt, teachers must give them their marching orders. In “Combating 1-Sided Narratives (Decolonize the Curriculum),” AP language teacher Gregory DeJardin insists that teachers must become activists themselves, since nothing naturally bends toward justice “without us bending it.” Decolonizing the curriculum involves expunging old books like Dr. Seuss or Shakespeare from the curriculum and replacing them with antiracist children’s books. Equitable bookshelves must be created, including texts from disrupttexts.org and socialjusticebooks.org, which feature books such as Rise Up: The Art of Protest and What We Believe: A Black Lives Matter Principles Activity Book. The “‘REDI’ for Change: Antiracism in Action” talk emphasized urging white people to confess their crimes of privilege and silence. “I was reading Me and White Supremacy,” said one teacher, and what it teaches “about white silence, and I realized the damage I was doing by my white silence.”

Decolonizing the curriculum could involve changing what history class is about. A focus on inventors or discoverers, for instance, leaves students with only a white-American view of the world, according to one student, since so many of the greatest American inventors have been white men. Decolonization of the classroom should emphasize all the great black inventors or stop focusing on inventors altogether. Bending the arc of justice requires a definite change in emphasis, if not a series of lies, noble or otherwise.

When schools do not allow such books to be taught, trainers encouraged teachers to use their academic freedom to integrate radical readings. Teachers “do have some influence,” one trainer said, over the books they choose “for read-aloud . . . independent reading, book clubs, literature circles.”

All of this is done not simply for the good of equity, but to cultivate a new kind of student.  “Global citizenship education is a means to combat these ideas and practices,” one teacher maintains. Children will think their own country is fundamentally racist and in need of systemic change, but those kids can become attached to a higher ideal than the nation—an understanding of humanity as such.

It is unwise to undermine the attachment military children feel toward their country. It is unjust to put lies at the heart of their education. Yet our military educators are doing both. The country will soon reap the sad harvest of this planting season. 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/09/26/undermining_us_citizenship_at_k-12_schools_on_american_military_bases_148236.html

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Washington Post Urges Colleges To Offer ‘Climate Anxiety’ Counseling

On September 12, The Washington Post highlighted the “critical” need for what it called “climate stress counseling services” at universities across the country.

“It was hard to feel as though there was a ‘level of understanding of how dire the situation is,’” one student told the Post.

Oh Lord, here come the sob stories.

Eco-anxiety is commonly used to describe people’s concerns about ‘climate change’, but psychologists say it is better to use more general terms such as ‘climate stress’ and ‘climate distress’ — terms that encompass the array of feelings someone may have in response to climate change,” according to The Post.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

The Post indicated that these “counseling services” are to “validate” students’ feelings of helplessness and anxiety over climate change.

So yes, that means that taxpayer money that goes into public universities is paying for students to have their feelings over climate change “validated.”

What the frick is happening to our society!?

More lunacy indicated that these university support groups needed places to “manage despair and grief related to the future of the planet.”

At meetings, participants would choose an object in nature they resonate with — including leaves, flowers, twigs, stones, shells — sparking conversation and allowing students to connect to each other’s experiences.

To take it a step further, the Post indicated that “experts” suggested that counselors seek special training to help people with “eco-anxiety” as it takes a special type of psycho to think that people need therapy over ‘climate change’.

The Washington Post not only published this dumb story on its website but even spent money printing it out for the September 16 edition of the paper.

Sure, the climate may be experiencing some changes but dwelling on it and having “support groups” to talk about twigs, flowers and stones is not going to do anything except validate stupid feelings.

https://principia-scientific.com/washington-post-urges-colleges-to-offer-climate-anxiety-counseling/

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Arizona Points the Way to Greater Education Freedom

It’s vitally important for America that states up their game in public education, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said during an appearance on “The Kevin Roberts Show.”  

In an interview on Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ podcast, the two-term Republican governor began a discussion of education policy and school choice in Arizona by acknowledging the problems faced by the nation in K-12 schools. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

To set an example, Ducey said, he aimed to put Arizona at the forefront of innovation by giving parents more choices in their children’s education.  

“K-12 education, I believe, in so many places is failing. Across the country, it has been flatlined since the mid-’80s,” Ducey told Roberts. “In America, we very rarely solve a problem. We innovate out of these problems. And Arizona has tried to be on the leading edge of new ideas that not only provide choice for the parents, but also have results.” 

As The Daily Signal previously reported, Heritage’s new Education Freedom Report Card ranks Arizona No. 2 among all states and the District of Columbia in overall education freedom after considering categories such as school choice, transparency, regulatory freedom, and spending.  

On “The Kevin Roberts Show,” Ducey stressed the effectiveness of using government resources to empower parents to decide where is best to educate their children. He outlined the first steps he said would help improve the nation’s education system. 

“This idea of public education is about educating the public,” Ducey said. “We’ve seen in Arizona, and I think … if you can start with the idea of the charter schools—the public schools with private management where [schools] can hire the teachers—and you see these education entrepreneurs that come out of these great programs … and they want to open up a school.”  

Desire for parental choice in education has been on the rise, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, and Ducey expressed discontent with school choice being a partisan issue. Instead, he said, it has been driven by resilient parents who challenged the current system.  

“I don’t think this is a Republican issue,” Ducey said, adding: “That choice movement, if anyone’s seen [the 2010 documentary] “Waiting for Superman,” … this was a parent movement. And some of the first and greatest successes were in the toughest minority areas.” 

“The stories of Harlem in the documentary, to this day, bring a tear to your eye,” the Arizona governor said. “And when you see somebody that knows that their child’s entire future is based on a lottery … I think these are things we should reject in our country.” 

Roberts and Ducey also discussed how education should be part of cultivating good American citizens and provide a stepping stone to a better country. 

“This incredible idea that you can pursue happiness in this country, in security, in safety, is still the best idea put forward,” Ducey said. “And K-12 education is a part of continuing it. And when you talk about the liberal arts …  [it] is the formation of the full citizen … those foundations and grounding that also have that participation, is where the strength of the country, and any state, is.” 

In closing, Ducey reflected on his two terms as Arizona governor since 2015 and his pride in taking his state to “the gold standard of educational freedom.” (Because of Arizona’s term limit for its governor, he can’t run for a third four-year term.)

“It took all of eight years to get here,” Ducey said. “Persistence is part of it, and also a great team. I’ve really been blessed with a great staff … and on this one, we were able to get this over the finish line.” 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/23/arizona-points-the-way-to-greater-education-freedom-governor-says

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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29 September, 2022

US Reading and Math Scores Fell Sharply During Pandemic, New Data Reveals

Math scores for New York City students took a nosedive during the pandemic — with only 38% of kids in grades 3-8 being proficient in the subject last school year, according to results of statewide standardized tests released Wednesday.

That’s a dip of nearly 8 percentage points from 2019, before COVID-19 hit, when 46% of students made the grade, the highly-anticipated data put out by the city shows.

Meanwhile, kids in grades 3-5 — who were just learning how to read during the worst of pandemic-era school disruptions — saw a substantial drop in English scores, though results in that subject increased for those in 6th through 8th grade.

As a whole, less than half of 3rd through 8th graders were considered proficient in English last school year, the data shows.

The results offer a first look at how students in the nation’s largest public system are faring in the aftermath of school closures and the trauma induced by COVID-19.

“While results are complicated by the pandemic, the results reflect hard work by our students, families and educators during a difficult time,” said First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg in a statement.

“They also reflect opportunity gaps and outcomes in particular for Black and Hispanic students as well as students with disabilities and English-language learners that are unacceptable,” he said.

Roughly 36% and 37% of black and Hispanic students passed the English test, compared to 67% and 71% of their white and Asian peers. Similar patterns emerged in math, with 21% and 23% of black and Hispanic students passing, while 59% and 68% white and Asian schoolkids deemed proficient.

Students with disabilities and English-language learners showed some improvements in reading, but their pass rate declined in math. Fewer than 2 in 5 schoolkids with a disability passed either test, despite there being alternative assessments for kids with the most severe needs. Just 13% of current English learners showed proficiency in reading, and 15% in math.

Weisberg added that his focus “looking ahead” is for all students to graduate on track for careers, economic security and “a positive force for change.”

Officials suggested remote learning may have had a bigger impact on math scores than reading.

English results for kids in 6th and 7th grade, specifically, saw a big improvement since the last time tests were widely administered in 2019.

But scores of the youngest test takers — 3rd and 4th graders — have plummeted following school closures. English proficiency for 3rd graders dropped by 4 percentage points, while those in 4th grade saw a dip of 6 percentage points from 2019.

“These students would have been in 1st and 2nd grades in March 2020” when classes went remote, explained Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, “grades when children are mastering the relationships between sounds and letters, and building the foundational literacy skills that will shape their future academic trajectory.”

Research shows students who do not learn how to read by 3rd grade will struggle to master the basic skill later on.

Sweet added she was “encouraged” the current administration under Mayor Eric Adams has prioritized literacy, but warned of challenges ahead.

“Shifting what happens in thousands of classrooms on a day-to-day basis is no small task,” she said, “and the devil is truly in the details.”

The last time that a majority of students sat for the state tests, in 2019, more than half of city schoolkids still couldn’t handle basic math or English, even while scores ticked up slightly. Only 47.4% in grades 3-8 passed the English language arts exams, and 45.6% the math. The English proficiency rate improved 0.7% from the year before and math scores went up by 2.9%.

Roughly 80% of local kids did not take the state exams in the 2020-21 school year, when students who were mostly learning remotely had to opt into the tests. 

Last school year, more than 10% of all public school kids opted out of one or both tests, compared to 4% in 2019. Though in-person learning had resumed full time, roughly 40% of city students were regularly absent from school.

“Chronic absenteeism, which is not obvious in the scores, is a hidden dimension,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education law and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.“Those kids are disproportionately represented in that 10% who didn’t even take the test.”

Bloomfield suggested there could be challenges to interpreting the city data without having the results for the state as a whole, especially when it comes to the disparity in reading scores by grade.

“When you see what looks like a pretty clear division between the lower grades and higher grades, it may be an artifact of the test. We won’t know until we see statewide test scores come out — to see whether there’s been an overall pattern, or if this is unique to New York City,” he said.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/28/nyc-students-took-hit-in-math-gained-in-english-during-covid/

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State data offer further proof that school lockdowns were a disaster for NYC kids

Lockdowns set New York City’s public-school kids back big-time, state test data just confirmed — fresh proof that the COVID-phobic teachers union put the children’s interests last.

Math scores for kids in Grades 3-8 took a nosedive — with only 38% of kids being proficient. That was a drop of nearly 8 percentage points from 2019.

Reading scores dropped in grades 3-5, but rose in grades 6-8 (though the latter figure may well reflect a dumbed-down exam, since it cuts against the national trend). And overall, less than half the kids tested as proficient in reading.

Plus, the number of city kids taking the tests was down noticeably, even allowing for lower enrollment. Since opt-outs tend to be lower-scoring, that suggests the real picture is even more grim.

Kudos to Schools Chancellor David Banks for getting the basic facts straight: “No matter what the latest test results tell you, I can tell you the system is broken in far too many ways. We are trying to create a new way forward.”

The State Education Department, meanwhile, is trying to hide the bad news. It sent the test scores to school districts statewide in mid-August, but banned public release of the info until now — and still refuses to release easy-to-compare data for the whole state. Historically, the public always got the full picture in August.

This, after SED cancelled the exams in the pandemic’s first year and made them completely optional in the second. Nor does it have any real excuse for keeping so much info under wraps now.

The obvious conclusion: Unlike Banks, the folks in charge of state education policy don’t want parents realizing the bad news, at least until after Election Day.

New Yorkers should be asking why more than half of the city’s public-school kids aren’t proficient in English or Math, despite record funding for education. Banks, to his great credit, knows that the system is a mess and that more money isn’t the answer. He’s intent on holding bureaucrats, principals and teachers accountable.

But SED, controlled by Democrats utterly beholden to teachers unions, has the opposite agenda: It wants ever-more spending and ever-less accountability.

The question is whether the special interests can succeed in stopping Banks from delivering the change the city’s kids so desperately need.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/28/state-data-offer-further-proof-that-school-lockdowns-were-a-disaster-for-kids/

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Alliance Defending Freedom to argue Connecticut policy harms girls' sports, is 'clear violation of Title IX'

Oral arguments are set to begin Thursday in a case involving four female athletes who challenged a Connecticut policy that allows males who identify as female to compete in girls’ athletic events.

Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing track athletes Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, Chelsea Mitchell, and Ashley Nicoletti in Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools, said in a press release ahead of arguments that the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s policy resulted in males who identify as female "consistently depriving" the women of honors and opportunities to compete at elite levels. The group argues, for instance, that the young women were denied medals and/or advancement opportunities. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit on April 25, 2021, but the plaintiffs have appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

"What we're arguing before the court tomorrow at the Second Circuit is that the court should allow this case to move forward, that girls should be able to make their case in court and demonstrate that males coming in and dominating girls' sports is a clear violation of Title IX," ADF Senior Counsel Christiana Kiefer told Fox News Digital.

The ACLU is among those defending Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, two transgender student athletes who have since graduated from Connecticut high schools. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny dismissed the lawsuit in April on procedural grounds, saying in the ruling that there was no dispute to resolve because the two transgender athletes have graduated, and the plaintiffs could not identify other female transgender athletes.

ACLU of Connecticut didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

"We think everyone is protected under Title IX on the same basis, and that's based on their biological sex," Kiefer continued. "The whole reason that we have women's sports as a separate category is because there are actual physical differences between males and females. Science shows that there's anywhere from a 10 to a 50% performance advantage that males have over their female counterparts. So, if we want a future where girls like my clients, Selina, Chelsea, Alanna can continue to compete to be the best that they can to earn college scholarships, to showcase their talents, then we have to protect the integrity of women's sports."

"Males will always have inherent physical advantages over comparably talented and trained girls; Title IX’s whole purpose was to ensure that girls had equal athletic opportunities to compete—and win—in girls’ sports events," ADF Senior Counsel Roger Brooks, who will be arguing before the court on behalf of the female athletes in Thursday's oral arguments said in a press release. "And when our laws and policies fail to recognize the real physical differences between males and females, women and girls bear the brunt of the harm. It’s our hope that the 2nd Circuit will give the young women we represent the right to pursue their case and put women’s sports back on a level playing field."

The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference declined to comment ahead of the hearing when Fox News Digital reached out. 

On the 50th anniversary of Title IX, a federal civil rights law established in 1972 designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics, in July, President Biden unveiled new draft rules that sparked the fury of many parents for how the new proposals would expand the definition of sex.

The proposed regulations would sweep gender identity into the law’s protections, "strengthen[ing] protections for LGBTQIA+ students who face discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity," according to the Department of Education. 

Should the draft rules become law, Kiefer predicted it would have a "devastating impact" on female athletes.

Other female athletes have spoken out against policies they've argued are unfair to women's sports. Notably, former All-American University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines has blasted policies allowing Lia Thomas, a former transgender athlete for the University of Pennsylvania, to compete against her in last year's NCAA tournaments.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/alliance-defending-freedom-argue-connecticut-policy-harms-girls-sports-clear-violation-title-ix

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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28 September, 2022

San Francisco teachers: Don’t go into teaching in California, it doesn’t pay

Low salaries and steep housing costs have priced some teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area out of their school districts, forcing them to face long commutes, two local educators told Fox News.

"I don't encourage any young people to go into teaching right now," Mindy Arndt, a South Bay kindergarten teacher, told Fox News. "I do not feel that California places a premium on their teachers." 

Heidi Herschbach, a second-grade teacher said: "California does not value teachers enough."

"I don't know, honestly, if I would get into teaching now," she continued. "Financially it's so much more difficult."

The San Jose metro area in the South Bay Area has a median existing-home sales price of $1.9 million, making it the most expensive metro area in the country, according to the National Association of Realtors. San Francisco has the second most expensive market at $1.55 million.

The median sold price for a single-family home in Santa Clara County, where Arndt and Herschbach teach, is $1.65 million, according to the California Association of Realtors. 

"California is getting more expensive," Herschbach said. "The median home price is so high."

"We already know that gas prices and food prices are going up, rent still is very, very high for people," she continued. "It's hard to live." 

Arndt agreed. "A teacher's salary is not going to be able to afford you housing in the Bay Area," she told Fox News. 

The average salary for a teacher in the San Jose school district where Arndt and Herschbach work is $88,000, while the average salary for a teacher in the nearby San Jose Unified School District is $81,000, according to the California Department of Education.  "I could not afford to live in my school district," Arndt, who lives on a single income, said.

Herschbach inherited her family home, allowing her to live in San Jose. But Arndt told Fox News she lives in neighboring Santa Cruz County and commutes for nearly an hour to her school in San Jose because of the cheaper home prices.

"People tend to have to find communities farther and farther away from where they work, where they can afford to either pay rent or hopefully, you know, purchase a home," she Arndt.

To combat teacher housing issues, the Milpitas Unified School District sent a message to South Bay Area parents asking them to open their homes and spare rooms for teachers to rent.

Milpitas teacher salaries start at $67,000 and top off at $110,000, according to the school district. Rising living costs are a main issue in hiring and retaining teachers the school district's superintendent, Cheryl Jordan, told the Daily Mail. 

'We've lost out on some employees that we tried to recruit because once they see how much it costs to live here, they determine that it's just not possible," Jordan said.

Nationally, about 300,000 public school teachers and staff have left the field between February 2020 and May 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"I don't think that there is really an understanding for what teachers are doing in 2022 and the scope of our job and the amount of energy and time," Arndt told Fox News.

Teaching is getting more complex every year, and the profession took on new responsibilities after the pandemic, both teachers said. Every year, more students need speech and occupational therapy as well as academic counseling and individual education plans, adding more to teachers' plates, according to Arndt. 

"I think there's parents that appreciate us," she told Fox News. "I think there's some administrators that appreciate us."

"I do not feel appreciated" by the state of California, Arndt said.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-francisco-teachers-dont-go-teaching-california-doesnt-pay

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Report card on big labor unions show significant loss of teacher union membership since 2018

A 50-state report card on Big Labor shows how labor unions have lost a significant amount of members over the past couple of years.

Per a report on Worker Freedom in the State sent exclusively to Fox News Digital from the Commonwealth Foundation, the big four national government unions saw legislative victories in state legislatures and courts, yet saw a net drop of nearly 219,000 union members between 2017 and 2021. 

The Worker Freedom in the State report card shows each state's progress in breaking away from labor union control. 

The National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) were among the four big unions that lost over lost 200,000 members since 2018.  

The membership loss was felt since Janus v. American Federation of States, a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled mandatory public union agency fees for nonmembers were unconstitutional.

Rebecca Friedrichs, the lead plaintiff of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which challenged the constitutionality of mandatory dues, told Fox News Digital that "the union stranglehold on government workers and teachers is fueled by the same politicians that labor leaders spend millions of dollars to elect."

The three-decade California teacher went on to say that, "Even after the Supreme Court recognized our rights, unions continue to receive privileges like automatic paycheck deductions and easy access to employees because of the influence they gain through campaign donations. Collective bargaining for government unions pits labor leaders and teachers against taxpayers, parents, and students. Reigning in the power and control government unions exert on education will improve teacher quality, student outcomes, and restore the rights of parents to take charge of their child's future."

After the Janus ruling, the NEA lost 87,774 fee-paying members and the AFT lost 82,713. The general drop in membership of the NEA was 84, 980 and the AFT was 39, 773.

The Commonwealth Foundation Executive Vice President Jennifer Stefano told Fox News Digital that "even with the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling, government union labor executives and their allies in government are not going to make it easy for public servants to break free of union control."

"Union executives have transferred vast sums of money from workers’ wages to politicians who create roadblocks to worker freedom," she continued. "To ensure that the promise of Janus is realized, lawmakers across the country must stand up to ensure that every civil servant has the right to choose whether or not to be associated with a union – they should not be forced to join a union or fund their political agendas."

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten praised the deal as a "game-changer for teachers and families drowning in an ocean of online dishonesty."

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten praised the deal as a "game-changer for teachers and families drowning in an ocean of online dishonesty." (REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo)

AFT and the National Education Association were blasted last year after it was discovered the powerful teachers unions had corresponded with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ahead of school reopening guidance, which appeared to result in a slow walking of a return to in-person instruction. The CDC appeared to use the unions' suggestions word-for-word in more than one instance in the final text of the CDC document.  

The AFT defended the correspondence, saying it was routine and that it also worked closely with the Trump administration. The AFT represents 1.7 million educators, healthcare professionals and public employees who spent the last 14 months serving on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. So naturally, we have been in regular touch with the agencies setting policy that affect their work and lives, including the CDC," AFT spokeswoman Oriana Korin said.   

McKinsey & Company research examined the effects of the pandemic on the 2020-21 school year and found that students were on average five months behind on math and four months behind in reading. For schools with largely minority populations, students fell six months behind in math and five to six months behind in reading.      

The closures have also exacerbated a mental health crisis among young people often forced to isolate from their peers, experts have agreed

https://www.foxnews.com/media/report-card-big-labor-unions-show-significant-loss-teacher-union-membership-since-2018

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Columbia students react to their college being ranked worst for free speech on campus

Columbia University students shared mixed reactions to their college ranking last for free speech on campus, with some expressing confusion while also shunning hate speech.  "I think everyone here is very open-minded, and so I'm not really sure where that's coming from," one student told Fox News.

However, Arianna, a senior at the Ivy League school, said, "Of course people think they can't say things. I think people think they might be judged by the majority."

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) ranked Columbia last in its third annual College Free Speech Rankings, which surveyed nearly 45,000 students from more than 200 colleges. The Ivy League university scored a 9.91 out of 100.

"I am surprised by that result," Astrid, a senior, told Fox News. "I don't think that I've personally experienced or witnessed the suppression of free speech at Columbia."

"I think that there is definitely a homogenous point of view at school, but I don't think that opposing points of view are necessarily suppressed either," she continued.

But Astrid added that "hate speech should definitely at least be monitored" on campus.

Numerous other students Fox News spoke with similarly considered Columbia open-minded and tolerant but said hate speech should not be allowed.

"Hate speech, that's not good to be hearing," one girl said. "But I think everything else, as long as it's like furthering ideas, that's good to talk about."

A freshman, Aarush, told Fox News, "I've heard some people with certain political views might not be able to express their opinions because it might be perceived as offensive."

He also said hate speech is unacceptable, that "obviously you can say whatever you want, like, physically, but there's going to be social repercussions."

"People should just be more careful about what they say," he added.

FIRE — a nonpartisan free speech advocacy group — used seven components in its scoring system, including openness to discussing challenging topics on campus, tolerance for controversial liberal and conservative speakers, and comfort expressing ideas and protest acceptability.

A senior, Sam, told Fox News that political issues are often taboo to discuss on campus, "Especially if you're not leaning left — can't say a word about that."

FIRE researchers found that only 27% of Columbia’s students don't believe it's ever acceptable to shout down a speaker to silence them. They also reported that there are roughly 6.8 liberal students for every conservative student on campus.

"You do have to walk on eggshells a bit because you don't want to offend anybody," Freshman Rosnell told Fox News. "If you do kind of misstep, people aren't really as forgiving as you would like them to be."

Similarly, Sam said the campus is "very averse to ideas that go against the grain."

"I’ve certainly seen people get trashed online; or in class, they’ll say something, and it will come up after class," he added. "Makes people afraid to speak."

The FIRE study found that 63% of students surveyed reported feeling worry over damaging their reputation based on someone else misunderstanding them, and 22% said they often self-censor.

Researchers also found that about three out of every five students reported that they would be uncomfortable "publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic or expressing an unpopular opinion to their peers on a social media accounts tied to their name."

https://www.foxnews.com/us/columbia-students-react-college-ranked-worst-free-speech-campus

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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27 September, 2022

Is Tenure Really Dying?

Throughout the United States, several stories have emerged about politicians and organizations interested in ending the institution of tenure in higher education. In Florida, steps have been taken to review the work of tenured faculty. In Texas, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has articulated a desire to do the same.

But it’s not just politicians. Emporia State University recently submitted a plan to restructure which would allow the firing of all employees, including tenured professors, with 30 days notice.

Even states with no direct legislative opposition to tenure, like California, have seen a decline in the density of tenured professors.

Data by the American Association of University professors indicates a decline in tenure track professors in percentage terms over the last few decades, though it is important to note that part of the decline is caused by the rise of community and for-profit colleges.

Nonetheless, it appears that tenure as an institution is, to say the least, under scrutiny. The question is, why? But in order to understand a possible deterioration of tenure, it’s necessary to understand why tenure exists in the first place.

No Profit, More Problems

Tenure has always been a controversial system, and it’s easy to understand why. The trope of the lazy professor who can’t be fired is by no means unbelievable. This is the central argument that critics launch against the system of tenure. If professors have more job security, they’ll be less accountable to expectations.

On the other hand proponents often argue that tenure is necessary because it protects academic freedom. Without tenure, some claim that those with unpopular research agendas and findings will be fired.

While this argument for tenure may sound like a good argument for why there should be tenure, it’s an unconvincing argument for explaining why there is tenure.

Instead, economist Armen Alchian in a piece titled “Private Property and the Relative Cost of Tenure” (1977) offered a convincing argument for why tenure evolved for purely economic reasons.

Alchian starts with the observation that universities are almost always non-profit organizations. This is true of both public and private universities.

In for-profit business, when managers choose to punish or fire a productive employee for arbitrary reasons unrelated to productivity (such as discrimination, political disagreements, or personal antipathy), the company will take a hit to their bottom line. Firing a great worker due to personal disagreements means you’ll have to spend money to replace that worker, if you can find a replacement at all.

Managers who exercise their firing power arbitrarily like this won’t be around for long. Either owners will recognize this particular manager is costing them money, or competitors who don’t fire employees arbitrarily will be able to drive them out of business due to lower costs.

In a for-profit business, losses caused by such behavior will be unacceptable, because owners have the ability to take their money out of the business and redirect it to other uses. Business assets will be liquidated and money will go elsewhere. Thus, in a for-profit context, there is an incentive to avoid arbitrary firings.

The same is not true in the non-profit sector. As Alchian points out:

“[i]n a non-profit-seeking enterprise, the administrator must spend all the income in the business for salaries, materials, building, etc.”

The nature of a non-profit is there is no owner who is able to take their money out and redirect it to better uses.

Without an owner with this ability, there is less incentive to push an organization to be as efficient as possible from a pecuniary perspective. Instead, those within the organization will have more discretion to use resources in unproductive ways.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2022/09/22/tenure-dying/?omhide=true

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Biden’s $420B student loan boondoggle is blatantly illegal — but progressives don’t care

The Congressional Budget Office says the price tag for President Biden’s constitutionally illiterate, fiscally reckless, socially divisive student debt cancelation will exceed $420 billion. It’s staggering, it’s infuriating — and it’s illegal.

So how is Biden getting away with it?

The administration is hoping that by running out the clock and exploiting legal loopholes, it can spend this money — and likely much more — in a move that makes a mockery of the separation-of-powers principles on which our Constitution was established 245 years ago.

Not only that — it flouts Supreme Court precedent from just last term. Simply stated, the executive branch, including such components as the Department of Education, lack the authority to exercise powers of “vast economic and political significance” absent a clear delegation from Congress, as the Court put it on June 30 in West Virginia v. EPA.

Congress has granted no such authority. Nor would it. Biden’s gambit is a naked appeal to the Democrats’ woke-progressive base, who are happy to ignore Constitutional norms and turn him into a president-king.

To function properly, our system needs government officials who are committed to the Constitution’s division of authorities. A member of Congress must defend the legislative branch’s powers from usurpation by the executive — and that includes the power of the purse. Progressives, however, see the constitutional framework as a sclerotic inhibition on the achievement of leftist policy goals. Hence the dramatic expansion of the administrative state, which shifts power from politically accountable officeholders to insulated bureaucrats at an alphabet’s soup of federal agencies.

More to the point, the Framers would have expected that a president who dared usurp legislative power would find Congress responding by slashing the executive’s budget and, in egregious cases, filing articles of impeachment. Progressives, however, prioritize policy outcomes, not constitutional niceties.

When Democrats control the White House, congressional Democrats are a rubber-stamp for aggressive “pen and phone” executive governance. Only when there is a Republican president do Democrats rediscover congressional powers to check executive action — while they then rely on progressive judges to implement policy preferences of the radical left, distorting the Constitution as necessary.

For now, Democrats control both houses of Congress, so the courts are the only promising avenue for blocking Biden’s lawless plan. Here, though, the president is banking on the so-called standing doctrine. This requires a litigant challenging executive action to show more than that it is illegal or unfair.

An individual does not have standing to file a lawsuit unless a personal injury can be shown — harm that is concrete, unique (i.e., hurts the person in a way that is different from the hurt it causes society as a whole), and quantifiable in the sense that it can be redressed by judicial action.

Ironically, even as he ignores the Constitution, Biden expects the federal courts to be sticklers for standing rules. These would bar a lawsuit based on, say, the claim that as a taxpayers, we are harmed by an illegal decree that forces us to underwrite the costs of extinguished student debt.

Still, there are some legal challenges that should surmount standing hurdles. The Pacific Legal Foundation may have found a way around the usual bar to taxpayer standing. Several states tax loan forgiveness. On Tuesday, PLF challenged Biden’s edict on behalf of an Indiana man, Frank Garrison, who can show individual harm: Under a federal program rewarding public service, he would not have been taxed; under Biden’s order, though, he’ll be penalized.

Others with obvious claims include student-loan servicing companies, whose income is generated by collecting loan payments. As commentators have pointed out, they could be fearful of the Biden administration, the Education Department, and congressional Democrats, who have may ways of undermining their business. Still, it is unlikely that all of them will be unwilling to sue.

George Mason University’s Ilya Somin notes that academic institutions such as Hillsdale College, which refuse to accept federally funded student loans (due to the various strings attached to them), could sue based on the doctrine of “competitor standing” — i.e., Biden’s program puts them at a disadvantage in competing for students because loans at their schools will not be eligible for forgiveness.

Then there’s another constitutional anomaly to factor in: legislative standing. It would no doubt surprise the Framers, who made Congress the most powerful branch of government, that lawmakers would need the judiciary to do their heavy lifting.

But as traditional separation-of-powers has broken down, the courts have been more open to allowing Congress to sue the president for usurping its power. Such suits must be brought by Congress as an institution, not by individual lawmakers. That means there will be no such suit until Republicans gain control of either or both chambers.

As with many things, then, President Biden will not get his comeuppance on the student loan travesty until the voters have spoken in November. How much money will be out the door by then?

https://nypost.com/2022/09/27/bidens-420b-student-loan-boondoggle-is-blatantly-illegal-but-progressives-dont-care/

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Apparent Victory Rings Hollow for Group Opposing School Choice

The effort to block a massive expansion of education choice in Arizona appears to be running out of steam.

Beth Lewis, executive director of the anti-school choice group Save Our Schools Arizona put on her best game face Friday afternoon as she announced that her group has gathered enough signatures to put the recent expansion of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program on the ballot for voters to decide.

But it wasn’t hard to detect Lewis’ disappointment.

Earlier this summer, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a bill sponsored by Arizona House Majority Leader Ben Toma, R-Peoria, to expand eligibility for the state’s ESA policy to all 1.1 million of the state’s K-12 students.

That would mean all families could receive about $7,000 to use for educational expenses such as private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, homeschool curricula, online courses, special-needs therapy, and more.

The program is widely hailed as the gold standard of education choice, cementing Arizona’s first-place ranking for education choice in The Heritage Foundation’s new Education Freedom Report Card. Arizona placed second nationwide for education freedom overall (including rankings of education choice, academic transparency, regulatory freedom, and return), behind only Florida.

Lewis’ group acted quickly to contest the ESA expansion. Under Arizona state law, voters may refer recently enacted legislation to the ballot for voter approval if they gather the signatures of registered Arizona voters equal to at least 5% of all votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.

In 2018, Save Our Schools Arizona ran a similar referendum campaign, in which it gathered about 111,000 signatures—comfortably exceeding the threshold of about 75,000 valid voter signatures. This year, sending the issue to referendum required about 119,000 valid signatures.

“Valid” is the key word. Signatures may be invalid for a variety of reasons—for example, if the signer isn’t registered to vote in Arizona, the signature or address doesn’t match what’s on file, and so on.

According to Ballotpedia, the average signature validity rate of ballot initiative petitions such as this one is 75.3%. Even with an 80% validity rate, Save Our Schools would need about 150,000 signatures to meet the threshold.

But Save Our Schools turned in only about 142,000 signatures Friday afternoon. Unless the group achieved an unusually high validity rate—84%—it is likely that it has failed to obtain enough valid signatures.

It appears that Save Our Schools Arizona already sees the writing on the wall. Earlier this week, Lewis offered a litany of excuses to the left-wing media outlet Salon, complaining about the higher signature threshold relative to 2018, the 80-day window to collect signatures, and likely scrutiny from the legal system.

But Lewis reserved her greatest ire for the efforts of school choice groups such as the Goldwater Institute and the American Federation for Children, to protect the expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Salon reported:

‘They’re already signaling massive legal battles,’ said SOS Arizona director Beth Lewis, who said that petitions are frequently challenged over not just issues like duplicate signatures but also incomplete addresses for signees and smudged notary markings.

Lewis appeared especially aggravated by the pro-ESA grassroots activists who urged voters to decline to sign her group’s petitions. According to Salon, she accused these activists (without evidence) of being backed by the Goldwater Institute and American Federation for Children:

In the meantime, the final weeks of petition gathering have turned hostile, as groups backed by the Goldwater Institute and AFC have launched a massive ‘Decline to Sign’ campaign, holding protests at petition gathering spots, urging supporters to call businesses near petition sites to complain that ‘this is hurting our children’s education’ and videotaping both petition circulators and voters who sign, posting clips of those interactions online. In this atmosphere, petition volunteers say they’ve been surrounded, harassed and followed for blocks on end, while pro-ESA protesters say they’ve been insulted or sworn at by referendum supporters.

While Lewis said there wasn’t ‘any organized opposition’ to the [2018] petition process … this year, ‘It’s like a war zone at some of these events.’

The “Decline to Sign” protesters, who want to protect the ESA program, see it differently.

“Hundreds of volunteer parents from all different backgrounds have come together to peacefully hold signs and talk to voters about the ESA program,” said Taylor Hoffman, a mother of two from Gilbert, Arizona, including one child with special needs.

Hoffman described how she and fellow protesters have had great success in persuading voters not to sign the Save Our Schools petitions. In one case, they approached a father who was considering signing.

“We brought up the fact that Save Our Schools has a history of fighting against multiple school choice laws in Arizona, including the original ESA program that helps special-needs students,” Hoffman said. “The dad decided not to sign and walked away.”

One of the greatest hurdles for Save Our Schools Arizona is voter support for education choice, which has reached all-time highs in the wake of prolonged school shutdowns, Zoom school, and concerns over-politicized classrooms.

