I remember how it was -- JR
Monday, May 01, 2023
New Book: Mediocrity Has Long Plagued Government-Run Schools
The American public school system has been defined by mediocrity for over four decades, argues a new book by two of America’s leading education reformers.
In Mediocrity: 40 Ways Government Schools are Failing Today’s Students, co-authors Connor Boyack and Corey DeAngelis explore how government schools evolved to embrace mediocre standards–an ailment that long preceded the COVID-19 pandemic.
Boyack, founder of the Libertas Institute and prolific author, joins forces with another powerhouse, DeAngelis, school choice evangelist and American Federation for Children Senior Fellow, to highlight 40 concrete examples of government schools failing students in the present day.
The book’s release coincides with the 40th anniversary of a 1983 report entitled A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform from the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Then-Reagan Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell oversaw the project.
Four decades ago, the report warned about “the rising tide of mediocrity” befalling America’s education foundations:
"Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur-- others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments."
The writers attribute the origins of this malaise to progressive figures Horace Mann and John Dewey—two individuals behind today’s corrupted model of public schooling.
The authors attribute “the schematics of today’s government schools” to Horace Mann’s reverence for the 19th century Prussian model of education. This model, they write, consisted of the following aspects: standardized curriculum, testing, compulsory education, professionalization of teachers, and career training.
“It was an authoritarian, top-down model that emphasized the collective over the individual,” Boyack and DeAngelis explain of Mann’s emulation of a “factory model school.”
The indoctrination, they continue, materialized under secular humanist John Dewey. Dewey wrote in his book, My Pedagogic Creed, how the “true kingdom of god” is the government. The authors also noted how he and other so-called reformers wanted to “build up forces…whose natural effect is to undermine the importance and uniqueness of family life.”
Notice the parallels to today’s leading government school advocates and their concerted effort to divorce parents from their children? It’s not a coincidence; these progressive reformers intended for this to happen.
From that time period to today, the quality of education has, sadly, diminished thanks, in part, to powerful teachers unions that put themselves before their students.
Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president and darling of the Left, first comes to mind. She colluded with the federal government - namely the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) - to keep schools closed despite evidence later showing schools were safe to attend.
Earlier this week, Weingarten went before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Subcommittee on Education denying her culpability in the matter, but House Republicans didn’t let her off the hook. A FOIA request from Americans for Public Trust revealed the powerful union head helped craft the 2021 CDC school reopening guidance to keep the majority of schools closed.
The New York Post reported, “Powerful AFT boss Randi Weingarten spoke twice by phone with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in the week leading up to the Feb. 12, 2021, announcement that halted full re-opening of in-person classes — including the day before the guidance was released…”
She and her union buddies deserve to be reprimanded for causing immeasurable learning loss on the whole of students, the authors argue.
It’s no wonder the “Fund Students, Not Systems” movement – a grassroots effort both have helped popularize on and off social media– is gaining steam across the U.S. today. But the authors go beyond school choice. That’s just a starting point.
While the book emphasizes 40 inherent problems with today’s schooling system, they advocate for the following “education entrepreneurship” alternatives for parents to public schooling: private schools, microschools, homeschool co-ops, online learning, tutoring, and cloud-based classrooms.
Instead of looking to self-appointed experts who tweet endlessly that reforms like school choice are useless against woke education, parents and reformers should seek out the likes of Boyack and DeAngelis who not only point out problems but are actively working to change the educational system for the better.
Education reformers like the two co-authors should give Americans hope that not all is lost.
**********************************************
School Allows Reading of LGBT Book to Second Graders Despite State Law Requiring Parental Consent
A Missouri elementary school allowed a parent to read the transgender-promoting children’s book “I Am Jazz” to a second-grade class without first informing other parents, although state law requires school districts to notify parents beforehand about lessons on sexuality.
Webster Groves School District, located in the suburbs of St. Louis, allowed the parent to read “I Am Jazz” to the second graders in September as part of Clark Elementary School’s “Mystery Reader” program, where a family member surprises a child by reading to the class.
A student’s parent asked for permission to read the book, and the school approved the request. But the school chose not to inform the parents of other students, a parent activist told The Daily Signal, although Missouri law requires schools to inform parents of any classroom content on human sexuality.
