Wednesday, May 29, 2019


Educating the Children of America’s Heroes

“The United States of America regrets to inform you,” are the words she remembers hearing when the Naval officers came to her home. She was young, only seven years old, but it was an experience she’ll never forget, and she explained what happened next. “My mom started to cry. I knew something very bad had happened. I was right.”

That was how Brandi Anderson learned about the death of her father. Michael Anderson enlisted in the Navy after high school and served on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CV-59). He left the Navy to return to civilian life but after the terrorist attacks of 9-11 he re-enlisted as a Navy Seabee. Petty Officer Michael Anderson was 36 years old when he died in Anbar Province, Iraq in a mortar attack. Brandi recently commemorated the 15th anniversary of her father’s death which occurred on May 2, 2004.

At this time of year, Americans recognize those laid to rest who sacrificed their lives for our nation’s defense. We also celebrate the next generation of professionals who are graduating from college and preparing to enter a workforce that is as dynamic and competitive as it ever has been. At Freedom Alliance, we do both by providing college scholarships to the sons and daughters of America’s military heroes.

Freedom Alliance has nearly 400 students on scholarship this year – each the child of a soldier, sailor, airman or marine who has given life or limb for our country. It’s an honor to know these students and a privilege to help them attain the college education their parent dreamed they would have. There’s no expectation on their part that their education will be free or easy. They are incentivized to do well because their ticket to higher education was paid for by a hero’s sacrifice that they wish to honor.

These military families stand in stark contrast to those who’ve used fat bribes or false pretenses to attain college admission. The lesson is unmistakable. Those who use illegal means to get their kids into school believe a college credential is the most important ticket to success. They teach their kids to lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. Military members, in contrast, teach their kids that character counts. They offer themselves in the service of others, show concern for their fellow Americans, and put their faith in enduring values that are the true measure of a person’s worth.

Approximately 7,000 children have lost a parent in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. As our Student Ambassador, Brandi Anderson will represent those students who are on scholarship with Freedom Alliance and those who’ve recently graduated. She will share with them the advice she most remembers from her father – “never give up.”

“I have held on to this advice,” Brandi explains, “and have tried to live a life that makes both him and my mom proud every day.” She certainly has accomplished that. Brandi graduated from Stetson University this month with a degree in Public Management and her name on the Dean’s List. Brandi’s goal is to work for the National Park Service. Her father’s dream was for her to graduate college, and it’s an honor to help that dream come true.    

A great debate is taking place in our country about the value of higher education and the debt with which graduates are saddled. College graduates owe more than $1.5 trillion in student loans, exceeding the amounts outstanding to credit card companies and auto loan lenders. On average, they carry loan balances of $33,310.

After this weekend, that’s no longer the case for some 400 graduates of Morehouse College in Atlanta. They were pleasantly surprised when commencement speaker and philanthropist Robert F. Smith, the CEO of Vista Equity Partners, announced he and his family would make a gift to pay off the entirety of the graduates’ loans – an amount estimated at $40 million. Kudos to Mr. Smith and congrats to the Morehouse graduates; a substantial burden has been removed as they begin their careers.

But for Brandi Anderson and other students who lost a parent in service to our country, their story is not about the debt they owe to a government loan. It’s about the debt we Americans owe to them.

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One's racial and economic privilege or lack thereof will be calculated in secret  

Earlier this year, students at Saratoga Springs High School were given a “privilege reflection form” and asked to calculate their privilege based on point totals added or subtracted from one’s score. Unsurprisingly, if one were white, male and/or heterosexual, points were added to one’s score. Those who were black, female, and/or homosexual subtracted points from their total. “At the end of the survey, students scoring negative 100 points or less were considered ‘very disprivileged,’ while students who scored above 100 points were told to ‘check it daily’ — as in check their privilege daily,” the Daily Gazette reported. Now, similarly poisonous nonsense has taken hold at the College Board: each SAT test-taker will be given an “adversity score” that purports to level the playing field between students from different social and economic backgrounds.

“The score will be calculated using 15 factors, including the relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s neighborhood,” The New York Times reports. “The rating will not affect students’ test scores, and will be reported only to college admissions officials as part of a larger package of data on each test taker.”

In other words, one’s privilege or lack thereof will be calculated in secret.

Why? Colleges are desperate to preserve the contemptible notion that diversity is more important than meritocracy. And while the Board insists race will not be part of the equation, it is the racial achievement gap, which has existed for decades and leaves many minority students un- or under-qualified to gain admissions to elite colleges, that remains the bane of colleges desperate to justify those admissions.

That Asian parents generally demand higher levels of academic achievement from their children than white or black American parents do? That white students from low-income households have fared better on the SATs than black students from upper-middle-class ones? That the University of California has determined that race predicts SAT scores better than class?

College Board CEO David Coleman, who is also credited with being the architect of the disastrous Common Core curriculum, is thrilled. “Merit is all about resourcefulness,” he insists. “This is about finding young people who do a great deal with what they’ve been given. It helps colleges see students who may not have scored as high, but when you look at the environment that they have emerged from, it is amazing.”

Nonsense. Merit is about merit. Moreover, vocabulary gives the Board away. A student’s “Overall Disadvantage Level” will be rated on a scale of one to 100. Scores over 50 points will indicate “hardship,” and scores lower than 50 points will indicate “privilege.”

No doubt it’s pure coincidence that “privilege” has been routinely used by leftists to vilify white Americans. Yet even if this effort is not about race, what’s so noble about discrimination by class?

In reality, the effort to subvert standardized testing is about two things. First, colleges want cover for admitting less-qualified students, and the College Board is more than willing to give to them. As the Daily Caller explains, the College Board “would not say how it makes the score or weighs the 15 factors considered.” Moreover the part of the total will be derived from “sources ‘proprietary’ to the College Board.”

Second? “The College Board is reacting to demand from colleges, many of which are making use if the SATs optional, or even dropping the requirement entirely, precisely because it does not yield the desired racial distribution of scores,” columnist Thomas Lifson reveals. “Fewer students taking the test, because colleges don’t require it, means less money for the College Board. By adding the adversity score and therefore a veneer of pseudo-science to the racial engineering of outcomes, the College Board is feathering its own financial nest.”

In other words, it’s all about the money.

And who’s kidding whom? The system is easily gamed, as one can rent an apartment in a bad section of town to use as an address, or hide income, to appear poor. Moreover, if this is a reaction to the college admissions scandal whereby 50 elitists, including Hollywood actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, simply bribed their child’s way into college, irony abounds: The College Board is also asserting that gaining the system is OK, as long as the gamesmanship accrues to the interests of its designated victims.

In fact, as Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald astutely points out, black students who already know they are held to a different standard than their white and Asian counterparts will have less incentive to push themselves, making the problem worse. “At present, thanks to racial preferences, many black high school students know that they don’t need to put in as much scholarly effort as non-‘students of color’ to be admitted to highly competitive colleges,” she writes. “The adversity score will only reinforce that knowledge.”

Mac Donald further notes campus diversity bureaucrats will be the only guaranteed beneficiaries of this scheme. “They have been given another assurance of academically handicapped students who can be leveraged into grievance, more diversity sinecures, and lowered academic standards,” she adds.

What about equality of opportunity, as opposed to equality of results? In a revealing paragraph, the Times insist that “families who hire expensive consultants and tutors” are also gaming the system, and that higher SAT scores “have been found to correlate with students from wealthier families and those with better-educated parents.”

In other words, absent a wholly classless society, equality of opportunity doesn’t exist. Thus, it becomes necessary to equalize the outcome — in the interests of preserving meritocracy, no less!

If such nonsense sounds Orwellian, that’s because it is. Furthermore, no amount of subterfuge can obscure the reality that many students conned into believing they are ready for college work will end up switching to less-demanding majors, or dropping out entirely when they discover they’re not.

The long-term consequences of this fraud? In a real world with far more exacting standards, even the most dedicated progressives will not entrust their well-being to those who’ve been taught that even where accuracy is critical, substandard efforts may be deemed acceptable if one’s socio-economic credentials demonstrate a sufficient level of adversity.

Nonetheless, the “soft bigotry of law expectations” doesn’t play well in places like operating rooms, or pilot seats — all the social justice warrior rhetoric in the world notwithstanding.

Regardless, the College’s Board’s “Environmental Context Dashboard,” which has already been field-tested by 50 colleges, will be embraced by another 150 schools this year, with a wider rollout scheduled for 2020.

“The whole purpose of standardized exams like the SAT is to implement one standard for everyone,” writes columnist Karol Markowicz.

Not any more. “If I am going to make room for more of the [poor and minority] students we want to admit and I have a finite number of spaces, then someone has to suffer and that will be privileged kids on the bubble,” stated John Barnhill, assistant vice president for academic affairs at Florida State University.

Privileged? Better qualified is more like it.

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Australia: Former US vice president Al Gore will lead a three-day climate change lecture in Queensland - and you'll be paying for the venue

Former US vice president Al Gore is set to visit Queensland to lecture students about climate change - but it will come at a cost to the taxpayers.

Mr Gore will speak at the Minister's Climate Change event in Brisbane from June 5 to 7.

The event comes at a cost to taxpayers with the Brisbane Convention Centre hire and one project co-ordinator costing about $142,000 and being charged to the Queensland Government, the Courier-Mail reported.

State Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch said the Queensland Government was supporting the climate leadership training by providing funding for the venue and a Brisbane-based Climate Reality Project manager.

Mr Gore, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, once commanded a $100,000 speaking fee, ABC reported.

The three-day event was set to feature an appearance by Labor leader Bill Shorten had he won the Federal Election.

Mr Gore is opposed to the Adani coal mine, which is due to operate in Queensland. 'The Adani mine doesn't have its financing, I hope it never gets its financing,' Mr Gore told the Guardian in 2017. 'It's not my place to meddle with your politics, but truly, this is nuts.'

Liberal-National MP Matt Canavan said he 'welcomed' Mr Gore to Queensland.

'I hope he can hear the message of how our state’s fantastic coal creates jobs, powers the world and produces a better environment because it is cleaner,' he said.

'We Queenslanders should think about what major dam or power station we want Al Gore to target so he can help us get that going too.'

Mr Gore will host climate leadership training for between 800 and 1000 business and community leaders from across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region during the climate change event.

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