A Morning Consult poll released in August found that 66% of Arizonans and 75% of parents of school-age children said they support Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Meanwhile, only a third of voters said they believe that their local district schools are on the “right track.”

Save Our Schools’ assault on education choice at a time when parents need it most may have awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve.

“The grassroots movement of Decline to Sign not only slowed down SOS signature gatherers, but it created a community of like-minded folks that genuinely care about what is best for kids,” said Grant Botma, a father of three from Gilbert, Arizona. “No politics. No hidden agenda. Just parents fighting for what is best for their kids and kids in the community.”

The coming weeks certainly will see signature challenges and likely will see litigation. One thing is for certain: Arizona parents will be watching.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/23/apparent-victory-rings-hollow-for-group-opposing-school-choice

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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26 September, 2022

Teachers want to ‘save’ kids with social justice — try just teaching them

It’s become apparent that there are people who believe they must do everything possible to save us from ourselves. They’ve entered nearly every industry that allows them authority and have proceeded to anoint themselves as the arbiters of social change for your own good, or in the case of the educational system, for your children’s benefit.

Since the death of George Floyd, savior teachers have taken it upon themselves to force-feed the doctrine of social justice ad nauseam to the most innocent of audiences.

They’ll exclaim that these actions are for the benefit of your child’s future, but their priority will always be the upliftment of themselves because saviors never do anything without the purpose of receiving congratulatory acknowledgement.

This month, Harlem educator Billy Green was named New York State’s Teacher of the Year — but not without criticisms from parental advocates that he focuses far too much on “wokeness” over course work and basic skills. Indeed, one of his algebra lessons had little to do with math, but instead aimed to teach “the vocabulary of inequalities to empower my identities in America.”

Woke progressivism has become a framework for narcissistic saviors to mask themselves with, as it provides strategy, language and worldview that’s performative enough to garner the attention they seek without the substance to benefit anyone else.

When Green was discussing his working at lower performing schools, he’s quoted as saying “I chose to work at those schools, they didn’t choose me. They NEED me at the worst schools.”

You must possess an exceeding high amount of arrogance to believe that any employer needs you, implying failure without you. The savior always believes that their existence is empirical to your success and without them, you will inevitably fail.

When they don’t receive the recognition they feel they deserve, the savior will revert into the momentary victim as a defense mechanism. In Green’s case, him being Puerto Rican, black and gay is the reason that he believes the Department of Education doesn’t want him to supposedly “succeed” and why the mayor hasn’t said anything to him about his award.

Billy Green's New York State’s Teacher of the Year award. 

Green has said that his calling is to work at failing schools.

There are some jobs that require minimal ego even when you’re one of the best in the field; teaching is one of them. There is a reason a firefighter says “I was just doing my job” after rescuing someone in dire need: it’s because they are here to serve the public and serving the public should require no congratulatory measure.

The public would find it distasteful if the same firefighter complained that they had yet to receive an award or a phone call from the mayor for their heroism and it should be equally distasteful coming from a public-school teacher.

The more parents are becoming involved in their children’s education, the bigger the threat they’ve become to uncovering this population of savior teachers. Under the authority of a savior teacher, your children’s purpose is to inflate their ego to a satisfactory manner — educational results be damned.

Woke progressive saviors want your children to be subservient to the will of their ego and embrace being impaired as victims of American society. They’ll continue to flaunt their credentials and experience to make parents feel insecure about their involvement in their children’s education. But this strategy is running thin.

Our children don’t need saving, they need serving by teachers who understand they are aides for the public, not adversaries against it.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/23/teachers-want-to-save-kids-with-social-justice-try-just-teaching-them/

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UK: Fury at 'witch-hunt' sacking of math teacher who refused to use a teenage pupil's preferred pronouns without obtaining parental permission first

A maths teacher has been sacked after refusing to affirm a pupil’s gender change because he wanted to first obtain the permission of the student’s parents.

Kevin Lister is taking legal action against his employers for unfair dismissal, claiming he is a victim of a ‘witch-hunt’ for challenging ‘dangerous transgender ideology’.

He has been backed by campaigners as well as Tory MP Danny Kruger, who said he was ‘very concerned’ because recent government guidance says the teacher had been within his rights to apply caution.

Mr Lister, a teacher at a school in Swindon, had enjoyed an unblemished 18-year teaching career before he was dismissed for ‘gross misconduct’ this month. 

He had refused to refer to a biologically female student, aged 17, by their preferred male name and he/him pronouns in A-level lessons.

The 59-year-old teacher told The Mail on Sunday he was concerned that the ‘out-of-the-blue’ request amounted to social transition, which could put the teen on a pathway to irreversible medical treatments.

‘I wanted at least to make sure that my student had parental support and was making an informed decision,’ he said. ‘As a parent myself, I would have been furious if my child had taken this step and I hadn’t been told anything.’

Mr Lister said he was ‘gobsmacked’ when he approached the safeguarding officers and was told the parents would not be informed about the student’s wish to identify as male in the classroom. The school’s guide to supporting transitioning students states that staff should ‘maintain confidentiality and only tell others about the person’s trans status with their permission’.

Mr Lister said he then found himself in an ‘impossible position’: ‘I ended up pointing to her as politely as I could to avoid either dead-naming her or supporting transition without parental consent.’ A few weeks later the student wanted to enter a female maths Olympiad.

Mr Lister said: ‘I put the names of the students on the board who wanted to take part and I put her name up on the board as being a female’s name to enter a female maths competition.’ 

Earlier this year, Mr Lister discovered some students had made accusations of transphobia against him and he was suspended in February, pending an inquiry, and escorted off the school grounds.

A disciplinary hearing last month upheld three complaints, namely that he had ‘subjected a gender-transitioning student’ to ‘transphobic discrimination’ and ‘harassment’ and ‘refused to use’ their preferred name and he/him pronouns.

He was also told in a letter earlier this month by the school’s vice-principal that he had ‘degraded’ the student by pointing in class and he was ‘insensitive’ by writing the female name on the board relating to the Olympiad.

The letter, which announced his dismissal, added: ‘We acknowledge that you are entitled to your beliefs, however, it is my view that your treatment of [the student] violated his dignity.’

Mr Lister has refuted the allegations against him, saying he was simply trying to protect his student’s welfare. 

Last month the then Attorney General, Suella Braverman, said the law was clear that under-18s could not legally change their gender, meaning schools were under no legal obligation to address children by a new pronoun.

Mr Kruger, MP for Devizes, Wiltshire, said: ‘I am very concerned that a school agreed to affirm a child’s transgender identity without parental consent.’

A spokesman for the school said: ‘We are unable to comment.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11246431/Swindon-teacher-sacked-refusing-use-pupils-preferred-pronouns-without-parental-permission.html

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New Yorkers, facing poorly performing schools, need more choice

By Lee Zeldin

Every New York student deserves access to a quality education regardless of race, ethnicity, wealth or ZIP code. The reality, though, is poorly performing public schools, violence, pandemic policies, woke educators and curricula run wild have forced more and more parents to explore other options, such as charter, private or parochial schools and in some cases homeschooling.

To truly raise the bar, we must lift the antiquated cap on charter schools, implement tax credits for school choice and Education Savings Accounts, extend advanced and specialized academics, protect merit-based entry exams into specialized schools, expand technical training and so much more. The status quo just doesn’t cut it.

My twin teenage daughters are going to the same public high school I attended, and my wife Diana and I are very happy with the quality education they’re receiving. All New Yorkers aren’t so fortunate, and many have been forced to make hard decisions about their children’s education.

An example of how New York has failed many of our children is captured in a study comparing the quality of education in New York and Florida. Both states have roughly the same student population, but that’s where the similarities end.

Florida has a greater number of black, Hispanic and low-income students. It also spends far less: $9,986 per student versus $24,882 per student in New York. Testing of fourth-grade students in both states show very different results; Florida students of all backgrounds scored higher in math and reading, ranking near the top of the national scale, while New York ranked 40th and 28th respectively.

What a shocking gap when the Empire State spends 2½ times the tax dollars per student as Florida.

A primary option for many parents seeking a better education for their children has been charters: independently operated schools funded with your tax dollars. Yet Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democrats in Albany have stalled raising the cap on the number of charter schools around the state.

In August, New York City charter schools welcomed more than 145,000 students to 275 schools throughout the five boroughs. That’s roughly 15% of all city students receiving a public education. About 80% of these students come from economically disadvantaged families choosing charter schools because they felt traditional public schools simply weren’t educating their children.

The proof of success is in charter schools’ four-year high-school-graduation rates, which are four times that of local public schools. It’s quite remarkable the superior scores that charter-school students receive on standardized testing compared with their public-school peers. And it’s even more striking when you consider the cost per pupil is $17,626 versus roughly $28,000 in traditional New York City public schools.

While the solution might be found in a charter school, the problem is that demand far outweighs the number of available seats, leaving more than 50,000 students on waiting lists. This situation can only be remedied by lifting the cap on the number of charter, a cap that’s become obsolete with these schools’ proven success in New York City and state over the past two decades.

Some parents may feel that private or religious schools or even homeschooling are the right choice for their children. Many struggle to pay the tuition, or, in the case of homeschooling, one parent is forced to give up a full-time job so their children can receive a quality education. Already facing runaway inflation and skyrocketing taxes, these hardworking New Yorkers deserve relief in the form of tax credits, savings accounts and other reasonable options that will lessen the bite of tuition costs or homeschooling.

By providing true learning choices for our students and their parents, we’ll also create competition that will spur all schools and educators to provide a better education to remain viable.

The greatest asset we have is our children; they are the future of the Empire State and deserve the best education possible.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/25/new-yorkers-facing-poorly-performing-schools-need-more-choice/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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25 September, 2022

Virginia Overhauls Transgender Student Policies on Pronouns, Bathrooms, and Sports

Virginia took a sharp turn on transgender student policies with new guidelines released on Sept. 16.

According to the new guidelines, public schools cannot affirm a student’s gender without parents’ written requests. In addition, bathroom and locker room use is to be based on students’ sex, defined as the biological sex at birth. Student sports participation should be sex-based as well unless federal laws require otherwise.

The new policies are is a complete reversal of the previous guidelines, which define transgender as a student’s “self-identifying term.” Those rules, which took effect in March 2021 under former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, ask schools to consider not disclosing a student’s gender identity to the parents “if a student is not ready or able to safely share” it with their family.

The new policies have common ground with the previous rules with regard to ensuring a safe learning environment without bullying, discrimination, or harassment for students. It lists the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution as primary evidence.

The new guidelines will enter a 30-day public comment period around Sept. 26 and take effect after the state superintendent approves the final version.

“The 2022 model policy posted delivers on the governor’s commitment to preserving parental rights and upholding the dignity and respect of all public school students,” Macaulay Porter, spokesperson for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

“It is not under a school’s or the government’s purview to impose a set of particular ideological beliefs on all students. Key decisions rest, first and foremost, with the parents.

“The previous policies implemented under the Northam Administration did not uphold constitutional principles and parental rights, and will be replaced.”

Virginia Del. Marcus Simon (D-Fairfax), who introduced the state House bill that became a 2020 law and the basis of the 2021 rules, said in a tweet on Sept. 16: “These new policies are cruel and not at all evidence-based. … If enacted, these policies will harm Virginia children. Stop bullying kids to score political points.”

Loudoun County-based parental rights group Fight for Schools applauded the new policy. “Governor Youngkin promised to put parents back in charge of the care, upbringing, and education of their children. Today, he delivered—big time,” said Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools, in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

He also had something to say to the school boards, especially his own in Loudoun County: “To the school boards in Virginia, such as the one in Loudoun County, you spent last year telling parents that they had to pass radical anti-parent, transgender policies to match the VDOE’s [Virginia Department of Education] model policy—now you will have to revise those policies based on the law and your own words. So get to work.”

Clint Thomas, a father to Loudoun County schoolchildren, echoed Fight for Schools’ sentiment. He has two daughters, both studying in Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS). Caroline, the elder daughter, is a high school senior and was on the school’s soccer team.

He’s also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against LCPS administrators and school board members, filed by America First Legal (AFL), a nonprofit conservative legal group, on his and 10 other parents’ behalf. At the end of June, the defendants were sued for “promoting secret gender transitions” and “forcing children to change in locker rooms with members of the opposite sex,” according to AFL.

“Virginia is returning to a focus on parents’ rights in education with its 2022 revision to model policies,” Thomas told The Epoch Times. “It feels so good as a father of children in LCPS to know our state Department of Education is returning to sanity when it comes to the basic rights of girls and women in our schools and athletic competitions.”

It’s unclear whether school districts will face budgetary consequences if they don’t follow the requirements. Porter didn’t respond to a question by The Epoch Times about the potential ramifications of noncompliance.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/virginia-overhauls-transgender-student-policies-on-pronouns-bathrooms-and-sports_4737553.html

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Boston school BANS gay pride flags and BLM livery from its classrooms to 'avoid disruption' and to foster an inclusive learning environment

School officials have barred a public high school in Massachusetts from displaying gay pride and Black Lives Matter flags in classrooms.

Stoughton High School staff were instructed during a faculty meeting on September 14 to not display the flags along with the police officer flag, known as the Thin Blue Line flag, a staff member told The Boston Globe. 

'We need to avoid placing items in the classroom that can cause disruption or distraction,' Administrative Principle Juliette Miller said in an e-mail to staff. 'We are an inclusive environment and want to maintain that inclusivity.' 

While the flags are prohibited, LGBTQ+ stickers will be distributed and placed on classroom doors. The stickers will not have the words 'Diversity, Equity Inclusion' to avoid 'politically charged' lingo. 

Miller didn't immediately comment on the matter.

An unidentified staff member complained about the recent order from the school and worries it will create a less 'welcoming' and 'warm' environment for students. 

'Pride flags help LGBTQIA+ students feel safe and welcomed in school. Taking down Pride flags could hurt students' well-being and make them feel like they have nowhere to run,' the staff member told The Boston Globe. 

'Having a rainbow or BLM flag in our rooms isn't pushing your beliefs on someone or displaying any political views. It is just saying, "Hey, you're welcome here, and we support you."' 

Some people on social media were infuriated about the school's decision. 'So much for inclusivity,' one person wrote. 'Glad my child is educated outside of our town.' 

Another added, 'They should be trying to teach current events, not sweep them under the carpet.'

'History loves to repeat itself,' another said. 

Meanwhile, others praised the school's decision and said they should stick to teaching 'math' and 'english.' 'Smart move by your principal - political flags have no business in ANY public school,' one person wrote.

Another added: 'Let's go back to assuming all are welcome. I don't see separate areas for race or gender in schools, and I'm pretty sure that did exist before. Just assume it's 2022 and you're accepted until somebody gives you a reason to think different.' 

'It’s insane and I don’t use that term lightly, it’s actually insane to think a flag or sticker on a door is going to create this magical inclusive environment.'

'Over the last couple of years, teachers have been asked to remove potentially controversial items from their classrooms. This is part of a consistent effort by the district to limit potential disruptions to students’ learning so that our students and faculty can focus on educational lessons inside the classroom,' Raab told Fox News. 

He added: 'Lessons and conversations around complex topics are an important part of the education our students receive, and I believe they can and show be addressed within the structured framework of age-appropriate lessons.'  

Raab didn't immediately respond to DailyMail.com for a comment. 

Stoughton High School joins the various schools that have banned flags and symbols supporting police, BLM, and MAGA. 

Kettle Moraine School Board in Wisconsin voted in August to continue the prohibition of the political displays. 

The issue was raised by right-leaning school board member Kelly Brown, who has a son in the district, complained about the influence the banners were having on her son.

To strike a compromise, Superintendent Stephen Plum said that the district would interpret the employee conduct guidelines to ban all such messaging.

School board president Gary Vose said that the interpretation was meant to support all students and prevent bullying.

'Having Pride flags in some classrooms and not in others -and maybe it's not the intent - could send the message that some staff members want to support students with various lifestyle choices and others do not,' he said at the meeting.

We don't want that in Kettle Marine. We want all staff members to support all students. We don't want to have conflict between students or conflict between staff members. We should not be allowing any bullying for any reason.'

More than 13,000 people have signed an online petition opposing the Kettle Moraine policy that was launched by two local high school students, Bethany Provan and Brit Farrar.

'Having a rainbow flag in your room isn't pushing your beliefs on someone,' Provan told WITI-TV. 'It's just saying, 'Hey, you're welcome here, and we support you.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11236017/Boston-school-BANS-gay-pride-flags-BLM-livery-classrooms-avoid-disruption.html

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Chicago High School to Enforce Race-Based Grading System

<i>Racial thinking has always been part of the Leftist mentality</i>

A high school in Chicago is attempting to justify implementing a race-based grading system “to adjust classroom grading scales to account for skin color or ethnicity of its students.”

Advocates for the racist system claim it is necessary because “traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities."

The new system will hold students accountable (or not accountable) for missing classes, misbehaving, or failing to turn in assignments based on the color of their skin.

The West Cook News reports:

Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF) administrators will require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students.

School board members discussed the plan called “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading” at a meeting on May 26, presented by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza.

[The plan] calls for what OPRF leaders describe as “competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book…encouraging and rewarding growth over time.” Teachers are being instructed how to measure student  “growth” while keeping the school leaders’ political ideology in mind.

“Teachers and administrators at OPRFHS will continue the process necessary to make grading improvements that reflect our core beliefs,” reads the plan, which is set to kick off in the fall of 2023.

https://thinkamericana.com/report-chicago-high-school-to-enforce-race-based-grading-system/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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23 September, 2022

America’s Education Crisis Is a National Security Threat

Since the end of World War II, the world’s population has not only gotten vastly bigger; it has also become vastly more educated. In nearly every country on earth, the total number of years that citizens have attended school has grown faster than the population itself, and the number of college degrees conferred has grown even faster. Although population growth is now slowing almost everywhere (and depopulation is an emerging reality for some countries), the overall pace of educational expansion will remain much faster than natural population growth as far into the future as a demographer’s eye can see.

Education is a crucial component of human capital and, by extension, of national might. A better-educated citizenry means a more productive economy and thus greater military potential. But because the educational explosion of the last 70 years has been uneven—some countries have made greater strides than others, and the pace of progress has varied over time—this dramatic transformation hasn’t just increased the overall size of the global economy. It has also shifted the distribution of economic potential among countries, including great powers. 

Comparatively speaking, Western nations, including the United States, have been the biggest losers in this great reshuffling of educational and economic heft, as we detail in a recent report for the American Enterprise Institute. During the Cold War, the United States was the uncontested education superpower; Americans enjoyed the world’s highest levels of educational attainment and accounted for far more of the world’s highly educated workforce than any other country. But that epoch is now history. An increasing number of countries are overtaking the United States in educational attainment, when measured by mean years of schooling, and it will soon cede its first-place ranking in college-educated workers to China. Sometime in the next two decades, India may also surpass the United States in total numbers of working-age men and women with higher education.

Such changes reflect major shifts in the international environment that have occurred over the past generation and foreshadow still others that will shape the world order in the decades ahead. Whether the United States can weather these changes without forfeiting its position of economic and military dominance will depend in part on its ability to recognize and address the ominous stagnation in its classrooms and lecture halls. That will require thinking creatively about partnerships and alliances with tomorrow’s centers of educational excellence—whether in Asia or in the United States’ backyard—and getting serious about reversing the unwelcome trends in U.S. education that policymakers have overlooked for more than a generation.

SMARTER WORLD

Scholars and strategists have long understood that nations draw strength from their populations. Until recently, however, most have focused on head counts: numbers of people, broken down by age and sex, inhabiting different countries or alliances. But that simple approach makes little sense in a world where people from some countries have much greater economic potential than people from others. Switzerland has fewer residents than Burundi, for instance, but its GDP per capita is more than 90 times greater.

In an era when a single person’s productivity in one country can be greater than that of 90 people in another, human productivity will increasingly affect the global balance of power. Productivity, in turn, is driven primarily by improvements in human capital—in health, knowledge, skills, and other intrinsically human factors. Rapid but sharply differential increases in human capital can open wide productivity gaps between countries, including between great powers, in just a few decades. One of the most important ingredients in human capital is education: more specifically, the sheer quantity of schooling received by national populations. Overwhelming evidence shows that more schooling means more productive potential at the national level, regardless of how high or low a nation’s baseline level of educational attainment.

Two projects have sought to chart the postwar educational explosion around the globe, and their findings offer clues about its effect on the international balance of power: the Human Capital Data Explorer, published by the Vienna-based Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Human Capital, and the Barro-Lee Educational Attainment Dataset, run by Harvard University’s Robert Barro and Korea University’s Jong-Wha Lee. The Wittgenstein research provides estimates of the world’s overall demographic and educational profile from 1950 to 2020, with projections up to 2100, while Barro and Lee’s work offers educational attainment estimates for 146 countries from 1950 to 2040. The assessments of these two projects are close but not identical, and we rely on data from both.

Educational progress over the last 70 years has been profound. The global share of adults who have received no schooling dropped from about 45 percent in 1950 to about 13 percent in 2020, and the Wittgenstein Centre projects that that figure could fall to eight percent by 2040. Between 1950 and 2020, the mean years of schooling for people aged 15 and older worldwide steadily rose from 3.7 years to 8.8 years—almost a two-and-a-half-fold increase. Around the world, average levels of adult schooling in 2020 were nearly five and a half years above what they were in 1950. That amounts to a long-term pace of improvement of over 0.7 years per decade, a rate that is projected to continue at a slightly slower tempo over the next 20 years.

These advances have occurred despite significant headwinds created by the shifting composition of global population. In 1950, the world’s less developed regions—where educational attainment remains lowest—accounted for two-thirds of the global population; today they account for five-sixths of the world’s population and virtually all the population growth projected for the next two decades. The countries with the most rapidly increasing populations tend to be those with the lowest baseline levels of schooling, meaning that their weight in the total global composition is steadily growing—and pulling down the global average for education.

Worldwide, the average level of educational attainment is now slightly above a completed grade-school education. 

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/america-education-crisis-national-security-threat

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How Teachers Are Secretly Taught Critical Race Theory

In 2018 the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District near Philadelphia signed a contract with Pacific Educational Group, a California-based consulting firm. According to the school district’s website, the partnership’s purpose was “to enhance the policies and practices around racial equity.” The district assured parents in an online update last summer that no “course, curriculum or program” in the district “teaches Critical Race Theory.”

Benjamin Auslander didn’t buy it. The parent of a high schooler in the district, he wanted to see the materials used to train teachers. Mr. Auslander, 54, made a formal document request but was denied. Officials told him the materials couldn’t be shared because they were protected by Pacific Educational Group’s copyright. His only option was to inspect them in person—no copies or photos allowed. “What are you trying to hide?” he asked school board members at a meeting in December.

Mr. Auslander accepted the district’s offer and in February went to inspect the documents in person. When he tried to record voice memos on his phone about what he was reading a district official called it a copyright violation. According to a subsequent complaint filed by Mr. Auslander in federal court, the official threatened him “with civil and criminal liability” if he kept recording. The official then ended the meeting.

In April, Mr. Auslander sued the district. His argument? The First Amendment protects his right to access information about officials’ public activities and issues of public debate without retaliation. Pacific Educational Group declined to defend its copyright claim, and in June the judge in the case vacated a confidentiality order on the training materials.

Our examination of those materials indicates that Tredyffrin-Easttown staff are being trained in critical race theory.

Documents emailed from 2019 to 2021 by Pacific Educational Group to district administrators in advance of various training seminars cite critical race theory explicitly. A rubric dated Feb. 4, 2020, encourages participants to “Deconstruct the Presence and role of Whiteness” in their lives. A March 17, 2020, presentation lists “aspects and assumptions of white culture” in the U.S. Some are negative, such as “win at all costs,” “wealth = worth,” “don’t show emotion,” and in reference to food, “bland is best.” Others are seemingly universal principles such as “cause-and-effect relationships,” “objective, rational, linear thinking,” and “plan for future.”

That presentation also spells out the “5 tenets of critical race theory” to “better understand the critical intersection of race and schooling.” One tenet is the “permanence of racism,” or the idea that “racism is endemic to all our institutions, systems and structures” in the U.S. Another is “whiteness as property.” The “critique of liberalism” tenet argues that “colorblindness,” “neutrality of the law” and the “myth of meritocracy” must be “deconstructed.”

These tenets aren’t presented as abstract notions for faculty to consider, but ideas they’re meant to apply. School staff’s ability to use “critical race theory . . . to inform racial equity leadership and analysis of school policies, practices and procedures” is considered a sign of the successful “internalization and application” of Pacific Educational Group’s framework. And a chart includes “Critical Race Theory” as a step toward “Equity/Anti-Racism School Transformation Action Planning.” A Feb. 3, 2021, seminar is even titled “Using Critical Race Theory to Transform Leadership and District.”

Brian Elias, an attorney representing the school district, told us via email that these materials “were for District leadership team training only.” He insisted that materials “were not designed to train for classroom teaching” but merely to help district leaders understand “what Critical Race Theory is.” He added that “none of the training designed for core classroom teachers included a discussion of critical race theory.”

Does that mean no Tredyffrin-Easttown teachers attended Pacific Educational Group training that discussed critical race theory? Mr. Elias refused to say.

Information on the district’s website seems to show that they did. A 2020 update on the district’s racial equity work declares that five to eight teachers from each “building” in the district would attend Site Equity Leadership Team, or E-Team, training. The material quoted above was marked to be included in E-Team training.

Perhaps districts like Tredyffrin-Easttown think they can shoo parents away by making a distinction between teacher training and curriculum. But what is the point of teacher training if not to inform teachers on how they should teach?

Teacher training is “where a lot of bad things actually happen,” says Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, a nonprofit advocacy group. She says the group’s tip line hears often from frustrated teachers forced to endure training in woke concepts. Records requests and whistleblowers have uncovered staff training, including in Loudoun County, Va., and Rhode Island, that push “antiracism” ideology.

Tredyffrin-Easttown is far from the only district contracting with teacher-training organizations like Pacific Educational Group. Lawmakers in some states are pushing—with little success—to require schools to post their classroom and teacher-training materials online. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a transparency bill in December. A former teacher and principal, Mr. Evers was Wisconsin’s elected superintendent of public instruction for a decade.

Mr. Auslander is still fighting in court to prove that the Tredyffrin-Easttown school district violated his rights by denying him access to the documents and allegedly threatening him with liability if he recorded what he saw. The district maintains that its actions were justified because of the copyright asserted by Pacific Educational Group at the time. If Mr. Auslander gets a favorable ruling, it may help protect Pennsylvania parents from similar stonewalling by educators. If Tredyffrin-Easttown continues to make a dubious distinction between teacher training and classroom instruction, more parents may start to wonder exactly what it is the district is trying to hide.

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/if-students-dont-learn-critical-race-theory-why-do-teachers-pacific-educational-group-school-board-administrators-students-class-11662150413

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Australia: Leftist crap taught even in an elite school

Freedom of speech is an essential element of a modern, functioning Western society. It allows us to express opinions and ideas without interference or threat of reprisal. When healthy debate is encouraged, ideas are tested and we invariably achieve a better outcome.

As an Independent secondary school student, I see this right increasingly threatened both by peers and the school institution itself. More and more we are made to conform to a single popular belief on various fronts.

I am a white male. Sadly for me, history class has become less of a lecture on the fascinating events, people, facts, or lessons learned and is instead a very public shaming for the actions of our white male predecessors.

Being labelled as ‘privileged’ or as a ‘white colonist’ is not uncommon. In fact, racism is often the theme of different subjects – from the books we study in our English class, to the units and topics we learn in our history classes.

While a strong understanding of this topic’s long and dark history is necessary, it should not be wielded as a weapon against a particular demographic of students.

We are taught ‘you cannot be racist toward white people’. I am sure the Jewish under Hitler, the Irish under English Lord Cromwell, and countless others over the years may not completely agree with this line of thought. Yet to make even a slight suggestion of this can result in a hostile response from classmates or even be detrimental to grades and reports issued by the school and its teachers.

Feminism is also regularly at the forefront of class discussion and is often unfortunately used to promote a victim mentality.

Open discussion about this topic is frequently suppressed by both peers and the school, resulting in many concepts being presented through a biased lens where men are typically depicted as villains.

An example is the gender pay gap. A quick Google search will show that in 1969, the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission ruled that women should receive equal pay to men for work of equal value. Mentioning this indisputable fact will often lead to the label ‘misogynist’.

As with racism, there is no denying that women have lacked opportunity and privilege in the past. The origins of feminism are well-founded and it is important to understand the history, acknowledge and learn from our mistakes, then move forward together as a single community. Continuing to promote a victim mentality, especially amongst young and developing minds, results in division and dangerous movements such as the #KillAllMen hashtag that has been recently trending on Twitter.

Gender and sexual orientation introduce further complexity to school communities.

I’m sorry, you’re bi? Oh, and you’re pan? And you are non-binary? My apologies, I have used the wrong pronouns. They/them? I see, and singular they for you, ze/zem for you, and it/them for you. Understood. Oh, and you’d like me to learn your flags together with your pronouns? Okay… I’ll do my very best to remember those, together with the sexual, gender, pronoun, and flag preferences of my 150 other classmates.

But with the utmost respect, there may be occasion where I stumble. No… No… I’m not homophobic, biphobic, transphobic or enbyphobic. I was raised to lead with empathy and treat all humans with dignity and respect regardless of their identity. It is just that my maths, physics, and history also need attention at the moment, and unfortunately there are only so many hours to learn in the day.

Schools should provide an environment where young aspiring minds can openly and freely debate controversial cultural and political issues and have the opportunity to do so even in a non-mainstream way. However, Independent secondary schools have sought to push a single narrative to the detriment of many students.

Is this an attempt by the school to appear more progressive?

Is it for the fear of being ‘cancelled’?

While I am fortunate and grateful for my educational opportunity, it is nonetheless concerning to see such basic and fundamental freedoms gradually stripped away through no fault of our own.

The school community has become divided into conservative and progressive extremes. In reality, the best ideas and solutions are typically found somewhere near the centre after healthy debate. These groups must collaborate and work together – like a football team in which conservative defenders rely on what has worked in the past to staunchly protect the goal while creative liberal attackers attempt to find new and innovative ways to score.

Those students that do not bend to a single popular belief become ‘white privileged, misogynistic, <insert-sexual-or-gender-orientation-here>-phobic’ in the mind of the school and in the eyes of their peers.

This leaves me wondering, are those now doing the labelling and marginalising any better than those they are targeting for historic misdemeanours?

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/whats-it-like-to-be-a-male-student-at-secondary-school

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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22 September, 2022

The Left Targets Youngkin’s Transgender Education Reform Prioritizing Parental Rights

Many on the Left appear appalled at the idea that parents should have the right to know and intervene if their children “identify” as the opposite sex or seek controversial transgender medical interventions that may irreversibly harm their bodies.  

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, on Friday announced a new model policy on students who identify as transgender in schools, prioritizing parental rights and upholding sex-based policies while directing the Virginia Department of Education to enforce federal and state laws protecting children from discrimination on the basis of gender identity.  

Youngkin’s policy reversed the directives issued under former Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, which mandated that schools adopt a pro-transgender stance and directed schools to keep parents in the dark if “a student is not ready or able to safely share with their family about their gender identity.”  

If parents or guardians know about a minor student’s transgender identity and disagree with it, the Northam guidelines positioned the school as the arbiter of such disagreements. 

The new Youngkin guidelines put parents in the driver’s seat. The model policy begins with the declaration: “Parents have the right to make decisions with respect to their children: Policies shall be drafted to safeguard parents’ rights with respect to their child, and to facilitate the exercise of those rights.” 

The new policy states that “schools shall respect parents’ values and beliefs,” and that parents have the right “to instill in and nurture values and beliefs for their own children and make decisions concerning their children’s education and upbringing in accordance with their customs, faith, and family culture.” 

The policy roots this squarely in the U.S. Constitution, key Supreme Court decisions, and Virginia law. 

The Youngkin policy states that “schools shall defer to parents to make the best decisions with respect to their children,” regarding health care, names, pronouns, counseling, and social transition at school. 

The new policy clarifies that students will participate in sex-segregated school programs according to their biological sex, rather than their stated gender identities, yet it allows for potential exceptions. “Single-user bathrooms and facilities should be made available in accessible areas and provided with appropriate signage, indicating accessibility for all students,” the policy states.  

While the policy states that when sports are segregated by biological sex, male students and female students will compete according to their sex, it makes exceptions for federal law. 

The policy also explicitly states that schools “should attempt to accommodate students with distinctive needs, including any student with a persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs from his or her sex.” 

The new model policy criticizes the Northam-era guidelines, saying they “disregarded the rights of parents and ignored other legal and constitutional principles that significantly impact how schools educate students, including transgender students.” The new policy cites the same law under which Northam’s administration created its guidelines. 

“This is about the right of parents to be involved in such important decisions and that all our students are treated with dignity,” Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter told The Daily Signal. “The law mandating that [the Virginia Department of Education] have a policy is cited, and the model policy is crafted to ensure local school boards who adopt it fully comply with all applicable federal and state laws. The ‘2022 Model Policies,’ designed to protect ‘the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools,’ allows for a 30-day comment period for Virginians to engage on its suggested content.”

Only 10% of school districts had adopted the Northam administration’s policies two years after Virginia law required them to adopt a policy on these issues, according to the Virginia Mercury.

The new guidelines make a great deal of sense. While transgender activists claim that students are more likely to commit suicide if schools and parents do not encourage their transgender identities, it remains unclear whether affirmation and controversial medical interventions actually help students with gender dysphoria.  

Medical interventions can have dangerous lifelong impacts. So-called puberty blockers, for example, actually introduce a disease into a patient’s body, according to Dr. Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist in Rocklin, California. Hypogonadotropic hypogonadism occurs when the brain fails to send the right signal to the gonads to make the hormones necessary for development. 

“An endocrinologist might treat a condition where a female’s testosterone levels are going to be outside the normal range,” Laidlaw told PJ Media. “We’ll treat that, and we’re aware of metabolic problems. At the same time, an endocrinologist may be giving high levels of testosterone to a female to ‘transition’ her.”  Cross-sex hormones can also have serious long-term side effects, increasing the risk of osteoporosis and cardiovascular events.

Government should defer to parents when it comes to the health and beliefs of their children, especially on such politically charged issues.  

Yet Virginia Democrats responded to this moderate policy change with outrage. 

“Gov. Youngkin’s mandate targets vulnerable children, and it’s downright shameful to think that an elected leader would punch down at kids to score political points,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., widely seen as a more moderate Democrat, wrote on Twitter. “This mandate rolls back the rights of kids to be themselves in schools.” 

“We are appalled by the Youngkin administration’s overhaul of key protections for transgender students in public schools,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia wrote on Twitter. “LGBTQ+ students already experience much higher self-harm & suicide rates because of the discrimination they face. This will only make matters worse.” 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/19/left-targets-youngkins-transgender-education-reform-prioritizing-parental-rights

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Does Your Kid’s School Librarian Need Parental Supervision? ‘Banned Books Week’ May Tell You

Banned Books Week is coming to K-12 schools and city libraries across the nation September 18-24. This is a time for librarians to promote books that have been challenged for offensive content, such as sexually explicit writing and images, the promotion of so-called transgender lifestyles, and child sexual abuse.

