I remember how it was -- JR
New York considers ditching Regents exams as HS graduation requirement
A cheaters' charter
New York State education bosses are considering ditching the Regents exam as a graduation requirement for high school students, leading to some education advocates accusing them of dumbing down standards.
The New York State Education Department on Monday presented the Board of Regents with the recommendations on graduation measures — which included giving students the option of taking the Regents exam to graduate.
Mona Davids of the NYC Parents Union said moving away from the Regents exam requirements to earn a diploma signifies an insulting lack of faith in the abilities of students of color.
“This is a continuation of the soft bigotry of low expectations from our black and Hispanic students,” said Davids, who was part of a 2014 lawsuit challenging New York’s tenure laws that shield ineffective teachers from losing their jobs.
“They don’t think our kids are smart enough to pass the Regents exams. They’re lowering the bar. It is racist to look down on our kids.
“It’s dodging accountability for educating our students. They don’t think our students are educable.”
A state education policy veteran, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Post that New York was heading in the wrong direction, away from accountability for whether poor and mostly minority students are learning.
“How are we going to monitor success? How are parents going to know if students are learning if we move away from exams? This is going in the exact opposite direction,” said the source.
If implemented, the move would mark a significant shift in state education policy, which has required high schoolers to take and pass the Regents exams before earning their diplomas for more than a century.
“We must remove barriers and facilitate equitable access to education by addressing the individual needs of students, increasing opportunities for work-based learning or college readiness programs, and providing students with practical skills and experiences that enhance their employability and post-secondary education opportunities.”
Under the commission’s proposed roadmap, students would still have the option of taking the Regents exam to graduate, but they could also be allowed to demonstrate their proficiency in different ways, such as various forms of “performance-based” assessments, like essay writing or developing portfolios of their work.
These assessments would be developed in partnership with teachers and ultimately approved by the state before implementation.
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Globalists Panic As Homeschooling Explodes Across US
Globalist spokesmen in media and government are voicing concern over a huge boom in homeschooling across the USA that has the trend becoming more mainstream
An analysis from the Washington Post last week found that the number of homeschooled children in the US has jumped from 1.5 million in 2019 to as many as 2.7 million this year — some estimates say 3.7 million — suggesting that many children did not return to schools when they reopened during the pandemic.
The analysis — which looked at 60 percent of the school-aged population in 7,000 school districts across 32 states and Washington, D.C. — found that homeschooling defies political, geographical and economic borders.
For example, while Republican Florida has the largest homeschool population with 154,000 homeschooled children, Democratic New York is showing the fastest growth with nearly 52,000 children homeschooled, more than double since 2017.
New York City boroughs Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx saw the highest growth rates with the homeschool population in some districts surging over 300 percent in the last six years.
The trend is also gaining popularity even in areas with high academic achievement. Last year over 60,000 children were homeschooled in districts which ranked in the country’s top fifth for scholastic aptitude.
Florida’s Hillsborough County has become the nation’s homeschool “capital” with 10,680 homeschoolers in the district.
“Today, Hillsborough home-schoolers inhabit a scholastic and extracurricular ecosystem that is in many ways indistinguishable from that of a public or private school,” reports the Washington Post. “Home-schooled kids play competitive sports. They put on full-scale productions of ‘Mary Poppins’ and ‘Les Miserables.’ They have high school graduation ceremonies, as well as a prom and homecoming dance.”
But Hillsborough officials are displeased with the trend.
“It’s a tremendous imbalance,” said Hillsborough County School Board member Lynn Gray, who says she worries about homeschoolers’ “academic preparation and lack of exposure to diverse points of view.”
“I can tell you right now: Many of these parents don’t have any understanding of education,” she said. “The price will be very big to us, and to society. But that won’t show up for a few years.”
But studies show that homeschoolers outperform their state-educated counterparts in nearly all areas. Standardized tests reveal that homeschoolers on average score over 30 percentage points higher than public schoolers in core studies such as reading, language and math.
SAT test results show that homeschooled children score higher than state-educated children by as many as 70 points in critical reading and 48 points in writing. They are also more likely to achieve higher GPAs.
Minority children who attend homeschool also show higher results than their counterparts. Black homeschooled students, for example, have been shown to outscore Black public schooled students by 23–42 percentage points.
According to government figures, 41 percent of homeschoolers are Black, Asian, Hispanic, and others (i.e. not White/non-Hispanic).
Most homeschoolers also report being excited about life and satisfied with their work, joined by a minority of public schoolers.
As school districts lose students to the homeschool method, governments and teachers’ unions are looking for ways to show more impressive numbers and boost enrollment.
The Oregon State Board of Education, for example, has dropped essential skills and standardized testing requirements, which it said was necessary to fight racism. This decision was ardently backed by the Oregon Education Association, the state’s 40,000-strong teachers’ union, which stands to lose members if graduation and enrollment rates falter.
Following the decision, Oregon public high schools boasted an 81.3 percent graduation rate last year despite only 43 percent of students being proficient in English and less than 31 percent being proficient in math.
The picture is bleaker in Baltimore where standardized test scores for 2021 revealed that 85 percent of students are not proficient in math and four out of ten public high school students earn lower than a 1.0 GPA.
At one public high school, students were found to read at an elementary school or kindergarten level.
But higher academic achievement among homeschoolers — including minority children — has not stopped media operatives from painting homeschool as a racist initiative.
“It may seem harmless, but the insidious racism of the American religious right’s obsession with homeschooling speaks volumes, writes @AntheaButler,” MSNBC tweeted.
Last month comedian John Oliver dedicated a segment on Last Week Tonight to slamming homeschools. Without data to show that homeschooled children are disadvantaged, Oliver argued that homeschools should be regulated by the state to ensure that homeschooling parents are “moral” and “safe” for their children.
Oliver is joined by other media figures in his opposition to homeschooling.
“Imagine putting ‘homeschool mom’ in your bio and not understanding you’ve just ruined the lives of five innocent children,” tweeted MSNBC host Joe Scarborough last year.
https://principia-scientific.com/globalists-panic-as-homeschooling-explodes-across-us/
**********************************************Primary school pupils are told to 'read woke' and study books that claim white people began racism
Schoolchildren have been encouraged to 'read woke' and study books that claim white people invented racism, it has been revealed.
Titled 'Read Woke', the project has supplied books to primary schools which claim racism was invented by white people.
It is part of a literacy project funded by a Scottish government grant that has been piloted to help 'enlighten' pupils on racial issues.
The programme includes a volume that asserts that it is impossible to be racist against white people, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, founder of the campaign group Don't Divide Us, urged schools to bin the material.
She told the paper: 'This initiative is normalising politically radical and partisan beliefs. It will do nothing to help teachers teach pupils how to read, and has little to do with education more generally.
'Our advice to schools is to either put the books in the recycling bin, or keep them for the next CPD and invite speakers from Read Woke and Don't Divide Us to discuss why this is/is not suitable curriculum content.'
The Read Woke website for South Ayrshire says the initiative 'will awaken our students to a range of important issues, enlighten them, and encourage them to think critically and with empathy when forming opinions'.
Piloted in 2021, the project was adopted from the idea of Cicely Lewis, a US librarian, and is said to have been supported by funding from Scotland's School Library Improvement Fund.
A book on the reading list for secondary pupils titled 'This Book is Anti-Racist' tells youngsters that 'being racist against white people is not a thing'.
It also offers advice on how to raise concerns about 'the dominant culture of white supremacy' in the classroom.
Elsewhere, the book My Skin Your Skin by Laura Henry-Allain also features on the primary reading list devised by the project.
It tells children that 'racism started a long time ago when white people wanted to have more control over people who were not white.'
And that 'an example of racism is when white people think they are better than people from other races.'
South Ayrshire Council was contacted for comment.
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