Friday, April 08, 2022


What About Ditching College?

It seems that more high school students and their parents are coming to terms with the fact that not everyone has to go to college. A few years ago, many parents assumed the only question for their child after high school was which college to attend. Now, the after-graduation question is whether to attend college at all.

The number of students going directly from high school to college in 2020 dropped 21% from the prior year. Many high school graduates chose to work or pursue other endeavors over taking and paying for a year of college on their laptop.

This drop was due in large part to COVID and our poor management of the pandemic. Other trends indicate that this turn away from college is not an aberration but perhaps an opportunity for us to free ourselves of the damaging idea that a costly college education is a must in our society.

“Are you going to college?” “Where did you go to college?” “What did you study in college?” Ever been peppered with these questions? It is endemic in our country to assume that everyone is going, has been, or aspires to go to college. Having a college degree is portrayed as a Wonka ticket that magically opens career doors and feeds you gobs of money and success. It’s far from it.

It’s hard to know when our nation’s cultural obsession with college began. Maybe in the 1990s, when co-President Hillary Clinton openly mused that every child should have the chance to go to college. But it’s evident now that colleges and universities and lenders see public high schools as little more than feed stations for the higher education industry. The people who enroll in college are called students, but they’re really customers. The academics want to indoctrinate them in the leftist agenda. The administrators want to expand the campus to attract new clients. The lenders want to put financial hooks into them that stick for decades.

In a recent poll of people who have graduated from college in the last five years, 19% said they were under-qualified for their first job. Over half had not applied to an entry-level job in their field because they felt unqualified.

Additionally, three out of every eight students who started college will drop out before completing their degree. And a Gallup poll from last year revealed that 45% of parents want to see more non-college options for their children.

Armed with these and other dismal facts, parents and potential students must ask themselves: What’s it all for? College doesn’t guarantee success and happiness, nor does a lack of college guarantee failure and misery. Far from it. Furthermore, high school students stand as good a chance at success in learning a trade and going straight to work — and without the massive debt that cripples the economic lives of so many college graduates.

The college bubble’s been ready to burst for a while. The economic value of a college education was already dropping before COVID. Enrollment is dropping and the costs are growing to unsustainable levels, but the higher education industry still believes it can keep things going.

Colleges are lowering the hurdles of entry for less academically qualified students. This is framed as reaching out to “underrepresented populations,” and it gives institutions something to brag about when they solicit donations from alumni networks and Pell grants from the federal government. By the way, doubling the Pell grant is one of Joe Biden’s line items in next year’s budget. Of course, exclusivity in obtaining a quality education is one of college’s selling points. If anyone can get in, exclusivity goes away. Or, as Syndrome put it in “The Incredibles,” “If everyone is special, no one is.”

Colleges are cutting costs in other areas as well: trimming staff, getting faculty to take pay cuts and take on a larger student load, and, of course, raising tuition. In the end, though, it’s all about enrolling students. Enrolled students are paying students. And that’s all colleges and universities really care about.

Remember: Higher education is neither a public service nor a prerequisite to a better life. It’s a business. And not everyone is required to be a consumer. The pathway to success is wide and varied, and it may indeed run through a college campus. But it certainly doesn’t have to.

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NY State is holding NYC’s schoolchildren hostage

The Legislature got its way, keeping renewal of mayoral control of New York City public schools out of this year’s budget, leaving the issue to the rest of the session in a juvenile slap at Mayor Eric Adams. When will they stop playing games with children’s futures?

Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul had pushed for a four-year extension of mayoral control along with the budget. It’s really a no-brainer, since no one seriously argues that defaulting back to the old, unaccountable city Board of Education would be an improvement — and any transition would leave the system in limbo for weeks if not months.

Control should be permanent: The main hostility to mayoral control stems from the United Federation of Teachers, whose power prospered under the BOE.

But the Legislature enjoys making mayors come crawling every few years to beg lawmakers to do the right thing and/or to bribe the UFT with wage hikes or other concessions to give its Albany puppets the go-ahead.

This year, Adams also peeved the leadership with his truth-telling on the urgent need for fixes to their recent criminal-justice reforms: They insist their work was near-perfect and get hissy at suggestions that it paved the way for soaring crime. (Spoiler: It did.)

It surely didn’t help that Adams has also said he wants to slash the city’s bureaucracy, putting unionized jobs at risk (public-employee unions all hold great sway in the Legislature). And he and Chancellor David Banks mean to do the same with the school system, where they also intend to institute serious measures of accountability, further enraging the UFT.

Perhaps worst for the teachers union, Adams is friendly to charter schools, and Banks even ran one. That’s a major threat to all adult interests that feed off the public schools.

It’s also a reminder of why mayoral control is so vital. Adams, who won without the UFT’s blessing, is free to choose what’s best for the kids, not for Mike Mulgrew’s union. (Indeed, he’s already faced down the UFT by refusing to even think about school closures over the phantom Omicron threat.)

Again, it’s unlikely the Legislature will risk disaster by letting mayoral control lapse. But its leaders are all too likely to demand concessions to serve the special interests, leaving the system’s future in doubt for weeks or months.

Yes, New York’s top lawmakers are so small-minded as to leave the fate of nearly a million schoolchildren in limbo simply to cut down to size a mayor they deem uppity. We’d call it shameful, but they plainly have no shame.

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Biden's Student Loan Decision Contradicts His Bragging About the Economy

As Madeline reported earlier on Wednesday, the Biden administration is set to extend the government's pause on student loan repayments to the end of August after previously extending the "relief" targeted at those who have federal student loans.

As The AP noted, "Democrats on education panels in the House and Senate recently urged President Joe Biden to extend the moratorium through the end of the year, citing continued economic upheaval." But...the White House has been bragging about how effective Biden's Build Back Better agenda is and how the country is doing better than ever?

Not so, according to members of Biden's party in Congress:

Sen. Patty Murray said more time is needed to help Americans prepare for repayment and to rethink the government’s existing system for repaying student debt.

“It is ruining lives and holding people back,” she said in a statement last month. “Borrowers are struggling with rising costs, struggling to get their feet back under them after public health and economic crises, and struggling with a broken student loan system — and all this is felt especially hard by borrowers of color.”

Once again, the White House's spin on economic data doesn't match reality for Americans, nor does it match the rest of the Biden administration's actions. Democrats on Capitol Hill and even the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis are warning that "[s]erious delinquency rates for student debt could snap back from historic lows to their previous highs in which 10% or more of the debt was past due" if student loan payments are restarted.

Compare what congressional Democrats and others have said with what Biden said just five days ago following the release of March's jobs report from the Department of Labor:

Americans are back to work. And that’s good news for millions of families who have a little more breathing room and the dignity that comes from earning a paycheck — just the dignity of having a job.