Librarians get to tout their activism as a virtuous commitment to First Amendment freedoms for students and others and they label those who don’t like the banned books as censors. But many of these books actually fall under the legal definition of obscenity. Others discuss things like the steps of “transgender transitioning” and how children can hide their internet search history from their parents. Nevertheless, many school and classroom libraries still carry them.

Research by Judith Reisman and Mary McAlister in the Liberty University Law Review, “Materials Deemed Harmful to Minors Are Welcomed into Classrooms and Libraries via Educational ‘Obscenity Exemptions,’” relayed that the Supreme Court has already settled that obscene material is not protected by the Constitution but left the definition of what is obscene to individual states based on the characteristics of their communities. Most states and the District of Columbia have obscenity laws with prohibitions on disseminating material that is “harmful to minors.”

But here’s the reason why school and classroom libraries can carry obscene materials: More than 40 states “have enacted exemptions to the prohibition against dissemination of obscene or indecent materials, even those ‘harmful to minors’ if the materials are labeled as or used by individuals or organizations for ‘educational, scientific, artistic’ or similar purposes,” according to Reisman and McAlister.

The Protect Child Health Coalition, an organization leading the charge against these exceptions, provides a list of state obscenity exemptions, so it’s easy to check and see if a particular state is on it.

But what does having these exemptions look like at the local level?

For books like “Gender Queer,” I’m unable to replicate the pictures depicted in the book for this article, as I would be subject to legal penalties. Likewise, a father at a recent school board meeting had his microphone silenced for attempting to read from some of the objectionable books found in his child’s school because the school board was aware that allowing the words to air was illegal.

But, magically, once a child enters a school library, a librarian can provide “Gender Queer” and other challenged books to him or her without fear of prosecution.

However, as more people have become aware that children have been harmed by this content, state legislators across the nation have begun offering legislation to close the legal loopholes that grant exemptions for K-12 libraries, and it’s possible that violators could face prosecution.

As an example of a state’s obscenity exemption, take a look at Texas Penal Code Section 43.24, which is the law that prohibits distribution of harmful material to children. The specific exemption is found at 43.24(c), and it provides “an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the sale, distribution, or exhibition was by a person having scientific, educational, governmental, or other similar justification.”

But Texas State Rep. Steve Toth is trying to change that. He announced legislation in June to repeal the exemption in Texas, and his bill would apply to taxpayer-funded school libraries and classroom assignments.

And Texas isn’t the only state where legislators are trying to close the loopholes. EveryLibrary, a national political action committee for libraries, tracks legislative attempts nationwide that would make libraries safer for children—though EveryLibrary calls it “legislation of concern.” This tracker allows you to monitor what’s happening in your state.

In the meantime, many librarians and some teachers remain committed to pushing harmful material on children. At a middle school in Puerto Rico for Department of Defense military dependents, one of the top five books checked out by children was “The Prince and the Dressmaker,” a story about a prince who hides his identity from his parents and “puts on daring dresses and takes Paris by storm as the fabulous Lady Crystallia.”

The Hill newspaper carried a story in late August about a teacher in Oklahoma who quit because she was told she wasn’t allowed to display certain books that had been challenged for inappropriate content. The article also mentioned the Brooklyn (New York) Library’s Books Unbanned program that invites “young people ages 13 to 21 from every state in the nation, to apply for a digital library available through” the program.

Brooklyn Library is on to something. Accessing digital library books is quick and easy, and I would like to invite parents to do just that and see firsthand what’s being pushed on their kids. It’s easy to download the Libby App so you can have instant access to library books. Or you could use your child’s digital library card through his or her school. Or you could take an afternoon to sit down in the children’s and teens’ section of your local and school libraries to carry out your own investigation. Don’t take my word or your librarian’s word about which books are or are not age-appropriate (you’ll find that the term “age-appropriate” is quite subjective).

Don’t know where to start? You could begin with the first three books listed as the American Library Association’s top 10 most challenged books of 2021, as these are the books being displayed to your children during Banned Books Week. These include “Gender Queer,” “Lawn Boy,” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue.” Throw in “George” (now “Melissa”), too, which has been included in past years’ lists. Some of these books would make a sex worker blush, and they most definitely promote anti-social behavior in the developing mind of a child.  

As you read through the list, I suspect that you’ll be surprised at what you find. You’ll probably wonder, like I do, why librarians are so aggressively pushing these books on school-age children.

And to think, these same librarians are also in charge of “weeding” out books for removal from the library. Read up on equity-informed weeding, decolonizing the library, librarian neutrality, and critical librarianship, and maybe you’ll also question why we’re allowing such librarians to have free rein in deciding which books to purchase and which books to toss as they build their collections.

To be clear, fighting to remove school library books that are harmful to minors is not “pearl-clutching”—it’s common sense. It’s not a matter of a small group of people trying to prevent other people from accessing material they don’t like. Society has already decided through federal and state laws that the material in these books is obscene. And just because libraries receive an exemption, that doesn’t make the content any safer for children.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/13/does-your-kids-school-librarian-need-parental-supervision-banned-books-week-may-tell-you

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Christian School Pastor Will Refer to Students by ‘Biological Sex,’ Stares Down Death Threats

A private Christian school in Florida remains stalwart in their conviction after being spotlighted in an NBC article for saying they will refer to students according to their “biological gender,” while asking “gay and transgender students to leave.”

The school has received praise and death threats for standing their ground.

School administrator Pastor Barry McKeen, at Grace Christian School, said he received death threats after NBC highlighted an email sent by the school to parents ahead of the school year outlining, among other policies, that students found practicing “any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle” will be “asked to leave the school immediately.”

“The backlash for about a day and a half was very severe, a lot of death threats, burn-my-house-down threats,” McKeen told The Epoch Times. “And then after about a day and a half, most of our commentary turned positive, because some of the more, I guess you could say, conservative outlets started picking up the story.”

It was more like an avalanche of support flooding in from people applauding the policy—which has been in place since the early 70s, and is now being prescribed verbatim by other Christian schools in Florida.

In the past two weeks, Grace Christian School received 7,000 emails, which were “80 percent positive,” McKeen said, along with $45,000 in donations from across the world.

“One guy gave $5,000,” he said. “I’ve never met him. He’s never been to our church or school. But he read about the story and said, ‘I believe what you’re standing for, and here’s some money.’”

As classes rang in, on Aug. 15, the NBC reporter contacted McKeen for the story. Believing Grace Christian School was being breeched, the pastor declined to comment.

In the aftermath, he held his peace initially, planning to let it just “run its course.” He prayed about it, then decided to not be cowed into silence but to set the record straight.

The article contained truth and lies, McKeen said.

“Our school does not allow homosexual and transgender students,” he said. “That’s true. If a student is actively involved in those lifestyles, they would be asked to leave our school.

“There were some things that were untrue. It was said in the article that I said, ‘If you’re a homosexual you go to hell.’ … I never said that. I wouldn’t say that. It’s not what I believe.

“Any sin will condemn you to hell, whether that’s homosexuality or adultery or stealing or whatever it might be.”

Grace Christian students aren’t expected to be sexual at all; they’re students and aren’t married.

The article cited a 16-year-old female student, “who is gay,” whose family was prompted “to transfer her to another religious school that is more accepting.” McKeen said it was “not really accurate” to imply that anyone was asked to leave immediately, because they “didn’t ask anybody to leave.”

In a video statement posted on the school’s Facebook page, he clarified, saying, “We had one student on one occasion, whose parents and us came to an agreement for them to be withdrawn. And that’s about it.”

He further added, “The biggest issue that happens in this culture is because you believe something and you stand for something that you’re automatically hateful. We are not hateful. Probably that’s the thing in the article that hurt the most; we’re not hateful people. We just aren’t.”

The school, in Valrico, about 20 miles east of Tampa, aims to provide students, pre-kindergarten through grade 12, a rigorous academic program and “a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ,” while training them to “serve Him in their lives.”

This contrasts markedly next to public schools across America where transgenderism and highly sexualized content are being injected into curriculums. Parents took notice at the kitchen table during COVID lockdowns.

But parents across America also stood their ground and pushed back against school boards for corrupting their children’s morals and violating their constitutional rights.

In July 2022, business leader Clint Thomas headed a group of 11 parents to launch a lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools to curtail policies that would prevent parents from knowing if their children expressed a different gender in school.

In May 2021, Scott Smith was arrested at a school board meeting where he became vocal about his daughter’s being raped in a girls’ bathroom by a male, who claimed to be transgender, at Stone Bridge High School—again in Loudoun County.

In liberal democratic societies where diversity and inclusion are assets, Grace Christian ought be welcome enrichment—expanding the conversation in the cause of liberty. Parents can send their children wherever they choose, McKeen said.

If they prefer the biblical worldview, they can choose Grace Christian.

“It’s a private Christian school, so parents choose to come here, they pay to come here, and they sign these policies saying we’ll abide by these standards,” he told The Epoch Times. “We’re allowed to have these rules. It’s what we believe. And if you don’t believe the same way, you don’t have to come here.”

A pillar of Western civilization predating Magna Carta, religious freedom joins the equation.

“To believe something biblically and to be shouted down or intimidated by somebody who doesn’t believe [isn’t fair],” McKeen added. “I don’t try to enforce my beliefs on other people outside of where I am in our ministry. I don’t go to other places and try to make them believe what I believe or change their policies. I feel like they were trying to intimidate us to do that.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/christian-school-pastor-will-refer-to-students-by-biological-sex-stares-down-death-threats-media-lambaste_4720002.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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21 September, 2022

A Canadian school district is defending a transgender teacher who instructs students while wearing large, exaggerated prosthetic breasts

The Halton District School Board in the province of Ontario confirmed Saturday that it’s “standing behind” the teacher in response to an inquiry from the Toronto Sun.

Imagery of the teacher in question reveals his use of outrageously large artificial breasts — with “nipples” clearly visible.

The teacher’s getup has spurred backlash from the community and on social media, and the school board has felt the need to create a “safety plan” at Oakville Trafalgar High School in response to potential protests, according to the Toronto Sun.

“There will the protesters and the anti-protesters,” said Margo Shuttleworth, chairwoman of the Halston school district, according to the Sun. “I do know there have been phone calls made to the school that haven’t been the most pleasant in nature.”

This individual began sexually “transitioning” last year, according to the Sun.  However, he only began presenting himself as a female with exaggerated breasts at the start of the 2022 school year.

Shuttleworth said the school has no problem with the situation, according to the Sun. “The teacher is completely accepted and welcomed into the school community as far as the staff is concerned,” she said, according to the Toronto Sun.

The district is identifying the teacher as an industrial arts teacher.

Some have questioned whether the individual’s exaggerated “breasts” represent a safety hazard in an environment in which minors are using circular saws and other potentially dangerous tools.

The teacher’s prosthetic “nipples” are also prominently visible through his clothes, raising the question of potential dress code violations in an environment intended for minors.

Controversy over the shop teacher’s bizarre appearance spurred the school district to send a letter to parents defending the individual’s rights to “gender expression”:

“We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate to our community that we are committed to establishing and maintaining a caring, inclusive, equitable and welcoming learning and working environment for all students and staff,” the statement said.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/school-board-goes-trans-teacher-leads-class-wearing-perverse-outfits-completely-accepted-welcomed

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GOP AGs Scorch Biden Education Department Over Free Speech, Due Process And Constitutional Rights

Our friends at the Title IX Coalition and SAVE have alerted us that the Attorneys General from 18 states have submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), in response to a proposed Title IX regulation that has stimulated widespread debate and opposition from conservatives and civil liberties advocates. The Attorneys’ General comments represent a tutorial on the meaning and application of First and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees in the higher education setting.

1. The first letter, signed by the Attorneys General of MT, AL, AR, GA, IN, KS, KY, LA, MS, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, and VA, first analyzes the DOE proposal to vastly expand the definition of sexual harassment. This change would “chill the free exchange of ideas,” which would “intimidate students and faculty into keeping quiet on controversial issues.”

The letter then deplores the rule’s plan to remove or modify important due process safeguards, including advance disclosure of evidence, impartial investigations, key written notice provisions, and live hearings. Cumulatively, these changes are “reminiscent of Star Chambers” that “stacked the deck against accused students.” The 37-page letter concludes, “In many instances, moreover, the Department’s Proposed Rule conflicts with the text, purpose, and longstanding interpretation of Title IX.”

2. The second letter charges the draft regulation lacks a clear statement of authority from Congress, and highlights the proposed rule’s unlawful attempt to preempt state laws that protect the rights of females. Signed by the Attorneys General of IN, AL, AZ, AR, GA, KS, KY, LA, MS, MT, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, and WV, the letter concludes simply, “The Proposed Rule threatens to destroy Title IX.”

3. Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas flatly charges the Biden proposal will “destroy constitutional rights.” (4) AG Paxton’s letter to the DOE concludes tartly, “the Proposed Rule promises to repeat the mistakes of the Department’s ill-advised 2011 Dear Colleague Letter.”

All three letters sharply criticize the DOE plan to expand the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity.” Noting that the draft policy lacks definitions of “sex” or “gender identity,” the first letter notes that the Department of Education “simply waves its hand and—by regulatory fiat—alters a fundamental term, as if its novel definition was axiomatic.”

The first letter also highlights the role of Catherine Lhamon, who served as the DOE Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights from 2013 to 2017 and was re-appointed to the same position in 2021. During the earlier period, the letter notes that Lhamon played the lead role in creating a “constitutional and regulatory mess.”

https://www.conservativehq.org/post/gop-ags-scorch-biden-education-department-over-free-speech-due-process-and-constitutional-rights

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Educational apartheid in Australian schools?

<i>Retired school principal Chris Bonnor thinks so. See below.  His basic beef is that children from affluent homes do better at school.  He ventures no explanation of why that is so.  He simply says that it is deplorable. But is it changeable?  He seems to think that it obviously is but he makes no argument to that effect.  He is enclosed in a warm cloak of his own righteousness that frees him from any obligation to justify  his views.

He does not at all consider the very well attested fact that higher IQ kids do better at school and that IQ is mainly hereditary.  Findings to that effect have emerged repeatedly for over a century.  So there never will be an equality of educational outcomes.

Chris could probably live with that but what really burns him up is that the kids who do well also come from more affluent homes.  And -- horrors! -- they even go to private schools!   

Again Chris fails to ask why that is so.  It's a pretty obvious deduction that smart people will in general be smart at making money too.  So the smart parents of smart kids will be able to give the kids concerned comfortable homes and a good educational experience.  That dastardly IQ is behind the high SES background of the more successful students too!

But no evidence or reasoning will have  any impsct on our Chris.  He is a rigid bigot who believes what he wants to believe and damn the evidence.  That educational inequality must always be with us is incomprehensible to him. He is good at hate, though.  Calling natural inequality "apartheid"  is scurrilous.  He is at best a buffoon</i>

If we sat down 40-plus years ago to write a prescription for a social/academic apartheid system of schools operating on an unlevel playing field, we couldn’t have done it better. It is a structural oddity which has placed Australia as an outrider on the OECD stage.

In the process, it effectively discounted one of the key findings of the Gonski Review, something that seems to lie at the heart of our problems. This problem isn’t hard to find. Anyone can go to the My School website and easily discover that the NAPLAN results coming out of the schools tends to match the socioeconomic status (SES) of the students going in each day.

But there’s more. Gonski reported – and other research confirms – that the collective impact on student achievement comes even more from the SES of each student’s peers, than from their own family. In the world of schools, negative peer effects are associated with students from disadvantaged social backgrounds; positive effects with students from advantaged backgrounds.

Parents and teachers know about this peer effect and that knowledge drives our enrolment shift from low to higher SES schools. School principals certainly know, and competition between schools too often degenerates into an unseemly competition to get preferred students.

The combination of such peer impacts on student outcomes in an already segregated system of schools calls out for a review of how our school system is structured and what we should be doing to create a more inclusive system and socially diverse schools.

https://www.smh.com.au/education/if-we-tried-to-plan-a-less-fair-school-system-we-couldn-t-have-done-a-better-job-20220915-p5bih1.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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20 September, 2022

Academic Administrators Are Strangling Our Universities

A parasitic class of self-righteous bureaucrats has taken over campus life

We generally think of fossilization, the replacement of bone and tissue by minerals, as a process that only makes contact with campus life at the paleontology museum. Yet a parallel variant is destroying American academic life, as universities substitute administrators for faculty and boost their outlays for administration at twice the rate for faculty. Responsibility, not just for processing Federal Student Aid forms and parking permits, but for the process of forming young minds, is being transferred from the faculty, selected for the originality and quality of their thought, to administrators who can be swiftly “deselected” should their expressed views depart from the orthodoxy. Today, even tenure-track faculty must think twice about the reaction of administrators as they conduct independent research, speak in the classroom, or express opinions.

While the antics of a relatively small cohort of post-modernist professors have distracted public attention, especially on the right, a new cohort of administrators zealous to reshape life on campus and off has fastened itself on institutions of higher learning—promoting their own welfare and power as a class through bureaucratic fads and mindsets that are far removed from the values of critical thinking and free inquiry. The speed of this hostile takeover is astounding. To take just one prominent example, the number of administrators employed by Yale University has risen three times faster than the undergraduate student body since 2003, while new managerial jobs have risen by 150% compared with a 10.6% increase in tenure-track jobs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that “noninstructional activities such as admissions, student activities, libraries, and administrative and executive activities” now make up 67% of the expenses of private for-profit four-year institutions.

What are we getting for this huge commitment of resources to administrators rather than classroom teachers? Today most universities lack core courses in the basics, but they do eagerly issue speech “guidelines”—overseen by the new bureaucracy—to police how faculty conduct classes. Similarly, campus administrators are reshaping students’ lives in their campus residences, mandating student attendance at freshman orientation sessions and panels aimed at forming morals and attitudes on subjects ranging from sexuality to identity to “privilege.” Last fall at a Princeton event administrators required some students to identify themselves as scions of privilege.

Indeed, much of what looks to outsiders like student-led protests and campaigns is in fact the product of the determination of the new administrative class to shape campus norms and priorities according to their own beliefs and preferences—which not coincidentally make the case for the importance of their own jobs. The power of this class, which is parasitic on the mission of the university, is quite considerable: first, they select who gets onto campus, with students who at least pretend to hold the “correct” social attitudes at an advantage for admission. Once students arrive on campus, they are pressured to think in approved ways, with those who dissent in particularly visible or annoying ways being subject to star chamber-like proceedings overseen by the administrators themselves.

Administrators also confer all kinds of benefits on students such as the funding of summer activities or consideration for special internship opportunities. The editors of student newspapers have long since discovered that whether they please the bureaucrats has palpable and direct consequences. There is no comparable pressure from the faculty whose preferred method of persuasion is...persuasion.

Nor is the problem of administrative overreach confined to student life. Today professors must filter virtually all research through an Institutional Review Board—another office dominated by non-academic administrators—which must approve the methods, and even the content of the research.IRB vetting takes place above and beyond the guidelines of research sponsors such as the NSF. Originally established to prevent psychologically and medically hazardous research experiments, atrocities such as the Milgram “experiment” at Yale in which research subjects were pressed to torture others, these boards have metastasized to the extent that virtually any project in the social sciences, even those based on public data, must gain their approval.

Let’s consider some examples of how the suffocating grasp of administrative power has played out. Consider the case of Harvard Law School Professor and quondam residential administrator Ronald Sullivan. In the proud tradition of the American legal community, stretching from John Adams’s spirited defense of the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre to Ketanji Brown Jackson’s work as a public defender, the American legal profession has been committed to the right of the accused to effective legal representation, even when the accused are unpopular. Sullivan honored that tradition by representing the ghastly (and abominated) Harvey Weinstein. A movement emerged at Harvard among those ignorant of the rights of defendants to defenestrate Sullivan for his unpopular association. Harvard’s administration peremptorily dismissed Sullivan from his administrative post. Shielded by tenure, however, he at least continues to teach and enlighten at the Law School—academic tenure protected Sullivan, administrative common sense decidedly did not.

What about research that turns out the “wrong way?” Harvard economist Roland Fryer ran into hostile headwinds with his research on the use, and abuse, of police force. That research was published in a top economics journal, and there it remains despite calls to “unpublish”. But Professor Fryer soon found himself to be the subject of a sexual harassment investigation (see here on the irregularity of the case against him). As a result of what looks like administrative retaliation for wrong-think, Fryer spent two years being banned from campus, and had his academic research center shut down.

Adjuncts, who lack tenure and make up an increasingly large fraction of classroom teachers, are far more vulnerable to administrative coercion. Today, administrators hold adjuncts to account for past statements by anonymous associates. When Harvard adjunct David Kane incurred considerable enmity when he invited a controversial speaker to his class, a group of students dug into his background to discover, and publicize, his affiliation from six years before with a blog on which an anonymous contributor—not Kane—made caustic comments. Kane’s contract was not renewed.

Nor are paper guarantees sufficient to safeguard academic freedom from the punitive impulses of administrators, who have appointed themselves as prosecutor, judge, and jury to discipline students and faculty alike. In retaliation for publishing opinions that Princeton administrators disliked, administrators deliberately misquoted prominent classicist Joshua Katz and held him up to the incoming class as the epitome of racism. When a group of faculty led by Sergiu Klainerman requested an explanation and was turned down, they recurred to a faculty appeals committee. That committee unanimously denounced the Eisgruber administration’s behavior, and recommended the administrators tasked with the investigation be removed from it. President Eisgruber has chosen to ignore the findings of the faculty committee, citing a second, secret, investigation of the administration’s conduct, conducted by...the administrators.

Which brings us to the essential question: how can we take back the universities from the administrative inquisitors?

To check the process of relegating tenured and tenure track faculty to adjunct positions, we recommend a basic standard limiting the fraction of courses that can be delivered by faculty not on tenure track, and that there be a ceiling on the number of terms a non-tenure track instructor can offer a course.

To limit the amount of indoctrination that takes place in lieu of education, we recommend that any mandatory attendance event held by residential life administrators, whether it’s a fire safety demonstration or a discussion of civil rights, must be subject to faculty review. If it is mandatory, it is part of students’ educational experience. Moreover, we think it is vital that hiring and firing faculty associates and leaders at residential colleges require approval by a faculty-controlled committee.

To roll back the courts of star chamber appearing on campuses across the nation, we advocate the inclusion of faculty members on any committee that considers faculty misconduct. Likewise, we call for the formation of an all-faculty committee that must approve all senior administrative hires and promotions, while it can review all staff hires and promotions. We also recommend the formation of a faculty-led committee that can investigate allegations of staff misconduct, and that can make its findings public. Any disciplinary procedure against a faculty member must allow for the opportunity to confront one’s accusers, and it must allow the faculty member access to the evidence against her, and it must allow her to present evidence in her own defense. There should also be faculty involvement in undergraduate admissions.

To preserve and protect the freedom of thought of the faculty, and the entire tenor of higher education, we urge that all institutions adopt the Chicago Principles of academic freedom, and implement the recommendations of the Kalven Report to protect the political neutrality of the university.

We understand these measures will require a lot more faculty involvement in the running of the university than is currently the case. But that is the price of freedom, too often members of the faculty prefer to be left alone to do their research, leaving to others the hard work of protecting academic liberty.

If nothing is done to revive universities by recentering their core mission around the faculty power, campus visits may soon differ little in substance from trips to see the T-Rex at the Museum of Natural History.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/academic-administrators-strangling-universities

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Valedictorian’s Professional License in Jeopardy Over Graduation Speech on Life, Love

Academic freedom is under global assault. Students and professors in places of higher learning around the world are forced to censor what they say or suffer the consequences.

Despite the fact that we all possess the inherent human right to freedom of speech, now more than ever, we are being silenced and sanctioned in the classroom. 

A startling case of academic censorship currently is being adjudicated in Mexico. Christian Cortez Pérez, a university student who was valedictorian of his class, may lose his license to practice psychology because of his graduation speech in June.

Pérez was a star student—top of his class at Mexico’s Autonomous University of Baja California’s School of Medicine and Psychology. Following his impassioned commencement address about the sanctity of life and protection of the family, Pérez’s professors initiated a campaign to cancel his career.  

Specifically, university professors came together to produce a “manifesto” outlining their complaints about the speech. They delivered the manifesto to the university, calling for the school to withdraw Pérez’s academic merit award, withhold his professional license, and issue a nationwide notice to psychology associations.

The university has launched formal proceedings against Pérez, threatening the very career he enrolled at the university to pursue. 

In his graduation speech, Pérez delivered this message: “Today, we are deep into a real anthropological struggle to redefine the human being, the human person, man, through the implementation of ideologies and fashions of thought that always end up undermining dignity and freedom.”

Devoid of hatred or ill will of any kind, he encouraged his peers to live in solidarity with one another, stating: “You have to love. No one seeks the good of the other if he does not love him.”

For expressing views shared by many, Pérez now could suffer irrevocable professional and personal damage.

He responded with a counterclaim to the university, noting, “Public universities must respect the free speech rights of all students, and I am committed to obtaining justice not just for myself but for all Mexicans interested in preserving the right to freely express themselves.”

In response to his opponents, Pérez takes an unequivocal stance in favor of free speech for all.

“To those that disagree with me,” he wrote, “I have one response: I firmly respect your right to freedom of speech too.”

Academic censorship is a problem across the world, and Christian Pérez is but one brave example of what it looks like to stand up for free speech.

Public universities should be marketplaces of ideas, not assembly lines for one type of thought. Moreover, it is deeply unjust for professors to wield this kind of power over their students.

If the vindictive attack on Pérez is successful, he risks losing everything he has worked for, and we all stand to lose from the undermining of free speech rights. 

Although it seemingly is far away in Mexico, the outcome of this case will reverberate globally and send a clear signal about the right to speak one’s mind–not only in school, but beyond.

Stifling free debate in academic settings has cataclysmic results for society as a whole. Now is the time to reject dangerous censorship campaigns that threaten all fundamental freedoms.

As Christian Pérez awaits judgment from his university, let us raise a resounding cry in defense of his free speech rights. You don’t have to agree with what he said, just his right to say it.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/16/valedictorians-professional-license-in-jeopardy-over-graduation-speech-on-life-love

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Britain's 'strictest headmistress' claims she's been reported to police for a 'HATE CRIME' after inviting Jordan Peterson to speak at school

Britain's 'strictest headmistress' has slammed critics who she says reported her to police for a hate crime for inviting a controversial Canadian professor to visit her award-winning school. 

Katharine Birbalsingh, whose Michaela Community School in north London recently saw 80 per cent of its students achieve 4+ (C) or more in their GCSEs despite being non-selective, invited Jordan Peterson to see her pupils on Friday. 

After she tweeted about the visit, the respected teacher - who is a British government's social mobility tsar - went on to receive a wave of abuse and calls for her to be sacked. 

Ms Birbalsingh shared two photos of Peterson at her school last week, tweeting: 'Look who is at Michaela today!' In another post, she said the controversial media personality was 'moved' and 'tears fell' as pupils wished him a good morning 

Following a backlash, Ms Birbalsingh wrote this weekend: 'I tweeted photos of Jordan Peterson's visit to Michaela. Like this one. They reported me to the police for hate crime. Many pleas to Ofsted for an immediate inspection. 

'Cries of safeguarding concerns. Demands for my removal as Head. But they deny cancel culture exists.' 

Peterson, a psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, is a controversial figure in left-wing circles due to his conservative views on free speech, gender identification and climate change. 

During his rise to fame, Peterson has described himself as a 'professor against political correctness'. The 60-year-old has been particularly outspoken about masculinity and has previously stated that the masculine spirit is 'under assault'. 

Today, the Met Police said it had 'no knowledge' of any crime reports concerning Ms Birbalsingh. 

Ms Birbalsingh has been influential in Tory circles since winning a standing ovation at the Conservative Party conference after she delivered a damning indictment of 'utterly chaotic' state schools in 2010.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11227673/Katharine-Birbalsingh-reported-hate-crime-inviting-professor-Jordan-Peterson.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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19 September, 2022

Utah governor slams Oregon fans for bigoted chant against Mormons at BYU game

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called out students at Oregon University for chanting "f--k the Mormons" during a football game against Brigham Young University.

“Religious bigotry alive and celebrated in Oregon,” the Republican governor tweeted in response to a video of the hateful chant at the University of Oregon home game.

Oregon Ducks fans can be heard repeating the line at least twice before the ugly chant trails off in one video. The school and its student section both apologized Sunday for the “offensive and disgraceful” chant in a series of tweets.

“The University of Oregon sincerely apologizes for an offensive and disgraceful chant coming from the student section during yesterday’s game against Brigham Young University,” the university stated.

“These types of actions go against everything the university stands for, and it goes against the spirit of competition.

“We can and will do better as a campus community that has no place for hate, bias or bigotry.”

The student fan group section dubbed the “Oregon Pit Crew” said it was “ashamed” of the incident.

“To all [BYU football] fans in attendance at today’s game we would like to apologize for the actions of the students in attendance,” the group tweeted. “We do not condone any hateful speech directed towards one’s religion and are ashamed of those who participated.”

Last month BYU faced heat when a Duke volleyball player accused fans of racial heckling and slinging racial slurs at her during a match at BYU. But an internal investigation by the Utah university later found no evidence to back up the claim.

The University of Oregon apologized to BYU in a statement for the offensive chant.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/18/utah-gov-spencer-cox-slams-oregon-fans-for-chant-against-mormons-at-byu-game/

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Yeshiva University suspends campus clubs after Supreme Court denies bid to block LGBTQ+ group

Yeshiva University, reacting to a Supreme Court ruling denying their attempt to block an LGBTQ+ student organization, has decided to suspend all student groups.

According to YU’s independent student newspaper, The Commentator, the university announced the move in an email to students. The message said the school is taking the time to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling, which said they needed to pursue the matter in state court.

“Considering the upcoming Chagim,” the letter said, using the Hebrew word referring to the Jewish high holidays, “the university will hold off on all undergraduate club activities while it immediately takes steps to follow the roadmap provided by the US Supreme Court to protect YU’s religious freedom.”

The holidays begin with Rosh Hashana on the evening of September 25 and continue through Simchat Torah on October 18. The letter did not say that clubs would necessarily be reinstated right after this time. Fox News reached out to YU for more information, but they did not immediately respond.

The dispute stems from a New York state court ordering Yeshiva to grant full recognition to an LGBTQ+ club on campus. Yeshiva has argued it is a religious institution and cannot be forced to recognize something at odds with the University’s religious mission.  The NY judge found that the school is primarily an educational institution and cannot rely on a religious liberty claim in order to block the club.

The Supreme Court, denying Yeshiva University’s request to put the New York County Supreme Court decision on pause, said the school has “at least two further avenues for expedited or interim state court relief.”

Tai Miller, former YU student and plaintiff in the case against the university, reacted to the club suspension announcement on Twitter, calling it “a throwback to 50 years ago when the city of Jackson, Mississippi closed all public swimming  pools rather than comply with court orders to desegregate.”

“The Pride Alliance seeks a safe space on campus, nothing more. By shutting down all club activities, the YU administration attempts to divide the student body, and pit students against their LGBT peers. We are confident that YU students will see through this shameful tactic and stand together in community.”

The school’s decision to suspend groups came a day after YU president Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman issued a statement indicating he hoped to work with the LGBTQ+ community.

“Every faith-based university in the country has the right to work with its students, including its LGBTQ students, to establish the clubs, places and spaces that fit within its faith tradition,” Berman said. “Yeshiva University simply seeks that same right of self-determination. The Supreme Court has laid out the roadmap for us to find expedited relief, and we will follow their instructions. At the same time, as our commitment to and love for our LGBTQ students are unshakable, we continue to extend our hand in invitation to work together to create a more inclusive campus life consistent with our Torah values.”

Yeshiva Student Union President Baruch Lerman was caught off guard by the club suspension, telling the Commentator he and his organization “were not expecting the university to take this drastic measure, and have not received any guidance about how we are to proceed with approving clubs, or having student council events.”

https://nypost.com/2022/09/18/yeshiva-university-suspends-campus-clubs-after-supreme-court-denies-bid-to-block-lgbtq-group/

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Limited support for student debt forgiveness

Americans' support of student loan forgiveness drops if it means higher university costs, more taxes and primarily benefits higher income earners, a new poll said.

Libertarian think tank Cato Institute and YouGov conducted the poll before President Joe Biden unveiled his administration's student loan relief plan. The poll said that 64% of Americans opposed debt forgiveness if it meant increased taxes, 76% opposed it if it meant higher tuition costs and 68% opposed it if it primarily benefited higher-income people.    

Biden announced last month that his administration would cancel $20,000 in student loans per borrower if they received Pell Grants and $10,000 in student loan debt per borrower for those who didn't. 

The cancellation will apply to all federal student loan borrowers making less than $125,000 per year or $250,000 per year for married couples. They also unveiled a proposal that would allow those with undergraduate loans to cap their repayment options at 5% of their monthly income.

"Support for cancelling federal student loan debt plummets when Americans consider its trade-offs," Cato Institute's Director of Polling, Emily Ekins, said. "These data show that Americans don't like the costs that many experts believe are associated with federal student loan forgiveness."

If you have private student loans, refinancing at a lower interest rate could help you reduce your monthly payments and pay off your loans faster. Visit Credible to find your personalized interest rate without affecting your credit score.

Experts say taxpayers on the hook to pay for the plan

By some estimates, the cost of Biden's plan is around $500 billion. It will "provide relief to up to 43 million borrowers, including cancelling the full remaining balance for roughly 20 million borrowers," according to the White House.

A blog post by the Council on Foreign Relations said that "since there is no provision for a special funding mechanism, all taxpayers will bear the brunt of this federal budget expense."

"Put another way, 320 million Americans are providing a benefit to 40 million Americans," it continued.

Some borrowers may also face a tax bill due to the loan cancellation. Although forgiven debt is usually subject to federal taxes, these canceled student loans won't be. That's because of a clause in the American Rescue Act that eliminates federal taxation on forgiven student loan debt through 2025. 

But the obligation to pay state taxes on forgiven debt isn't as clear. According to Mark Kantrowitz at The College Investor, 28 states, plus Washington D.C., either have no income tax or automatically conform with federal law and will not tax canceled student debt. 

However, Mississippi, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arkansas and North Carolina treat debt forgiveness as income. And unless they change their laws to conform with the federal tax exemption for student loans, students would be on the hook to pay taxes on the debt, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. 

"Having your taxable income jump by $10,000 - 20,000 dollars can obviously have a major impact on your taxes," Chris Motola, a financial analyst at MerchantMaverick.com, said. "Furthermore, the difference in laws from state-to-state could mean that students in some states will benefit more from student relief than others."

If you have private student loans, these will not qualify for federal student debt cancellation. However, you can reduce your monthly payment by refinancing to a lower interest rate. Visit Credible to find your personalized interest rate without affecting your credit score.

Debt forgiveness may add to tuition inflation

Another trade-off that Americans participating in the Cato poll were against was debt forgiveness at the cost of higher tuition rates. Market experts have been vocal about the potential risk that the plan may spur students to take on more debt, as well as that the plan does little to address runaway tuition costs at colleges and universities. 

The cost of attendance for one year at a private 4-year university currently averages $38,000, and a year at a public university costs about $10,000, according to figures reported by the College Board. 

"The cost of college tuition has far outpaced inflation for years," Leslie Tayne, founder and head attorney at Tayne Law Group, said. "And with the promise of possible forgiveness in the future, students may be willing to take on more debt upfront. This would give schools the power to raise their prices, leading to a cycle of increased borrowing."

There is also a concern that the proposed changes to the income-driven repayment plan, which would see borrower repayments capped at 5% of their monthly income, might also incentivize universities and colleges to raise costs, Tayne said.  

"Regardless of the loan amount, borrowers will have to make the same monthly payments on student loan debt, which could leave students borrowing as much money as possible," she said. "Colleges and universities can then increase tuition costs, knowing the amount borrowed won't matter much to students with federal loans."

However, one expert believes that the basics of supply and demand should help rein in tuition and bring some normalcy to their significant cost increase. 

"While universities may see loan forgiveness as an opportunity to raise tuition, market forces may prevent large hikes," Jay Zigmont, founder of Childfree Wealth, said. "Students and their parents have become more price sensitive and are even starting to look at the ROI of college." 

One way to reduce your monthly payment on your private student loans is by refinancing to a lower interest rate. To see if this is the right option for you, you can contact Credible to speak to a student loan expert and get all your questions answered.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/student-loan-forgiveness-americans-opinion

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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18 September, 2022

Cruz Slams Senate Democrat for Blocking School Safety Bills

Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday called out a Senate Democrat for blocking passage of a pair of bills intended to provide schools with additional funding for safety and mental health services. 

The Texas Republican, in a statement, questioned how Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., could oppose the Securing Our Schools Act and the Protect Our Children’s Schools Act.  

The Securing Our Schools Act, drafted by Cruz and Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., aims to aid schools with security resources by investing “$15 billion in school safety personnel, $10 billion to hire 15,000 mental health professionals, increase the physical security of schools through grants, and triple [the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s] Nonprofit Security Grant Program to help secure schools,” the Cruz statement said. 

The Protect Our Children Act would have allowed schools to “use unspent, previously appropriated federal COVID-19 education-related funding to improve school security,” according to the press release.  

“This bill would be the most serious, the most significant, the most major investment in school security Congress has ever enacted,” Cruz explained on the Senate floor.  

Murphy objected to Cruz’s Secure Our Schools Act, but didn’t explain why. Cruz called him out for putting partisanship before solutions, saying: 

What we just saw reveals that the Democrats have one objective when a mass murder happens, and that is to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. That is always, always, always their solution.  

Never mind that it doesn’t work. … If another lunatic attacks a school, and there’s not a police officer at the front door to stop it, remember right now. Remember this moment, when the Democrats said, ‘No, we will not protect our kids.’

Cruz has made previous efforts to keep schools safe while protecting Second Amendment rights. In 2013, an amendment Cruz co-sponsored with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa (retooled in 2021 as the Protecting Communities and Preserving the Second Amendment Act) would have further bolstered the background-check system to keep guns away from criminals and added many protections of the gun rights for ordinary citizens, but Democrats blocked it.  

Cruz and Barrasso made another effort in June with the Safe Kids, Safe Schools, Safe Communities Act, but that was blocked by Senate Democrats then, too. 

Cruz tweeted that the blocking of the Securing Our Schools Act was “utterly shameful” and that the bill would have “doubled the number of police officers in schools to protect our kids.” 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/15/cruz-slams-senate-democrat-for-blocking-school-safety-bills

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Bill Maher warns woke schools' critical race theory lessons and insistence on keeping students' 'sex changes' secret from parents is driving liberal voters to Trump

Bill Maher says that woke schools' lessons on critical race theory and decisions to conceal transgender students' new identities from their parents are driving liberal voters into the arms of Donald Trump and the Republican party.  

During a discussion screened Friday with Trace Adkins, Julia Ioffe, and John Meacham, Maher stated that his two biggest issues when it comes to voting are democracy and the environment.

He admitted that he doesn’t have children but said his friends who do have kids ‘don’t like it when they come home and say they divided the class today into oppressors and oppressed.’

Maher, a Democrat who has donated millions to his party, went on: ‘And if I change my sex I don’t have to tell my parents. There’s s*** like that going on that makes people go, you know I agree Donald Trump is a creep. ‘He is everything wrong that could be stuffed into one man, but I have these other considerations, that’s all.

‘That’s why, you know, you seem like you have such contempt for half the country. I don’t think that’s going to get us where we need to go.'

Discussing the ongoing divide between Republicans and Democrats in the US, Maher sounded a pessimistic note. ‘I think we’ve crossed this line and now the question is how do we walk it back,' he began. 'How do we walk it back from "I hate you so much I can’t live with you."'

He added that of those who voted for Trump in the last election, he has been told that the ‘biggest mistake liberals make is thinking I like him.’

Maher explained that he would never vote for Trump, but he ‘understands’ why people would vote for him because there are things that are going on in the country. He went on to say that it depends on what the ‘priorities’ of the voter are, and those with kids often have different views.

Maher also called out the Portland school system, where they plan to teach that the concept of gender was brought here by white colonists, saying: ‘Not even Star Trek would try that story.’

That is a concept known as 'presentism', where historical figures are held to the most progressive of modern social standards.  

Maher spoke after furious Virginia parents gathered outside a Loudoun County School Board meeting on Tuesday to demand ‘an end to the racist and divisive ideologies being infused into the government schools.’

The area has become the nerve center for parental activism, with debates over critical race theory ideologies bleeding over into the rest of the United States.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11222115/Bill-Maher-warns-woke-schools-critical-race-theory-lessons-driving-liberal-voters-Trump.html

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Australia:  Senior High School students ditch difficult subjects in search of higher marks

The number of HSC students taking physics has tumbled to its lowest in 20 years, while the proportion of girls studying the subject has failed to budge in more than a decade.

A snapshot of this year’s HSC subject data shows 7730 students are studying physics – almost 2000 fewer students than a decade ago – as biology, business studies and personal development, health and physical education (PDHPE) enrolments climb to near 10-year highs.

Physics enrolments fell after a new syllabus was introduced in 2018, as the course became more mathematical, shifted to traditional physics and focused more on areas like quantum mechanics and astrophysics. Students are also selecting other science subjects such as earth and environmental sciences and science extension.

Simon Crook, a physics education expert and consultant, said students are choosing easier subjects due to the difficulty of achieving a band 6 in physics and chemistry. “And when you have low staff morale and teacher shortages that exacerbates the problem,” he said.

There are dwindling numbers studying maths at the highest levels, with enrolments in the three advanced maths courses offered at HSC level falling 12 per cent in 20 years.

Of this year’s physics students, 22 per cent are girls. In chemistry and biology the proportion of girls studying the subjects has risen slightly, with 48 per cent and 65 per cent respectively.

Data from the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) data reveals biology enrolments continue to surge: 19,173 students opted to take the subject this year, up 14.5 per cent from ten years ago. Business studies increased by 18 per cent and PDHPE enrolments have grown 20 per cent.

Meanwhile, enrolments in modern history and economics have flatlined, while ancient history has taken the biggest hit with 6530 enrolled this year – almost half the number enrolled in 2012.

NSW Science Teachers Association vice president Lauren McKnight said the 20 per cent drop in physics over ten years is concerning, but she welcomed the growth in biology, investigating science and science extension.

“Students turning away from academically difficult subjects such as chemistry and physics possibly reflects more on the nature of the exams, student workloads, and the overt focus on band performance,” she said.

NSW History Teachers’ Association Jonathon Dallimore said the addition of many new HSC subjects over the years means students now have more options. “One reason that students have maintained their interest in modern history is the content – the crisis of democracy, dictatorships, modern conflicts.

“This is all so clearly connected to current events giving it a sense of real immediacy, whereas on the surface ancient history can appear to some students as more detached from the news cycle.”

HSC student Chelsea Leung from Brigidine College in Randwick, one of five physics students in her year, attributes her curiosity and interest in “knowing how things work” as her motivation for studying the subject.

“When experiments work and support your hypothesis, it is so satisfying. I am looking into biomedical engineering at university,” she said. “I want to help people, I’d love to make hearing aids or medical devices.”

A NESA spokesperson said enrolments are consistent with previous years, with maths, biology and business studies attracting the largest numbers for nine years running.

“Year-on-year HSC course enrolments fluctuate based on a number of factors,” the spokesperson said. “Students may choose HSC courses for a number of reasons including their interests, future goals and courses most suited to their pathway to university, employment or further studies.

“Young women are very well represented in science courses, particularly in biology and science extension.”

There are 75,493 students studying one or more HSC courses this year, with exams starting on October 12.

Macquarie Fields High teacher Melissa Collins said year 12 students were still dealing with challenges after ongoing COVID-19 disruption this year, and next week the school will run five days of wellbeing initiatives for HSC check-in week.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/nsw/hsc-students-ditch-difficult-subjects-in-search-of-band-6-results-20220915-p5bibb.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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17 September, 2022

Mom wins fight against NYU to allow ‘banned’ baby on campus

A “desperate” mom who’s juggling motherhood and law school scored a victory this week when — with the help of The Post — she successfully convinced NYU to let her previously banned baby onto campus. 

After weeks of pleading with officials to allow her three-month-old son onto campus so that she can breastfeed him between classes, second-year law student Devorah Neiger was repeatedly told that only vaccinated guests ages 5 and older can enter any NYU building. 

As she’s enrolled in four courses and in class five days a week, Neiger came up with a workaround: Having her baby and his vaccinated nanny wait in an empty space on campus until she could squeeze in a quick feeding session.

But when the infant and nanny were caught in the lobby of the law school’s Furman Hall during the second week of classes, the Director for Diversity and Inclusion emailed Neiger to put her on notice: “This is still a violation of the university’s COVID-19 Visitor Policy which applies to lobby areas as well as interior parts of the building so cannot be a continued practice.”

After The Post began making calls about the baby ban, NYU apparently changed its policy by end of day Thursday — the same time as the deadline The Post gave the school for comment.

Now, the Westchester mom of three will finally be able to have her 12-pound tot wait inside school buildings.

“They’re making an exception for me,” Neiger told The Post on Thursday.

Asked about the sudden change of policy, including the “exception,” Michael Orey, spokesperson for the law school, told The Post: “NYU regularly reassesses its health and safety protocols, and has recently relaxed a number of Covid-19 restrictions. In accordance with that trend, our student, and others who are similarly situated, may now bring their children into NYU buildings.”

The school, which carries a $73,216 tuition, did not respond to questions about whether children under 5 must present vaccination status.

After being rebuked by the Director for Diversity and Inclusion for having her son and nanny in the lobby of Furman Hall, Neiger pleaded with officials on Sept. 8 in an email seen by The Post.

“All I want to do is be able to breastfeed my baby when I literally have just 10 minutes between/during classes. I’m not asking for much,” she wrote. “I am in an intensive academic program where I’m told attendance is mandatory or my degree will be jeopardized. You have a mother who is willing, able (and frankly desperate) to try and give her baby everything he needs while pursuing an education. I am so disheartened and surprised by the university’s response and the roadblocks placed in my way.” 

Neiger, who was valedictorian of Baruch College, said she had previously been permitted to bring her son into class by two professors. In an email seen by The Post, one even reminisced about bringing her own young kids to class while she was a law student.

The mom, who said she needs to have immediate access to her son, said that an official had previously suggested two public spaces for him and the nanny to wait for her: one play space in Union Square, another neighborhood entirely; and a public library .8 miles away.  

But Neiger said she was uncomfortable with the nanny and her tiny tot traipsing around the crime-ridden Greenwich Village to pass time until she could meet them. “I don’t want my baby in random places in Manhattan, especially in a neighborhood riddled with crime,” she said.

“All I want to do is breastfeed my child at the door of the school,” Neiger told The Post. “I’m grateful to NYU for allowing my baby in. It was a relief to have him close by today on campus.”

https://nypost.com/2022/09/16/mom-wins-fight-against-nyu-to-allow-banned-baby-on-campus/

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GOP welcomes end to ‘disastrous’ policy of masking Head Start toddlers

Republicans on Friday welcomed a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to drop a mandate for kids as young as two at Head Start preschool and daycare centers.

"I hope these reports are true that Secretary Becerra is finally ceding to commonsense and will lift the federal mandate that forces certain toddlers to wear face masks on the playground," Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital. "I’ve been fighting this government overreach since the very beginning. This decision is long overdue."

"Head Start's mask mandates would have continued to hinder the education and social development of nearly a million children from disadvantaged communities," Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. "Finally we're seeing one small step away from virtue signaling and a step toward actual science. I'm glad to see the Biden administration reverse course on their disastrous policy and finally unmask American children."

An HHS spokesperson confirmed to Fox News Digital Friday that it will remove its COVID mask mandate to align with CDC guidelines. The Hill first reported the move.

"Today, the Office of Head Start (OHS) notified programs that, in the near future, it intends to publish a final rule that will formally remove the requirement for universal masking in Head Start programs for all individuals ages 2 and older, which will align Head Start program masking requirements more closely with the updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance," the HHS spokesperson said.

"OHS has not monitored mask use at Head Start programs since February 2022, following updated recommendations from CDC," the spokesperson added. "OHS will continue to not evaluate compliance with the mask requirement during monitoring visits. This applies to all Head Start programs."

The HHS spokesperson did not address a question from Fox News Digital about whether Head Start will continue to require staff to be vaccinated.

The shift came just days after Republicans in both the House and the Senate called on the Biden administration to rescind the mask mandate.

Thune and Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Richard Burr, R-N.C., led a group of senators asking the administration to roll back both mask and vaccine mandates. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, where Cloud is a senior member, led a similar letter.

"Numerous studies have shown it is detrimental to children to be continually subjected to mask-wearing; children learning how to speak, interact socially, and interpret the world around them at early ages have the most to lose from this mask policy developmentally, economically, and educationally," the House lawmakers wrote.

The National Head Start Association, which says it's the "central association for the Head Start workforce," also lauded the decision to roll back the mask mandate Friday.

"The Head Start community is grateful for today’s announcement that finally gives us the clarity we have been seeking. It will go a long way to allow programs to do what they do best in a safe, healthy, and community-driven manner," the group said in a press release. "We appreciate the Administration’s work to restore the local authority that is vital to programs and their ability to serve as many low-income children and families as possible."

The HHS decision comes near the start of the third full school year of the post-COVID era, which finds children and parents grappling with the effects of masking, shutdowns, virtual learning and learning loss.

"Prior to the pandemic, two thirds of students in the U.S. didn’t read at grade level anyway," Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education and a former educator, told Fox News Digital this week. "Things were bad already. Now, the house is on fire more than it already was."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-welcomes-end-disastrous-policy-masking-head-start-toddlers

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My High School’s ‘Antiracist’ Agitprop

I was educated in the school district ranked by Niche.com as America’s third-best. Immigrants from around the world come to Great Neck, N.Y., to raise their children. My best friend’s father was at the Tiananmen Square massacre. My classmates left behind their families in El Salvador. My mother escaped revolutionary Iran, and my grandfather escaped the Nazis.

Lately, though, the area’s diverse and liberal-minded residents may have reason to think their local school officials aren’t as open-minded as they thought. In 2021 Great Neck North High School directed the student government to give $375 of student funds to a “racial equity” group to speak to the student body about “systemic racism.” I was the student government’s treasurer, and I felt we didn’t know enough about the organization and its mission to disburse the funds. So I refused to sign the check.

In response, the teachers who advise the student government berated, bullied and insulted me at our next meeting, which took place over Zoom for my parents to overhear. They began by announcing that my social studies teacher would be present. Together, the three adults told me that the principal himself found my stance “appalling.” I had made them and the school “look bad,” they told me. One teacher said the situation gave her “hives.”

When I suggested that students might not need or want a lecture on systemic racism, my social-studies teacher asked whether I’d also oppose a Holocaust survivor’s presentation.

I objected to that comparison, but she cut me off: “If you’re not on board with systemic racism, I have trouble with that, girlfriend.”

When I didn’t back down, she made a bizarre accusation: “The fact that you think slavery is debatable . . .”

I logged off Zoom and started crying. My parents comforted me, and I decided I wasn’t going to sign that check.

That’s when I noticed how illiberal my liberal high school had become. I once expressed disagreement with the narrative of the “1619 Project,” and that same social-studies teacher snapped that I was opposed to hearing other perspectives. I had signed up for her class because it was described as “discussion-based,” but certain discussion seemed forbidden.

Later, a friend showed me a lesson from his English class—a Google Slides presentation urging that students pledge to work “relentlessly” in the “lifelong process” of “antiracism.” According to these slides, America is a place where racism is “no better today than it was 200 years ago.” I disagreed but didn’t mind the debate. Yet this wasn’t about debate: Immigrant children were being told to “pledge” to defend a view many of them don’t hold.

I doubt students could have comfortably objected in class. The lesson pre-empted criticism by imputing to them “white fragility,” which means they “close off self-reflection,” “trivialize the reality of racism,” and “protect a limited worldview.” The adult presenting this accusatory material was a teacher who had the power to grade them and affect their prospects of getting into college.

When parents caught wind of this presentation, their group chats exploded: “I feel like I live under a rock.” “I did not realize the extent of this at all.” “If you too are troubled by this, join us at the upcoming school board meeting.”

I decided to tell the school board about my treatment at the hands of teachers and school officials. I was nervous but I made my case. The response, to my shock, was a standing ovation. I also received many expressions of support from fed-up parents, from teachers who silently abhorred their one-sided “professional development” courses, and from students who had been punished by administrators for questioning the orthodoxy of systemic racism. (One of those students had been sent to the principal’s office for refusing to sign an “antihate” pledge.)

That experience prompted me and a few like-minded others to look into our school’s curriculums. What we found was an arsenal of lopsidedly race-obsessed lesson plans. One was about the American Psychological Association’s “Apology to People of Color” for its role in “Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism.” Another was titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” My favorite: “A Critical Race Theory Approach to The Great Gatsby.”

The schools in our district had always followed the guidelines of New York state’s comprehensive social-studies curriculum, which included teaching about the pervasiveness and evils of slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, discrimination against Chinese immigrants and so on. What we discovered was something else—partisanship and race essentialism, mixed in with administrative intimidation and bullying that our officials refused to address.

District officials responded in the way school officials often do when criticized. They ignored us for as long as possible, then delayed taking action for as long as possible, clearly hoping everybody would forget the controversy and move on. They didn’t respond to my father’s freedom-of-information request until the day before a contentious school-board election. The board then promised to further investigate the curriculums, but we never heard anything after that. My school brought in a member of the state Education Department’s Board of Regents, to discuss curriculums, but that resulted in nothing.

I graduated last spring, but no one has moved on. Students and parents across the country are finally asking tough questions about anti-American curriculums. Immigrants like my mother and grandfather found refuge in America because for all its problems, it’s a wonderful place full of generous and open-minded people. The nation’s schools have a duty to teach students that basic truth.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-schools-antiracist-curriculums-education-teachers-students-open-minded-free-speech-racial-equity-systemic-racism-11663254720

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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16 September, 2022

DeSantis: Purpose of Education Is to Educate, Not ‘Indoctrinate’ Kids

Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke about how important it was for parents to reclaim their rights in education, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We’ve seen over the last few years in our country how important policy is, both good and very bad,” DeSantis said at a Heritage Foundation event Friday in Orlando. “There may be no area where the contrast between a free state like Florida and some of the lockdown states was [bigger] than on education during COVID.” 

The event featured the unveiling of Heritage’s “Education Freedom Report Card,” which ranked Florida as the freest state in the nation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)  

“We’re not going to let fear drive policy making,” he added. “we’re going to make sure that we’re there to support the well-being of our kids and also to support families throughout Florida.” 

The governor also addressed how his plans to give parents more rights in the education of their children has led to conflict with leftist groups. DeSantis highlighted his state’s work on the “Parental Rights in Education” bill and curriculum transparency bills. 

The “Parental Rights in Education” legislation was often referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics and the corporate media.  

“The purpose of our school system is to educate kids, not to indoctrinate kids,” DeSantis said. “You do not distort American history to try to advance your current ideological agenda.” 

DeSantis also said his administration was placing an increased emphasis on teaching American civics.  

“As [we] fight back against things like [critical race theory]… we’ve put a renewed emphasis on American civics, on making sure that the kids who come through our schools have an idea of what it means to be an American,” DeSantis said. 

After his speech, the governor sat down with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts for a discussion on what made Florida’s education policies some of the best in the country.  

Roberts noted that while Florida was first on several different metrics for education freedom, it lagged behind other states on school choice. Roberts then asked DeSantis what his plans were to bolster school choice in the Sunshine State.  

The governor targeted teachers unions as a negative influence in achieving better school choice policies in Florida, and said his state was planning on reforming how families could use state scholarship funds to choose where to send their kids to school. 

“There’s an opportunity for some innovation with [scholarships] if it’s an account that the parents can control that can be tuition, but could also be for tutoring or for other services,” DeSantis said. “The parent will be able to make a whole host of other choices to give their kids the most opportunity possible.” 

According to “Education Freedom Report Card”, Florida is the best state in the Union at protecting parental rights.  Roberts, who referred to DeSantis as “America’s governor,” said that the work Florida lawmakers were doing in education is the “lever for taking back our schools for our kids, and our parents, and our families.”  

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/11/in-fight-for-parents-rights-in-education-desantis-florida-leads-pack-says-heritage-foundation

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Pandemic “Learning Loss” Actually Reveals More About Schooling Than Learning

There are mounting concerns over profound learning loss due to prolonged school closures and remote learning. New data released last week by the US Department of Education reveal that fourth-grade reading and math scores dropped sharply over the past two years. 

Fingers are waving regarding who is to blame, but the alleged “learning loss” now being exposed is more reflective of the nature of forced schooling rather than how children actually learn. 

The current hullabaloo over pandemic learning loss mirrors the well-worn narrative regarding “summer slide,” in which children allegedly lose knowledge over summer vacation. In 2017, I wrote an article for Boston NPR stating that there’s no such thing as the summer slide. 

Students may memorize and regurgitate information for a test or a teacher, but if it has no meaning for them, they quickly forget it. Come high school graduation, most of us forget most of what we supposedly learned in school.

In his New York Times opinion article this week, economist Bryan Caplan makes a related point: “I figure that most of the learning students lost in Zoom school is learning they would have lost by early adulthood even if schools had remained open. My claim is not that in the long run remote learning is almost as good as in-person learning. My claim is that in the long run in-person learning is almost as bad as remote learning.”

Learning and schooling are completely different. Learning is something we humans do, while schooling is something done to us. We need more learning and less schooling.

Yet, the solutions being proposed to deal with the identified learning loss over the past two years promise the opposite. Billions of dollars in federal COVID relief funds are being funneled into more schooling and school-like activities, including intensive tutoring, extended-day learning programs, longer school years, and more summer school. These efforts could raise test scores, as has been seen in Texas where students receive 30 hours of tutoring in each subject area in which they have failed a test, but do they really reflect true learning? 

As we know from research on unschoolers and others who learn in self-directed education settings, non-coercive, interest-driven learning tends to be deep and authentic. When learning is individually-initiated and unforced, it is not a chore. It is absorbed and retained with enthusiasm because it is tied to personal passions and goals.

Certainly, many children have been deprived of both intellectual and social stimulation since 2020, as lockdowns and other pandemic policies kept them detached from their larger communities. I wrote back in September 2020 that these policies were damaging an entire generation of kids, and urged parents to do whatever possible to ensure that their children had normal interactions with the wider world. 

Children who were not able to have those interactions will need more opportunities now to play and explore and discover their world. It is through this play, exploration, and discovery that they will acquire and expand their intellectual and social skills. This is best facilitated outside of a conventional classroom, not inside one. 

“What we need is less school, not more,” writes Boston College psychology professor Peter Gray. “Kids need more time to play and just be kids. Mother nature designed kids to play, explore, and daydream without adult intervention because that is how kids develop the skills, confidence, and attitudes necessary for mental health and overall wellbeing.”

Fortunately, non-coercive schooling alternatives are becoming more widely available. My latest Forbes article describes an Illinois public middle school science teacher, Josh Pickel, who quit his job this summer to open a new self-directed microschool. As Pickel wondered: “What if we removed coercion and those kids were allowed to focus their energy and their intellect on things they care about?”

The start of this new school year brings with it greater education possibilities, including those like Pickel’s that enable children to joyfully explore content they care about, in pursuit of goals that matter to them, leading to genuine learning retained for years to come.

We can criticize school shutdowns and affirm that they never should have happened, while also recognizing that imposing more schooling is not the solution to presumed pandemic-era learning loss. It might raise test scores, but it’s unlikely to lead to true learning. Only freedom can do that.

https://blog.independent.org/2022/09/09/pandemic-learning-loss-actually-reveals-more-about-schooling-than-learning/?omhide=true

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The Plot Against Jewish Education

Sometime soon, The New York Times is slated to publish its expose on the state of Hasidic education in New York. Several members of the community who were contacted by the Times expressed their grave concerns to Tablet about the paper’s biases and the likelihood, or lack thereof, that the Times will give Hasidic Jews a fair hearing. One member described the impending piece as “yet another assault.”

It’s a convenient feature of the Times these days that one hardly has to read it to divine what the Gray Lady might utter. And so, unless the muse of objective journalism intervenes in some way none of us should reasonably expect, we can assume the report will read something like this: We’ve talked to dozens of (self-selecting) people in the Hasidic community, reviewed documents handed to us (by interested parties), and were troubled to find that Hasidic schools have fallen far behind. Despite receiving enormous amounts of government assistance, these (money-grubbing) private schools don’t bother teaching children basic tenets like history or science, the result being graduates who are illiterate and an embarrassment. This Dickensian grimness is made possible because those crafty Hasidim vote en masse and hold local politicians under their sway—power these black-hatted Rasputins inexplicably choose not to exert when it comes to charging and convicting assailants who beat up members of their own community.

How to address such allegations?

You could play defense, and say that labeling what goes on in Hasidic yeshivot as strictly religious instruction that bears no relevance to the so-called secular world is woefully unfair. Study page 14 of Tractate Eruvin, for example, and you’ll come across the pronouncement that, “Whatever circle has a circumference of three tefachim must have a diameter of one tefach.” Aha! the average Times reader may growl. But this is wrong! Pi isn’t 3, it’s 3.1415 etc.!

Tosafot, the medieval commentaries on the Talmud, got there first: “But [pi] is a little more [than 3],” they write, “which means that the value [of pi] is rounded down.” The rabbis grapple with this, but can’t come to a good conclusion to explain this Talmudic error. “This is difficult,” Tosafot goes on to proclaim, “because the result [that pi=3] is not precise, as demonstrated by those who understand geometry.” It doesn’t take a Euclid to realize that for a young Hasidic boy to understand these concepts—appearing, again, in a most sacred text—he first needs to understand the basic premise of geometry.

Or history, given that so much of the Talmud is an account of about a millennium’s worth of movements and conquests, from Alexander the Great’s unprecedented empire to the rise of Christianity to the golden era of the Sasanian Empire. Go ahead and ask a public school graduate to tell you about Queen Shushandukht and see how far you get.

If you’re in a slightly nastier mood, of course, you can go on offense and argue that no one in their right mind ought to launch anything like an apologia for New York’s public education system. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 enrollment has dropped by a mind-boggling 9%. Maybe that’s because of the fact that despite receiving $14 billion for education courtesy of two federal stimulus packages, New York delivered one of the nation’s absolute worst performances. A survey of remote learning during the pandemic, for example, found that students in New York City’s schools received less than half of the instruction the state itself requires per year, a disgrace that Miami, say, or Houston, somehow managed to avoid, despite receiving significantly lower sums from Washington.

But this ain’t the Times; we’ve no interest in playing partisan politics here. Instead, let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that everything the Times will argue is absolutely true. Let’s assume that Hasidic schools are failing to teach children the basic foundations of secular education, and let’s assume also that public schools would do a much better job giving them these tools.

So what?

The community that runs these schools produces individuals who grow up in multigenerational homes, live close to and support each other throughout life, raise children, live according to their virtues, and spend their days doing things they love and believe are of the utmost importance. As a result, they are happier. Don’t believe me? Maybe you’d like to glance at that hotbed of Haredi propaganda, The Journal of Psychology, which, in a 2020 study titled “Prioritizing Patterns and Life Satisfaction Among Ultra-Orthodox Jews: The Moderating Role of the Sense of Community,” came up with the following conclusion: Haredi Jews are happier. “The results,” read the survey, “demonstrated that prioritizing meaning and sense of community were positively associated with life satisfaction … Our findings suggest that even in extremely close-knit community-oriented societies, a strong sense of belonging to a community enables individuals to prioritize more hedonic aspects of their lives in order to promote their life satisfaction.”

All of which should lead us to what ought to be the crux of this and any other conversation about education—which is what, precisely, is its ultimate goal. Education is a means to an end; what, then, do we want our well-educated children to be?

This approach forces us to do two things. First, it demands that we look at output, not input. The zealots trying to use state power to curb Hasidic liberties to educate their children as they see fit are demanding that yeshivot be compelled to teach as many hours of English, math, and other core subjects as do public schools, no matter how spotty the actual outcomes. Instead, we must demand better and judge an educational system by how well it succeeds in actually meeting its goals.

Which leads us to a second, and much trickier task: answering what, precisely, these goals ought to be. Here’s a radical idea: Above all, we want students invested in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We want them to become neighbors who care for the needy next door. We want them to become children who care for their parents as they age. We want them to become siblings who support each other through life. We want them to become spouses who treat their husbands and wives with respect and reverence and love. We want them to become individuals who are self-confident, grateful to their Creator for all of His bounties, and mindful that true joy means balancing personal appetites with communal needs. We want them to be happy.

With these perfectly obvious yardsticks at hand, let’s ask a much more pressing question: How well are our schools doing? And because roughly 50 million American students, or about 90% of all school-age children, attend public schools, a more accurate way to phrase this question is this: How well are our public schools doing?

To hear Nobel Laureate economist Angus Deaton tell it, not well at all. Together with his wife, the Princeton economist Anne Case, Deaton researched the rapid surge of so-called “deaths of despair” caused by suicide or drug overdose or alcohol-related diseases. Consider the following: In 2017 alone, the last year for which dependable data is available, 158,000 Americans died deaths of despair—the equivalent, Case and Deaton wrote, of “three fully loaded Boeing 737 MAX jets falling out of the sky every day for a year.” Nearly 92,000 Americans died in 2020 from drug overdoses, a number that continues to climb. Another estimated 95,000 die each year from alcohol-related causes, which is more than double those we lose to gun violence, two-thirds of whom are victims of suicides. With so many Americans rushing to put an end, one way or another, to their miserable existence, it’s no surprise to read the Times report that “the average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years.”

And then there are the Americans never born at all. America’s birth rate has plummeted by a whopping 20% since 2007. To maintain a so-called “replacement rate” and keep the population stable, we need an average of 2.1 births per woman of childbearing age; America’s now at 1.6. With 4 in 10 Americans aged 25 to 54 now unpartnered—a steep 29% increase from 1990—it’s not hard to understand why.

Let us recap: Of the overwhelming majority of Americans who attend public schools, an increasingly alarming number go on to live solitary lives that drive them to choose infertility and turn to drugs and alcohol in record numbers to numb their pain. This is stark proof of an education system failing on the grandest scale imaginable, a catastrophic collapse that should terrify us all, parents and nonparents alike.

How to fix it? The answer may be simpler than we think. If the problem we’re facing is despair, the cure may be hope, that precious metal that is best mined wherever a sense of belonging is strong and a higher purpose evident. Hasidic communities have all that in droves, which is why they’re faring much, much, better than their nonobservant neighbors.

What we need, then, isn’t another Times hit piece suggesting that observant Jews are using their political clout to mask a vast cultivation of ignorance that borders on child abuse. What we need is a committee of Hasidic rabbis investigating New York’s failing public school system and offering ways to imbue it with the moral and ethical education it currently lacks and which it so clearly and desperately needs.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/plot-against-hasidic-education-new-york-times

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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15 September, 2022

Nation’s Largest Public University Hit With Class Action Suit Over Race-Based Hiring Practices

The largest public university in the United States is reserving faculty positions based on race and making six-figure bonuses available exclusively to minorities, programs that are now the subject of a class action lawsuit.

As part of a new initiative to attract "faculty of color," Texas A&M University set aside $2 million in July to be spent on bonuses for "hires from underrepresented minority groups," according to a memo from the university's office of diversity. The max bonus is $100,000, and eligible minority groups are defined by the university to include "African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians."

Another program, at the university’s Mays Business School, reserves certain slots on the faculty for the same minority groups, emails between Texas A&M professors show.

These explosive revelations form the basis for a class action complaint filed this weekend by the conservative nonprofit America First Legal. The plaintiff, a University of Texas at Austin finance professor named Richard Lowery, argues that the hiring programs violate three different civil rights laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits race discrimination in contracting; Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race discrimination at federally funded universities; and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which bars public universities from using racial preferences in nearly all situations.

"University administrators think they can flout these federal statutes with impunity because no one ever sues them over their discriminatory faculty-hiring practices and the Department of Education looks the other way," the lawsuit reads. Lowery is asking a Texas district court to put an end to Texas A&M’s programs and appoint a court monitor to make sure that the diversity office "does not aid or abet violations of the nation’s civil-rights laws."

Such violations are increasingly de rigueur in both academia and corporate America. A faculty hiring plan at George Mason University, announced in April 2021, drew criticism from law professors over its apparent use of racial quotas, which are illegal under federal law. Google, Pfizer, Microsoft, and IBM have capped or outright excluded white and Asian applicants from prestigious fellowships, while Amazon offers "Black, Latinx, and Native American entrepreneurs" a $10,000 stipend to launch their own delivery startups—a program that, like Texas A&M’s initiatives, is now the subject of a lawsuit.

Many of these programs seek to ensure that an institution’s racial balance reflects the demographics of the population. George Mason said its hiring initiative would close "gaps" between the racial composition of its students and the racial composition of its professors. Texas A&M likewise touted its race-based bonus scheme as a way to achieve demographic "parity" with the state of Texas.

Though the public universities can use race as a "plus factor" in admissions, it’s not clear whether they can do so in faculty hiring. Even if they can, the lawsuit argues, Supreme Court precedent would still forbid the sort of outright quotas used by Texas A&M.

"These discriminatory, illegal, and anti-meritocratic practices have been egged on by woke ideologues who populate the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public and private universities throughout the United States," Lowery’s lawsuit says. "The existence of these offices is subverting meritocracy and encouraging wholesale violations of civil-rights laws throughout our nation’s university system."