School districts must notify parents of the “basic content of the district’s or school’s human sexuality instruction to be provided to the student” and a “parent’s right to remove the student from any part of the district’s or school’s human sexuality instruction,” the 2018 law states.
Because other parents didn’t know about the classroom reading of “I Am Jazz,” they couldn’t opt their 7-year-olds out of learning about transgenderism at school.
The district’s superintendent, John Simpson, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the incident.
“I Am Jazz” is the story of transgender-identifying biological male Jazz Jennings. It is rated as age-appropriate for children aged 4 and up. The book says that from the age of 2, Jazz liked the color pink, dressing up as a mermaid, and wearing girls’ clothes.
“I have a girl brain but a boy body. This is called transgender,” the book, told from Jazz’s perspective, reads. “I was born this way!”
The parent activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his children from bullying at school, said he was not surprised by the “I Am Jazz” incident.
“The culture among admin and staff is to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion at any cost,” he told The Daily Signal. “They cannot see the possible downside of educating children on topics of sexual and gender ideology at such a young age.”
Derek Duncan, communications director for the Webster Groves School District, said the district doesn’t believe it broke the law with the classroom reading of “I Am Jazz.”
“While we don’t believe this violates the law, we are aware of this situation and have appropriately addressed it,” Duncan told The Daily Signal in an email.
Duncan did not elaborate when asked.
The Webster Groves district, with 10 schools and more than 4,400 students, has a history of pushing radical gender ideology on children. Also in September, a high school librarian encouraged students to check out sexually explicit books from her list of commonly banned books and enter a raffle for a “sweet prize.”
The school district also plans to include the personal pronouns “they/them” in math problems and hire certified teachers as “math interventionists” to fight racism and gender bias in math classes, following a curriculum evaluation.
One family was upset when their second grader came from school saying she had learned that boy bodies can have girl brains and vice versa. After the family expressed concerns, the teacher included two brief sentences about the classroom reading of “I Am Jazz” in a longer email to parents.
“Last week we read the book I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings and illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas,” reads a copy of the email obtained by The Daily Signal. “In the book, Jazz shares her transgender experience.”
Although Missouri law doesn’t mandate sex education in public schools, the Webster Groves School District begins teaching children about gender identity early in elementary school.
First graders learn about gender expression through the children’s book “My Princess Boy,” according to a copy of the curriculum obtained by The Daily Signal. The parent activist said the district makes its sex education curriculum available upon request.
Told from a mom’s perspective, “My Princess Boy” is the story of a little boy who loves “pink and sparkly things” and “sometimes wears dresses” and “his princess tiara.”
“And a Princess Boy can wear pink and I will tell him how pretty he looks,” the boy’s mother says.
“If you see a Princess Boy … Will you laugh at him? Will you call him a name? Will you play with him? Will you like him for who he is?” the children’s book asks young readers.
Webster Groves fifth graders learn about gender identity and expression. They play a “guess the gender” game based on the behavior of pretend children.
“Gender identity refers to the way people see themselves in relation to being male or female or a combination,” the curriculum for 10-year-olds says. “It comes from a person’s own inner thoughts and feelings. It may or may not match the way others see them.”
Sixth graders learn about gender with a graphic depicting the “gender bread” person, which defines transgender as “a person who does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.” The “gender bread” graphic also defines “assigned male,” “assigned female,” and “nonbinary.”
The “gender bread” graphic defines “gender fluid” as “someone with a non-fixed gender identity [who] can switch back and forth.”
Teachers tell seventh graders that “gender exists on a spectrum” and instruct them not to “make assumptions about gender,” to “use preferred names and pronouns,” and “be a friend or ally.”
“Gender identity has to do with the way you feel about yourself,” reads a different cartoon shown to seventh graders in Webster Groves schools. “Sexual orientation is based on the way you feel toward others.”
***************************************************
Australia: High school pass marks lowered to under 50 per cent
Struggling Year 12 students who fail exams and assignments are still passing maths and English subjects, as state curriculum bodies push down pass marks to below 50 per cent.
In results that raise questions about teaching and syllabus standards, fresh “grade boundary” data from the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) shows that Year 12 students scored a “C” pass-mark in specialist maths with an overall mark of 47 out of 100 last year.