And more and more Americans get jobs — as they do, it’s going to help to ease the supply pressures we’ve seen. And that’s good news for fighting inflation, it’s good news for our economy, and it means that our economy has gone from being on the mend to being on the move.

On the move, huh? If the American economy is now done being mended, in Biden's mind, why are pandemic response measures being extended another three months? "Our policies are working," Biden also claimed on Friday. "And we’re getting results for the American people...Record job creation. Record unemployment declines. Record wage gains...People are making more money. They’re finding better jobs," Biden said.

Of course, his claims don't match reality and are undercut if not discredited by his administration's decision to extend student loan forbearance. The American people already know that wage gains are entirely erased by inflation that has left them, on average, with a two percent drop in real wages in the last year. The jobs supposedly created are really just jobs that are being recovered — and the economy is still not back where it was before the pandemic started.

Biden's decision to extend the pause on student loan repayment is an admission of sorts that Biden's economic agenda hasn't achieved the goals his campaign promised. But that doesn't stop the White House from continuing its furious spin to try and claim victory ahead of the midterms. President Biden and his aides either think the American people are too naive to know better or too simple-minded to see the glaring contradiction between what the White House says and what the White House does.

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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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Thursday, April 07, 2022


Joe Rogan slams California school that pushed woke 'anti-racism' on his 9-year-old daughter and says he doesn't even know what the ideology means

Joe Rogan is slamming the California elementary school that he claims pushed woke anti-racism ideology on his nine-year-old daughter after George Floyd's killing.

The podcaster claims the unnamed school issued a blanket statement email in May 2020 telling families that students 'must be anti-racist,' something he said the kids were too young to even understand.

'When the whole George Floyd thing happened, one of the schools that my kids were going to back in California released this email, saying that it's not enough to not be racist, you now must be anti-racist,' Rogan, 54, said on Tuesday's episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

Rogan, who has been embroiled in his own racial controversy after old clips of him using the n-word surfaced, said he could support schools teaching students that 'racism is stupid,' but argues teaching them to be anti-racist is inappropriate.

'These kids are not even remotely racist. Like, they have all sorts of different kinds of friends,' he said. 'I've never heard them discuss it once. It's just "I like this person and she's nice to me and we like to play together and we both like the same things,"' he said. 'So to tell a 9-year-old that you have to be anti-racist, well, then they go looking for racism, they're gonna go looking to confront it.'

Floyd, 46, was killed at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020 during an arrest. His death triggered protests around the globe against racism and police brutality.

Rogan also criticized the educators who truly believe pushing the woke curriculum was a good idea, calling them 'naive'.

'They weren't that good at teaching in the first place,' the podcaster argued. 'And now here there are saying they're going to tackle something, not not just tackle something as complex as race in America, but you're going to establish rules that you can't just be not racist, you have to be anti-racist.

'And you're going to teach this to a nine-year-old?' he questioned. 'So what are you saying? Like, what exactly are you saying, what is your f*****g end goal?'

He stated he supported academics instilling values of equality, but his daughter's school's agenda was confusing

'If you want to tell my nine-year-old, they have to be anti-racist. What does it mean?' he questioned. 'They have to go find racism and confront it?'

The podcaster claims the California school's anti-racist push came amid the nationwide push to combat racial injustice that followed Floyd's death.

Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, having been arrested for allegedly attempting to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a grocery store.

Shortly after the incident, video emerged of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck as he lay on the ground for nine minutes.

Floyd cried out, 'I can't breathe!' over and over. His words became a rallying cry for demonstrators the world over.

Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd's death. Three other officers, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane, and J Alexander Kueng, were fired from the police department who did nothing to intervene while witnessing Floyd's death.

Rogan's remarks about anti-racist education came during a Tuesday interview with playwright and filmmaker David Mamet in which the pair discussed the current state of Hollywood.

The podcaster has been under fire in recent months from progressives who called on Spotify, the streaming service that houses his show, to cancel his $200million deal over his COVID-19 comments and use of racial slurs.

In January, a group of 270 doctors and scientists signed an open letter to Spotify accusing Rogan of pushing 'anti-vax misinformation' and branding him a 'menace to public health'.

After Spotify didn't respond to the letter, musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell led a boycott and pulled their music from the streaming platform.

Spotify eventually launched content advisory warnings on episodes that include discussion about COVID-19 on a rolling basis.

Then in February, clips resurfaced from Rogan's podcast in which he used the N-word over 20 times. He later apologized, calling it 'the most regretful and shameful thing I've ever had to talk about publicly.'

'It looks f***ing horrible. Even to me,' Rogan said. 'I know that to most people, there is no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now. I haven't said it in years.'

Last month, Rogan threatened to cancel his Spotify deal if 'he has to walk on eggshells.'

'There's more people pouring over it but it's the same thing. I do it the same way,' Rogan said during his March 29 episode.

'If I become something different because it grew bigger, I will quit. If it gets to a point that I can't do it anymore, where I have to do it in some sort of weird way where I walk on eggshells and mind my p's and q's, f*** that!'

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A Big, Fat ‘F’ for Gubmint Skools

American students perform poorly on the nation’s report card. Overall, the majority of our students in public school don’t even meet “below basic” standards. We’re far from alone in thinking this is a huge problem.

C. Bradley Thompson, philosophy professor at Clemson University, digs into the actual numbers of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). He illustrates this fact:

In history, for instance, only 20 percent of U.S. fourth graders, 17 percent of eighth graders, and 12 percent of twelfth graders who took the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests (America’s so-called Report Card), were deemed “proficient” or “advanced” in their knowledge of the subject. More than 50 percent of high school seniors posted scores at the lowest level (“below basic”), and “only 35% of fourth-graders knew the purpose of the Declaration of Independence.” In 2018, American eighth graders scored four points lower on the NAEP U.S. history test than they did in 2014. According to a recent survey, 42 percent of Americans think Karl Marx’s communist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is to be found in one of America’s founding documents.

Thompson goes on to make the point that this author often does regarding how devastating the COVID lockdowns were for our students. He writes, “In 2021, after a years of masked or online teaching, reading test scores for American first graders fell a stunning 24 points on a national reading test, but even before the pandemic, nearly two-thirds of American students could not read at grade level.”

American public education has been in sharp decline for decades, but as this data clearly shows, our current batch of students are in a free fall. This is not for lack of attempted intervention. Big Government has long tried to right the sinking ship of education with Head Start, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and so many others.

These government “interventions” did little more that accelerate the issues. The real meat of the problem is varied and nuanced, and though a great chunk of responsibility can be placed at the feet of public schools and government policies, there are so many more issues at hand.

At the bottom of this Analysis, don’t miss your opportunity to support your Patriot Post team!

Why don’t these stats talk about the vast difference in the students that we teachers see? As recently as 15 years ago, teachers at the kindergarten and first grade levels were not seeing as many children with learning difficulties as we’re seeing in today’s classrooms. Learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, autism, and other challenges.

Why is that?

Most recent education reforms focus on having no standards at all, which is an overcorrection to the Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind policies of punishing schools and teachers if their children don’t succeed.

There has also been a shift in cultural priorities. Having an educated populace makes it more difficult to manipulate people politically. Teaching children to despise real learning and to love emotional grandstanding is another way to stupefy the masses (empathy over intellect). We also have a culture of adults who do not like to read. Reading is a skill that is developed over time. Books for pleasure are just as essential as books that challenge. Taking the time to better oneself by reading books that challenge requires discipline, self-awareness, and a desire to learn — qualities that are no longer viewed favorably in our instant-gratification, social media-driven culture. Some even refer to this striving for improvement as “whiteness.”

Parenting has also changed. Many parents do not fully understand that in spite of the propaganda, they are their children’s primary educators. By leaving “education” up to the schools, they are forfeiting that essential part of parenting that drives children to succeed.

These children also have the distinct disadvantage of growing up in a digital age where instant gratification is taken to the next level. Learning is a process that takes time and digital learning does not effectively teach as a result.

Children are also being diagnosed with learning disabilities at a much higher rate. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because they can receive interventions by their parents and teachers to help them succeed. It is bad because these diagnosis are often used as an excuse not to try their absolute best and/or for their teachers not to work their hardest to help them succeed.

There are other issues at play that feed into our children’s learning disabilities. Our diets, environmental issues, genetic issues, lack of social interaction, lack of play in early education … the list is endless.

The most nefarious reason of all is the emphasis on nonessential education — the eduactivism element that is hurting and further convoluting our children’s learning. Our children can’t read, write, or do math, but by all means let’s teach them about gender pronouns, critical race theory, and how to have safe sex. This is not at all the intended role of public schools, and yet in this current era, it is sometimes the primary emphasis.

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Australia: Better discipline in schools begins outside the classroom

That is probably true but it is no substitute for better discipline IN the classroom

One of the hot button topics in education at the moment is the issue of classroom discipline and student behaviour.

Because everyone has been to school, everyone also has an opinion on the issue, often ill-informed and, at times, extremely unhelpful.

As is commonly the case when we seek global responses to problems we face, the reality of the solutions required are more complex than they first seem. For example, there is a tendency to assume the solution always lies with the individual teacher and their capacity to maintain order in class. While there is certainly some truth in that view, consider a scenario that commonly occurs in schools.

Teacher A, in one classroom is valiantly seeking to implement the school’s expectation that students do not use their mobile phones in class. On telling the students she requires them to put their phones away, she is told by one of her more voluble charges that Teacher B, a little further down the corridor, doesn’t care if they do. Teacher A is immediately undermined and, despite her willingness and capacity to follow the rule, is somewhat less able to make it work.

This, rather than headline-grabbing stories about violence in schools, is really the main game as far as improving discipline is concerned, since it is low-level disruption that really impedes quality teaching in class, rather than periodic outbursts that are fleeting, and by comparison rare.

The point is, that regardless of any individual teacher’s efforts to maintain discipline in class, it can only really happen on the back of a whole-school approach.

In research conducted in 2009 on why some schools perform much better than their peers, my colleagues and I found it depended, to a significant degree, on the leadership, their expectations for the school, and the extent to which an orderly learning environment exists where students are well-known by the staff.

The key in this regard is consistency. Put simply, the greater the consistency of practice, the better the school. It reflects the fact that Teacher A can request the phone be put away, secure in the knowledge that Teacher B will do the same and the school’s leaders will back them on this.

Leadership, we found, is the difference between the pockets of improvement that exist in any school, and whole-school improvement. Schools do not get better unless their leaders are leading improvement. The principal is at the centre of this. That said, the principal cannot do it on their own, and hence needs to weld a team of leaders together who can then work to drive improvement through their school.

This applies as much to classroom discipline as to any other strategy for improvement the school adopts. It in turn suggests that if all we do is try to improve teachers’ individual disciplinary skills, then all we will get is the variability that already exists. It is only when the whole of the school unites around a common approach that things can begin to change.

Some years ago, for example, a large school that I worked with in outer-eastern Melbourne, tackled a breakdown in implementing its uniform policy through a mix of improved documentation, procedures and a simple red bag. Although the school attempted to ban the wearing of hoodies and facial piercings, inconsistent implementation by teachers meant they remained rife in the school.

By giving each teacher a red shopping bag to collect the offending items, the school’s leaders answered the question of how to store them through the day and provided a highly visible means to monitor the implementation of the rule. Through persistent hard work led by the principal and his team, uniform-wearing skyrocketed in the school which then considered where it should seek to be more consistent next.

There is always a need to improve teacher preparation and a broad range of their skills. But unless it is matched by a focus on leaders and supporting them to develop and implement a culture of high expectations where positive behaviour is demanded and required, then the outcome will be less than we intend.

There are many examples of schools which punch above their weight, not least because they have a dynamic leadership team with a clear sense of what’s needed if their school is to improve. We could do much worse than learn from these exemplars so that more schools can work like the best.

After all, don’t we all want to see students and staff alike on time, in class and ready to learn each and every day.

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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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Wednesday, April 06, 2022


Some of America’s Ivy League universities are suddenly shy

Far from trumpeting each year how low their acceptance rate is – thus underlining how hard it is to get in and how exclusive they are – three of the eight universities in the exclusive group are withholding the information this year.

Some Ivy League admissions officers say that drawing so much attention to how few candidates made the cut is doing more harm than good, ratcheting up panic among high-school students and their parents and perpetuating a myth that it is nearly impossible to get into a good college.

“We’re focusing not on how hard we are to get into but on who these young people are that we chose,” said E. Whitney Soule, admissions dean at the University of Pennsylvania.

Princeton and Cornell universities also no longer share detailed admission figures after informing applicants of their results.

“We know this information raises the anxiety level of prospective students and their families and, unfortunately, may discourage some prospective students from applying,” Princeton wrote in a statement on its admissions website explaining the change.

It is a marked shift from a standard annual game plan in which all eight Ivy League institutions – and scores of other well-known schools – publicly share figures for how large the applicant pool was and how few of those hopeful students actually made the cut. Most typically issue news releases, highlighting their single-digit acceptance rates.

This year Harvard said it had admitted 3.2 per cent of the 61,220 people who applied to join the fall 2022 class, edging down from 3.4 per cent last year.

Yale and Brown also reported record-low acceptance rates for this year, at 4.5 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively. Columbia and Dartmouth roughly tied last year’s rates of 3.7 per cent and 6.2 per cent.

The reticence of three of the eight Ivys came as the number of Americans applying to universities jumped sharply.

Through to mid-March the widely used Common App – an undergraduate college admission application – received 6.64 million applications, a 21 per cent jump from the 2019-20 school year.

There were 1.18 million applicants, an increase of 14 per cent. Highly selective universities – those admitting less than half their applicants – reported the biggest increases in applications. One factor explaining the increases is that many schools made test-score submissions optional during the pandemic.

There is also a longer-term trend at play: high-school students with high aspirations see the statistics from prior years and, concerned about getting in, try to hedge their bets by applying to more schools. The pools continue to grow; acceptance rates continue to tumble; the cycle repeats.

Harvard, Yale and other Ivies received an unprecedented number of applications last year and near-record figures for the early-admission deadline of the current cycle.

Stanford University in 2018 stopped reporting its admission data, saying it wanted to de-emphasise the perceived value of low acceptance rates, though other schools have been slow to follow suit.

About a year ago, Akil Bello, senior director of advocacy and advancement at FairTest, a non-profit that advocates for more limited use of standardised tests, began using the term “highly rejective” to describe some of these schools, rather than highly selective.

Mr Bello said his aim was to cast the low acceptance rate in a different light, one that wasn’t worthy of crowing about in a news release.

“I was challenging the notion that the statistic of admission rate was a positive indicator,” he said. “That’s really all it is. It’s a rejection rate.”

Ms Soule, from Penn, said the goal wasn’t to make the admissions process less transparent.

Schools still do post admission figures publicly, in the Common Data Set online and in reports to the Education Department, though there is a time lag before those are available.

At the time of admission, she said, the focus should be on the students who are getting in and what about them that caught the attention of admissions ­officers.

That is more useful to prospective students than a slight increase or decline in annual acceptance rates, she said.

“If others follow along, that would be great,” Ms Soule said.

“This is the right way for us to celebrate those we’ve admitted.”

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MIT Leads the Way in Reinstating the SAT

Expect others to follow. Selective institutions that don’t use standardized tests will fall behind.

“I find it hard to take seriously the state of Michigan’s contention that racial diversity is a compelling state interest—compelling enough to warrant ignoring the Constitution’s prohibition of distribution on the basis of race,” Scalia began. “The problem is a problem of Michigan’s own creation. That is to say, it has decided to create an elite law school . . . [and] it’s done this by taking only the best students with the best grades and the best SATs or LSATs, knowing that the result of this will be to exclude to a large degree minorities.”

Scalia said that if Michigan wants to be an elite law school, that’s fine. But there are trade-offs involved if the school also wants to prioritize enrolling some predetermined percentage of underrepresented minorities for aesthetic reasons. “If [racial diversity] is indeed a significant compelling state interest, why don’t you lower your standards?” he asked. “You don’t have to be the great college you are. You can be a lesser college if that value is important enough to you.”

Last week, the highly selective Massachusetts Institute of Technology, faced with a similar dilemma, apparently chose to maintain its high standards. It became the first prominent school to reinstate the requirement that applicants submit SAT or ACT scores, a practice that MIT and many other colleges had abandoned during the pandemic.

MIT explained the reversal in a blog post. “Our research shows standardized tests help us better assess the academic preparedness of all applicants, and also help us identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities that would otherwise demonstrate their readiness for MIT,” wrote Stu Schmill, the dean of admissions. “Our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT⁠is significantly improved by considering standardized testing—especially in mathematics,” he added. Thus, “not having SATs/ACT scores to consider tends to raise socioeconomic barriers to demonstrating readiness for our education.”

None of this is unique to MIT. Mr. Schmill cited a major study released in 2020 by a University of California task force that highlighted the SAT’s ability to assess accurately high-school students for college readiness. Opponents of standardized testing claim the SAT is biased toward more-affluent whites. According to race scholar Ibram Kendi, “The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever designed to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies.”

If that’s true, how is it that a racial minority—Asian students—tend to score highest on the SAT? And how is that even low-income Asians outperform middle-class students from other racial and ethnic groups? Moreover, social science has long demonstrated that the SAT is a better predictor of college performance than high-school grades are for black students, while the reverse is true for white and Asian students.

Thus, black students have the most to lose as schools move away from objective test scores and toward more-subjective holistic assessments of applicants. The University of California system simply ignored the social science and ditched its SAT requirement. MIT should be applauded for putting the interests of students ahead of racial balancing.

Racial differences in test scores are less a reflection of innate intelligence and more a reflection of a young person’s developed academic capabilities. Given that millions of blacks are relegated to some of the worst-performing K-12 schools in the country, why would anyone be surprised by racial gaps in SAT scores? In large cities such as New York and Chicago, most black students cannot read or do math at grade level. Standardized tests aren’t causing these disparities, just revealing them. And the responsible way to address the problem is not by scrapping the test but through more school choice and better test preparation.

Of course, to Justice Scalia’s point, MIT also realizes that double standards for admissions will eventually lead to double standards for grades and degrees. The school must keep its eye on such competitors as the California Institute of Technology, which has a race-blind admissions process. “I have a hunch that MIT’s decision was driven by competitive pressure,” wrote Steven Hayward, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, since “its arch-rival for science supremacy in academia—Caltech—might start to leave MIT conspicuously behind if MIT continued down the road to politically correct admissions practices.”

No doubt. But the broader concern is that other nations—China, Japan, South Korea—will gain a competitive edge on the U.S. as our elites wage war on meritocracy in the name of equity.

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Soaring school absenteeism im NYC

Chronic absenteeism has hit a staggering 40% in the city public-school system, The Post’s Susan Edelman reported Sunday. That translates to about 375,000 children out of 938,000 registered students missing at least 10% of schooldays.

And that figure, up from 26% in the pre-COVID 2018-19 year, is an undercount: Kids who log in online or have nominal contact with a teacher while out with COVID or quarantined get marked present.

The question is: Will Chancellor David Banks stop the Department of Education bureaucrats from fixing the data, not the problem?

Post-pandemic school absenteeism is plaguing big-city school districts across America, as many parents retain (unfounded) fears about COVID transmission in school — and all too many kids got out of the habit of showing up every day. Yet chronic absenteeism (defined as missing 18 days or more of an academic year) often results in low achievement, truancy, dropping out, delinquency and substance abuse.

Far worse (in the educrats’ eyes), poor attendance figures imperil DOE’s bottom line: Much state and federal aid is pegged to the number of students in school on a daily basis.

So the DOE regulars have rushed to paper over the crisis, pushing principals to “correct” the absentee data. In a memo leaked on Twitter, DOE sets a goal of reducing chronic absenteeism citywide to 30%, with each district and school given a target to hit — and principals urged to review past attendance records to ensure that absences got coded correctly.

Hint, hint: Fudge the records, guys.

Yes, the DOE is also using some of its avalanche of federal funds to hire social workers and others to make home visits and otherwise get the kids coming to school more regularly. It probably needs to make every school expand its front office to ensure endless calls home (which means more effort to get working numbers) whenever a kid doesn’t show.

It should also revisit the de Blasio-era policy that says poor attendance can’t prevent promotion to the next grade.

It’s up to Banks to ensure the bureaucracy actually mends its ways on this front, as on all too many others.

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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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Tuesday, April 05, 2022



What Educating Our Kids Looks Like After COVID-19

Parents have spent the last two years dealing with lawmakers’ and school officials’ indecisions about school reopenings, a nightmare for many. Public officials have constantly alternated between remote and in-person learning, masking and unmasking, social distancing and not.

Now, many families are rejoicing as they see states lift their remaining COVID-19 restrictions. Getting their children caught up on two years’ worth of learning will be the only concern when they attempt to have a normal educational experience once again.

Or so one would assume.

A return to pre-COVID-19 conditions will not be enough to get American students on track when another major obstacle still plagues them: the youth mental health crisis.

There is no doubt the pandemic and many of the arbitrary policies made in response to it contributed to suffering. Children were not immune from mental grievances.

Locking youth populations down, increasing their screen time, and isolating them from their friends and teachers made them feel more stressed, clingy, fearful, helpless, and lonelier than ever before. As a result of these disruptions to their routine, every age group has seen a significant uptick in various mental health, speech, and developmental concerns.

In the first six months of the pandemic alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that hospital visits for mental health-related emergencies increased 24% for children ages 5 to 11 and 31% for adolescents ages 12 to 17. The agency found in a follow-up study that emergency room visits for attempted suicides also increased by 50.6% for teen girls and 39% for adolescents overall compared to the same period in 2019.

The situation is dire enough that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association declared it as a national emergency last October. Psychologists collectively fear for American children’s futures because these mental health problems are set to peak and persist well after the pandemic.

According to a congressional testimony made last September by Dr. Arthur C. Evans Jr. from the American Psychological Association, untreated mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic disorder will affect their ability to meaningfully engage in learning and function in adulthood.

Untreated mental health issues make it more difficult for students to learn and are highly correlated with chronic absenteeism, school failure, and school dropout, which can lead to possible unemployment, financial instability, or involvement with the juvenile and/or criminal justice system.

For parents and students who know this disarray all too well, they are desperate for answers now.

And if traditional public schools have already proven themselves to be unreliable in preventing students from falling so dangerously behind, how can parents also have faith in them to put students back in a good head space when they are partially responsible for triggering their trauma?

This severed relationship between families and schools is all the reason why lawmakers should empower parents to choose how and where their children learn now more than ever.

Luckily, state lawmakers across the U.S. have already answered the call to introduce legislation on their behalf. Ever since the pandemic exposed how public education has failed students on multiple fronts, lawmakers in 19 states created or expanded public and private school choice options in 2021. Many more are considering these opportunities this year.

The youth mental health crisis gives more urgency to the school choice movement. It must be emphasized as much as the need for improved educational outcomes.

Education savings accounts are a solution state lawmakers should consider to address all these factors because they allow parents to customize their child’s learning experience.

With an account, state officials deposit a portion of a child’s funds from the state education formula into a private account that parents use to buy education products and services for their students. Parents can buy textbooks, pay private school tuition, and, critically, pay for education therapy services.

Parents of children with special needs have generally used these therapy services to help a child with special needs access therapies such as speech and occupational therapy treatments, but now, parents should be empowered to use the accounts for counseling services as well.

As lawmakers around the country consider these accounts, they should make sure that parents have the flexibility to meet a child’s unique needs, including their mental health needs. They can do this by ensuring there are also provisions that allow education savings account funds to be used for counseling.

K-12 students today are facing challenges related to learning losses, politicized curriculums, and an exacerbated mental health crisis on top of the standard challenges that come along with growing up. Although unique to their generation, they are not impossible to navigate through and heal from. Lawmakers can help by giving parents the ability to access whatever resources best allow their child to succeed in school and in life.

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Police probing women’s rugby team hazing allegations at Vermont university

A women’s rugby team at a Vermont university is being investigated for hazing after a player on the squad was allegedly branded and waterboarded last month, authorities said.

Police learned of the alleged behavior after responding to Norwich University, a private military school in Northfield, on March 20 for a report of someone being held at knifepoint, according to affidavit obtained by The Barre Montpelier Times Argus.

Officers discovered an intoxicated member of the women’s Rugby team, who was wielding a knife. Two days later, the woman spoke to police and shared disturbing allegations of hazing.

She told police that she had been “branded” using pliers and a lighter by other members of the rugby team while she was intoxicated.

The woman said she believed team members had broken into her room, so she grabbed the knife and threatened them with it. However she said she was shaky on the details of what had actually occurred because of her intoxicated state.

The victim said she was too intoxicated to say no, and would not have agreed to be branded had she been sober.

With the victim’s permission, police looked through her cell phone and found a video of another woman with a washcloth, or something similar held over her face while a third woman poured liquid onto the cloth. Police described what they saw as “waterboarding,” according to court records.

Last Friday, Northfield police executed search warrants at a residence hall at the university after the school reportedly refused to fully cooperate with the investigation, The Barre Montpelier Times Argus reported.

Northfield Police Chief John Helfant confirmed in an email Friday that police activity on campus was related to the investigation into the hazing allegations involving “branding and waterboarding of and by NU students,” the paper reported.

The chief also said university officials denied police access to students in their dorm rooms and would only allow police to talk to students in a conference room.

Helfant said police obtained search warrants for access to two dorm rooms and for electronic communications. The investigation is ongoing, he said.

A University spokesperson said the school has fully cooperated with the investigation.

“Norwich University is subject to federal student privacy laws and other restrictions on what it may disclose,” Daphne Larkin said in a statement to the newspaper.

“Sometimes, law enforcement officials become confused about the extent to which we may respond to their requests. Norwich University has fully cooperated with the Northfield Police Department in their investigation of the allegations surrounding this incident while ensuring the constitutional rights of our students and employees.”

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‘Limbo land’: Daycares, preschools in NYC navigate shifting mask policies

Some Big Apple day-care centers and pre-schools say they are taking matters into their own hands amid the city’s and courts’ back-and-forth on the tot mask mandate — and will risk fines by making masks optional.

A director at one Manhattan facility said she sent a memo to her parents last week about allowing their children to go mask-optional, thinking the mayor would hold up his end and do away with the mandate for 2- to 4-year-olds Monday as promised.

But Friday, even after a Staten Island judge ruled in favor of lifting the mandate, Adams said the city would appeal that decision because COVID-19 cases were rising again and the mask order had to remain.

The director said that she didn’t know how to rescind her memo to parents.

“I’m not going to send another memo over to the parents to confuse them,” she said. “We can’t continue to have all these changes. It’s very disruptive.”

A pre-K director in The Bronx also said she would not enforce the mandate for families choosing not to mask their children.

“We’re in this limbo land of ‘it’s required, it’s not required,’ ” she said.

“We can’t keep doing this with parents. It’s very confusing and upsetting. I think it doesn’t create a lot of confidence.”

“Young children need consistency, and the messaging is not consistent,” she said, adding that the confusion predates last week’s developments.

“They’re taking the mask off for lunch, for rest, when they’re playing outside — then they’re putting the mask back on.”

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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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Monday, April 04, 2022



A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday ordered five elected school directors be immediately kicked off the nine-member West Chester Area School board

On Wednesday the same judge, William P. Mahon in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas, ordered the parties to meet Friday for an argument.

It is all in response to a February petition filed by West Chester Area School District parent Beth Ann Rosica. In the petition, Rosica calls for the removal of five school board members, Sue Tiernan, Joyce Chester, Karen Herman, Kate Shaw, and Daryl Durnell.

Students returning to in-person classes after two years of remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were required to wear masks over their mouth and nose. When Pennsylvania ended mandatory school masking, the West Chester Area School District was among a handful of schools that kept masking in place.

“When that was lifted, all of us parents started emailing, calling, showing up at school board meetings, asking our school board to amend their health and safety plan and allow for optional masking,” Rosica told The Epoch Times.

“They didn’t lift it for the West Chester School District, so we began to work on a petition to remove school board members because we believed that their actions were illegal and unconstitutional.”

Eventually, the district did lift the mask mandate, but the petition request remained relevant because, in August, the board passed a new health and safety plan which allows the board to impose future mandatory masking at various levels of COVID-19 transmission.

“For high levels of transmission, our current approved health and safety plan still requires masking, and we believe that that is illegal. We want this answered because we don’t want them to impose it come next fall, or any point in time when cases start growing up again,” Rosica said.

The petition was based on a seldom-used Pennsylvania education statute that allows for the removal of school directors for “failure to organize or neglect of duty.”

The statute says any ten resident taxpayers in the district may present a petition to the court to have them removed. But that argument was not addressed in Tuesday’s decision.

The court favored for Rosica, citing West Chester Area School District’s failure to respond. It also ordered Rosica and the four remaining board members to each submit a list of five proposed replacements for the board, to be appointed by the court to fill out the exiting board members’ terms.

Attorney Kenneth Roos of the Wisler Pearlstine law firm in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, represents the school board. He told The Epoch Times in a phone call that he filed a motion for reconsideration of Tuesday’s decision, late Tuesday night. He had no other comment on behalf of the school board.

The motion disputes the time frame that the school had to respond, arguing it should have had until April 4 to answer. The judge agreed and it will be argued Friday.

Rosica is more than a mother of two students in the district. She is executive director of Back to School PA, a political action committee that advocated for reopening schools closed by COVID-19 mitigation measures. It aims to get pro-parent and pro-student candidates elected to school boards.

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Teachers Were Secretly Giving Pre-Teen Students Puberty Blockers Behind Parents' Backs

Out of control. This is simply getting out of control. Again, I’m not a culture warrior. These were never issues that got me animated, but now it looks like we all must fix bayonets and skewer the freaks who are turning our places of learning into dens of sexual deviancy. This isn’t about LGBT folks. I don’t care about them. This is 2022—if you’re part of that community—good for you. It’s no longer a shocking detail or taboo. Younger conservatives don’t care either—the shock value is gone. This is about ending this grooming bit in our schools and the brainwashing that goes along with it.

No one knows that they’re pansexual, transgender, or gender fluid in their pre-teens. This is nonsense. It’s science fiction. Those who do are being subjected to child abuse. They’re being buttered up for something, which I will not go into here. You can use Google for your own research purposes here. Teachers are targeting children 10 years of age and younger to start trans clubs. They’re also being given puberty blockers in secret behind their parents’ backs. A school nurse in Connecticut revealed this covert puberty blocker/ transgender operation at her school—and got suspended for it (via Daily Mail):

Kathleen Cataford, who worked at the Richard J Kinsella Magnet School in Hartford, was axed from her role Monday over the post, which was branded transphobic.

Writing on a local mom's group in response to a request for local school recommendations, the 77 year-old said: 'Investigate the school system curriculum...CT is a very socially liberal, gender confused state,' the post read.

…'As a public school nurse, I have an 11yo female student on puberty blockers and a dozen identifying as non-binary, all but two keeping this as a secret from their parents with the help of teachers, SSW [social workers] and school administration.

'Teachers and SSW are spending 37.5 hours a week influencing our children, not necessarily teaching our children what YOU think is being taught.'

Cataford went on to claim that 'children are introduced to this confusion in kindergarten.' DailyMail.com's attempts to contact her Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty in transgender children, and are a current hot-button issue in the United States.

[…]

Hartford Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez issued a statement condemning Cataford's remarks, but did not name the nurse, citing privacy concerns.

'Hartford Public Schools strives to provide an inclusive environment where all students feel seen, valued, respected, and heard,' the statement read.

Torres-Rodriguez added: 'We uphold all of our staff to a high standard, entrusting them to be caretakers and leaders in the community.

'We as a school district are responsible for the health, well-being, social and emotional development, and safety of ALL of the children entrusted to our care.'

Yeah, not so sure secret puberty blocker therapy is part of the school’s health care plan. That is a family-oriented decision. Period. Schools used to be places where—you know—education was the focus. It’s not become a hive mind of woke nonsense and activities that could be described as child abuse. This is an area where the teacher has no say. None. It’s not their job. It’s not their purpose. Stick to the textbooks. I wish I could say ‘leave it to the doctors and medical professionals’ but that field is becoming fraught with decay from progressives.

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Australia: There is still no rape crisis on campus

Bettina Arndt

Five years ago, the Australian Human Rights Commission conducted a million-dollar survey to try to find evidence of a rape crisis on campus. It proved a huge letdown for the activists because all they found was a lot of unwanted staring and tiny rates of sexual assault. I was the only journalist in Australia to suggest we should be celebrating our safe universities whilst mainstream media beat up a new narrative about widespread campus ‘sexual violence’ which activists used to bully universities into setting up the kangaroo courts, implementing sexual consent courses and the like.

Now they’ve tried again, and contrary to what has appeared in the media this week, the results are even more disappointing for the feminists. The latest survey published last Wednesday was a dud, with sexual harassment rates less than a third of those reported in 2015-16 (8 per cent compared to 26 per cent), and minimal rates of assault (1.1 per cent for the year surveyed compared to the earlier figure of 0.8 per cent).

What a joke, given that they’d done everything they could to expand the definitions of sexual misconduct, as I explained in this blog last year. The latest survey included as harassment such items as staring, making comments about your private life or physical appearance, and repeated requests to go on a date.

Enthusiastic consent featured in defining sexual assault, with all sexual acts including kissing deemed assault if your partner ‘made no effort to check whether you agreed or not’ and including all sexual acts as assault if you were ‘affected by drugs or alcohol’.

The response rate for the survey was just 11.6 per cent – 43,819 self-selected responses from those invited to participate, who were in turn just part of the 1.6 million university students in this country. So, the new report is based on a piddling 2.7 per cent of the student population.

Not that the statistics matter two hoots when our blinkered media remains determined to sing from the feminist songbook. They carefully shifted the goal posts, highlighting such critical matters as the newly discovered peak sexual assault rates for pansexual students and claiming one in three students experienced sexual assault over their lifetimes, a figure which no doubt includes all the drunken schoolkid gropes that feature in Contos’s testimonials – nothing to do with the supposed campus rape crisis.

Not a single one of the so-called reporters bothered to look at official sexual assault rates for this age group. The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey shows sexual harassment rates for 18-24-year-olds of 27.3 per cent and sexual assault at 3.4 per cent – making it very clear that our universities are extremely safe compared to the general community.

For the last two days graduates across Australia have been receiving emails from Vice Chancellors apologising for the ongoing crisis and promising to do better. How about all you Australian graduates spend a few minutes writing to these snivelling leaders of your former institute of higher learning to tell them that we’ve had enough? Call out their lack of integrity in participating in this farcical misrepresentation of the important issue of the safety of our universities. And urge them to put a stop to this ongoing, contrived campaign to demonise the next generation of vulnerable young men.

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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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Sunday, April 03, 2022



Victory: Appeals Court Upholds Massive Legal Judgment Against Woke College for Defaming Local Business

The story began in 2016 with an incident at a small, family-owned bakery that had been a pillar of the local community for decades. Some Oberlin College students tried to shoplift some wine, prompting a confrontation. Due to the skin color of the individuals involved, the situation devolved into an unhinged morality play, detached from any facts. The school sided with the mob. A lawsuit was filed in 2017. Details, via a CBS News report from 2019:

David Gibson, one of the owners of Gibson's Bakery in Oberlin, described what happened when his son, Allyn, was at the cash register when the student tried to buy a bottle of wine: "My son confronted him and would not accept the false ID...But realized that he was also trying to steal two bottles of wine. And at that point he denied him the sale....He attempted to take a picture of him with his phone. At that point, the young man took his phone and shoved it in his face and was able to run out of the store. "My son and I both pursued [him]. My son's quite a bit faster than I am at this age. And outside of the store [he] tried to detain him by hugging him. And he fell to the ground. And I witnessed all of this. And then we had multiple people come in and start hitting my son." ...

David Gibson knew that trouble was brewing. When the officer at the scene told him, "We're not going off what they're saying; we're charging him with robbery," Gibson remarked, "They're going to be trashing us." It wasn't long coming. The next morning, in fact, a crowd appeared chanting, "No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace!" Oberlin is one of the most liberal college campuses in the country, and remember, Donald Trump has just been elected president the previous day. Totally unrelated to what had happened at Gibson's bakery, but it does help explain the mood. One demonstrator said, "We are here today because yesterday three students from the Africana community were assaulted and arrested as a result of a history of racial profiling and racial discrimination by Gibson's Bakery, located 23 West College Street." Which is where generations of Gibsons had been running the bakery for more than a hundred years.

"At court, roughly nine months later, the young man, a student at Oberlin College in Ohio, received a reduced sentence after pleading guilty to attempted theft, essentially confirming the police report of what had happened," the story explains. That detail isn't so minor, but the whipped-up, frenzied mob wasn't really interested in facts or culpability. They were interested in self-righteous preening and Larger Truths. The famously left-wing college got involved, joining the smear campaign:

The college officials and students accused the bakery of racial profiling, called a boycott, suspended Gibson’s business with the college, and organized protests outside the bakery. At the protests, a flyer was handed out, according to witnesses who testified at trial, by Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo, who also handed out stacks of flyers for others to distribute. The flyers accused the Gibsons of a long history of racial profiling, including in the incident with these shoplifters. The Gibsons disputed that allegation and that they did anything wrong in this incident, and requested a public apology from the college in order to repair the reputational damage, but the college refused.
Facing reputational wounds and loss of business, Gibson's filed a lawsuit:

"Our feeling is that, that's what you have in life is your reputation. It had taken generations to build this reputation for us. And in just one day, we lost it." That damage to their reputation has led to what the Gibsons claim is a 50% loss of business. When the college refused to issue a statement exonerating the family of racism, the Gibsons filed a lawsuit...Last June, a local jury found Oberlin College on the hook for $44 million in damages. The court has since reduced the award to $31.5 million, and Oberlin College has appealed that judgment.

Oberlin appealed the jury's judgment, and over the course of the continued litigation, Mr. Gibson passed away from cancer. But the case marched on, and the appeals court has now upheld the entire verdict. A huge blow to Oberlin, as National Review reports:

An Ohio appeals court has upheld a ruling that awarded more than $30 million to a bakery that accused Oberlin College of damaging its business and libeling them with false accusations of racism. A three-judge panel on the Ninth District Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision to uphold a 2019 ruling by Lorain County Judge John Miraldi, who initially awarded the bakery more than $40 million in punitive and compensatory damages, Cleveland.com reported. However, the sum was later reduced to $25 million, though the bakery was awarded more than $6 million for lawyers’ fees...

Gibson’s Bakery sued the college in 2017, accusing the school and one of its administrators of hurting its business and libeling them over an incident in which the son of the bakery owner stopped three black Oberlin College students, one of whom was stealing wine bottles from the store, in November 2016. Students from the school protested the bakery after the arrest, handing out fliers outside the bakery telling shoppers to buy their baked goods elsewhere. Oberlin College regularly purchased baked goods from the bakery for its student dining service but suspended its purchasing for a month after the incident. The students pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2017 and said the younger Gibson’s actions were not racially motivated.

This is justice. A leftist university coddled lunacy from its students, who were all spun up over the election of Donald Trump. They joined in the unjust libeling and punishment of innocent people, based on bogus racism charges, to appease their raging mob. They became part of the raging mob. The true victims in the case faced no choice but to present the facts to a jury of ordinary people, who recognized the injustice and slapped huge damages on a deep-pocketed institution responsible for fanning the flames. That decision has now been unanimously upheld. As I've said before, I'm not a litigious person by nature, but in some of these cases, the only way to force institutions to think twice before casting in their lot with the woke screamers is to present a plausible fear of huge economic consequences for doing so. Juries can be an equalizer.

Students had every right to protest, but when Oberlin abetted defamation with words and deeds, the calculus shifted. The initial verdict and fresh decision from the appeals panel represent an isolated but satisfying victory in the struggle against the destructive excesses of these people

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What's Creepy About the Unearthed Docs Instructing Teachers on How to Target Students for Trans Clubs

Let’s clear the air here first. No, I’m going all Iranian here and saying we need to wipe out the transgenders and the gays. There’s no Tehran protocol here. Again, no issues with these folks until biological males try to erase women’s sports and nuke the social order that’s been in place since...forever.

We’re not going to overhaul everything for the less than one percent of transgender folks in America. Sorry, not going to happen. Also, we’re not going to talk about these complex issues in schools, especially with the freak show teachers we have coming out of the bunker. No, fourth-graders don’t need to know your trans, teacher person. No, we don’t need to go into graphic detail about your sex life either, teacher. No, we’re not going beyond the educational boundaries of comprehensive sexual education. We’re not going to show kids how to give great oral sex to their partners. Demonstrations on how to put a condom on—that’s okay. I can see some folks still having issues with that, but there’s give and take here.

What we’re also not going to accept is creepy teachers targeting students 10 years of age or younger to join transgender clubs. No.

The Washington Examiner’s Chris Tremoglie wrote about what he unearthed reading the instruction packets handed to teachers by the California Teachers Association. This is their how-to guide to turning our schools into bastions of child abuse and brainwashing. The Left will make you care. That sure fits the bill here [emphasis mine]:

The packet acts as an instructional guide on propagandizing students with gay and transgender information. One of the most disturbing parts is the recommendation for these clubs in elementary schools, where children are 10 years old or younger. Another concerning section focuses on teachers proactively recruiting students to be leaders of these clubs. It provides a section for teachers to list the names of the students they think would be interested. This particular packet was from a previous California Teachers Association LGBTQ+ Issues Conference.

The packet also asks teachers to list supporters and enemies of these clubs. One section is dedicated to listing the names of allies who “would support this project.” Another section is provided to identify any existential threats to the club and to list those who could be a “barrier to your success.”

[…]

Other perverted indoctrination activities include a recommended videos list. The packet suggests the First Person YouTube channel. It provides 52 videos on various topics such as “Drag as a Tool for Self-Advocacy,” “Queer Black Cosplay,” “Growing Up Intersex,” “Asexuality,” and “The Importance of Being Cliterate,” among many others. Additionally, other suggested videos are “Coming out GAY to my 5 year old brother” and the animated music video “Everyone is Gay.”

The clubs are supposed to be “student-led.” Yet the packet reveals that teachers are partially funding these clubs. A section asks how much of their money teachers are “willing to put into this project.” As such, it is obvious that teachers are the true leaders of these clubs, not students. Instead, teachers recruit students to be figureheads and then use them as pawns to spread this propaganda. They are using students to brainwash other students into thinking a certain way.

“I think it’s wrong what is going on. A child’s innocence is being taken away,” said a California Teachers Association member who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity. “Children are being indoctrinated. Teachers are trying to encourage different sexualities among students. It’s disturbing, and it’s violating young and innocent minds.”

This circus must stop. Tear down the big top. If this was geared to high schoolers, juniors, and seniors—that’s an entirely different matter. It’s clear the ‘get them while they’re young’ ethos is at play here. Not everyone is gender fluid, gay, trans, or whatever alphabet or symbol comes next. They’re kids. They’re making clay snakes and playing with building blocks. Leave them alone. They don’t know what this is yet. This is child abuse. Period.

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Australia: New ‘stripped back’ school curriculum slammed as ‘just political’

Children will have to do more maths without a calculator and learn about consent and respect in a new “stripped back” school curriculum available from next term.

They will also learn more about the impact the British settlers had on First Nations Australians and about Australian democracy.

History has also been “significantly decluttered”, allowing more time for in-depth teaching, and there will be more emphasis on phonic in English, according to the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).

“Importantly, this is a more stripped-back and teachable curriculum that identifies the essential content our children should learn,” ACARA CEO, David de Carvalho, said.

“There is a stronger focus on phonics in English and on mastering essential mathematical facts, concepts, skills and processes.”

ACARA said the curriculum would include a stronger focus on students mastering the essential maths and being introduced to these at the right time.

In particular, children in Year 1 will be expected to achieve a higher level of maths than they do currently and be able to memorise times tables from the beginning in Year 2.

Students will also be taught about privacy and security online, as well encouraging children to get outside of the classroom and be more active.

Mr de Carvalho said the new curriculum would lead to better results.

The overhaul follows Australia’s steady decline in the international education rankings over the past decade.

It will be available online from the start of next term.

Education Standards Institute Director Kevin Donnelly said on the surface the new curriculum looked to be an improvement but the “devil will be in the detail”.

“It sounds good to cut it back and to talk about explicit teaching, memorising times tables and not relying on computers,” he said.

“The problem is teacher training is based on progressive fads and beginner teachers are not being properly trained.”

He said the existing curriculum was already currently weighted towards Indigenous studies so it was wrong to further emphasise it.

He said teaching about consent and respectful relationships was pushing a “woke agenda”.

“It’s just political,” he said. “Boys are taught that masculinity is negative.”

Dr Donnelly said the curriculum was just the first stage, whether the states and territories fully adopt or adapt is up to them.

He said his own research found that principals were unable to confirm what children were being taught in the classrooms.

Ministers considered the final draft of the curriculum earlier this year.

The existing Australian Curriculum that is currently taught in schools, and all support resources, will continue to be available on the current Australian Curriculum website until all states, territories and schools are implementing the updated curriculum

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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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