Laylan Copelin, the vice chancellor of marketing and communications for Texas A&M, said the the university system would "review the lawsuit" and "take appropriate action as warranted." With more than 73,000 enrolled students, Texas A&M is the largest university in the country.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/nations-largest-public-university-hit-with-class-action-suit-over-race-based-hiring-practices/

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NYC’s Trinity School bares its unholy leftist hate

There were hopeful signs last week that reality might slowly be dawning on the tony Trinity School on the Upper West Side, when the board of trustees issued a statement subtly repudiating the headmaster’s clueless handling of the racist “Dexter” scandal. 

In a statement to parents, David Perez, president of the Board of Trustees, did what headmaster John Allman failed to do the previous week when a senior teacher was caught on video saying that “we just need some vigilante Dexter” to get rid of the “horrible . . . white boys” at the school. 

Since Dexter is a TV serial killer, Trinity teacher Jennifer Norris appeared to be advocating for white male students to be murdered when she was secretly recorded by gonzo journalism outfit Project Veritas. 

Perez was lead author on last week’s revisionary statement assuring parents that he and Allman “categorically denounce the derogatory and antagonistic comments in the recently released video about our white students . . . Bias of any kind or the threat of violence toward any person has no place at Trinity School. 

“The comments made in the video do not reflect the mission or values of Trinity School. Ms. Norris is not speaking for Trinity School.” 

Well, that’s a relief. But why is Norris still employed? As of Sunday, she was still on paid leave, according to Kevin Ramsey, Trinity’s director of Communications. 

School’s initial silence 

Why did it take five days and two statements for the school to state the bleeding obvious? You’d think it was a no-brainer immediately to come out and say that Trinity does not share the values of a teacher who thinks white boys should be murdered by a serial killer. 

But. no, the previous week the school had issued a tone-deaf statement expressing anger — at Project Veritas. The primary complaint was “the reprehensible way Ms. Norris and our school community were targeted,” and that she was recorded “without her knowledge and permission by someone who misrepresented himself.” 

The hateful bigotry expressed by Norris was mentioned only as a mild afterthought, something that “does not reflect the mission or values of Trinity School.” 

No surprise really, considering Norris implies that other school members share her hostile view of conservatives, and considering Allman’s bizarre outpouring of grief in 2016 after Donald Trump was elected president. 

When Norris told Veritas that Trinity is “definitely a school where conservatives would not feel comfortable,” she was telling the truth. 

In the end, Perez must have felt enough heat to issue a stronger statement a few days after the school’s initial limp offering. 

Maybe there has been a change of heart. Or, more likely, the trustees don’t enjoy getting calls from journalists. 

It’s a prestigious gig to sit on the board of trustees of an elite Manhattan private school whose annual fees start at $61,000, and it’s guaranteed to earn you esteem in the social pecking order, and all the best invitations. 

The last thing the trustees want is to be engulfed in a scandal. 

But they are involved. The board “bears ultimate responsibility for the well-being of the school,” says its mission statement. 

It’s their fault that the nation’s oldest Episcopal school, a once-great institution of learning, has gone so far off the rails. It is not one teacher but the entire woke ethos of the school. 

Perez, a Cuban-born investment banker, must understand from life in his former homeland the lethal trajectory of far-left ideological manipulation in schools. 

Unfortunately, calls and emails to Perez and other board members have gone unanswered, unless you count Ramsey’s emailed statements. 

But take billionaire William P. Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, Trinity Class of 1978 and respected emeritus trustee of the school board. 

Does he think it’s OK for the school to exclude conservatives, and for a teacher to advocate that white male students, like he once was, be murdered? He won’t say, but he should. 

He comes from a family which well understood the murderous nature of hate and bigotry. His uncle Ronald Lauder, as president of the World Jewish Congress, used to talk about confronting bullies: “When there is no reaction to their hate they are emboldened. Silence gives them strength.” 

He was talking about anti-Semitism, but the sentiment applies to bigotry of all kinds, including dehumanizing conservatives and plotting the painful deaths of “white boys.” 

https://nypost.com/2022/09/11/nycs-trinity-school-bares-its-unholy-leftist-hate/

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The snobby dark side of Australia's universities: How a State  school student was 'humiliated' so badly at a university Open Day he almost gave up his dream of becoming a doctor

<i>An interesting story.  I think I need to put my sociologist's hat on to explain it. The Muslim guy obviously lacked social skills and awareness.  

The  early days at university are a time of uncertainty and some anxiety for most students.  And they reassure themselves by hanging out with other freshers that they know -- usually from their old school.  It is not snobbery.  It is an adjustment to a new environment and experience.

So if you have no-one there that you know you are at a largely inescapable disadvantage -- as Mr Khan was.  His prior  environment did not prepare him for university. It was a new milieu for him. 

I was in a similar sitution.  I actually taught myself for the Senior exam so I knew nobody at university when I first went there.  As it happens, that did not bother me.  I was used to running my own race.  But I did do what Mr Khan should have done:  Join campus special interest groups.  I met people that I became friendly with that way. I even joined a university army unit, which I enjoyed greatly.  Approaching people you don't know out of the blue and with nobody or nothing to introduce you is just not British and will get you nowhere</i>

A medical student has claimed his neighbourhood and the humble state high school background led to him being led to him being 'snobbed' at one of Australia's most prestigious universities.

The experience was so humiliating that Fahad Khan said it almost caused him to give up his dream of becoming a doctor. 

In a TikTok video, which has almost 50K likes, third-year medical student Fahad Khan recalled his experience of attending  Sydney University's Open Day as a year 12 student in 2016 from western Sydney.

Under the caption 'Getting snobbed @USyd Open Day as a person from Western Sydney' Fahad said the first thing he did was go to the medicine information session.

'I saw that there were two medical students, I think, and about 10 Year 12 students with them,' Fahad says. 'When I went close to them I heard them speaking about things like 'does Mr X still teach maths and does Mrs X still do that?'  'And they were all having a laugh and I went 'look they are all mates, that's like pretty nice'.'

The caption on the TikTok video changes to: 'This is why I believe there's parts of USyd with a toxic selective/private school culture' as Fahad describes trying to join in the conversation. 

'I tried to say hello and they ignored me,' he says.  'And then I say it again... I say 'Hi my name's Fahad'. 'And they all turned around and they looked at me and then they looked away and one of the medical students was like 'oh, hi'. 

'And then they all started talking about their high school again and I said 'what the hell? They just like kind of ignored me',' Fahad says.

'But I said 'You know what? The session is starting in five minutes, maybe this is just a group of mates and fair enough if they want to talk to their mates before they start talking to everyone, that's fine'.'

However, things did not improve when the session started.  'The first question they asked was 'Which high school did everyone go to?',' Fahad says. 'Most of them were James Ruse students, there was some Sydney Boys [High] and Sydney Girls. 'I was the only student from a non-selective non-private school.'

Fahad describes what happened next as 'unbelievable'.  He said all those from the selective and private schools were taken to one side of the room to talk to the medical students while he was left alone on the other side. 

'I asked them 'Am I coming? Am I also included in this?'

'And the medical student turned around to me and he was like 'Oh, there's like this third medical student going to come, you hang out with that person' and I was like 'What the hell?'.'

The third medical student did not show up.

Fahad decided he was 'going to force' himself into the experience.  'So, I went there and I sat with them, and I forced myself to sit with them and do what they were doing,' Fahad says.

'And I kid you not throughout the entire 100 per cent of the session they were talking about inside jokes from their high school.

'Whenever I asked a question like, 'How was first year? How was second year?' they were like, 'Oh yeah, it's alright'. 'Then they looked away and started talking about their high school again and I was like, 'What the hell is wrong with these people?'.'

Fahad said the experience was shattering. 'I remember leaving that session completely humiliated,' he says.

'Then on the train home I remember thinking about how my peers at school would laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a doctor and they would just say to me 'you know some dreams are out of reach'.  'That day almost made me believe I couldn't be a doctor.' 

The comments underneath the video made it clear that Fahad's experience wasn't unique. 

'I went through usyd med as one of the only non selective/public schooled/low SES students and it was so isolating being around so much privilege,' one wrote.

'Usyd was so toxic, I transferred there my 2nd uni year and the vast majority of people looked down on me for the area I came from,' another said.

'Definitely a superiority complex held by many students at usyd,' another wrote.

Fahad's story touched at least one person who said they were associated with the university.   

'From someone that works at USYD: Really sorry you had to go through this man. Was heartbreaking to watch,' they wrote.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11213411/Sydney-University-student-snobbed-medical-school-Open-Day-person-western-Sydney.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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14 September, 2022

Biden’s controversial Title IX rule bombarded with record number of comments from concerned parents

President Biden's proposed changes for Title IX have stirred up such controversy that they've generated a record number of public comments from parents, many of whom are concerned about their children's safety in schools, and what the amendments will mean for women's sports.

The Biden administration proposed new regulations on the 50th anniversary of Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools, to expand the protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies recently released a study highlighting what they called the "Dirty Dozen Defects" of the draft. The "defects" the group said has fired parents up most are those that would require schools and colleges to allow biological males to compete in girls’ sports and use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their "gender identity." 

Monday marks the last day of public comment period for the Title IX proposals. As of Friday, it received a record-breaking number of comments for the Department of Education - over 184,000 as of Sunday - from individuals sounding off on the rule to redefine sex.

"For fifty years, Title IX has provided important protections and opportunities for women by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex," one commenter wrote. "While parents across the country are demanding the rejection of ‘woke’ policies, the Department of Education instead has chosen to hijack Title IX to force gender ideology on children without their parents’ knowledge or approval."

"Your rule changes will destroy girl's sports. It will no longer exist. Your rule changes will subject girls to boys in their private spaces. Your rule changes will perpetuate the spread of confused children who claim to be another gender to fit in," another parent wrote, saying, they "can't even publicly comment on this issue without fear of retaliation."

Yael Levin-Sheldon, technology and communication officer for No Left Turn in Education, said she commented through the portal provided by the Defense of Freedom Institute, which offered four main categories - parental rights, women’s sports, due process, and freedom of speech. She said she submitted a comment through all four.

"The obvious concern I would say is that Title IX was made specifically to make a space for women so adding gender identity to it pretty much voids it," Levin-Sheldon told Fox News Digital.

"As a mom… the clear usurpation of parental rights that basically a child… the schools are assuming the responsibility of in loco parentis and acting as if they are the parents or legal guardians of the child and will be able to hide anything they want from the parents," she continued.

Individuals of all ages sounded off on the 

"For fifty years, Title IX has provided important protections and opportunities for women by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex," one commenter wrote. "While parents across the country are demanding the rejection of ‘woke’ policies, the Department of Education instead has chosen to hijack Title IX to force gender ideology on children without their parents’ knowledge or approval. This proposed rule is a lawless interpretation and is a complete overreach by the Department of Education.  As a 71-year-old woman who has cherished Title IX, this is abhorrent and must be stopped. Please do the right thing and oppose the Biden Regime."

Others threatened to file lawsuits.  

"You are using non-discrimination laws in an illegal and unconstitutional way, and if this hits my kids’ school, we will file a lawsuit," one user wrote.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bidens-controversial-title-ix-rule-bombarded-with-record-number-comments-from-concerned-parents

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Private School Diversity Director: ‘BIPOC Students’ Must be Protected from ‘White Gaze’

The Director of Diversity and Inclusion for a private school in Baltimore expressed support for racial segregation in order to protect students from the “white gaze” and promoted turning children into woke activists. 

Kalea Selmon, the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Maryvale Preparatory School, gave a presentation where she argued that nonwhite students must be given spaces away from white students and described how those who work in education can use students as activists. 

The presentation was given at the People of Color Conference, which is hosted by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and tells teachers and administration how to embed the tenets of Critical Race Theory into their schools. The NAIS is America’s largest accreditation agency for K-12 private schools. 

In a video of part of her presentation, Selmon claims that “BIPOC spaces are sacred.” The term stands for “Black, Indigenous, People of Color.”

Selmon then goes on to say “It’s necessary for BIPOC students to have space away from white gaze and that it is absolutely okay to give black and brown students things you’re not giving white children because the white children are fine.”

In a second clip, Selmon discusses the utility of racially segregated affinity groups, saying that they can be used to find future leaders, who she refers to as “boots on the ground,” for organizing.

In yet another video clip, Selmon explains that her work is motivated by what she calls “70 over 460.” She goes on to explain that 70 is “the number of BIPOC students” while 460 was the total number of students at the school. The slide read “This is why we do this work!”

According to her LinkedIn profile, Selmon “Supervises affinity student groups with the Dean of Students” and “Chairs the Equity and Justice Committee” in her role as a diversity director at Maryvale Preparatory School. Selmon is also tasked with developing “inclusive and multicultural curricular and co-curricular programming that reflect the school’s mission and commitment to diversity.”

The school teaches Critical Race Theory to its students, with lessons for middle school students, like “The Historical Construction of Race and Current Racial Identities Throughout U.S. Society,” and “Racism as a Primary ‘Institution’ of the U.S. – How We May Combat Systemic Inequality.”

Meanwhile, teachers at the school have engaged in professional development training seminars based in the tenets of Critical Race Theory. Among the professional development training resources listed on their website are talks titled “Identity, Race, and the Classroom,” as well as “Let’s Talk! Discussing Whiteness.” 

There is also a talk from Critical Race Theorist Robin DiAngelo, titled, “Healing the Racial Water: a half-day Anti-Racist Workshop with Dr. Robin DiAngelo.”

In the talk, DiAngelo presents a “systemic analysis of White Supremacy and work around Whiteness and White Fragility. Dr. DiAngelo takes participants through topics including white socialization, systemic racism and the specific ways racism manifests for white progressives.”

Maryvale Preparatory School received over $1.2 million dollars in federal money through the Paycheck Protection Program. Maryvale, which is an all-girls school, is a 501c3.

https://www.breitbart.com/education/2022/09/02/private-school-diversity-director-bipoc-students-must-be-protected-white-gaze

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Democrat Mom Accuses Educators, Therapist of Driving Her Autistic, Gender-Confused Child to ‘Catastrophic Ruin’

After educators and a therapist drove her high-functioning autistic, gender-confused daughter to a mental breakdown, a California mother is speaking out about the “trauma” and “catastrophic ruin” that gender ideology has caused her family.  

Vera Lindner (not her real name) says she worries that other parents’ children will be led down a path of delusion. 

“Children who have experienced trauma or adverse childhood experiences, who are neurodivergent such as autistic or with ADD, ADHD [attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] are extremely susceptible to the transgender ideology,” Lindner says.

“Instead of the teachers and the doctors saying, ‘OK, now let’s get to the bottom of this. Let’s see what’s really bothering you. Why are you saying you’re not a girl?,’ the teachers and the doctors blindly affirm. They perpetuate this delusion.”

Lindner says she wanted to speak up using her real name, but doesn’t feel safe doing so. She is an industry leader in California who employs more than 10 individuals and mentors dozens more. 

Should she get “canceled” or blacklisted for sharing her politically unpopular views, she fears that everyone she employs could lose their jobs, incomes, and livelihoods. 

Still, Lindner says she believes her story was important enough to risk telling on camera, while concealing her face, to protect a generation of neurodivergent young girls who she believes are being manipulated and exploited under the guise of compassion.

Lindner’s daughter first identified as transgender in August 2020, a few months after COVID-19 lockdowns took full effect. She was 14 years old. 

Lindner believes that her daughter was first exposed to the idea of gender identity in her public school. In seventh grade, she received a “Genderbread” worksheet that claimed gender identity is separate from biological sex. The worksheet asked Lindner’s daughter to pinpoint where she falls on the “gender identity” scale.

During the pandemic lockdowns, Lindner says, her daughter and some friends watched TikTok videos for hours at a time. In this group of five female friends, one already identified as transgender. Bored and isolated at home, the girls started “nudging” each other to make up male names, use male pronouns, and take on transgender identities.

It came as a shock, Lindner says, when her daughter told her: “Don’t call me a woman. Don’t call me a girl. Don’t call me she. I’m a guy. I’m your son.” 

Just one week prior, she recalls, her daughter had said: “I am a proud lesbian and a Democrat and that’s who I am.”

Lindner herself is a lifelong Democrat who has hired, mentored, and promoted LGBTQ+ individuals. She had supported her daughter in her coming out as a lesbian, and initially, she supported her daughter’s exploration of her “gender identity,” too. 

However, immediately after announcing she identified as transgender, Lindner’s daughter demanded treatment such as testosterone and a binder to flatten her chest.

“I understood that there is a medical harm. There are profound side effects involved in taking opposite-sex hormones. They make the body ill, but the side effects on the mental health are much worse,” Lindner says. “This is where I had to draw the line.”

In June 2020, Lindner hired a seasoned therapist who was a lesbian in her mid-70s. Lindner’s daughter faced a slew of mental health issues that needed to be addressed: in the fall of 2020, she was diagnosed with autism, ADD, depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder.

When her daughter announced her transgender self-identification just two months into working with the therapist, Lindner says, the therapist began referring to her daughter as a boy.

“At the time, I spoke with a therapist, saying, ‘My daughter has autism, ADD, anxiety, and depression. Why is it not cool anymore to be a lesbian? Can you explore these issues?’” Lindner recalls.

“I also wrote to the therapist, ‘Out of the five friends in her friend group, four are now identifying as transgender. Could this be peer influence?’ None of these questions were ever addressed.”

Lindner describes being “profoundly disappointed” with the therapist for failing to explore the underlying issues that might be causing her daughter to identify as the opposite sex. Worse, Lindner says, the therapist perpetuated her daughter’s confusion by telling her that testosterone would bring her “gender congruity,” and instructed her to call her parents’ insurance company to ask whether she was eligible for testosterone at the age of 14.

These ideas, Lindner says, led her daughter into a mental breakdown, which presented itself as a severe depression.

“My teen was in her room all day long, lying on the floor, catatonic, with the cellphone in her hands, watching TikTok videos,” she recalls.

Lindner says that when she asked the therapist to help her daughter minimize the time she spent on social media, the therapist did the opposite. 

Lindner says the therapist told her: “She has a broken heart. She has to soothe herself and distract herself with social media.”

At that point, Lindner says, her mother’s intuition kicked in and told her to approach the crisis “holistically.” This involved drastic measures: Mother and daughter packed up and moved to a mountain farm community where the daughter could volunteer, be around animals, move her body, and get in touch with nature.

“That return to real people, real-life stories, and spending less time on social media has been the most healing,” Lindner says.

Slowly, with the help of medication to treat the depression and ADD, her daughter’s mental health began to improve.

“What I had to do is be loving, supportive, and kind without affirming the delusion. Without affirming the ideology,” Lindner says. “And drawing a very clear boundary that ‘You’re loved, you’re safe. But we will do absolutely no medical interventions until you are 18.’”

Lindner says she has voted Democrat since she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000. As she watches politicians from California all the way up to the White House pressure parents by repeating the lie that children will commit suicide if parents don’t “affirm,” she says she feels betrayed:

I’m profoundly disappointed that the Democratic Party has chosen to affirm a delusion and a very toxic ideology that derails these vulnerable children.

I entrusted my child with professionals. And they created so much trauma and such catastrophic ruin in our family.

Autistic people often describe feeling disconnected from their bodies, in addition to having trouble understanding society’s expectations for “masculine” and “feminine” behavior. 

By sharing her story, Lindner says, she hopes that instead of blindly affirming gender confusion, politicians, doctors, and educators will begin asking why so many trans-identifying individuals are also autistic.

“One of the most toxic ideas of transgenderism is the idea that you’re born into the wrong body,” she says, adding:

What kind of an idiocy is this? Your body’s wrong? It has to be medicalized? It’s autism.

As a parent who has watched this firsthand with my child and with her friends, I have to fight this. There’s no other way for me.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/09/mom-accuses-educators-therapist-of-driving-her-autistic-gender-confused-child-to-catastrophic-ruin/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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13 September, 2022

Republicans Should Bring Back College Debt Bankruptcy, And Here’s Why

For the last several years, Democrats have been running on wiping out student loan debt at taxpayer expense. On Aug. 24, President Biden finally bowed to the pressure and announced he will unilaterally “forgive” up to $20,000 worth of debt for some borrowers.

Republican candidates have generally had little to say on the subject other than to reject the government giveaway, but the problem of crippling debt remains for many Gen-Zers, Millennials, and Gen-Xers. Republicans may well be losing winnable votes over this issue, and if no plan is put forward, we can expect Democrats will eventually win the day.

What should Republicans do to address the student loan crisis? It is very simple: bring back bankruptcy for student debt for those who cannot repay their loans after several years of good-faith efforts and require that colleges repay half of their students’ discharged debt.

Nearly every college in the country accepts federal money, and if they wish to continue receiving this funding, colleges should be willing to assist in cleaning up the mess that so many of them helped create. 

Fifty years ago, college debt was readily dischargeable in bankruptcy; but since then, Congress and the courts have made it more and more difficult to discharge student debt. It is past time to reverse course.

How big is the student debt crisis? Nearly 48 million Americans owe money on student loans; more than 45 million of them owe the federal government. A U.S. News poll from earlier this year found that 37 percent could not afford to make payments on these loans. Another 27 percent said they could barely afford to make their payments. If this poll is accurate, more than 15 million borrowers cannot repay their loans, and 9 million can barely afford their loan payments.

In addition to helping individual borrowers, bankruptcy for student debt would benefit American society. The U.S. News poll also found that 37 percent of those with student debt were putting off a home purchase, 32 percent were putting off saving for retirement, 19 percent were putting off starting a family, and 18 percent were putting off marriage.

Once freed from their debts, these college graduates would have an easier time settling down, starting and raising a family, and buying a home or starting a business. All of these outcomes benefit society at large and increase the likelihood that a person will hold conservative views.

Why should colleges be required to repay a portion of their students’ discharged debt? In addition to the fact that colleges have profited handsomely from the student debt crisis, they have also kept crucial pieces of information from students and parents. For example, most colleges do not disclose the average salary earned by graduates of the institution’s various degree programs. Furthermore, colleges routinely issue intentionally confusing financial aid award letters that make it difficult to discern how much a year of college costs and how much of the aid package consists of loans that must be repaid. So it should not be at all surprising when young people make poor choices based on incomplete data.

Allowing individuals with crushing student debt to discharge that debt in bankruptcy and holding colleges accountable for their students’ outcomes would transform higher education. If colleges knew they would be required to repay their students’ discharged debt, then colleges would change their ways in a hurry. They would likely pare back or jettison degree programs that provide few employment opportunities and focus on preparing students for the real world.

Colleges would also be incentivized to trim their bureaucracies, reduce costs, and work harder to ensure their students found suitable jobs after graduation. In other words, bankruptcy for college debt with a clawback provision would help align the financial interests of colleges and their students.

Biden’s plan, by contrast, simply rewards colleges’ greed and profligacy and decouples the cost of a college degree from its economic value. That colleges have failed to produce graduates capable of earning enough to pay back their loans is of no consequence; colleges get paid anyway. 

Colleges now have no incentive to reassess their spending and lower tuition, as they would if they were on the hook for a portion of student debt in bankruptcy. Instead, colleges can continue to eagerly belly up to the federal loan trough and spend extravagantly on projects, programs, buildings, administrators, and amenities that have little or nothing to do with providing quality education. Colleges can go right on with degree programs that produce graduates who cannot pay back their loans. 

Before Biden’s move, colleges and students may have only been working under the assumption the federal government would eventually forgive student debt. Now they know. The precedent is now set for the next student loan crisis — an inevitability so long as the federal government remains in the student loan business. The federal government will not reassess its lending habits as a private bank would. It will simply go on lending, same as before, until the next student loan crisis hits.

Nor will Biden’s plan give students or employers any reason to reconsider the economic value of a college education as compared to alternatives such as vocational training, on-the-job training, or starting a small business out of high school. 

To help solve the student debt crisis, transform higher education, reduce tuitions, and improve conservatives’ electoral prospects, Republicans should support allowing student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy with a clawback provision that requires colleges to pay back half their alums’ discharged debt. Gambling and credit card debts run up by middle-aged adults are routinely discharged in bankruptcy. Why shouldn’t college debt be treated the same way?

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/31/republicans-should-bring-back-college-debt-bankruptcy-and-heres-why/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=9fa4637c-2bc6-4f24-a09a-29482449af10

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The fate of a generation of Jewish children is at stake in yeshiva debate

By Michael Steinhardt

In a surprisingly caustic Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, Dovid Margolin, a senior editor at the Hasidic magazine Chabad.org, warned of a major new threat to his community’s vast network of schools, known as yeshivas. “New York’s yeshivas face a challenge with echoes of ancient persecution,” he wrote, comparing it to the shuttering of Jewish cheder schools in the Soviet Union a century ago.

He wasn’t alone in sounding the alarm. “This war on Orthodox Jews’ religious educational underpinnings,” wrote Eli Steinberg in the Daily Wire, “is as much an existential threat as the madmen who storm their grocery stores with guns and rush their homes with machetes.”

Margolin and Steinberg aren’t talking about violence or state-sponsored persecution, however. The looming horror they describe is nothing more than a set of proposals the state Board of Regents is considering to help these schools provide children a basic education.

Upwards of 65,000 Hasidic children statewide do not receive the education they deserve. Most of them are boys attending yeshivas whose language of instruction is Yiddish: Children are not even taught to read and write in English. Similar neglect is found in math, science and other key subjects.

The lack of a basic secular education contributes to a cycle of poverty that prevails across the Hasidic community — one that will only get worse as its population grows.

Such schools are not simply neglectful: They fail to meet New York’s legal requirements for education.

True, the 1895 state law mandating compulsory education allows for the creation of nonpublic schools, including religious ones like yeshivas. But such schools must still offer a secular education “substantially equivalent” to nearby public schools’.

And public schools are constitutionally obligated to provide, per a 1995 ruling, a “sound basic education” — including reading, writing, math and other skills necessary for productive civic engagement.

This month, the Board of Regents will consider a series of regulations aimed at helping nonpublic schools, including yeshivas, fill the needs — and rights guaranteed by the state Constitution — of their students. They flow from a 2015 complaint that offered detailed accounts of educational neglect. After a few years of court battles, the proposals on the table offer no fewer than four different pathways to compliance.

Contrary to opponents’ claims, the proposals do not interfere with yeshivas’ religious freedoms or management. They come from a genuine desire to help them follow the law while protecting their community’s way of life.

There is nothing inherent in Jewish tradition that forecloses a basic secular education. For many centuries until very recently, most traditional rabbis learned how to earn a living alongside their religious studies. Today, Modern Orthodox day schools provide a rigorous secular education alongside their religious one — and some are among the nation’s top private schools. Indeed, some Orthodox communities in America compete favorably against almost every other ethno-religious category, Jewish or otherwise, for academic excellence.

Efforts like those of Margolin, Steinberg and others to paint their opponents as closet Cossacks are beyond outrageous. Many behind the campaign to make Hasidic schools follow the law, such as Young Advocates for Fair Education, which filed the 2015 complaint, are themselves committed Jews worried about the fate of the children who attend these schools.

As am I. For more than three decades, I’ve invested heavily in programs like Birthright Israel, which strengthen Jewish identity in the Diaspora. Central to my identity has always been a concern for the success of all Jewish communities — including the ultra-Orthodox. They are my people as much as any other group of Jews.

So it troubles me deeply that so many Hasidic leaders have chosen a path that rejects the Jewish tradition of educational excellence and instead leads to poverty, dependence and an inability to contribute meaningfully to the world. This is most sharply expressed in the education their children, especially their boys, receive.

For that reason, I’ve always looked for ways to help ultra-Orthodox communities become more economically self-sufficient and build excellence through education. I’ve also been a supporter of YAFFED’s efforts to enforce New York law.

But in the American Jewish community, only a small number of philanthropists, and none of the major institutions, have taken up the fight. The Jewish establishment has been surprisingly silent.

American Jews must understand what is truly at stake in the debate over New York Hasidic schools: nothing less than the fate of a generation of Jewish children. Organized American Jewry should stand up to the voices opposing the proposed regulations and strongly show their support.

And the Board of Regents, as well as the state’s Education Department, should stand firm in enforcing the law and not hesitate to pass and implement the proposals.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/05/the-fate-of-a-generation-of-jewish-children-is-at-stake-in-yeshiva-debate/

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Team Biden’s shameless bid to dodge blame for school closure damage

Team Biden’s comment on news that school lockdowns cost America’s kids years of progress boils down to “Don’t blame us!”

Seriously: President Joe Biden’s Education Department late last week issued this absurdity: “When President Biden took office, most schools in America remained closed. President Biden got to work. He put teachers at the front of the vaccine line and got Congress to provide aid to improve ventilation and spacing in schools. This plan produced results: A few weeks after President Biden put these measures in place, a majority of schools were open for the first time since the pandemic started.”

What bull: The Biden administration without question slowed down school reopenings, in concert with Democrats nationwide who were rushing to please teachers unions that fought them.

It’s a known fact that schools reopened far sooner in Republican-led “red” states and cities than in Democratic-controlled “blue” ones. Teachers unions in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and other major cities kept schools closed far longer than in, say, Florida — which had in fact reopened well before Biden took office.

In February 2021, the White House pushed the Centers for Disease Control to accept the input of American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, which led the CDC to adopt “advisory” language delaying reopenings.

The fact that most schools reopened after Biden took office had nothing to with him. In fact, local leaders had to ignore the Bidenites’ advice to realize that 1) kids were never actually at significant COVID risk, and 2) school shutdowns did enormous damage to children.

America’s children, particularly minority kids in major cities, needlessly suffered immense learning loss thanks to Democrats’ eagerness to satisfy a selfish special interest.

Now that the damage is obvious, all the villains from Weingarten to the White House are pretending they worked hard to reopen schools. It’s a shameful, self-serving lie.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/05/team-bidens-shameless-bid-to-dodge-blame-for-school-closure-damage/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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12 September, 2022

Yeshiva University in New York City will not have to recognize an LGBT student club, at least not for the time being, according to an emergency ruling the U.S. Supreme Court issued

Founded in 1897, the Orthodox Jewish university describes itself in court documents as “the world’s premier Torah-based institution of higher education.” The word “yeshiva” itself refers to a traditional Jewish religious school. Recognizing the LGBT student organization would violate its religious teachings, the school argues.

The new ruling came as the high court has become increasingly protective of constitutionally guaranteed religious rights in recent years.

The order was issued by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees emergency applications from New York and two other states within the 2nd Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Sotomayor provided no reasons for her decision in the case known as Yeshiva University v. YU Pride Alliance, court file 22A184. Her order (pdf) states that the lower court ruling “is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.”

The university asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a court ruling that determined its refusal to recognize the YU Pride Alliance violated the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL), which forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In the alternative, the school asked the high court to take up the case and fast-track it, something the high court may yet do.

Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, hailed the new ruling. “We are pleased with Justice Sotomayor’s ruling which protects our religious liberty and identity as a leading faith-based academic institution,” Berman told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

“But make no mistake, we will continue to strive to create an environment that welcomes all students, including those of our LGBTQ community. We remain committed to engaging in meaningful dialogue with our students, Rabbis, and faculty about how best to ensure an inclusive campus for all students in accordance with our Torah values.”

The attorney for the YU Pride Alliance, Katie Rosenfeld of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward and Maazel LLP, said her client “will await a final order from the Supreme Court.”

The group “remains committed to creating a safe space for LGBTQ students on YU’s campus to build community and support one another without being discriminated against,” Rosenfeld told The Epoch Times by email.

In June, Judge Lynn Kotler of the 1st Judicial District of the New York Supreme Court, determined that the university was not a bona fide religious corporation so it was, therefore, not exempt from the public accommodation provisions of the NYCHRL, as The Epoch Times reported.

Kotler, a Democrat, ruled that even though the university is “religious” and “at first blush” appeared to be exempt from the law, its “organizing documents” do not “expressly indicate that Yeshiva has a religious purpose.”

Kotler stated that Yeshiva amended its charter in 1967 to become, in the words of the amending document, “an educational corporation under the Education Law of the State of New York.” The document states that “Yeshiva University is and continues to be organized and operated exclusively for educational purposes.”

Although in 1965, the NYCHRL “excluded ‘colleges and universities’ from classification as a place of public accommodation, in 1991, the City Council removed this exemption from the NYCHRL.” This means, the judge wrote, that the court’s finding that “Yeshiva is not exempt from the NYCHRL is wholly consistent with the legislative intent of the NYCHRL, which requires that exemption from it be narrowly construed in order to minimize discriminatory conduct.”

Kotler issued a permanent injunction directing Yeshiva to “immediately grant Plaintiff YU Pride Alliance” official approval as a club.

The university’s attorney, Eric S. Baxter of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, previously said Kotler’s ruling was “an unprecedented intrusion into the autonomy of a religious organization and a gross violation of the First Amendment.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/supreme-court-blocks-order-forcing-yeshiva-university-to-recognize-lgbt-club-on-campus_4721870.html

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Affirmative action hurts Asian-Americans—but the left just shrugs

In her landmark 2003 opinion legalizing affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger, Sandra Day O’Connor famously wrote, “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.”

This is the only time I can think of when the Supreme Court assigned an expiration date to a constitutional right. We’re coming up on Justice O’Connor’s deadline and — right on schedule — the Supreme Court is poised to end affirmative action in lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

But the legal argument is not that affirmative action is unnecessary. It’s that it causes schools to actively discriminate against Asian applicants. The evidence is infuriatingly strong.

A 2009 study by Princeton professor Thomas Espenshade found that Asian applicants had to score 140 points higher than white ones on the SAT to have the same chance of admission to elite colleges, 270 points higher than Hispanic applicants, and 450 points higher than black ones. Progressives usually argue that Espenshade himself said his evidence isn’t a smoking gun, because Asian applicants are possibly worse than other races on all the soft factors beyond GPAs and test scores.

I can’t help but notice that liberals don’t demand a smoking gun when inquiring into racism against other ethnicities.

It’s kind of funny and sad that our antiracist society buys the argument that elite colleges aren’t discriminating against Asians because we’re just cowardly, unlikeable, unkind worker drones who aren’t leaders. It’s common knowledge that this is the exact same argument that Harvard made when it discriminated against Jews almost a century ago. 

Harvard wanted to reduce its population of Jewish students from 25- to 15%. The university called that “the Jewish problem.” To accomplish this without imposing a strict quota, it introduced “character” requirements like leadership, which it found Jewish applicants consistently fell short on. It also introduced legacy admissions to further address its Jewish problem.

I don’t think we need to bring in Sherlock Holmes on this one. Harvard is discriminating against Asian applicants in exactly the same way it did against Jewish ones, for exactly the same reasons, with exactly the same results, and exactly the same justifications. But when you look at media analysis of the issue, you get a dozen progressive think pieces about how calling this “racism” is just a conservative talking point.

Society seems to be going in the direction of handing out education, jobs, honors and even medical treatment on the basis of race. New York, Utah and Minnesota all allocated scarce lifesaving COVID-19 treatments on the basis of race, explicitly prioritizing nonwhite people above white ones on the CDC’s recommendation.

Race-based victim status isn’t just a shortcut to education and lifesaving care these days. It’s also becoming a qualification for government money. In March 2021, Oakland announced to great fanfare that it was launching a pilot program testing universal basic income, distributing $500 a month to 600 low-income families for eighteen months. 

There’s a catch: white people weren’t eligible to apply. Officials and media justified this discrimination by appealing to gaps in median wealth between races; the editorial board of the Daily Californian breathlessly praised, “The radical potential of guaranteed income based on race.”

But individuals are not mere representatives of their race, and a poor black family and a poor white one with the same amount of money are equally poor no matter what’s happening to the median white and black family. As the threat of lawsuits rolled in, Oakland quietly changed its eligibility requirements to say that people of all races are permitted to apply to the program, though its focus is still on helping “BIPOC” people.

This is clearly a fig leaf to hide the city’s naked discrimination from the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. I don’t think the Constitution will be so easily fooled, and I hope the same is true for today’s judges who interpret it.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/10/affirmative-action-hurts-asian-americansbut-the-left-just-shrugs/

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Save NYC school snow days, Chancellor Banks, and let our kids have actual childhoods

Announcing that city public-school kids will now have to sign in for remote learning when snow shutters the actual schools, Chancellor David Banks chirped: “Sorry, kids! No more snow days, but it’s gonna be good for you.”

No, it won’t. 

Remote learning was, with few exceptions, a complete disaster for New York’s schoolkids. Just look at the pandemic-year data on everything from enrollment numbers (down 10%) to learning loss (40% of students across the city fell below math benchmarks over the 2021 academic year; in reading, 50%) — to say nothing about skyrocketing rates of mental illness among adolescents. 

In short, to learn and thrive, kids need to be physically present in school with their buddies and teachers. Not parked, as the chancellor seems to envision, in front of a screen for eight hours. 

Yes, remote learning can work in certain limited contexts — for, say, an honors calculus class at Stuyvesant. But what Banks’ edict means for the vast majority of NYC schools will be teachers pretending to teach (many not even virtually present for class, since union rules say they don’t have to be), and an utter loss for students. 

And yes, the proliferation of school holidays (which is likely driving the “no more snow days” move, as the Department of Education legally must “teach” 180 days a year) is a problem Banks can’t easily fix. But chaining little kids to their tablets while snow sparkles outside isn’t the answer. 

Disturbing, too, is the notion that technology is good in itself that seems to underlie the call. Just because schools can present content at a distance, over tablets and laptops, doesn’t mean they should. It’s no substitute for rigorous, in-person instruction in fundamentals and actual education innovation. Note as well that those tablets and laptops, lent by the DOE, often simply failed to work for NYC’s lower-income families even as the DOE provided no tech support. 

Meanwhile, play — free, unstructured, and as unsupervised as possible — is also hugely important for kids. It helps them develop self-reliance, sharpens their social skills, improves their physical health and provides a necessary outlet from the very real stresses and pressures they face. In our era of hyperstimulation, pointlessly putting them in front of yet another screen when they could be outside having a snowball fight is as absurd as it is cruel. 

So long live snow days! Chancellor Banks, if you really have the best interests of kids at heart — and we know you do — you need to reconsider your decision. 

https://nypost.com/2022/09/10/save-nyc-school-snow-days-chancellor-banks-and-let-our-kids-have-childhoods/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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11 September, 2022

Is it time to defund the humanities?

<i>As I have often <a href="https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2022/07/i-am-dyed-in-wool-conservative_31.html">pointed out</a>, I am a big fan of much in the humanities but I don't see it as deserving of taxpayer subsidy

My own first degree was an Arts degree but I think the argument in favour of Humanities involvement in education is greatly over-egged.  I am not at all sure that any arts and humanities courses should be publicly funded.  There is very little evidence that they do any good.  All we get are high flown assertions to that effect

I myself greatly enjoyed my studies of Homer, Thucydides, Chaucer, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Goethe, Wittgenstein, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven etc. and still do -- but I can't see that I needed to go to university to acquire that familiarity</i>

Much of the cost of running our universities and other centres of higher education is borne by government, meaning the taxpayer. Therefore, to reciprocate, one of the main responsibilities of these institutions should be to produce graduates who meet the needs of society. This is not to suggest that we should exclude the ‘follow your dreams’ brigade from higher education. But funding, facilities and priority should be given to subjects that will contribute more to our national prosperity and societal requirements. These subjects would include engineering, computer science, mathematics, chemistry, physics and other sciences intended to improve our skill deficiencies, our industrial productivity and to encourage more entrepreneurs. To improve our public services, we need to expand training in medicine, dentistry, nursing, other healthcare professions as well as social work of different kinds.

The state should consider reducing university funding for the arts and humanities. Would our society suffer by having fewer graduates in English, history, geography, modern languages and other subjects, or would it prosper by redirecting that university funding to more beneficial subjects? Many readers will be enraged by that suggestion and I will be accused of being an intellectual philistine attempting another form of social engineering. On the contrary though, this is merely being pragmatic. As a nation, we should cut our cloth to suit our need.

A case in point is the cap on medical student places of 7,500 annually which has been static for almost a decade with the exception of A level grade inflation in 2020 and 2021. This number of training slots is totally inadequate for the needs of the NHS. To plug the gap, the General Medical Council registered 53,296 doctors from abroad between 2016 and 2021. The cap exists because of the costs of training doctors. There is no additional funding available but that could change if places for less essential subjects were reduced.

It is not to insult the humanities or other subjects to point out the problem we have in this country with ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees. The term was even expressed by Margaret Hodge when Minister of State for Universities in the Tony Blair Labour government. She described it as ‘a degree where the content is not as rigorous as one would expect and where the degree itself may not have huge relevance in the labour market.’ That was 20 years ago and priorities have not changed. If anything more non-academic modules have been introduced.

Dame Margaret’s comment would have annoyed her boss who in 1999 had expressed a target of 50 per cent of school leavers going to university, a target recently increased to 70 per cent by the Tony Blair Foundation. That ambition would guarantee the creation of more unsuitable subjects especially for less able students who would be laden with debt from tuition fees. Why does Tony Blair not listen to his son Euan and voices from industry who advocate more apprenticeships?

By reducing funding for the humanities, students would begin to not think of university life as a goal in itself or as being a means of finding independence and liberation from parental influences. Instead the primary consideration would be the utility of their subject. There are of course, exceptions to this rule at the moment. The brightest students from the best universities studying the most esoteric subject may effortlessly move into finance, management consultancy or the law. There will also be scientists who fail in the job market. But it is the average student from the average university gaining the average BA degree who will have the most difficulty finding relevant employment. It is for them that this article is written. They should not suffer because of misguided career advice and a flawed state university funding policy.

The problem may be self-limiting as universities push for tuition fees to be increased closer to the £24,000 per year paid by foreign students. Prospective university students whose chosen subject has little relevance to the job market may be reluctant to take the excessive debt gamble. A glance at tables linking degrees to graduate entry salaries or to the chances of getting a job with that degree would be a wise move for most young people.

Part of the problem is that the decision on approximate career paths must be taken while selecting A level subjects. That is how we have arranged our higher education. At that age, students may be more attracted to softer subjects in preference to the greater discipline and demands of science subjects. That truth delegates greater responsibility to schools and to realistic career advice. Schools have the responsibility to guide students to good jobs.

I’m not suggesting that schools should indoctrinate students into science subjects but the advantages, importance and greater challenges of the broad range of studies defined by the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) should be explained. Science and mathematics teachers could be encouraged to make the case to counterbalance the preference some pupils at that age have for softer subjects. They could be paid more than other teachers given the greater relevance of their subjects. And the state should itself reduce funding and therefore the number of humanity places available so that only the most rigorous and successful courses continue.

Science and technology look forward to a progressive future while English and history look back into the past and at best, attempt reinterpretation and revision. These subjects can be learnt alongside STEM subjects. And in my experience, many scientists are also hungry culture vultures – there’s no reason students can’t enjoy the arts outside of a university degree.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/is-it-time-to-defund-the-humanities/

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Family-run bakery hails $36.5 million settlement that Oberlin FINALLY paid - after woke college defamed the small business with false racism claims

The owners of an Ohio bakery celebrated on Thursday their $36.5 million victory over the liberal arts institution Oberlin College in a defamation case, declaring that 'David has overcome Goliath'.

The college had been ordered to pay after jurors ruled that it had defamed Gibson's Bakery by describing the institution as racist, after the storeowner chased down three black students who stole from the business in November 2016.

With legal fees and interest, the amount rose to over $36.5 million. 

Oberlin College had tried to appeal the case to the Ohio Supreme Court, which announced on August 30 that it would not take up the issue.

Finally, in a statement on Thursday, the college announced it 'has initiated payment in full of the $36.59 million judgment in the Gibson's Bakery case and is awaiting payment information from the plaintiffs.

A lawyer for the bakery celebrated the huge settlement. 'With Oberlin's decision to not pursue any additional appeals, the Gibson Family's fight is finally over,' said Brandon McHugh, an attorney for the family.  'Truth still matters, and David has overcome Goliath.'

McHugh said the ruling meant the family firm was saved from collapse. 'While Oberlin College has still refused to admit they were wrong, the jury, a unanimous panel from the court of appeals, and a majority of the Ohio Supreme Court decided otherwise,' he said. 

'Now, the Gibsons will be able to rebuild the business their family started 137 years ago and keep the lights on for another generation.' 

The anger at Oberlin was whipped up by the former dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, who led the woke mob's attacks against Gibson's - and even turned up outside the business to screech accusations while toting a bullhorn. While named as a defendant in the suit, she won't have to pay the settlement.

And despite the disgrace she heaped on her former employer, Raimondo has now landed a cozy job at Oglethorpe Liberal Arts College in Atlanta, and has yet to speak out over her role in the costly scandal. 

The statement continued to say that while school officials are 'disappointed by the Court's decision... We hope that the end of the litigation will begin the healing of our entire community.' 

'We value our relationship with the City of Oberlin, and we look forward to continuing our support of, and partnership with, local businesses as we work together to help our city thrive,' school officials said.

They added that 'our careful financial planning... means that we can satisfy our legal obligation without impacting our academic and student experience.

'It is our belief that the way forward is to continue to support and strengthen the quality of education for our students now and into the future.'

Former Dean of Students and Vice President Meredith Raimondo stoked protests against Gibson's Bakery following the shoplifting incident, even though the claims were found to be totally false. 

She has since been blamed for much of the behavior that has seen Oberlin ordered to pay $35 million for defamation, with Raimondo since moving to a college in Atlanta 

Store owners Allyn Gibson and his son, David Gibson, both now deceased, sued Oberlin College in November 2017 claiming they had been libeled by the school and that their business had been harmed.

The suit was filed a year after David's son, also named Allyn, chased and tackled a black male student he suspected of having stolen a bottle of wine. 

Two black female students who were with him then intervened, and all three were arrested and later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges.

The arrests sparked protests outside Gibson's Bakery where flyers were handed out, some by an Oberlin College vice president and dean of students, accusing Gibsons of a long track record of racial profiling and discrimination.

A Student Senate resolution condemning the Gibson family was then emailed to all students and was posted in a display case at a school student center, where it remained for a year. 

Soon, the woke college — located in the small town of Oberlin southwest of Cleveland — ordered its campus food provider to stop buying cookies, bagels and other items from Gibson's, hurting the bakery's profits.

And even after the storeowners complained about the way they were being portrayed by college officials, they refused to retract their claims, protests continued, and the store was forced to lay off half its staff and cut opening hours. 

In June 2019, after a five-week trial, jurors awarded the Gibsons $44 million in compensatory and punitive damages. 

The award was later reduced to $25 million and $6 million in legal fees, but rose again in this week's state supreme court decision after a series of appeals.

The bakery has been begging school officials to pay up, claiming their comments and subsequent boycott of their business hurt its reputation.

In an opinion article just last week, Lorna Gibson, widow of the former bakery owner, said the 'shelves are bare', it now only has a trickle of customers, staff has been laid off and the family — which is white — is deep in debt.

'If I got the money from the college, I wouldn't buy a house, or go on vacation, or leave Ohio. I would replace the compressors for the refrigerators and replace the fryers and proofers that we use for our dough,' she wrote.

'If the money doesn't come through within the next couple of months, I'll be forced to declare bankruptcy and shut the doors of Gibson's for good,' she added.

She then went on to describe how the massive protests in the days after Donald Trump's election affected the family's business. 

'They blocked the door and screamed at customers who elbowed their way through to the counter. A few came in to record videos on their phones of our customers.'

'Our world was turned upside down and has never been set right,' Lorna Gibson wrote in the article, in which she strenuously rejected claims her family were 'white supremacists' who racially profiled customers. 'Calling us racists wasn't just wrong, it was deeply painful to our core.'

The boycott effectively continues to this day and freshmen nowadays are 'brainwashed to hate us' she added.

By November 2018, David Gibson died at the age of 65 after battling pancreatic cancer. His bereaved wife said she wanted to do everything she could 'to honor his final wish' and 'keep the doors open, no matter what'.

Allyn Gibson then died in February, aged 93. He spent much of his eighties sitting in front of the bakery, a 'fixture in the community' who chatted with locals, wrote Lorna Gibson. 

After the protests, 'no one would talk to him. It broke his heart', she added.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11195113/Oberlin-College-pays-36-5m-owes-Ohio-bakery-defamed-racism-claims.html

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Princeton will offer 'free ride' worth $300,000 to all students whose families earn less than $100,000: Includes tuition, housing and meals

<i>One wonders a little about what this will do for standards</i>

Princeton announced it will offer a 'free ride' for most undergraduate students from families making under $100,000, including tuition, accommodation and food. 

The Ivy League institution's offer breaks down to about $79,540 annually, and is equivalent to more than $300,000 over the course of four year-degree. 

The offer will also be extended to some students coming from families making as much as $300,000 that have multiple children at the New Jersey college.  

About a quarter of the elite University's student body of about 5,500 - some 1,375 students - is expected to qualify. The new aid program will come into effect fall of 2023.

The money to support the aid program is coming out of investment returns from the school's endowment worth over $79 billion according to The Washington Post.

Princeton previously offered a similar package for students coming from families making under $65,000.

The move comes as Princeton has spent years trying to shake its long-held reputation as being a stronghold for the wealthy and elite by recruiting heavily from a high schools representing diverse economic background.

Princeton president Christopher L. Eisgruber's announcement of the program echoed those ideas.

'We know that Princeton can achieve its research, teaching and service goals only if it attracts the best talent from throughout society,' Eisgruber said, 'I hope that these improvements will help prospective students and families see more clearly than ever one of this University's core commitments - at Princeton, we seek and welcome talented learners from every background and every sector of society.

Princeton president Christopher L. Eisgruber said he hope the new measures would help students 'flourish on our campus' +3

Princeton president Christopher L. Eisgruber said he hope the new measures would help students 'flourish on our campus'

Eisgruber explained the students from families earning up tp $300,000 with more than one child in college would qualify for aid in increments proportionate to the family income.

Families earning $150,000 would pay $12,500 per year; families earning $200,000 would pay $25,000; families earning $250,000 would pay $37,500; and families earning $300,000 would pay $50,000. 

Eisgruber noted the school was going away with an old policy requiring students accepting financial aid to provide $3,500 for books and other expenses. He said he hope the new measures would help students 'flourish on our campus.'

The move comes weeks after Joe Biden announced plans to spend up to $1 trillion to cancel student loan debt for Americans earning under $125,000, angering many who said it was unfair to those who'd scrimped and saved to pay off debts already. 

And not all were impressed with the leafy school's efforts, including Sandy Baum, an economist at the Urban Institute who previously studied financial aid and tuition tends for College Board.

'Does it change the world? No,' Baum said, 'Will it make life better for the small number of people who are fortunate enough to get into Princeton? Sure.'

'I'm not really worried about these Princeton students. I'm worried about all the people who don't go to Princeton,' she added.

Princeton's acceptance rate is among the lowest in the country - of the tens of thousands who apply annually, the acceptance rate hovers around 4 percent.

The school has been working to boost its undergraduate enrollment up to 5,700 by 2025 and has been adding new residence halls to accommodate.

Princeton's move is the latest in a tuition arms race amongst the ivy league, as the elite institutions vie for to draw students and to foster more inclusive student bodies.

In June Dartmouth College abolished student loans for families that qualify for financial aid, after well-heeled donors provided $120million for the initiative.

Both Harvard and Yale also cover the full tuition costs for students coming from families earning up to $75,000. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11194725/Princeton-offer-free-ride-worth-300-000-students-families-earn-100-000.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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9 September, 2022

Why schools won’t tell parents what their kids are being taught

School is starting, but don’t count on getting answers about what your child is being taught. School administrators commonly lie or give parents the runaround.

That explains the fireworks over a Greenwich, Conn., elementary-school assistant principal, Jeremy Boland, bragging that the school pushes kids to think in a “progressive” way that he hopes will make them Democratic voters.

The school’s hiring process, he explains on video, is geared to accomplish indoctrination. Prospective teachers who are Catholics or over 30 are disqualified. They’re too set in their ways, he says. Catholics are unlikely to “acknowledge a child’s gender preferences” or go against parents, so “you don’t hire them.”

When the video was released last week, Greenwich authorities immediately put their free-speaking assistant principal on leave. But Peter Sherr, who served on the town Board of Education for 12 years until December, attests that Boland’s comments are “very accurate.”

The video, made by the undercover investigative nonprofit Project Veritas, is part of a “Secret Curriculum” series. Another video shows Ginn Norris, director of student activities at Trinity School on the Upper East Side, swearing she’ll never allow a Republican speaker at the school: “Not on my watch.”

Secrecy is a problem across the country. Officials discourage parents’ inquiries and throw up roadblocks to those who persist.

Jackie Homan, who has three sons at Greenwich High School, says when she questioned the curriculum at a Board of Education meeting, “they laughed me out of the room.” She filed Freedom of Information Act requests and, after months of runaround, got some information but not about the class that worried her the most — SEL, short for social and emotional learning.

Jeremy Boland — an elementary-school assistant principal from Greenwich, Connecticut — was caught on video talking about how his teachers push "progressive" ideas on children.

Jeremy Boland — an elementary-school assistant principal from Greenwich, Connecticut — was caught on video talking about how his teachers push “progressive” ideas on children.

She was told she couldn’t have a copy of the SEL curriculum because it’s copyrighted. A preposterous excuse, since all the books students read are copyrighted.

Pennsylvania’s West Perry School District used the same lame pretext to turn away another inquiring mother, Ashley Weaver.

When Fort Worth, Texas, mother Jenny Crossland requested a list of books her children were being assigned, the school district told her she’d have to pay $1,267.50 for someone to compile it.

SEL classes are shrouded in secrecy. It’s no wonder. Originally, social and emotional learning meant teaching children to control their emotions and get along in class. No more. Now K-12 students are being taught “transformative SEL.” The American Federation of Teachers says the new SEL is aimed at “redistributing power to promote social justice.”

Panorama, a for-profit company that produces SEL materials for 1,500 school districts in 21 states, and the nonprofit CASEL, the largest producer of SEL materials, both encourage students to see systemic racism in their world.

SEL is political indoctrination. In many schools, students have SEL classes several times a week, even replacing math or science.

Last week, the West Bonner, Idaho, school district canceled its English-language-arts curriculum in response to parent protests that the SEL component would lead to liberal indoctrination and the teaching of critical race theory.

Parents are catching on, but too slowly. Public education is being hijacked. The AFT, America’s second-largest teachers union, announced its goal is to “reimagine the purpose of education” from learning to social activism. Never mind if your child acquires the skills to succeed.

Teacher-training programs and graduate schools of education have stopped focusing on classroom management, lesson planning and pedagogy. Fewer than one in four emphasizes training teachers in the “science of reading.” The new focus is how to turn children into activists.

No surprise Greenwich’s Jeremy Boland said the school will only hire teachers under age 30. They’re ready-made indoctrinators.

Boland got caught in a gotcha undercover video. It shouldn’t be that tricky to get the truth. The heroes are parents who keep demanding it, even when school authorities laugh them out of the room.

President Joe Biden told a group of teachers that their students “are not somebody else’s children. They’re like yours when they’re in the classroom.” Sorry, Mr. President. They’re yours to educate but not to indoctrinate.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/06/why-schools-wont-tell-parents-what-their-kids-are-being-taught/

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Inflation Will Hit Universities Hard

It is indisputable that the U.S. faces the worst inflation in 40 years, an outcome that seemingly no one was predicting a few years ago. The impact on Americans of rapid, unanticipated price increases varies. Retired citizens living on interest income from bonds and fixed pensions are badly hurt, for example, while some others, including owners of inflation hedges like gold, land, or real estate could conceivably profit.

In the short run, colleges and universities will be losers from inflation, partially for reasons peculiar to the workings of higher education. To borrow a term once used to describe slavery, colleges are now America’s “peculiar institution.”

Whereas grocery stores, gas stations, and airlines change their prices weekly or even daily, universities set tuition fees that exist for a minimum of one academic year. If the Consumer Price Index is reasonably correct, each dollar of tuition schools collect this fall was worth around $1.08 (in today’s dollars) a year ago, when university decision-makers decided on fees for the year ahead. The more rapid inflation becomes, the more colleges lose purchasing power.

In two to three years, some students may be paying tuition fees that are 20 percent or more below current levels in inflation-adjusted terms. Aggravating the problem, a few years ago large numbers of colleges embraced a tuition price-guarantee program. Students were guaranteed that the tuition fees in place when they entered school would be maintained for four (or even five) years.

Therefore, it is conceivable that some students will be paying tuition fees, in two to three years, that are 20 percent or more below current levels in inflation-adjusted terms. What seemed to be a good marketing ploy for colleges will now damage their finances.

Inflation also hurts schools, especially richly endowed private ones, in other ways. When prices were rising predictably at two percent or so annually, markets adjusted to that reality, and stock prices rose over time, as did other investments. Endowments on average increased healthily, allowing private schools like Duke or Stanford to increase their spending on the basis of investment earnings.

In the last year, as inflation has soared in unanticipated fashion (unanticipated to the Fed, but not to some contrarian economists like myself with a classical understanding of monetary and fiscal policy), interest rates have risen, driving bond and ultimately stock prices down. In time, the housing-price boom will likely reverse, as well.

As a result, rich colleges may take multi-billion-dollar drubbings in the market. Those theologically disposed might say that God is punishing these schools for their contempt for American traditions like free speech, their downplaying of merit as the basis for reward, and even their declining academic standards.

Furthermore, in the short run, rising inflation particularly hurts academic employees, who usually work on annual contracts, sometimes with a lifetime-employment guarantee. During unanticipated and substantial inflation in the World War II era, and then again in the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, college employees often got, say, three to five percent pay increases but faced eight to ten percent increases in prices, lowering their standard of living meaningfully.

Unlike decades ago, today’s inflation is occurring in a period of reduced demand for higher-educational services. For example, between the 1972-73 academic year and the 1980-81 year—a period of substantial and largely unanticipated inflation (with prices rising about three percent a year at the beginning of the period and over 12 percent annually at the end)—federal data tell us that the real (inflation-adjusted) earnings of full professors at universities in the U.S. fell an extraordinary 20.8 percent.

That was during a period of substantial enrollment expansion—robust and rising demand for higher-educational services.

However, unlike decades ago, today’s inflation is occurring in a period of reduceddemand for higher-educational services. For higher education as a whole, national enrollments have fallen continuously for a decade, and the discounting of published tuition fees has grown to astronomical proportions at a time when costs are starting to rise sharply.

Colleges buy electricity, natural gas, food, and other items even as they escalate in price. Tuition revenues are stagnant, but costs are rising robustly. Many schools are in precarious financial condition despite huge federal bailouts related to the Covid pandemic. Quite a few have already closed their doors.

Most academics will probably dislike my saying it, but, to a considerable extent, the colleges brought this on themselves.

I especially blame my fellow academic economists, a majority of whom seem to still, vaguely if not stridently, endorse the old Keynesian remedy for nearly all macroeconomic ailments: increase “aggregate demand” by “stimulus” packages of massive budget deficits and artificially low and unsustainable interest rates. The Federal Reserve System is run by individuals steeped in a Keynesian academic tradition and in such fashionable but unproven notions as “Modern Monetary Theory.”

In truth, the economic problems of recent years, emanating from the Covid pandemic, are supply side determined. Demand has been just fine—witness the shortage of many goods, from electric cars to baby formula.

The universities are usually favored wards of the state, but their struggles may be overwhelmed now by bigger distractions.One of the very few advantages of old age is gaining some historical memory. The rise of faculty unionization in K-12 schools (and, to a lesser extent, in higher education) occurred in the late 1960s and the 1970s—a period of enhanced inflation. Falling real wages in the present will lead to increased tensions between faculty and administrations, aggravated, I suspect this time, by growing rage over the growth of a non-academic, sometimes even an anti-academic, cadre of high-priced campus administrators.

Of course, the lobbyists at One DuPont Circle and other outposts of the higher-education elite will beg Congress for more aid to assist colleges in financial distress. Normally they would receive a sympathetic reception, as the universities are usually favored wards of the state.

But their struggles may be overwhelmed now by bigger distractions, most notably prodigious federal deficits coupled with a slowing economy. These are perilous times, and college leaders have their work cut out for them to keep their institutions afloat.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14264

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UK: Not everyone's glad to be back at school! Parents share snaps of grumpy children returning to the classroom

Prince William and Kate Middleton may have walked hand-in-hand with their perfectly behaved children for their first day of school today - but that's not the reality for every parent across the country. 

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, both 40, strolled through the ground of £50,000-a-year Lambrook school yesterday as they dropped Prince George, nine, Princess Charlotte, seven, and Prince Louis, four, off for their first day.

And the children appeared to be on top form for the occasion, smiling at one another before shaking hands with the headmaster Jonathan Perry.

However, many parents have taken to social media to share snaps of what their children's first day at school is really like. 

From tantrums on the floor to floods of tears, some mothers and fathers shared the moment they sent their youngsters off for the next life stage. 

One British mother shared a post of her young son looking a little worried about the big day on Instagram.

Sharing the image, which showed her cuddling up with the little boy ahead of the big moment, she wrote: 'A few nerves this morning and Matteo telling me, "It's not too late, we can stay at home!"'

She added that he had settled into the school well, writing: 'He went into the class room with no problem - hopefully  he realises school isn't so bad.'

The posts were shared as families around the world took their children to their first day at school ahead of the new year starting. 

Yesterday, the Duke of Cambridge quipped about his 'gang' of children during a chat with staff members of Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis' new £50k-a-year school as he dropped his children off for their first day yesterday.

The children attended a 'settling in afternoon' - an annual event to welcome new starters and their families to the school on the day before the new school term begins. The trio will officially start school today. 

Arriving yesterday, the family strolled in a line, with Kate holding George and Louis' hands and William holding Charlotte's, to meet headmaster Jonathan Perry.   'Welcome to Lambrook,' Mr Perry told the children. 'It's lovely to have you with us. We're very excited for the year ahead.'

 Shaking them each by the hand in turn, he asked 'Are you excited?' with all three chorusing 'Yes'. William remarked 'We're looking forward to it,' adding the children had 'lots of questions'.

The Duke and Duchess are beginning a new life in the country away from the goldfish bowl of their official London residence Kensington Palace which is being seen as a bid to put their children first and give them more freedom.

William and Kate had been known to have set their heart on outdoorsy prep school Lambrook, with its 52 acres of grounds, where fees will cost the couple in excess of £50,000 a year in total for their three youngsters.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11192959/As-Kate-William-children-day-school-parents-reveal-REALLY-like.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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8 September, 2022

Trans Toddlers and Secret Abortions: Elite NYC Private Schools Use Summer Reading Lists to Push Radical Agenda

As school goes back into session, students in New York City’s top private schools head into the classroom having been recommended summer reading lists riddled with books about children transitioning their genders, cross-dressing, attending pride parades, getting secret abortions, and questioning their sexuality.

According to reading lists reviewed by National Review, students as young as kindergartners were recommended books by the elite schools celebrating toddlers becoming transgender and cross-dressing.

Nightingale-Bamford, an all-girls school where annual tuition runs at $59,000, recommends that kindergarteners read books like When Aidan Became A Brother, a story about a girl who changed her gender when she was a toddler; Julian Is A Mermaid, a book about a boy who is celebrated when he chooses to dress in a skirt, flower crown, and necklace; and Pride Puppy, a story about a dog who gets lost at a pride parade and then is chased by a drag queen.

When Aidan Became a Brother

In When Aidan Became A Brother, the main character, Aidan, who was born a girl, tells her parents she was a boy because she “hated” the sound of her name and felt like her “room belonged to someone else.”

After revealing her new preferred gender to her parents, they accepted Aidan as transgender and said they made “mistakes” in assuming that she was a girl. Aidan also says the family’s new baby should not be given a gendered name and should instead just be a “baby.”

“Aidan experiences complicated emotions as he and his parents prepare for the arrival of a new baby. He works hard to make sure the baby is welcomed in as inclusive a way possible, and prepares to be a big brother,” the recommendation reads.

Bodies Are Cool, a picture book in which characters adopt the plural pronoun “they,” also appeared on the tony private school’s recommended reading list.

Nightingale-Bamford also suggested that third-graders read Melissa, a book about a boy named George who comes out as transgender.

The description of Melissa, based on the school’s website, reads, “When people look at Melissa, they think they see a boy named George. But she knows she’s not a boy. She knows she’s a girl. Melissa thinks she’ll have to keep this a secret forever, until an opportunity arises that challenges her to be who she is for all to see.”

Sixth-graders were asked by the school to read two books off the recommended list, which included Too Bright to See, a book about a transgender boy who lives in a haunted house.

When asked if the recommended books fit into the school’s mission, Nightingale’s director of communications, Thomas Hein, told National Review, “Our library offers our students a diverse set of highly regarded, academically appropriate books that they and their parents can choose to enjoy throughout the summer and school year.”

The Chapin School, which is also located in the city’s Upper East Side and charges over $59,000 in tuition per year, recommended a similar set of books to students.

Lower-school students at Chapin were recommended “affirming stories,” including Bodies Are Cool and Fred Gets Dressed, a picture book about a naked boy who is celebrated when he wears his mother’s clothing and makeup.

Fred Gets Dressed

The school’s website states that “the ‘affirming stories’ section in this list provides only a small sample of the many important, necessary, and inspirational books that have been most recently published.”

Students in grades four through seven were asked to read at least two books off the summer reading list, which included titles like Melissa and Different Kinds of Fruit, a book in which a sixth-grader named Annabelle discovers that her father and her new best friend are both trans.

“Together Annabelle, Bailey, and their families discover how these categories that seem to mean so much — boy, girl, gay, straight, fruit, vegetable — aren’t so clear-cut after all,” the description of the book reads.

Upper-school students at Chapin were encouraged to read books including If I Was Your Girl, a story about a transgender teen who, after getting surgery and hormones, comes out to the community.

Chapin did not respond to an inquiry from National Review asking why these books were recommended.

Saint Ann’s School, a private school in Brooklyn with tuition ranging upwards of over $55,000 per year, also recommended Pride Puppy to students entering kindergarten to third grade.

For entering fifth- and sixth-graders, Saint Ann’s suggested Zenobia July, a story about a transgender middl- school student who tries to fit into her new town.

Rising seventh- and eighth-graders were recommended Cemetery Boys, which the school’s website summarizes in the following way: “Yadriel is trans, and feels left out of a very gendered lineage of magic and healing.”

Saint Ann’s suggested that high-school students read Unpregnant, a book in which a minor travels to get an abortion across state lines to evade parental consent.

“When seventeen-year-old Veronica realizes that she is pregnant, she enlists her ex-best friend, Bailey, to drive 900 miles with her to New Mexico — the nearest place to legally get an abortion. (In Missouri where she lives you must be 18 without parental consent). Things don’t go exactly as planned! Funny, heartfelt, and incredibly timely,” a description provided by the school states. 

High schoolers were also recommended Gender Queer, the No. 1 most challenged book in the country in 2021, due to its “sexually explicit images,” according to the American Library Association.

A mom in Kentucky challenged the presence of Gender Queer in her district’s public-school libraries this summer, arguing that the book was “pornographic.”

“Accepting and loving children does not mean putting pornography in their hands,” Miranda Stowall said at a meeting challenging the book, Fox News reported.

She expressed frustration that school administrators “disagreed that graphic pictures of oral sex, dildos, stap-ons, advertisements for porn sites are obscene material for children,” she said.

Saint Ann’s apparently found the wide-ranging ban of the book to be a virtue, describing Gender Queer in its recommendation as “an autobiographical graphic novel that tells the story of the author’s lifetime experience with gender. The book — which was one of the most banned this year — offers a powerful perspective which is brought to life with beautiful illustrations.”

When asked whether students should be exposed to stories about minors becoming transgender and to sexually explicit images, Saint Ann’s headmaster, Vince Tompkins, said he was “proud” of the school’s librarians for recommending books “that embrace the range of human experience and identities.”

“Our mission statement at Saint Ann’s School states, in part, that at our school, ‘unfettered by grades, teachers and students embark on journeys of discovery in which the arts are central.’ Through an ambitious curriculum and a culture of inquiry, we question the world. We invite each other to take risks, pursue knowledge for its own sake, and celebrate growth,” Tompkins said.

“I am proud of our librarians for carrying out this mission with care and commitment in their everyday work with children and in recommending books that embrace the range of human experience and identities and help children better understand and question the world we share. Saint Ann’s is an independent school, chosen by families and by those who teach and work here because they know that we are not subject to the urges of politicians and zealots who seek to restrict what teachers can teach and say and what books we choose for our library shelves. This is our mission, and we will continue to pursue it,” Tompkins added.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trans-toddlers-and-secret-abortions-elite-nyc-private-schools-use-summer-reading-lists-to-push-radical-agenda/

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Higher Ed’s New Woke Loyalty Oaths

In 2021, the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) School of Medicine—ranked fourth in the country for primary care—released a 24-page “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Strategic Action Plan,” listing dozens of “tactics” for advancing “diversity and racial equity” over the ensuing half-decade. One of those tactics reads: “Include a section in promotion packages where faculty members report on the ways they are contributing to improving DEI, anti-racism and social justice.” The plan promises to “reinforce the importance of these efforts by establishing clear consequences and influences on promotion packages.”

OHSU’s policy represents the latest stage in the institutional entrenchment of DEI programming. Universities have long required diversity statements for faculty hiring—short essays outlining one’s contributions to DEI and future plans for advancing DEI. Since it began almost a decade ago, the policy has been criticized as a thinly veiled ideological litmus test. Whether you see it as one largely depends on whether you think DEI is simply a set of corporate “best practices” like any other, or constitutes a rigid set of political and social views. In any event, the diversity statements and criteria have only expanded, and are now commonly required for promotion, tenure, and faculty evaluation.