In maths methods, a prerequisite for engineering, the pass mark was 45 out of 100 – the same as for base-level general maths.
In physics, students needed just 49 marks per cent to pass, while English students passed the subject with just 41 marks out of 100.
And Victoria’s “score ranges’’ for coursework units and written exams for each subject in 2021 reveal students could pass some of the final Year 12 science, maths and English exams despite getting two out of three questions wrong.
Teacher shortages are being blamed for the poor results, as schools struggle to find enough teachers with university qualifications in the hard-to-staff maths and science subjects.
Up to 40 per cent of Australian maths students are being taught by teachers who did not specialise in the subject during their four-year education degree at university.
Senior maths and science academics and teachers warned yesterday that too many students are leaving Year 12 without the necessary maths skills, blaming both teaching standards and the curriculum.
Professor Jennifer Stow, an eminent researcher at the University of Queensland’s Institute of Molecular Bioscience, said she was “hugely concerned’’ about falling standards among high school maths graduates and criticised “what is being taught and how it’s being taught’’.
“I think students aren’t being taught enough basics in maths to give them a good underpinning to build upon at a higher education level,’’ she said. “Assignments don’t teach them formulae or maths rules or how to do calculations – they are being assessed on assignments that anyone can mark. They should be drilled on maths rules and formulae, and shown the way to do things.’’
Maths teacher Dr Stephen Norton, who spent 15 years teaching mathematics to trainee teachers at Griffith University before returning to the classroom this year, said many students were finishing primary school without knowing their times tables, long division and multiplication, or fractions. “When they get to high school they’re cactus,’’ he said.
“The biggest problem in secondary school is you get a whole bunch of kids coming to school in Grade 7 with the knowledge of Grade 4 or 5.
Education Minister Jason Clare says children and students aren’t as ready for school or university as they used to…
“For some of them, if you ask, ‘What’s seven multiplied by six?’ they can’t do it.
“They don’t know how to multiply, they haven’t been taught long division and they can’t add or multiply fractions.’’
Dr Norton said high school teachers were required to teach to a detailed curriculum so quickly that they did not have time to help students catch up on basic concepts.
“If you’ve got a struggling kid, or a kid who hasn’t quite got it, they will fall behind quite quickly,’’ he said.
Dr Norton said the best way to improve students’ maths results would be to ensure primary school teachers are given more training to teach the subject. “The primary school teachers are so poorly prepared by universities,’’ he said.
Queensland is the only state to publish subject-level grade boundaries, which show that in maths methods, a prerequisite for engineering, the pass mark for Year 12 last year was 45 out of 100 – the same as for base-level general maths. In physics, students needed just 49 marks per cent to pass, while English students passed the subject with just 41 marks out of 100. In biology, the lowest pass mark for a C grade was 48, while in chemistry it was 50, and 44 in modern history.
In Victoria in 2021, the pass mark for the final written exam in biology was 108 out of a possible 240 marks – an effective pass mark of 45 per cent.
In chemistry, the lowest score for a C mark was 78 out of 240 – a pass mark of 32 per cent.
Maths methods had a pass score of 50 out of 160 in the mathematical methods exam, revealing that students answered just one in three questions correctly.
In specialist maths, the pass rate for the written exam was 35 out of 80 marks, meaning students could pass despite failing 56 per cent of the questions.
In the English exam, the lowest score was 26 out of 60 marks – a 40 per cent pass rate.
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority did not respond to The Australian’s requests for comment.
A QCAA spokesman said that a grade of C “matches the objectives of the course and is considered ‘satisfactory’.’’
“Every year we look at the achievement of students to determine the grade boundaries,’’ he said. “This involves the QCAA and expert teachers looking at student performance across their range of assessments in every subject to determine cut-offs that align to each reporting standard on a 100-point scale.
“If the range for a C in a subject is 45-64 marks, it is because the student work that received marks in this range demonstrated the attributes of a C standard as described in the syllabus.
Dr Kevin Donnelly, a senior English teacher, curriculum writer and academic who reviewed the national curriculum in 2014, said Australia set a “low bar’’ for education. “We’ve lowered the bar to create a false picture of how well our students are doing and it breeds complacency,’’ he said.
******************************************************
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
******************************************************
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment