I remember how it was -- JR
Missouri School Offered ‘Sweet Prize’ to Students for Reading Sexually Explicit Books
A Missouri high school offered prizes to students who read books featuring sexually explicit LGBT material, critical race theory, and transgender education.
The high school librarian in the Webster Groves School District, located in the suburbs of St. Louis, encouraged students to check out books from her commonly banned book list to enter a raffle for a “sweet prize.”
“Select and check out any book from this list during Banned Book Week to enter your name in a drawing to win a sweet prize,” librarian Liz Forderhase posted on the Webster Groves High School library webpage.
“Banned Book Week” was Sept. 18-24. The raffle offer was removed from the school library website after a parent activist exposed it, but the book list remains.
The list contains “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” which has been removed from libraries in at least 29 school districts nationwide due to concerns about “sexually graphic material, including descriptions of queer sex,” according to The New York Times.
Libraries around the nation are using children’s books to peddle radical gender and critical race theory. A public library in Washington, D.C., put up a display of LGBT-themed children’s books ahead of a March 30 Christian book reading. Almost 90% of books removed from Florida schools since the beginning of the academic year in September were pornographic, violent, or inappropriate for students’ grade levels, according to school district data submitted to the state’s Department of Education.
Other books on the Webster Groves High School recommended list include “Stamped From the Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” by critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi; “The Hate U Give,” which has been criticized for featuring 89 instances of the f-word and promoting anti-police sentiments; “Being Jazz,” the story of a transgender teenager; and “This Book is Gay,” a guide for “anyone who’s ever dared to wonder” about their “gender or sexual preference.”
Forderhase also recommends “Beyond Magenta: Transgender and Nonbinary Teens Speak Out,” which examines the “life, love, and struggles” of transgender teens; “Am I Blue: Coming Out From the Silence,” a collection of short stories about growing up gay; “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” the fictional tale of a teen sent to a “conversion therapy center”; and “Annie on My Mind,” the story of two female teenage best friends who fall in love.
The raffle was removed from the website between Feb. 24 and March 19, according to the parent activist who exposed it, and the name of the list was changed from “Commonly Challenged Books” to “Celebrate the Freedom to Read.”
When asked about the removal of the raffle offer, Webster Groves High School Principal Matt Irvin told The Daily Signal, “I understand that we are no longer doing it.” Neither Irvin nor Forderhase responded to questions about why the raffle was removed from the website.
The parent activist who exposed the school district for incentivizing high schoolers to read inappropriate books told The Daily Signal he is disappointed to see a Webster Groves librarian attempting to influence local children against the will of parents.
“Aggregating a list of books for which district parents are most likely to find inappropriate and rewarding children with prizes to read them can only be seen as activism,” he said on the condition of anonymity to protect his children from bullying at school. “Many of these books contain sexual, gender ideology, and critical theory content.”
In October, Webster Groves Schools reluctantly removed 11 books from school libraries after a Missouri bill passed banning sexually explicit materials in schools.
The district’s communications director Derek Duncan said that although it was essential for Webster Groves to follow state law by removing the books, the district would “continue to strive to provide materials that mirror our student population and celebrate the diversity that exists within the world around us.”
The parent activist, who is a father of a Webster Groves High School student, said not a single member of the Webster Groves Board of Education supported the removal of the explicit books, which he said indicates that the board members prioritize politics over children.
“It is disappointing to see the high school librarian engaged in activism as a direct representative of the Webster Groves School District,” the parent continued, “especially considering that the activism is designed to influence our children.”
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NY private school STILL enforces masks outdoors, silence lunches as part of strict COVID measures
The federal government says the COVID is over — but tell that to this upstate New York school.
A private school in Ithaca is still forcing draconian measures on its students, including making them wear masks outdoors and eat lunch in silence — three years after the pandemic began, according to a report.
The Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School of Ithaca (EACMSI), which costs up to $18,000 a year to attend, is currently one of the last schools in the nation to still be imposing such strict COVID measures, The Free Press reported.
Dr. Beth Stein, who pulled her kids out of EACMSI and put them in private school because of the strict measures, told The Free Press she initially welcomed the precautions, but they became overly burdensome as time went on.
“I could tolerate most of the stuff — the teachers in N95s and face shields while standing behind plexiglass barriers, the 12 feet of distance for band members, the ban on singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in class,” she said. “I just wanted them to end the outdoor masking.”
The board-certified doctor also claimed her students were almost kicked out of the school after she complained about outdoor masking.
The school doesn’t have a cafeteria and students eat lunch in their classrooms.
Stein said some days her 13-year-old daughter’s teacher would play movies during lunch, but on other days they ate in complete silence. If a student dared to ask their teacher a question during lunch, the kid would first have to put on their mask in order to speak, and then could take it off again to go back to eating.