A quick search for academic jobs inevitably yields dozens or hundreds of positions that require diversity statements. In November 2021, the American Enterprise Institute conducted a survey of faculty jobs and found that 19% required them, a number that is likely to grow. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, applicants seeking positions in chemical and biomolecular engineering must submit a one-page “Statement describing candidate’s approach to and experience with diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education.” At the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, despite a new law that prohibits requiring job applicants “to endorse a specific ideology or political viewpoint,” applicants for a job in political science must submit a “statement concerning experience with and plans for contributing to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Meanwhile, every open faculty position listed by Ohio State University’s College of Arts and Sciences, including roles in econometrics, freshwater biology, and astronomy, requires some variation of a statement “articulating the applicant’s demonstrated commitments and capacities to contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion through research, teaching, mentoring, and/or outreach and engagement.”

It’s conceivable that job candidates could list their plans to contribute to diversity and inclusion without indicating a commitment to any particular political or social viewpoint, but the most commonly available rubrics for assessing diversity statements demonstrate a clear ideological gloss. Almost all of the publicly available rubrics used by recruitment search committees resemble the University of California, Berkeley’s “Rubric for Assessing Candidate Contributions to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” which dictates that applicants should receive a low score if they “[discuss] diversity in vague terms, such as ‘diversity is important for science,’” or if they “state that it’s better not to have outreach or affinity groups aimed at particular individuals because it keeps them separate from everyone else, or will make them feel less valued.”

Most notably, the Berkeley rubric explicitly punishes any candidate who expresses a dislike for race-conscious policies, requiring a low score for anyone who “states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same.’” Conversely, it rewards those most committed to the cause: Candidates receive a high score for “discuss[ing] diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as core values that every faculty member should actively contribute to” and “convincingly express[ing] intent, with examples, to be a strong advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging within the department/school/college and also their field.”

The rubric published by the University of Colorado Denver mimics parts of Berkeley’s rubric verbatim, but also takes it a step further: In one category, candidates receive a middling score for espousing the “golden rule” (“I will treat others as I want to be treated”) but the highest score for espousing the “platinum rule” (“I will treat others as they want to be treated”). Meanwhile, some institutions employ even more overtly ideological language. At Western Oregon University, high-scoring statements provide “at least two or more strategies for contributing to advancing racial equity and eliminating systemic racism” and identify “at least three inequities and … how they would address those inequities if employed at WOU.”

Such evaluations create obvious issues for academic freedom. Even the tamest rubrics reward candidates for affirming the value of race consciousness and punish candidates for affirming the value of racial colorblindness—not exactly an apolitical hiring criteria. In an Aug. 22, 2022, statement, the nonprofit organization Academic Freedom Alliance called for an end to the practice, arguing that the “demand for diversity statements enlists academics into a political movement, erasing the distinction between academic expertise and ideological conformity. It encourages cynicism and dishonesty.”

Given the public health disaster of the last two-and-a-half years, it’s particularly jarring to see this development unfold in the medical field.

DEI criteria have become increasingly dominant not only in hiring practices, but in tenure decisions. In the American Association of University Professors’ recent survey of tenure practices, 21.5% of all surveyed institutions reported including DEI criteria in their tenure standards, and 38.9% reported that they were considering adopting such criteria. For large institutions, 45.6% had adopted the criteria, and another 35.5% were considering them. Only 18.8% of the large universities surveyed had not implemented DEI promotion and tenure criteria and were not considering doing so in the future. Presumably, some number of them will eventually flip.

That the policy is an open question at so many universities underscores an important point: DEI measures tend to inflate. Large fleets of university diversity officers need a raison d’ętre, which is why universities are adopting DEI strategic plans, and ennumerating dozens of new policies created by and for DEI officers, at accelerating rates. The universities that have not yet done so face mounting pressure. In April of this year, Ohio State University’s Task Force on Racism and Racial Inequities released a report with a laundry list of “Grand Challenges and Priority Action Steps,” recommending the creation of an institutionwide diversity action plan. If that plan looks like the College of Engineering’s Racial Equity and Inclusion Action Plan, it will include establishing language in its promotion and tenure manual “concerning the assessment of equity and inclusion in annual reviews.”

Given the public health disaster of the last two-and-a-half years, and the gravity of the discipline, it’s particularly jarring to see this development unfold in the medical field. The Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine was recently reaccredited, but the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits medical schools, found it lacking in faculty diversity. In response, the medical school released its DEI strategic plan, which was created “in alignment with accreditation requirements,” and which promises not only “consequences” for faculty who don’t get on board but also to “develop and incorporate DEI, anti-racism and social justice core competencies in performance appraisals of faculty and staff.”

The UNC School of Medicine likewise created a Task Force for Integrating Social Justice Into the Curriculum, which recommended, among other measures, adding social justice criteria to the school’s promotion and tenure policy. As of May 2021, the school’s promotion and tenure guidelines require faculty to submit a diversity statement and list DEI contributions, examples of which include “Application of material learned in DEI trainings (e.g., Safe Zone, Unconscious Bias, Implicit Bias, etc.) to promote an environment of cultural awareness, knowledge, and sensitivity.” The broader list of recommendations was so radical that it received extensive pushback, prompting the dean of the medical school to give a personal response to the UNC Board of Governors, in which he suggested that many of those recommendations came from the LCME. When pressed on the promotion and tenure policy, the school downplayed concerns, noting that DEI efforts would be “conceptualized in the broadest context.”

At other institutions, the case that these requirements are politically neutral is harder to make. Overtly ideological language is baked into the newly established requirements for the California Community College system—the nation’s largest system of higher education, governing 116 colleges that together enroll 1.8 million students. In May 2022, the Board of Governors approved a resolution mandating that community college districts “include DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] competencies and criteria as a minimum standard for evaluating the performance of all employees” and that they “place significant emphasis on DEIA competencies in employee evaluation and tenure review processes.”

The resolution itself is suffused with ideological language. It defines “Cultural Competency,” for example, as “the practice of acquiring and utilizing knowledge of the intersectionality of social identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face.” The Chancellor’s Office also released a list of example competencies saturated with the ideological buzzwords of contemporary identity politics:

Demonstrates an ongoing awareness and recognition of racial, social, and cultural identities with fluency regarding their relevance in creating structures of oppression and marginalization.

Seeks DEIA and anti-racist perspectives and applies knowledge to problem solving, policies, and processes to create respectful, DEIA-affirming environments …

Develops and implements a pedagogy and/or curriculum that promotes a race-conscious and intersectional lens and equips students to engage with the world as scholars and citizens.

Participates in a continuous cycle of self-assessment of one’s growth and commitment to DEIA and acknowledgement of any internalized personal biases and racial superiority or inferiority, or ideas of normalcy.

Like so many others, the California Community Colleges system appears impervious to appeals to academic freedom. During the resolution’s comment period, an anonymous commenter brought up the policy’s likely chilling effect—that evaluating faculty for their adherence to political views might prevent any dissenting voices from speaking up or even just telling the truth as they see it, for fear of “very real and severe social consequences (including demotion, job loss, and public ridicule on social media).”

The Chancellor’s response? “This comment is speculative and not grounded in specific facts or observations. As such, the Chancellor’s Office cannot provide a meaningful specific response to the concerns expressed in this comment.”

Whatever else they do, diversity statements and criteria at least provide a clear admission of where things like education, knowledge, and the pursuit of truth fit in a university’s list of real priorities. Students and parents should take note.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/higher-ed-new-woke-loyalty-oaths-dei

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Fascism in Australian universities

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was invited to deliver a lecture by the Sydney University Law Society. He was shouted down, sworn at and labelled ‘ruling class scum’ (RCS) by a motley collection of student protesters and others. The former PM had to be escorted out by the police. Turnbull was livid, describing what had happened to him as ‘complete fascism, just extraordinary’. He challenged Australia’s oldest university, and Turnbull’s alma mater as it happens, to take some action to protect free speech on campus.

Based on my own rough and ready reckoning on the back of an envelope – look out Neil Ferguson, Imperial College pandemic modelling professorship here I come – that makes twice when I’ve ever fully agreed with Mr Turnbull. (The other time was when, as PM, he offered the states income tax power – as exists in every other federal democracy in the world – and our useless, mendicant, one-size-fits-all loving premiers, Liberal as well as Labor, turned him down flat.) But my point here is that Turnbull is right, at least in this sense. In today’s academic world, Australia’s and the wider anglosphere’s, if you’re perceived to be a conservative (I don’t say that these protesting students were particularly bright, or that they excelled in aptly characterising the actual location on the political spectrum of visiting RCS speakers) then the scope to speak one’s mind, for many, is a good deal more circumscribed than it is for those espousing bog-standard progressive orthodoxies and green-left woke creeds. You never read of lefties being shouted down on campus, do you?

Needless to say, this incident provokes various observations. First off, Mr Turnbull was prime minister at one point in time, right? Is it just now dawning on the man that our universities aren’t nearly as open to the John Stuart Mill notion of a cauldron of competing views to drive the search for truth as they were back in his day at Sydney Uni? Has our former PM missed the whole woke takeover of universities under which listeners’ sensibilities and feelings of being offended trump speakers’ entitlements to say their piece so that campuses need safe spaces and trigger warnings and, heck, statues need to be taken down because they’re too confronting? I work in the university sector so trust me, I know. This problem existed just as much four years ago, when Mr Turnbull was PM, as it does today. So what did the Turnbull government do, or try to do, to fix this university free speech problem? Nothing, would be my answer. Team Turnbull was completely useless on every axis of concern.  If you attended university three or four decades ago then what you recall is nothing like today’s campus reality.

Senior university administrators could fix this problem in under a month. On entering university you tell all students that part of the deal is being exposed to views they may not like. Higher education in part demands that. It needs students to think analytically about views different to their own. If you attend, that’s the deal, full stop. Then, if anyone is shouted down on campus (be it guest speaker or in-house professor) expel all the students involved, no exceptions, no backing down, no way back to the university for them. Do it very publicly too. Be prepared to weather any student protests as regards this disciplinary action.

Take this approach once or twice and the problem of shouting down speakers disappears, even as regards invited RCS lecturers. But top university administrators around the English-speaking world almost never do that. They hedge, equivocate, duck and weave. They tell Mr Turnbull the matter is being looked into and he’ll be welcomed back on campus but students are unlucky if they receive even a mild admonishment. In essence these vice-chancellors and the other (now myriad) senior apparatchiks deal in sophistry and casuistry. I think in part that’s because bravery is not a characteristic that is rewarded in the struggle to move up the university sector greasy pole. And also in part it’s because university top administrators are even more left-leaning politically than the median campus professor (and boy is that saying something in a world of collapsing viewpoint diversity where conservative academics are becoming an endangered species).

In the US, where political donations are public information, they know this is true, that top administrators are even more pronouncedly left-leaning than their left-leaning faculty. I think it’s true here in Australia too. Try this thought experiment. How many academics who were opposed to reciting an acknowledgement of country do you think could ever get any administrative job at all? How many who oppose the Voice or indirect quotas for women and various minorities could get one of those $600,000 p.a. deputy vice-chancellor gigs? How many Liberal-voting VCs do you reckon there are in this country, and I mean when it’s a PM Abbott or Dutton not Malcolm? Let’s be blunt. Sometimes (though probably not in this Turnbull instance because, heck, he’s not actually a conservative) the top university administrators feel a modicum of sympathy for the protesting students’ position.

And now a third, related observation. Our universities today make a point of making open displays, in vague and amorphous terms, of their commitments to free speech on campus. The facts on the ground, however, are often otherwise. Codes of conduct make the university both investigator and judge. In the Peter Ridd case in the Full Federal Court the majority justices were at least honest, they said academic freedom (and hence free speech) wasn’t really a protected value. Bad luck. At the High Court of Australia the justices went into overdrive virtue-signalling about the importance of academic freedom but then held against Peter Ridd because he infringed the Code of Conduct by speaking out about what was happening to him in the disciplinary proceedings. Our top judges implied there was some magical unspecified way Ridd should have run his case. Bollocks! For me, that shows our top judges haven’t really got a clue what life is like on today’s university campuses for many iconoclasts, dissidents and non-conformists, call them ‘conservatives’ to save time. Heck, as I write this I personally know of conservative academics currently having their codes of conduct (not from my uni) brought to bear for refusing to play the woke, ‘genuflect before the new identity politics Gods’ game. Just telling me, or anyone, breaches the code of conduct (so we used top spycraft).

Under the Ridd decision they’re in big trouble if this can be proved. So how do they run a defence and raise money? The Ridd decision was a woeful one in practice. It leaves university dissenters, in practice, out in the cold. They’re treated like RCS, but without the R and C. So just the S.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/ruling-class-scum

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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7 September, 2022

US Universities Are Watering Down Standards In The Name Of ‘Diversity’

Higher education institutions have implemented diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to vet students and faculty rather than evaluating them on their merits.

Universities have included different DEI initiatives including axing standardized test requirements, mandating DEI statements in applications and curriculum requirements. The initiatives aim to raise diversity and social justice awareness, considering mainly the promotion of understanding and consciousness of DEI. (RELATED: ‘Easy As 1,2,3’: Biden Admin Outlines How To Claim Student Loan Handout)

“It should be obvious that as universities become increasingly obsessed with diversity, inclusion and equity efforts, and devote more attention and resources to those efforts, they have reduced their attention, resources and focus on merit-based outcomes, traditional educational goals and academic competencies, and the equal treatment of all students and faculty regardless of their sex and race,” University of Michigan-Flint professor Mark Perry told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Universities can prioritize true academic excellence and true equality or they can prioritize diversity, inclusion and equity efforts, but they can’t prioritize both goals simultaneously, because to focus on diversity, inclusion and equity is to necessarily compromise academic quality and sacrifice the equal treatment of all individuals.”

Several universities require some sort of DEI statement outlining applicants’ competencies of diversity; applicants to the University of Tennessee are required to submit a diversity statement, which they are judged on, telling how they will help contribute to diversity and inclusion at the school.

At the University of California, Berkeley, a DEI rubric was created to grade how candidates have contributed to furthering DEI, according to the school website. It also allows candidates to be judged on their “knowledge and understanding” of DEI.

Indiana University School of Medicine updated its standards in May 2022 in order for professors to be promoted and tenured, requiring them to “show effort toward advancing DEI.” A “short narrative DEI summary” is one way the university suggested applicants could demonstrate their DEI competency.

Proposed regulations in June 2022 to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors would require community colleges in California to judge applicants and faculty applying for tenure on DEI “competencies.” Faculty and applicants will be judged on their understanding of “anti-racist principles.”

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office directed the DCNF to their press release regarding the initiatives when asked for comment.

“These actions mark a seminal moment in an intentional process to strengthen campus and classroom climates across our institutions and aid in student retention and persistence,” Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley said in the press release. “And they deliver on a promise we made in our Call to Action, issued during the racial reckoning in the spring of 2020.”

DEI has also been implemented through guidelines in curriculums; the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) released DEI guidelines on July 14 for medical schools advising them to teach students to take their “identity, power and privilege” into account when treating a patient. The guidelines tell medical professionals to “address social determinants of health affecting patients and communities.”

“We have evidence that supports that race is a social construct, and there is a growing body of evidence about what race is and isn’t, and its impact on health,” John Burotti, president and CEO of AAMC, told the DCNF. “These new insights are improving medical practice and allow us to shift our thinking in medical education to better prepare tomorrow’s doctors.” 

Since November 2021, applicants for several departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are required to submit a “Statement of Contributions to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” detailing their past and future contributions to DEI. The school stated that the “initial screening of applicants will be based exclusively on the Research Statement and the Statement of Contributions to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”

The University of Tennessee mandated that all schools and departments create a “Diversity Action Plan” in the name of DEI in 2020. Each plan differed, but the College of Social Work assesses students on their “critical consciousness related to anti-racism and social justice,” requiring at least 90% of students to get a four out of five on the DEI test.

The University of San Diego School of Medicine began using critical race theory in 2020 to educate its students and aims its curriculum at “dismantling racism.” To do this, the school created an “antiracism lab” and hired only diverse faculty for its “Family Medicine Diversity and Anti-Racism Committee” to promote “empathy” and “anti-racism.”

Vice President Joe Biden (L) meets with (C-R) Dr. Bruce Levine, Dr. Carl June, and University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann while touring the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine and Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania January 15, 2016. During the State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama tasked Biden to spearhead an initiative to cure cancer. REUTERS/Mark Makela

Vice President Joe Biden (L) meets with (C-R) Dr. Bruce Levine, Dr. Carl June, and University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann while touring the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine and Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania January 15, 2016.  REUTERS/Mark Makela.

Universities also have stressed DEI in their admission process, including Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, which have race-conscious admission policies. The schools claim that even with the race-based policies, they still face problems with representation of minority students on campus.

In May 2022, the University of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine exempted students from five historically black colleges and universities applying to their school from taking the Medical College Admissions Test, used to gauge a student’s readiness for medical school, if the student is accepted into an eight-week study program. While in the program, students receive housing and a stipend to conduct research, participate in community service and career seminars.

The NCAA proposed that Division I and Division II athletic teams drop the standardized test requirement for athletes as a part of their “eight-point plan to advance racial equity,” according to a February 2022 press release. Standardized tests for college admissions, such as the SAT and ACT, are used to determine a student’s rate of success at a higher institution.

Princeton University created a “diversity” tool in 2021 so faculty can hire vendors and suppliers on their physical attributions as opposed to their qualifications. Vendors are filtered by race, gender and sexual orientation through the tool, with a separate entity available for faculty to pick vendors just based off their ethnicity.

The “diversity” tool is an aspect of the university’s multi-year diversity plan to give a “fresh commitment and energy in the pursuit of racial equity and inclusivity.”

“Almost every university in the country has adopted some sort of diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic plan,” John Sailer, fellow at the National Association of Scholars, told the DCNF. “If these plans aren’t adopted at the university level, individual schools and departments adopt them. These plans almost inevitably rewrite standards. Virtually every diversity, equity and inclusion task force recommends moving toward holistic admissions practices, or simply dropping standardized tests.”

“Often, these plans push new forms of pedagogy that downplay the role of well-established standards,” Sailer told the DCNF.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/09/05/universities-diversity-vet-students-faculty

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I was smeared as a 'grandma killer' for refusing to subject my kids to Covid lockdowns, but they've thrived - while math scores for millions have plummeted

In May of 2020, I was just one of the millions of parents – on the political right, left and center – who begged policymakers to weigh the potential benefits of our draconian pandemic mitigation measures against the potential harms.

I was canceled and smeared as a 'Grandma Killer' on Twitter for refusing to sacrifice the quality of my children's lives to protect vulnerable adults.

But I resisted.

I would not lock my kids down inside our home for irrational fear of Covid, and I was proven right. Today my kids are thriving; something few parents in liberal regions of the country can say.

My local elementary school, which my children would have attended if they weren't homeschooled, has seen the math scores for 3rd graders drop from 38.7% proficient in 2019, to 5.6% in 2021.

The reading scores or ELA (English Language Arts) scores dropped from an already dismal 26.7% in 2019 to 7.5% in 2021.

Nationally, the test results are also bleak, according to the 'Nation's Report Card,' conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics.

The survey is the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of school lockdown policies and it's gut-wrenching.

Math and reading scores for 9-year-olds, the children who were half through their first-grade year when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, fell off a cliff during the first two years of the pandemic.

Kids testing in the top 90th percentile dropped three points in math. Students in the bottom 10th percentile showed a 12-point decline.

The average reading score was down five points – the largest decrease in 30 years.

As a homeschooler, my children were always better positioned to learn during a crisis.  But there was a trickle-down effect for them as well as public school policies were adopted by many of their extra-curricular activites.

This approach failed everyone.

It's sickening and it didn't have to happen.

Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told the New York Times that she was, 'taken aback by the scope and the magnitude of the decline.'

You want to know who wasn't surprised?

Former President Donald Trump.

Trump was explicit about the cost of school closures in the summer of 2020, as he fought to reopen the schools, faced with the opposition of the progressive establishment in government and media, in addition to the teachers' unions.

'According to McKinsey and Company, learning loss will probably be greatest among low-income Black and Hispanic students,' he explained during a news conference. 'They're the ones that are hit the hardest. We don't want that happening.'

Lo and behold – Trump was right.

While math scores for white students fell 5 points, the scores for black students dropped by 13 points and for hispanic students by 8 points.

So, what may be the consequence of erasing years of our children's educational growth?

At the end of 2021, a non-profit education news site, founded by a former CNN host and a former New York City education official, put a price tag on the cost of learning loss.

Their analysis found that, 'a 9 to 11 percentile point decline in math achievement (if allowed to become permanent) would represent a $43,800 loss in expected lifetime earnings.'

'Spread across the 50 million public school students currently enrolled in grades K to 12, that would be over $2 trillion — about 10 times more than the $200 billion Congress set aside last year to help schools respond to the pandemic.'

Sadly, this is no longer a hypothetical.

We have the proof that Covid lockdown policies hurt our kids.

And undoubtably, the most disgusting claim from the Covid scolds and lockdown fanatics was that our children were going to be fine.

They're resilient, we were told – again and again.

It was a lie! America's youth won't be okay without a genuine reckoning in the face of what we can now no longer deny was a catastrophic crime committed against them.

In a grim coincidence, the announcement of these national test scores came as the White House held a webinar last week alongside the United Federation of Teachers and National Education Association on getting back to school safely.

In attendance, UFT's Randi Weingarten and the CDC's Rochelle Walensky.

The panelists were a who's who of those responsible for keeping the schools shuttered and children in hybrid and/or remote learning for far too long.

Maybe it felt like a reunion of sorts, given how closely the Biden administration and CDC worked in tandem with the teacher's unions to keep schools shuttered throughout the 2020-2021 school year.

But by 2020, we knew that school lockdowns were harmful.

The American Academy of Pediatrics advised in June of 2020 that students be 'physically present in schools' as much as possible.

But the AAP changed their tune once President Trump advocated for opening schools; and liberals decided that opposition to Trump was more important than our kids' well-being.

As a result, some schools – especially those in urban and overwhelming liberal parts of the country – stayed closed.

As late as the winter of 2022 in Chicago, where 90% of the public-school population is minority, the teachers' union held a 5-day strike – shutting out 350,000 students from any instruction at all.

The unions didn't want their teachers to have to go back to work, and they vocally opposed any effort to help reopen these inner-city schools.

The United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz even claimed California Governor Gavin Newsom's plan to re-open schools would worsen 'structural racism.'

On May 4, 2021, Biden education secretary Miguel Cardona defended the teachers' unions refusing to reopen schools, explaining, 'Reopening schools in the middle of a pandemic is not as easy as some may think.'

The next day appearing on Morning Joe, Cardona refused to say it was a mistake to keep schools closed: 'It's critically important that we're listening to our health experts, because this is a health pandemic.'

These self-style children's advocates aren't just hypocrites; they're villains.

The Biden administration and teachers' unions have made crystal clear they have each other's backs, all while leaving our kid's out in the dust. And now we have the arsonists in charge of the rebuilding of our education system.

It would be criminal to do nothing with that information and a total betrayal of our children not to act on it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11185983/I-smeared-Grandma-killer-refusing-subject-kids-Covid-lockdowns-BETHANY-MANDEL.html

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Australian Catholics’ gender warning for schools

Catholic schools have been strongly advised not to assist in ­efforts to affirm gender transitions in students through the use of drugs or surgical interventions and that “a human being’s sex is a physical, biological reality”.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference will advise schools that, for the vast majority of children and adolescents, gender ­incongruence is a psychological condition through which they will pass safely and naturally with supportive psychological care.

The guidance, to be issued on Tuesday, urges Catholic schools to avoid assisting in the issue of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgery to limit possible infertility, “unnecessary damage” and “future possibilities for healthy human growth”.

The nation has more than 1700 Catholic schools educating about 780,000 students.

The guidance voices grave concerns over an affirmation-based approach to students experiencing gender ­dysphoria and instead steers educators to a “biopsychosocial model” based on research showing a high correlation between “childhood gender incongruence and family dynamics”.

“In this model, practitioners promote ongoing psychological support for the child or young person through engaging with families,” the guidance says. “By discovering the child’s and family’s stories, practitioners are able to understand the gender variance felt by the child or young person within the context of family and their domestic environment.”

Pastoral care initiatives that are “in conflict with the generosity of the Christian vision” are also to be “respectfully avoided”, including concepts that say gender is arbitrarily assigned at birth, gender is fluid and that gender is separate from biological sex.

“Research data strongly suggests that, for the vast majority of children and adolescents, gender incongruence is a psychological condition through which they will pass safely and naturally with supportive psychological care,” the guidance states. “Studies quote between 80 to 90 per cent of pre-pubescent children who do not seem to fit social gender expectations are not gender-incongruent in the long term.”

Catholic school leaders are told to recognise that society has “widely adopted the belief that each person’s innermost concept of themselves determines their gender identity”. But they are warned these recent changes were “in conflict with the Catholic understanding of creation, in which every person is created good and is loved unconditionally as they are”.

Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli, the chair of the Bishops Commission for Life, Family and Public Engagement, said the guidance document elevated the dignity of every person rather than “defining that person by any single characteristic”.

He said Catholic schools ­adhered to the “foundational principle that each person is created in the image and likeness of god, and is loved by god”.

“That principle guides this document, which we offer to our schools to support them in walking compassionately alongside each student we are invited to educate,” he said.

The document is aimed at ­providing support and care to students. It makes no recommendations that would result in students being expelled because of their gender identity.

Catholic schools are encouraged to cater to the needs of students experiencing gender incongruence, a term recommended for use by educators over the term “transgender”.

The document recommends that schools provide unisex toilets or a change room area not aligned to biological sex to increase safety and options for vulnerable students. It also proposes to offer “flexibility with uniform expectations” to cater to the diversity of the student body.

However, all school documentation is to record students’ biological sex at enrolment. The guidance notes that “it may be lawful” to exclude a student from single-sex competition if they are over the age of 12 where the “strength, stamina or physique of competitors is relevant.”

It advises educators to refer to commonwealth guidelines when developing school policies, and ­argues it is “paramount” for all sporting environments to be inclusive and safe.

The guidance comes amid public debate surrounding the ability of transgender students to participate in school sports, a discussion that was stoked during the election campaign after Scott Morrison’s hand-picked candidate for the seat of Warringah, Katherine Deves, ran on a platform to ban transgender competitors from participating in female sports. Ms Deves said a ban would ensure the safety of female competitors, but faced a backlash for a number of tweets she wrote arguing that transgender girls had been “mutilated and sterilised”.

In the new guidance, Catholic school are encouraged to be diligent in “resisting the incursion of political lobbying, ideological postures” and various organisations which may be “at odds” with the school’s mission. It also gives licence to principals who may feel the need to decline the involvement of politically motivated organisations.

National Catholic Education Commission executive director Jacinta Collins said the guide would be discussed at the National Catholic Education Conference underway in Melbourne. “Recent comments by eminent psychologist Professor Ian Hickie highlight the increasing number of medical professionals who are challenging the gender-affirmative approach and are supporting the biopsychosocial approach, which is less invasive, holistic and more closely aligned with a Catholic world view,” she said. “It remains critical that our Catholic schools can speak about the Church’s teachings on these matters in an informed way, underpinned by the principles of respect and human dignity.”

The guidance recommended that schools review of a number of subjects in the curriculum to ensure schools were well placed to deal with “most matters that may surface if a student is undergoing psychological and/ or medical intervention”.

The federal government provided $8.24bn in funding to Catholic schools in 2020, which is close to the $8.67bn spent on government schools, while the states and territories contributed $2.2bn.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/catholics-gender-warning-for-schools/news-story/a2cce209f2dbf79c8a32d4f6b6ab4b74

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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6 September, 2022

How New Orleans School Vaccine Mandate Is Affecting Students

New Orleans requires all students older than 5 attending public school to be vaccinated against COVID-19 unless a parent signs an exemption form.  

Parents may claim an exemption to the mandate on philosophical, religious, or medical grounds and submit the form to their child’s school to avoid having to vaccinate their child. 

Those exemption forms appear to be a formality, as any parent who applies for an exemption likely will get it. 

In an email to The Daily Signal, Taslin Alfonzo, director of media relations for New Orleans Public Schools, said: 

For students who are unvaccinated, the policy is for schools to work with families to fill out the form, if their child has not been vaccinated. All students, teachers, and staff–and particularly those who may be unvaccinated– are strongly encouraged to participate in routine, weekly molecular testing. 

The New Orleans school system “does not deny an education to any child,” Alfonzo added. “All unvaccinated students are required to fill out an exemption form, if they don’t get the vaccine. Our schools work with families to fill out the form.” 

According to New Orleans Public Schools, that requirement went into effect Feb. 1 and applies to the ongoing 2022-23 school year.  

Data from the New Orleans Health Department website shows that, as of Aug. 30, only around 53% of school-age children have completed their vaccine regimen. Around 66% have initiated the vaccine regimen. 

In the District of Columbia, about 40% of black students ages 12-17 are not fully vaccinated, as The Daily Signal previously reported. 

Like the District, New Orleans is a majority-black city; the U.S. Census Bureau reports that nearly 60% of New Orleans is African American. On top of that, most public school students, 85%, in the Big Easy are black, according to U.S. News & World Report. 

Unlike in the nation’s capital, virtual learning exists in New Orleans as an option for unvaccinated children, but only in certain cases.  

The school system’s Alfonzo said: “Remote learning is only available to students requiring the option due to health conditions as documented by a physician and provided to their respective school for approval.” 

In a separate phone interview, Louisiana State Superintendent of Schools Cade Brumley said he fought for the exemption forms so that parents could make health decisions for their own children. 

“I have respected local control and I have fought for that throughout the pandemic. But at the same time, government doesn’t own children,” Brumley said, adding: 

Children belong to their parents and children are supported by their parents. And whenever it comes to a health decision such as a vaccine, I just want to make sure that our parents in the state of Louisiana have access to the dissent form if that aligns with what they feel is best for their family. 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/08/30/unlike-dc-new-orleans-allows-exemptions-from-school-vaccine-mandate

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Concerned parents take Welsh government to court to stop 'extreme ideology' gender identity and sex education being taught to children as young as three

Parents have taken the Welsh government to court to stop gender identity and sex being taught to children aged three to 11 in primary schools.

Campaigners against the new Relationships and Sexuality Education curriculum, which is due to begin next week, are seeking a High Court injunction to prevent the policy.

They want a temporary ban until a judicial review to the curriculum is heard later this year, or an opt-out for parents to remove their children from the mandatory classes.

The legal challenge has been brought by Public Child Protection Wales who say the curriculum is inappropriate for primary age children.

Paul Diamond, representing the claimants, acknowledged the seeking of an injunction at the eleventh hour was an 'uphill task' but was 'one of those exceptional cases'.

'It cannot be more important, and the issues cannot be more fundamental to our society involving the rights of families, the rights of children and the rights of fundamental liberties under the common law,' he told the High Court.

Mr Diamond said the claimants, who were not identified in court, are four mothers and one father and were 'fighting for their children as any parent would'.

'They feel weak, powerless and believe it is a David versus Goliath conflict, but children are often their only legacy in life,' he said.

'And never stand in the way of a mother who would protect their child.

'There are a number of wider questions that will come before the substantive hearing.

'There has been a shift in the liberal order, the right of individuals to choose their own good life without state interference to now a requirement that people and individuals and private organisations must have the same views endorsed by the state.

'The question is whether we have a free, open tolerant society? Or, we say, an extremist, intolerant, almost totalitarian society imposed by the state.

'We say the extremism and intolerance is by the Welsh ministers and this cannot only lead to injustice and the seeking of uniformity.

'It will result in societal breakdown and will result in authoritarianism and that is why this case raises wider issues.

'We say it is the claimants who are the moderate, tolerant, decent citizens who seek the protection of the court and why this is an important case.

'Our society is consumed with irrational ideologies, a lack of tolerance and cancel culture. There is an atmosphere of fear and lack of free speech and a culture without freedom.'

Mr Diamond told Mrs Justice Tipples during a remote hearing that 'matters of moral, ethical, religious, conscience and sex' have always been treated as 'unique prerogatives of parents'.

'Religious education has been a standalone subject and so has sex education,' Mr Diamond said.

'This has been the standard position of education in the UK that education laws should be limited to non-political, non-ethical subjects conveyed by schools in a neutral fashion.

'Individuals are able to determine their own view of the common good.'

The judge questioned why the injunction was only sought earlier this month when the legal challenge was launched in April.

Mr Diamond said the parents were only informed at the end of the June by letter that the curriculum was going to be implemented in September but acknowledged they 'could be criticised for not moving faster'.

'They don’t want to do this. You are not dealing with Spanish shipping owners or city firms with solicitors,' he said.

'They don’t want to go to court, they don’t want to go down this route, they just want to protect their children.

'We are talking about the most extreme ideological imposition on children in this country and it is considerably worse than what the English legislation provides, which still effectively provides for opt outs.

'This is highly controversial and is not even scientific and is totally aggressive ideology - a man cannot be a woman.

'They believe their children and other children would be irreparably damaged - especially vulnerable children.

'It is a question of children and parents’ rights. It is going to shift the balance between the state and parents. This is just the beginning. Who runs the children? The parents or the state?'

Emma Sutton, representing the Welsh Government, opposed the application and said what the claimants were seeking was impractical as the curriculum would be woven into all classes, regardless of subject.

'In terms of the timescale, it is wholly significant that what is being suggested is to stop a process that has been in effect for a considerable period of time - a number of years,' she said.

'Less than a week is to pass now before the curriculum is going to be implemented. It is a late hour and it is too late for the claimants to come to the court in the way that they have.

'RSE will be a mandatory element of an entirely new comprehensive framework for the curriculum in Wales.

'The purpose of RSE is to help pupils to develop as healthy, confident individuals by providing them with developmentally appropriate teaching that will give them a proper understanding of relationships and sexuality.

'It has an emphasis on rights, equality, equity, and it seeks to enable pupils to understand and respect differences and diversity.'

Miss Sutton said there was no legislation to excuse pupils from attending lessons and the Welsh Government was not acting unlawfully.

'The Welsh ministers have no power to suspend RSE teaching and the court should not order the Welsh ministers to do something that they have no power to do,' she added.

Mrs Justice Tipples said she would adjourn and given an oral ruling on the application on Thursday morning.

The judicial review hearing will take place over two days from November 15 before Mrs Justice Steyn.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11165853/Parents-Welsh-government-court-stop-gender-identity-sex-education-taught.html

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Million Australian ‘teen robots’ on path to illiteracy, OECD warns

A global education leader has criticised Australia’s shallow school curriculum for producing “second-class robots’’, as damning new data reveals a million teenagers are on a track to illiteracy over the next five years.

Andreas Schleicher, education and skills ­director with the ­Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has warned that Australia has “made learning often a mile wide, but just an inch deep’’.

“I would say that is one of the real challenges in Australia,’’ he says in a speech prepared for the National Catholic Education Conference next week.

“The challenge is to teach fewer things at greater depths.

“If you look at the top-­performing education systems, that’s what they do. They often focus more on deep conceptual understanding rather than just surface content.’’

Mr Schleicher called for more rigour in the curriculum to teach children to think for themselves and collaborate, instead of educating “second-class robots, people who are good at repeating what we’ve told them’’.

“We have made students passive consumers of a lot of learning content,’’ he said.

Mr Schleicher oversees the world’s biggest comparative school test, the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has revealed a startling slide in achievement among Australian 15-year-olds compared to students from 75 other industrialised countries over the past decade. Since 2003, Australian students have dropped from 11th place in maths to 29th, from eighth place in science to 15th, and from fourth to 16th in literacy.

Criticism of the national curriculum – which was simplified and “decluttered” in April following a two-year review – coincides with warnings of alarmingly low literacy levels among students.

The most recent PISA test, involving 14,000 Australian students in 2018, found one in five teens reads at the lowest of seven levels of proficiency – a level the OECD regards as “too low to ­enable them to participate effectively and productively in life”. Only 60 per cent read at a “proficient standard’’ of level three.

Learning First chief executive Ben Jensen has extrapolated the data to calculate that 800,000 Australian students have substandard literacy levels. He predicts that will soar to a million by 2028, unless they are given help to catch up with reading and writing.

“Translated across the school system, that means a million students, out of just over four million, who cannot read well enough to have a productive career and a full life,’’ he writes in Inquirer on Saturday. “The evidence shows that when students who are behind are taught clearly identified and sequenced knowledge appropriate to their grade level, using high-quality instructional materials, they can accelerate … learning and make up huge ground.’’

Dr Jensen also criticised the new national curriculum, which the Australian Primary Principals Association has declared “impossible to teach”. He said Australia’s curriculum is “not high-quality and knowledge-rich’’.

“It does nothing to guarantee the knowledge students are supposed to learn,’’ he said.

“It fails to provide teachers with comprehensive, high-quality instructional materials.’’

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which released the new curriculum in April, has withheld the 2022 NAPLAN results until year’s end. Last year’s testing of a million children found one in five teenage boys is semiliterate, with one in 10 girls and one in five boys failing to reach the minimum standard for writing in Year 9.

Mr Schleicher, a physicist and statistician who studied in Australia for his masters in science from Deakin University, is special adviser on education policy to OECD secretary-general ­Mathias Cormann, Australia’s former finance minister and special minister of state. He said that in PISA’s reading literacy tests, “Australia has gone backwards’’.

“I’m not saying that Australian students learn less necessarily but when it comes to those advanced knowledge management skills, this is where they increasingly struggle,’’ he said.

Mr Schleicher said the curriculum must teach children to out-think robots, and “think for themselves and collaborate with others’’. He said top-performing education systems “look at the realm of human knowledge, the realm of ethics and judgment, the realm of political and civic life, the realm of creativity, aesthetics, ­design, of physical health, natural health, economic life’’.

“(They teach) those fundamental concepts that make us different from the artificial intelligence that we have created in our computers. Teaching fewer things at greater depths is really one of the key challenges.’’

Mr Schleicher said the most successful countries in education used “rigour, making sure that students are challenged in every moment of their learning’’.

“It’s about focus, teaching fewer things at greater depths.

“Success is about remaining true to the disciplines, helping students understand the ideas, the foundations of a discipline.’’

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/million-teen-robots-on-path-to-illiteracy-oecd-warns/news-story/32fba9e931210b8c094d08dca2b8ad54

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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5 September, 2022

Three British universities investigated after ‘sharp increase in top grades’

It is believed to be the first time the Office for Students (OfS) has officially probed institutions over grade inflation since gaining new powers earlier this year.

The regulator refused to name the universities under investigation on Friday. “We expect to publish further details in due course, as our investigations progress,” it said.

The OfS said it had “identified potential concerns that require further scrutiny” at the institutions. But it stressed this was not to be interpreted as wrongdoing at this stage.

The higher education regulator has vowed to clamp down on grade inflation at UK universities, warning this risked undermining public confidence in the value of degrees.

It released figures last month showing the proportion of first class degrees more than doubled in just a decade – up from just under 16 per cent to 37 per cent in the 2020-2021 academic year.

The OfS gained new powers to clamp down on grade inflation earlier this year.

It introduced a new regulatory condition earlier this year, which requires universities to “assess students effectively and award qualifications that are credible and stand the test of time”.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/three-universities-investigated-after-sharp-increase-in-top-grades/ar-AA11moXG?ocid=winp2sv1plustaskbar&cvid=8849173dd69c4b3a86f65c40d86a5ce7

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Is university good value for money?

Opinion polls these days don’t normally raise more then passing interest. But there are always exceptions worth a second look. One such was a YouGov survey out on Wednesday on what people thought about university finance. The big question was whether they believed nearly £30,000 for three years at college was good value for money. Among graduates, many of whom will have paid these fees, the answer (by a margin of well over two to one) was clear. They didn’t. For good measure, nearly half of the graduates polled thought most degrees actually left them worse off overall, against just over a third who thought they led to financial benefits.

Many, no doubt, will draw a predictable conclusion. The government must be shamed or bullied into disowning the decision by the coalition ten years ago to set the present fee (which was about three times the previous one). England should be manoeuvred into following Scotland and Wales, eliminating or greatly cutting tuition fees, and correspondingly increasing its direct subsidy to students and universities.

For the more thoughtful, however, there may be some rather more radical, and indeed hopeful, inferences to be drawn. Whoever has the higher education portfolio next week could do worse than read this survey quite carefully.

First, despite the comments on value for money, a clear majority actually liked the present system of fees plus loans, more than support through general or (hypothecated graduate) taxation. This is a relief for the government, which would otherwise face enormous cash demands. But it is also good for independent-minded students and academics: universities entirely, or nearly entirely, dependent on taxation are in danger of becoming politically subservient, as has been occasionally pointed out in the case of Scotland.

Secondly, if YouGov is right an intelligent government could, with apparent public approval, not only accept but actually run with the finding that university is not ‘value for money’. Why not quietly take this opportunity to drop talk of scholarship as a commodity and students as consumers of it?

This will admittedly come hard, especially to free-marketers. Indeed, it was one such, David Willetts, who airily but foolishly justified the 2012 fee hike by telling students that their vastly pricier degree remained a good buy because it was ‘an excellent investment in your future.’ The case is nevertheless becoming ever stronger for abandoning the make-believe that seats of learning are just a different kind of service provider that could use some private sector management, and students canny consumers raring to stimulate some healthy competition.

For make-believe it is. Universities are expensive to run and many of their benefits intangible. Fees, at almost any figure in reach of the non-plutocratic, cannot support them. It would be far more honest for government to see colleges not as sellers of a commodity but for what they really are, or at least should be: charitable institutions serving a social purpose and requiring subscriptions from those wanting to use their facilities, and as such deserving both top-up assistance from the state and the provision of help for those who cannot otherwise pay their dues. Seeing students not as consumers but as users would also reduce the pressure on universities to promote specious and distracting measures of quality such as ‘student satisfaction’, and concentrate instead on their core function: providing learning to those who really want it.

Thirdly, last week’s findings leave room for some serious thought about university numbers. From the figures given, it seems a fair inference that a goodly number of graduates believe – some no doubt as a result of personal experience – that a degree is neither a good bargain at the time nor very beneficial in later life. This is significant. If we are encouraging people to go to university when they think they get neither good value there nor later advantage elsewhere we should be worried; all the more so if we are subsidising them to do it with public money. The government may now find it increasingly easy to say what it has only hinted at obliquely before: that a fair number of people who currently go to our universities should not have gone there, but should have been encouraged to seek other, probably more beneficial, options.

Indeed, this last point gains force from a further number buried in the YouGov report. Just before Christmas last year, the government tentatively mooted an idea to deny student support from those without minimal GCSE qualifications, and encourage them instead to look elsewhere. Then howls of anguish followed from the academic blob at this squeezing of its power. In this week’s polling, by contrast, the respondents actually backed these proposals by something like three to one.

Whether the government will choose to take a cue from of all this and begin to think seriously about how many students (or universities, for that matter) it should support is not certain. But one thing is clear. Whatever the academic establishment says (and its spokesman was quick with a soothing assurance that high prices had not dampened demand for places), there is noticeable public unease at what has happened to universities, a surprising willingness to accept change, and a chance for an enterprising government to initiate it. Before university life became a middle-class rite of passage in the 1960s and an investment in earning power in this century, universities were genuine havens for those seriously interested in scholarship, without too much regard to their own future wealth. What about some serious planning to return to that situation?

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/is-university-good-value-for-money/

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Trump-Obsessed Crazy Korean Out of a Job

A leftist Yale psychiatrist who has fallen from grace will not be receiving her position at the prestigious university back, a judge has ruled.

Dr. Brandy Lee’s lawsuit against Yale University was dismissed by a federal judge on Tuesday, the Hartford Courant reported.

The university refused to reappoint Lee after the psychiatrist began an apparent crusade against then-President Donald Trump in 2019. Lee publicly commented on the mental health of Trump and his close associates despite never having examined any of them.

Lee used her clout and credentials to author a book, accept interviews and even form a group dedicated to advising lawmakers on the president’s mental fitness.

The group, calling itself the “Independent Expert Panel for Presidential Fitness,” involved Lee, several other psychiatrists, and other neurological experts.

Amid this blitz against Trump, Lee came under serious scrutiny from colleagues and leaders at Yale. Dr. John Krystal, chair of the university’s psychiatry department, blasted the political activity happening under the guise of professional conduct.

“I want to emphasize that you did not make these statements as a layperson offering a political judgment,” Krystal wrote in a 2020 letter to Lee. “You made them explicitly in your professional capacity as a psychiatrist and on the basis of your psychiatric knowledge and judgment.”

“For that reason,” he continued, “the committee decided it was appropriate to consider how these statements reflected your ability to teach trainees.”

One major factor in Krystal’s reaction to Lee’s political action is likely the “Goldwater Rule,” a professional standard from the American Psychiatric Association that warns against diagnosing someone without an evaluation.

While it seems like an obvious step in diagnosis, Lee, who is not a member of the APA, argued that the danger from Trump outweighed the need for clinical evidence.

Citing a supposed “duty to warn” the public about Trump’s mental state, Lee filed a lawsuit arguing that her own unhinged assault against the president wasn’t partisan slander but a professional obligation.

While battling allegations of mental unfitness and a possible invocation of the 25th Amendment, Trump took a cognitive test that indicated no decline in his faculties.

Thankfully, it looks like common sense has prevailed in the court of law.

District Judge Sarah A.L. Merriman didn’t quite see things the same way as Lee and completely dismissed her suit against Yale.

Without a position at Yale, Lee’s prospects in the anti-Trump racket appear to be growing bleaker by the day.

Over at CNN, where she may have been able to land a gig years ago for her opinions on Trump, the departure of two prominent leftists and a general shifting of the network signal that those days are over.

Fortunately for Lee and other experts in her group dedicated to advising lawmakers on the mental fitness of the president, there appears to be plenty of material for their “professional” consideration when it comes to President Joe Biden.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/trump-obsessed-psychiatrist-diagnosed-45-gets-bad-news-court

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3 September, 2022

The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading in America

National test results released on Thursday showed in stark terms the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago.

This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the 1970s, 9-year-olds lost ground in math, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years.

The declines spanned almost all races and income levels and were markedly worse for the lowest-performing students. While top performers in the 90th percentile showed a modest drop — three points in math — students in the bottom 10th percentile dropped by 12 points in math, four times the impact.

“I was taken aback by the scope and the magnitude of the decline,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the federal agency that administered the exam earlier this year. The tests were given to a national sample of 14,800 9-year-olds and were compared with the results of tests taken by the same age group in early 2020, just before the pandemic took hold in the United States.

High and low performers had been diverging even before the pandemic, but now, “the students at the bottom are dropping faster,” Dr. Carr said.

In math, Black students lost 13 points, compared with five points among white students, widening the gap between the two groups. Research has documented the profound effect school closures had on low-income students and on Black and Hispanic students, in part because their schools were more likely to continue remote learning for longer periods of time.

The declines in test scores mean that while many 9-year-olds can demonstrate partial understanding of what they are reading, fewer can infer a character’s feelings from what they have read. In math, students may know simple arithmetic facts, but fewer can add fractions with common denominators.

The setbacks could have powerful consequences for a generation of children who must move beyond basics in elementary school to thrive later on.

“Student test scores, even starting in first, second and third grade, are really quite predictive of their success later in school, and their educational trajectories overall,” said Susanna Loeb, the director of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, which focuses on education inequality.

“The biggest reason to be concerned is the lower achievement of the lower-achieving kids,” she added. Being so far behind, she said, could lead to disengagement in school, making it less likely that they graduate from high school or attend college.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered a gold standard in testing. Unlike state tests, it is standardized across the country, has remained consistent over time and makes no attempt to hold individual schools accountable for results, which experts believe makes it more reliable.

The test results offered a snapshot for just one age group: 9-year-olds, who are typically in third or fourth grade. (More results, for fourth graders and for eighth graders, will be released later this fall on a state-by-state level.)

“This is a test that can unabashedly speak to federal and state leaders in a cleareyed way about how much work we have to do,” said Andrew Ho, a professor of education at Harvard and an expert on education testing who previously served on the board that oversees the exam.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/national-test-scores-math-reading-pandemic.html

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Suspended Teacher Who Refused to Use ‘Preferred Pronouns’ Obtains $95K Settlement

In George Orwell’s dystopian and now-prescient work of fiction “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the “Party” and its leader, “Big Brother,” devise a diabolically clever tactic to control the thoughts and actions of the proletariat: a new language. With this lexicon, “newspeak,” they can control the speech and actions of the masses, ensuring that both conform to the ideology of their ruling party.   

This week, in the land of nonfiction, a teacher who was tired of her public school’s newspeak on gender identity just secured a $95,000 settlement against the school board that had suspended her for refusing to conform to its preferred gender pronoun policy.  

Fort Riley, Kansas, middle school math teacher Pamela Ricard wasn’t looking to pick a fight. But when the Geary County School District suspended and disciplined the teacher with a 17-year history of teaching at the school, she sued.

Her offense? She addressed two students who considered themselves transgender by their legal names rather than their preferred names and pronouns, and she refused to hide their social transition from the students’ parents. Both actions were in contravention of the school district’s new communications policy.

Ricard is a Christian. She believes that God immutably creates each person as male or female, that there are only two anatomical sexes (except in very rare medical circumstances), and that the Bible prohibits dishonesty and lying.

In her federal lawsuit, Ricard stated that the school district both violated her constitutional rights and failed to accommodate her Christian beliefs when it suspended her. She brought claims alleging that the school district violated her free speech, free exercise of religion, and due process rights.

In her May decision to let the case proceed, U.S. District Court Judge Holly Teeter recognized that Ricard was likely to succeed on her First Amendment free exercise of religion claim against the school district and granted her motion to suspend enforcement of the school’s communication policy.

Among other authorities, Teeter cited Meriwether v. Hartop, which I’ve written about here, in which the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a Christian professor at a public university was not required to use a student’s preferred pronouns.  

The court in that case explained that professor Nicholas Meriwether’s First Amendment interest in not using his students’ preferred gender pronouns was “especially strong … because [his] speech also relates to his core religious and philosophical beliefs” and because requiring the professor to use students’ preferred gender pronouns “potentially compelled speech on a matter of public concern.”

Teeter stated that because Ricard’s transgender students had not authorized the school to disclose their preferred names and pronouns, the teacher would face the Hobson’s choice of “complying with the District’s policy and violating her religious beliefs, or abiding by her religious beliefs and facing discipline.”

Shortly after Teeter’s ruling, the school board voted to revoke the communications policy altogether. After a brief period of continued litigation on the separate student preferred pronoun policy, the school district offered to settle.

As part of the settlement, school officials have agreed to issue a statement that Ricard was a teacher in good standing without any disciplinary actions against her at the time of her retirement in May.

Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom and Kriegshauser Ney Law Group represented Ricard in her lawsuit against school officials, and after settlement, filed a motion to have the case dismissed.

Joshua Ney, the lawyer who represented Ricard in the case, said:

This case provides straightforward lessons for Kansas school boards: Schools shouldn’t lie to parents and teachers don’t forfeit their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door. The Geary County School District unsuccessfully tried to convince a federal court that a teacher should completely avoid using a child’s name during a parent teacher conference in order to hide new names and genders being used by the school for a child in a classroom. Absurdity and deception has its limits, especially in federal court. I’m glad the case clarifies the financial stakes for school boards if they attempt to force teachers to lie to parents about their students.

As recently as last term, the Supreme Court reinforced the rights of public school teachers to communicate on matters of public concern—particularly when such speech relates to a teacher’s religious convictions—and said that such speech is protected by the First Amendment.

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionaries chose “post-truth” as the international word of the year. The definition: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” 

While Orwell’s fictional totalitarian state of Oceania and modern America may both be suffering the ramifications of a post-truth era, at least in the case of Pamela Ricard and the Geary County School District, the score is encouraging:

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/01/truth-victorious-suspended-teacher-who-refused-to-use-preferred-pronouns-obtains-95k-settlement

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Education Dept. Student Loan Projections Off By $311B

Bad assumptions on the part of the Department of Education led to federal student loans costing the government $197 billion since 1997 — instead of making $114 billion.

That’s according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which found that the $311 billion difference was due to “faulty assumptions.”

Federal student loans were “originally estimated to generate $6 in income per every $100 disbursed” but they’re actually “expected to cost the government almost $9 for every $100 disbursed.”

That’s quite a miscalculation.

The GAO found by looking through the Department of Education’s budgets over the years that about 61 percent of the bad accounting was due to these faulty assumptions, like incorrect estimates on the economic standing of borrowers, underestimating the likelihood of borrower default, and underestimating the percentage of borrowers who would enter income-driven repayment plans.

The Direct Student loan program, which is the largest federal student loan program, accounts for about $1.4 trillion of the $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loans, The Daily Signal reported.

About half of all loans issued in that program are being repaid through IDR plans, which cap monthly loan payments based on income.

The Congressional Budget Office reported in February 2020, “borrowers who enroll in IDR plans tend to borrow more and earn less than borrowers in fixed-payment plans.”

That means the student loan program is not only making less money than estimated, but also losing money.

The GAO found the other 39 percent of the miscalculation is due to “programmatic changes such as ongoing repayment pauses, participation in Public Service Loan Forgiveness, interest waivers, and new income-driven repayment plans,” the Signal reported.

And this isn’t about to be corrected anytime soon. The DOE will continue to use these inaccurate accounting metrics for the next three years, making the budget incorrect until at least 2026.

And none of the bad accounting includes the recent announcement from President Joe Biden that forgives $10,000 in students loans per person, costing an estimated $300 billion.

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/09/02/education_dept_student_loan_projections_off_by_311b_850312.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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2 September, 2022

UK: Half of pupils who get low grades in junior school already judged to be behind at age 5, study finds

<i>This is of course being blamed on a deprived childhood background but it is perfectly predictable as an inherited IQ effect.  A person with a low IQ is mostly born that way and stays that way.  And a deprived background will also usually  be an effect of low parental IQ.  So IQ is undoubtedly at work in the results however you look at it.  So nothing much is likely to change it</i>

Half of schoolchildren who do not pass their maths and English GCSEs were already judged to be behind on their education at the age of five new research has found.

A fifth of all students in England, or around 100,000 pupils each year, do not achieve the grade 4 pass grade in both English language and maths.

“The forgotten fifth of pupils leaving school lacking basic English and maths skills is one of education’s biggest scandals,” Professor Lee Elliot Major, co-author of the research paper, said.

The government has set out a plan for 90 per cent of children to reach the expected standards in reading, writing and maths by 2030, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said.

Researchers from the University of Exeter and UCL used data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study to map the educational trajectories of 11,524 students born in England in 2000-2001, who then went on to take their GCSEs in 2016 or 2017.

They presented their findings on Thursday in a working paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The academics found that 18 per cent, or a fifth, of teenagers failed to achieve a grade 4 in both English language and maths. Of those students, just under half (48 per cent) had not reached expected levels of numeracy and literacy at the age of five.

More than one in four of them, 28 per cent, had been assessed as “delayed” in their learning at the age of three.

Since their first survey when they were nine months old, the children were followed up six times between the ages of three and 17 - providing regular assessments of how they were doing in school.

The paper found that children who were assessed as not being “school ready” at age three, and who were below expected standard levels at age five and age 16, often had similar family backgrounds.

At each age, children identifying as struggling were twice as likely to be born to a teenage mother (13 per cent compared to 5 per cent) and to be living with a single parent (24 per cent to 10 per cent). They were also three times as likely to be living in a workless household (33 per cent to 11 per cent).

These children were also three times as likely to have parents with no or poor education qualifications. Their home was also more likely to be rented, overcrowded, damp, or situated in poorer areas, compared to their peers.

They were also less likely to be female (39 per cent to 53 per cent) and were less likely to be a firstborn child (37 per cent to 44 per cent). Children who were born in the summer months were also more likely to do worse academically, with five-year-old underachievers twice as likely to be a summer baby than not.

Early years educational disadvantage was associated with being Black, Asian or minority ethnic and living in a home where an additional language (other than English) was spoken. However, this setback was reversed as the children grew up.

Not attaining a grade 4 or higher GCSE in English language and maths was associated with being white and only English being spoken in the home.

The forgotten fifth of pupils leaving school lacking basic English and maths skills is one of education’s biggest scandals

Mr Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, added: “Government attempts to address this challenge will fail without high-quality support for children during the pre-school years and greater efforts to identify, diagnose and most importantly respond to children falling behind at early stages of schooling.

“We should also consider introducing a basic threshold qualification for functional literacy and numeracy skills that all school leavers would be expected to pass.”

Dr Sam Parsons, an academic at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies and co-author of the study, said: “Poor performance in the early years together with socio-economic disadvantage are clear risk factors for poor performance in GCSE English language and maths examinations, which are in turn increasingly crucial for post-16 transitions.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said: “The recently published schools white paper sets out our ambition for 90 per cent of children to reach the expected standards in reading, writing and maths by 2030.

“This is supported by excellent teaching and our pledge that if any child falls behind in English and maths, they will receive timely and evidence-based support to help them to reach their potential.”

They added that nearly £5bn has been invested to help children recover from the impact of the pandemic on their education.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/gcses-age-5-literacy-numeracy-england-schools-b2155616.html

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NYC: Yeshiva University asks Supreme Court to act in case over LGBT club on religious freedom grounds

Yeshiva University has asked the Supreme Court to intervene in its legal battle over the recognition of an LGBTQ student club on religious freedom grounds.

The Manhattan school on Monday filed the emergency application to stay a state court ruling ordering it to formally register the Yeshiva University Pride Alliance.

“Yeshiva is now asking the Court to protect its religious mission from government interference,” high-profile law firm the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, representing the university, said in a press release.

“The lower court rulings would force Yeshiva to put its stamp of approval on a club and activities that are inconsistent with the school’s Torah values and the religious environment it seeks to maintain on its undergraduate campuses,” it said.

Four current and former students filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court last April, claiming the college had denied multiple requests to officially register a gay-rights group as a student club.

The plaintiffs argued that not allowing such a group to be recognized alongside more than 100 other student clubs was discriminatory and in violation of New York’s human rights law.

“All we wanted to do is find a way we can give support to each other in a way all other students had access to do — except for the queer students,” Beth Weiss, a founding board member of the Pride Alliance, told The Post on Tuesday.

Formal recognition gives student groups space on campus, access to email listservs, the ability to promote the club and its events around the school, and oversight and guidance, Weiss explained.

“If we had just been able to have a club from the beginning, it would’ve been not a big deal,” Weiss said. “We would’ve been able to have pizza nights and movie nights, and hang out and put out a flyer. The situation would not have escalated.”

A state judge in mid-June ruled in the group’s favor, saying that Yeshiva is not a religious corporation according to its charter — a category exempt from the anti-discrimination state law — and therefore must formally register the club, The New York Times reported at the time.

The school then appealed to a higher state court, which denied its request to grant a stay earlier this month, prompting it to file its petition with SCOTUS.

The school requested a stay “to prevent… grave and irreparable constitutional harm” to its First Amendment rights to religious freedom, according to the 42-page filing.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/30/yeshiva-university-asks-supreme-court-to-act-in-case-over-lgbt-club/

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Minnesota Proposes to Require Teachers to Use Critical Race Theory

Parents are spreading “disinformation and hysteria around critical race theory,” a former teacher recently told NPR.

“Teachers can barely afford the resources for their own curriculum [so] it’s laughable that they’d shell out money [to teach] a college course,” he said.

College, of course, is the place where radical activists claim that critical race theory is found, not in K-12 classrooms.

Such claims would be laughable, absent evidence that state officials actually require teachers to teach critical race theory, a theory that that in fact advocates discrimination and views everything through the lens of skin color.

Earlier this year, Minnesota’s board for teacher licensure, which sets standards for teacher certification in the state, proposed changing standards for K-12 teachers to include training on “intersectionality,” one of critical race theory’s central ideas.

According to intersectionality, a concept developed by critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, individuals should be categorized into groups. Women and ethnic minorities, especially, have overlapping identities based on race, class, and ambiguous “gender” choices. Then, actions that are sexist, or even perceived as sexist, for example, are also racist and elitist.

Such categorizing helps with “assertions of multiple identity and the ongoing necessity of group politics,” Crenshaw writes in an essay in the 1995 book “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement,” making plain that  the political goal of critical race theory is to force tensions between and among identity groups.

What the theorists are less likely to admit is that intersectionality creates a culture in which people are always on the lookout for new ways to describe how they have been offended. Every action creates victims—or as one essay on critical race theory says: “The question isn’t: Was the act racist or not? The question is: How much racism was in play?”

Minnesota’s licensure board recently held a hearing on the proposed changes, which say that a teacher should “foster” student identities, including race, class, and so-called sexual orientation and gender identity. Which makes a parent wonder whether a child also will be taught that his or her character and behavior matter, too, or just skin color and gender.

These identity groupings also may affect grading. Teachers should “[take] into consideration the impact of … cultural background” on “measuring knowledge and performance of students,” according to the licensure board’s proposed changes.

The proposals in Minnesota are similar to new standards in Illinois, where the state licensing board added critical race theory’s ideas in 2021. In fact, the Minnesota board cites Illinois’ certification requirements in its documents, as reported by the Center for the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based research institute.

Illinois’ standards made headlines last year because of provisions such as “there is often not one ‘correct’ way of doing or understanding something, and that what is seen as ‘correct’ is most often based on our lived experiences”—a standard that makes geometry challenging to explain to students.

Illinois’ standards also include intersectionality as well as “decolonization,” another idea used by critical race theorists. With decolonization, teachers should replace books by white authors, such as the modern classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,”with books about “police brutality,” for example.

Minnesota officials should be prepared for parents to speak up.

A survey of Illinoisians conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and a group called eighteen92 found that 84% of respondents said they agreed with the statement, “All people should be treated equally based on merit.”

Only 23% of those surveyed said that “teachers should embrace progressive viewpoints and perspectives when teaching U.S. history, to encourage students to advocate for social justice causes.”

“Teachers should and do celebrate our state’s increasingly diverse student body, but these proposed changes would require teachers to view students as group identities and group cultures, undermining who they are as unique individuals,” Catrin Wigfall writes for the Center for the American Experiment.

Minnesota officials should consider how unpopular the prejudice and bias of critical race theory are in Illinois and other states where surveys have found that Americans reject it. Then they should refocus teaching standards on student achievement and the pursuit of truth, instead of identity politics.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/08/30/minnesota-may-require-teachers-to-use-critical-race-theory-heres-what-parents-need-to-know

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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1 September, 2022

Jobs not jail: Bring back vocational education

After a two-year pandemic hiatus, classrooms are finally headed back to normalcy. While it’s a relief for parents, it’s going to take decades to absorb the brutal consequences of COVID on our nation’s kids.

Back in the 1990s, I was listening to a presentation by an official who ran a for-profit prison. During the Q&A, an audience member asked: “How do you know how many beds you need to build?” Without hesitation, the official said: “We extrapolate from the number of children that fail the NAEP’s fourth-grade reading exam.” The room went silent.

Conducted every four years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is a longitudinal snapshot of student attainment at fourth, eighth and 12th grades and proficiency in reading and math. It was last conducted in 2019 — pre-shutdown, giving us a baseline that abuts COVID. The 2019 NAEP showed 34% of fourth-grade students unable to read at grade level — up 3% from 2015. My bet is the next measure is going to be much bigger.

How much bigger? The Brookings Institution gauges COVID’s impact on reading at 15%. With 2023 right around the corner, we might be looking at a NAEP non-proficiency number around 50%. And if you are looking for evidence of disparate impact, NAEP failure and COVID-related failure are not colorblind.

The good news is the educational establishment knows it has a huge problem on its hands — and it has $22 billion looking for “evidence-based interventions” to address the COVID-aggravated drop in learning.

Unfortunately, the thinking on this front is neither inspired nor up to the challenge. Educators intend to open the funding spigots to pay for measures that depend for their success on high-quality teachers — teachers who don’t exist in the current labor pool.

What would up-to-the-challenge thinking look like?

First, a budget for big thinking. The money is there. The Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief Fund is $200 billion, including $20 billion dedicated to closing the COVID gap for at-risk students. The problem is the default thinking that helped get us into this spot: It won’t get us out, even with this bankroll.

We know who fails these NAEP exams. Instead of watching them drown again, let’s develop an educational approach that works for them specifically and at scale.

We know what works: clarity and achievable standards for both academic and personal comportment, scrupulously enforced.

We need to go in with our eyes open. These kids have obvious problems outside the classroom holding them back academically. Clarity is key. This isn’t jail — this is an alternative to jail. Education is your child’s best chance for a good life.

These kids need a culture of learning designed to push back against the problems that exist at home or on the street. The NAEP test is made to be passed. Closing the NAEP gap ought to take priority — not a new teachers’ contract or more identity politics or a lowering of standards to satisfy woke directives.

Look behind the curtain of successful charter and Catholic schools in poor communities. You’ll find a culture of personal responsibility, tied to respect for one’s peers, teachers and the community. Lorraine Monroe made it her calling to save at-risk kids; her mantra is “The Street Stops Here.” There is too much street in our schools and in these kids’ homes. They need loving discipline and structure.

Last, make it practical, hands-on and engaging. If we want to create functional citizens from dysfunctional circumstances, meet them where they are and give them the tools and encouragement they need to rise above their circumstances.

And make it relevant to them. Communicate the immediate benefit and practical value of learning. Build lessons and classroom activities around the demonstration of an education’s real-world value. Unleash and exercise students’ common sense.

This failure at the bottom comes from our middle-class fixation on college as the only path to productive citizenship and living — even though only 40% of high-school graduates have the needed aptitude for college-level work.

The solution to the problem of at-risk kids — most of them minority males — is public trade schools. Teaching trades was once a component of public education, and some high schools were solely dedicated to grooming human capital in the practical arts and sciences. These schools and programs have all but vanished now. They need to be revived.

With all this money sitting idle, let’s invest it in building flagship vocational schools and programs within regular high schools — programs consciously designed to close the NAEP proficiency gap and prepare at-risk kids to fill those millions of unfilled, high-paying, skills-based jobs.

The choice before us is simple: a middle-class job or a prison bed. It shouldn’t be a hard call to make.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/31/jobs-not-jail-bring-back-vocational-education/

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Oberlin College Gets Just Deserts for Smearing Bakery.  Appeal fails

Update: Legal Insurrection reported Aug. 30 that the Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Oberlin College meaning that the Gibson Family Bakery is now entitled to collect approximately $36 million in punitive damages. While Oberlin College may appeal to have their appeal heard in federal court, William Jacobson says that strategy is unlikely to succeed.

In 2016, clerks at Gibson’s Bakery in Oberlin, Ohio, stopped several shoplifters from stealing from their store. They didn’t realize at the time that their action would set them on a six-year legal struggle.

Social justice warriors accused the tiny, family-owned bakery of racial profiling for confronting the shoplifters, who were black. That accusation prompted students and faculty at nearby Oberlin College to engage in a smear campaign to shut down Gibson’s Bakery.

Fortunately, a libel case filed by the bakery owners recently concluded with their victory. This didn’t stopped the college from continuing to accuse the shop of being racist.

“They have been completely unapologetic. They have been very aggressive towards this bakery,” says Bill Jacobson, a Cornell Law professor and founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation. “They continue to make their false accusations of racism against the bakery. They show no remorse whatsoever.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/05/05/oberlin-college-gets-just-deserts-for-smearing-bakery/

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A professor lectures to an empty room as all students work from home

<i>I agree that this is not good.  I always took questions from students during and after a lecture and that was a helpful part of the process</i>

A university professor has cried out for help after he gave a lecture to a completely empty hall - as students watch remotely from home rather than come to campus. 

Jan Slapeta, a Professor of Veterinary and Molecular Parasitology at Sydney University, posted an image of his deserted lecture theatre on Monday as all students were dialling in. 

The work-from-home habits adopted during Covid lockdowns have lingered long after most isolation measures for the virus had been abandoned.

Prof. Slapeta said students as a result are missing out not only on collaborative learning but the social life that had always been a major part of the  student experience.

'Should I be shocked again? 1 pm lecture - no one! I lectured empty chairs,' he posted to social media.

Professor Slapeta tagged Sydney University in the post, asking for answers after the only student he encountered was one who turned up early for the next class.

'10 min in a student that was early for 2 pm lecture showed up (completely unrelated subject, different degree). 

'We had a great discussion, and I had one keen student learning,' he wrote, before asking the uni: 'Where from now? Help @Sydney Uni'

The veterinary professor told Daily Mail Australia it was an issue that 'required deep thought', as lecture attendance had been 'declining for several years' - even before the pandemic - as the university allowed students to log in remotely.

Peter Black, a senior law lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, revealed he often hosts digital lectures to students with cameras turned off.

'This was almost just as depressing, teaching to unresponsive blank screens on Zoom,' he replied to Professor Slapeta's post.

The response to the image was mixed, with some suggesting universities and lecturers will have to adapt to the results of modern technology, while others lamented the isolating effect.

'As someone who taught for over 25 years (high school and undergrad) I can honestly say I find this really upsetting. Teaching is social, and there is nothing like building knowledge together with students in a room,' another professor at QUT replied.

'We are in a global pandemic. Why is it surprising to anyone that people don't want to risk serious illness to do something that can be done remotely?' astrophysicist Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith said.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson, a Senior Lecturer in Australian History at Sydney University, thought the picture showed the problems with modern learning. 'This shows that the current way of approaching hybrid teaching isn't working. We need a rethink,' she said. 'Lectures are a vital part of university life and can provide transformative moments in students' education. We need to value them. The current model does not.'

A PhD student claimed the lecture dynamic was wrong and the lack of discussion and debate was also a factor causing lack of attendance.

'Lecture theatre design is outdated! Look how the space is arranged. It implies that only you have something worthwhile to say. 

'In my opinion, the design of learning spaces impacts on how we view them. Students will show up not to be talked AT but to be in conversation WITH,' she replied.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11162711/Sydney-University-picture-exposes-reality-uni-2022.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The English "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.


The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray



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