Non-education in Portland, Oregon

This week, Townhall covered how one state passed a policy that lowers the requirements for students to graduate high school altogether, claiming that the previous requirements harm "students of color."

Through 2029, the state's high school students will not have to prove mastery in reading, writing and math to graduate, the state Board of Education decided. This initially began in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue.

Now, reports broke that teachers in this state are now going on strike, making it impossible for students to attend school.

Teachers and other school employees in Portland, Oregon, began to strike on Wednesday, according to The New York Times. This canceled school for tens of thousands of students in the district (via NY Times):

The Portland Association of Teachers, which represents about 3,700 teachers, school counselors and other employees in the negotiations, is asking for higher wages, more time to plan lessons and a cap on class sizes, among other issues. They say that students’ emotional and academic needs have skyrocketed since the pandemic, and that employees are under strain and undersupported.

“We are on strike not just for ourselves, but for our students,” said Angela Bonilla, the union’s president, who described crowded classrooms where there aren’t enough desks, teachers who are working up to 20 hours a week unpaid to keep up with their workloads and schools that are overwhelmed by students’ mental health challenges.

The average salary for a Portland teacher is $87,000, according to Portland Public Schools, slightly above the area median income for a single person and below the median for a family of four. (The union said that the average full-time salary is about $83,000.)

Portland Public Schools has offered raises of 4.5 percent for the first year, and 3 percent in subsequent years of the contract. The union is asking for 8.5 percent in the first year to keep up with cost of living, and 6 percent and 5 percent in subsequent years.

The district serves around 45,000 students. And, the students spent "significant" time out of the classroom and stayed fully virtual until April 2021. This was longer than most school districts.

Nicki Neily, the president of parental rights organization Parents Defending Education, called the district "students last."

"Oregon recently removed basic competency requirements in reading, writing, and math in order to graduate high school because they're 'unnecessary' and 'disproportionately harm students of color.' Now teachers in Oregon's largest district are on strike preventing 45,000 students from going to school," she wrote on X.

Last year, Townhall covered how many teachers unions across the country went on strike ahead of the 2022-2023 school year. This is the same time most school districts plan to return to full-time, in-person and "normal" schooling since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/11/02/portland-strike-n2630697

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Washington Snoozes While Foreign Money Continues to Pour Into U.S. Colleges and Universities

The recent hubbub surrounding pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish demonstrations at major universities and colleges in the U.S. has again drawn attention to the massive, and unaccounted donations made to those institutions, including by foreign governments and other sources; contributions that have become an increasingly important part of the schools’ budgets.

However, if critics are looking for either Congress or the administration to do anything to improve the almost total lack of transparency regarding such money flow, they are in for a long wait.

Uncle Sam has been asleep at that switch for decades, and the Biden Administration has made clear it has no interest whatsoever in continuing its predecessor’s modest effort to enforce long-standing requirements that institutions of higher learning simply report major foreign monetary donations, especially where Communist China is concerned.

Congress has not done much better. A measure that would have strengthened the federal government’s power to examine large foreign gifts to, and contracts with American universities, was stripped out of a bipartisan bill two years ago that was designed to strengthen American innovation. The reasons for the measure’s demise included opposition by the very same universities and colleges that receive significant money from foreign donors, including China, which reportedly had donated more than $400 million in the two years before the measure was deep-sixed in 2021.

Adding to the demise of the extremely modest reporting requirement in the “innovation” legislation, was a jurisdictional turf dispute between two Senate committees with concurrent jurisdiction over the measure.

The reality is that since 1986, when Section 117 was added to the 1965 Higher Education Act, colleges and universities have been required to report foreign gifts and contracts. It was not until 2019, however, that the Department of Education, under the leadership of Secretary Betsy DeVos, got around to actually ordering the schools to start doing what they were supposed to have been doing for more than three decades.

As President Trump’s Education Secretary, DeVos issued a report in October 2020 stating that some 95% of colleges and universities had for years simply ignored the foreign gift reporting requirement. The report also noted that successive administrations and Congresses had failed completely in their responsibilities to enforce the law’s reporting requirement.

The DeVos report threw cold water on the excuse given by the universities for their failure to comply with the federal law – that the reporting requirement was unclear and burdensome. It explained that the schools “manage to track every cent owed and paid by their students” and already report extensively to the IRS on their financial undertakings.