Sometimes, teachers took the mandated silent lunch as an opportunity to keep teaching, the mom said.
Stein’s 10-year-old daughter said kids in her class wanted so badly to converse during lunch that they invented their own sign language to communicate. “We just really wanted to talk,” the girl said.
When EACMSI held a student orchestra performance indoors this January, students playing wind instruments were still required to wear masks, according to the report.
Parents had to figure out how to make or alter masks so their children could both play the instrument and have their faces covered. “I see the current situation as ridiculous,” another parent, who wished to stay anonymous, told the outlet.
The school, which enrolls about 220 kids between ages 3 to about 14 or 15, says its “pedagogy is child-centered, hands-on, individualized, and serves the development of the whole child—physical, social, emotional, cognitive.”
EACMSI’s policies go beyond the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, which only recommend indoor masking in the nurse’s office or if a community has high rates of COVID.
CDC COVID guidelines for schools also currently recommend staying home when sick, improving ventilation in school buildings and encouraging students to stay up-to-date on vaccinations.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/14/private-school-in-ny-still-enforcing-strict-covid-19-measures/
***************************************************Maryland Governor Tries to End School Choice for Low-income Families
Families and students in Maryland can breathe a sigh of relief after lawmakers agreed to provide $9 million in funding for the state’s school choice scholarship program for low-income families. The program was originally on the new governor’s chopping block.
Gov. Wes Moore’s fiscal year 2024 budget called for a 20% cut to the state’s $10 million scholarship program. He also stated his desire to entirely phase out the Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today, or BOOST, program, even though its price tag is a pittance compared to the state’s record $8.8 billion in spending on K-12 public schools.
Lawmakers in Annapolis restored $1 million in cut funding and removed language that would have eventually ended the program.
Moore’s initial plan to cut BOOST scholarships is a useful reminder that in politics, historic “firsts” often help candidates more than their constituents. Those constituents include many low-income students in Baltimore who likely felt a rush of pride seeing a black man ascend to the state’s highest office.
Moore himself stressed the historic nature of his gubernatorial victory. Indeed, he was sworn in on the Bible once owned by Frederick Douglass.
While Moore paints himself as a proud son of Baltimore, he actually attended Riverdale Country School, a tony private school with ivy-covered buildings that sits on 27.5 acres in the Bronx, New York. Tuition and fees there currently total $61,305 per year. The governor later graduated from another private school, Valley Forge Military Academy and College, before enrolling at Johns Hopkins University.
Moore’s early education surely fueled his long list of professional accomplishments, so it is unlikely that he opposes private schools in principle. It is hard to imagine him managing the state’s budget if he had attended one of the 23 Baltimore schools that did not have a single student who was proficient in math in 2022.
The parents working to save the BOOST program want the same fighting chance for their children that the governor’s mother wanted for him.
BOOST is not perfect by any means. The average scholarship is less than $3,500, a fact that likely explains why the program serves a disproportionate number of students who were already enrolled in private schools. But the interest groups and ideologues who want to shutter BOOST do not oppose it because it serves too few families.
Moore and anti-school choice advocates claim public dollars should not go to private schools. Yet they apply this stance only to K-12 education. No one has ever called for restricting the use of publicly funded Pell grants only to public universities. Perhaps that is because there is not a union for college professors and university administrators that is as politically influential as local and national teachers unions. Both oppose expanding charter schools and any type of school choice voucher program.
The same groups have encouraged the last two Democrats in the White House to cut a similar program in Washington, D.C. Congress created the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2004 after local parents organized an effort to provide education options for low-income students. One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president was to try to axe the program. Ultimately, he was unsuccessful.
President Donald Trump increased funding for the program, but the political football was tossed again in 2021, when the Biden administration took over. Much to the delight of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, one of the first things the current administration did was move to phase out the program.
In Maryland, Moore’s initial plan to phase out the BOOST program would’ve meant fewer chances for students from low-income families to get a good education. Instead of pulling the plug, Maryland lawmakers should follow the example of other states that have embraced innovative school choice policies.
Neighboring West Virginia, for example, is one of five states that have moved to universal choice programs for all students that focus on funding students, not systems. These states recognize that the funding source and beneficiaries in a “public” education systemmatter more than the way it is delivered—public, private, or home-school.
Seven other states have developed education savings accounts for specific populations only, including low-income families and students with special needs.
These programs put the key decisions about a student’s academic future in the hands of the people who care about them most—their parents.
What is happening in Maryland should be a cautionary tale to all voters. The politicians who try to convince you that they understand your plight because you share the same skin tone often serve special interests instead.