The 2020 report made clear that enforcement of the reporting requirements for institutions of higher learning was not to “police” or stop foreign contributions to American universities, but simply to bring a necessary degree of transparency to the public and to “alert” other government agencies with jurisdiction over aspects of such “entanglements.”

DeVos’ concerns that significant financial “gifts” to U.S. universities come with strings attached and can indeed influence both the education missions of the institutions, as well as potentially harming our national security, are not misplaced. As noted in the report, and elsewhere, the torrent of money flowing into our schools in recent years especially from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China, has increased dramatically. A 2011 FBI report focused on just such security concerns, but even that did not awake the Justice Department from its slumber.

In the three years since DeVos issued her report and at least began to demand our universities and colleges report major foreign gifts and donations, the problem has only worsened.

Not only has Biden’s Education Department deliberately stopped enforcing the long-standing law requiring schools to report foreign contributions, but has halted the initiative by Trump to crack down on Chinese espionage more generally, his “China Initiative.” Biden’s Justice Department concluded that Trump’s efforts to identify and limit China’s growing influence in American academia and businesses, was or might be perceived as “racist.” The absurdity of this conclusion has led to a number of important national security prosecutions against Chinese influencers in our country being dropped completely.

So long as our own government continues to turn a blind eye to foreign monetary influences in major U.S. universities and colleges, foreign governments will continue their efforts to influence educational policies and also to steal important technology from us.

https://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2023/11/02/washington-snoozes-while-foreign-money-continues-to-pour-into-us-colleges-and-universities-n2630644

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Not Taking It Sitting Down: High Schoolers Walk Out to Protest Trans Restroom Policies

It was May 28, 2021, when a 15-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in a Virginia public school restroom. Details revealed the girl was attacked by a boy wearing a skirt who was legally allowed to use the girls’ restroom at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, Virginia, because it “matched his gender identity.”

Under the pseudonym “Jane Doe,” the girl and her parents filed a lawsuit after the school allegedly covered up her assault. Incredibly, the boy went on to attack another girl in a different school. But because he considered himself “gender-fluid,” the violence was denied by both his mother and teachers.

In response to incidents like these, which resulted from school policies allowing boys into girls’ restrooms and locker rooms, a growing tide of high school students across the country are walking out of class in protest.

On Wednesday, Loudoun County students held a second walkout protesting Policy 8040, which allows biological males to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. The first walkout occurred after the sexual assault incident in 2021.

In Pennsylvania, hundreds of students from Perkiomen Valley School District ditched class to protest the failure to enact a policy requiring students to use the bathroom that matched their biological sex.

“[It feels] as if it’s me and my sister and the rest of us students’ rights are now compromised and not a priority to this school whatsoever,” Pennsylvania student Brandon Emery said. His mother, Melanie Marren, added, “They are making these policies without taking into consideration how they affect the students and how uncomfortable it is … to be faced with the invasion of their privacy in those areas where they should feel safe and private.”

In Baltimore, a group of parents involved with Parental Alliance for Safer Schools in Baltimore County (PASS) planned a protest of the county and its policy that allows trans-identifying students to use whichever bathroom or locker room they please. However, the Oct. 10 protest faced opposition when parents supporting transgenderism also showed up.

In Canada, groups have also gathered to protest policies that allow biological males in female-specific spaces. Students from Longfields-Davidson Heights High School formed a group called LDHSS Students for Change to push back against the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board by hosting their own walkouts.

One of the students from the group told Newsweek, “The main thing we protested for was for us to be able to say what we want and to keep gay teachings out of our schools.” As a way to fight the policies, these students want the school board to establish gender-neutral single-user bathrooms, a compromise some states have put in motion.

“American adults and parents should be ashamed of the fact that students are forced to protest for the right to not undress in front of someone of the opposite sex,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at the Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The students and staff are protesting because the Left is forcing progressive adult sexual priorities on children as a way of justifying their own adult actions, and it’s not acceptable.”

Kilgannon acknowledged that “when students leave school in protest for gun control or climate change,” it may be that “kids [are] taking an opportunity to leave class,” adding that “some may have the same attitude towards these examples.” However, she emphasized that “when the cause of the protest is something as intimate as access to bathrooms or locker rooms, or is in protest of compelled speech, we should pay attention.”

Kilgannon concluded, “[I]f these kinds of protests continue, it’s going to make the release of the Biden administration’s redefinition of Title IX and sex itself much more charged.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/03/high-schoolers-resistance-to-trans-restroom-policies-grows-as-walkouts-multiply

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http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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