Any politician who opposes school choice should send their own children to the low-performing public schools that they consign poor families to attend.
Progressives claim to work on behalf of the poor and middle class. But when it comes to school choice, their message is clear: Teachers’ unions matter more than students, and private schools are only for people who can afford them.
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Indian students banned or limited as Australian universities crack down on bogus applicants
At least five Australian universities have introduced bans or restrictions on students from specific Indian states in response to a surge of applications from South Asia and an accompanying rise in what the Home Affairs Department described as fraudulent applications.
An investigation by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald has obtained emails from within Victoria University, Edith Cowan University, the University of Wollongong, Torrens University, and agents working for Southern Cross University that show the crackdown on applications from Indian students.
Australia is on track for its biggest-ever annual intake of Indian students, topping 2019’s high watermark of 75,000. But the current surge has prompted concerns from government MPs and the education sector about the integrity of Australia’s immigration system and the long-term impact on the nation’s lucrative international education market.
“The volume of students arriving has come back a lot stronger than anyone was expecting,” said Jon Chew from global education firm Navitas. “We knew there would be a lot of pent-up demand, but there has also been a surge in non-genuine students.”
With many applications deemed by universities not to meet Australian visa requirements that they be a “genuine temporary entrant” coming solely for education, universities are putting restrictions in place to pre-empt their “risk rating” being downgraded.
The Home Affairs Department keeps a confidential rating of each country, with each university and college also ranked. Students from countries with higher risk ratings are required to provide more evidence that proves they will not overstay their visa, not work more hours than allowed under their visa, and not use fraudulent material in their application.
Those universities that have restricted access to some Indian states are concerned Home Affairs will reduce their ability to fast-track student visas because of the number of applicants who are actually seeking to work – not study – in Australia.
“In an effort to strengthen the profile of students from areas where we have seen increased visa risks, VU will implement a higher level of requirements in some areas in India,” the university’s regional recruitment manager Alex Hanlon wrote to education agents. A university spokeswoman said these additional requirements included “assessing gaps in applicants’ study history to determine if they are suitably qualified and prepared for international study in Australia and can support themselves adequately”.
Those restrictions came just days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited India, in part to celebrate Australia’s education links and announce a new agreement with Australia’s universities and colleges that would, he said, herald “the most comprehensive and ambitious arrangement agreed to by India with any country”. Crucially, the agreement included a “mutual recognition of qualifications between Australia and India”, which will make travelling to either country for university study easier.
The deluge of applications from south Asia began after the Morrison government, in January 2022, removed a 20-hour per week limit on the amount of work students can do – meaning there were no longer any restrictions on how many hours students could work. The move encouraged those wanting a low-skill Australian work visas to apply to cheaper education institutions. The Albanese government will on July 1 reintroduce this work limit, but lift it to 24 hours a week.
The Age and the Herald has confirmed with five universities, or in one case agents working on a university’s behalf, that they have put restrictions on students wanting to come to Australia from India. Another list seen by The Age and the Herald and authored by one Australian education agency, showed 12 universities and colleges had put in restrictions. The agency asked not to be named for fear it would damage its relationship with education providers.
It is not just universities that are grappling with a surge in applications from people seeking to work in Australia and gain permanent residency – rather than studying – in Australia. The vocational education sector is also seeing a surge in applications from students ultimately judged to be too risky to accept.
Under the process for getting a student visa, education providers accept applicants who are then assessed by Home Affairs. In February, Home Affairs rejected an unprecedented 94 per cent of offshore applicants from India to study in Australia’s vocational sector. It compared to less than 1 per cent of student applications from countries including the United States, the United Kingdom and France. In 2006, when Home Affairs started publishing records of this nature, 91 per cent of applicants from India were accepted.
The international students pouring back into Australia fuel an overseas education industry worth about $40 billion annually, trailing only iron ore, coal and natural gas as an export.
The University of Sydney took $1.4 billion of revenue in 2021 from fee-paying overseas students, Monash University collected $917 million in tuition fees while the University of Queensland got $644 million, federal education department figures show.
“Many universities, like Monash, Melbourne, Sydney and the University of New South Wales, already receive more revenue from international students than from domestic students,” said Peter Hurley, director of Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute. “International education is an incredibly valuable resource. It is really important that we manage it properly so that it works in everyone’s interests, especially international students.”
Hurley said international students provided both students for the nation’s higher education sector, and workers for Australia’s booming jobs market. “We need this workforce,” Hurley said. No Australian university could now function without international education revenue, he said, noting international students provide some institutions with three times as much in tuition fees as a domestic student.
Education agent Ravi Singh said too many of Australia’s training colleges had become “visa factories” interested in offering immigration pathways, not an education.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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