Does America have a brilliant or woeful future? Watch, ‘The Millennial Job Interview’ to understand

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A reader sent us this short video that struck us as so funny but sadly so true. The public education system has created a generation of youth who are addicted to social media, with no job skills or knowledge of how to succeed. They aren’t taught how to think, rather they’re taught what to think.

WATCH: The Millennial Job Interview

In a December 11, 2019 Daily Signal column titled Students’ Test Scores Unchanged After Decades of Federal Intervention in Education Lindsey Burke wrote,

Federal “Highly Qualified Teacher” mandates. Adequate Yearly Progress requirements. Smaller learning communities. Improving Teacher Quality State Grants. Reading First. Early Reading First. The dozens of other federal programs authorized via No Child Left Behind. School Improvement Grants. Race to the Top. Common Core.

All of that has been just since 2000. Over those past two decades, while federal policymakers were busy enacting new federal laws, creating mandates for local school leaders, and increasing the Department of Education’s budget from $38 billion in 2000 (unadjusted for inflation) to roughly $70 billion today, the math and reading performance of American high school students remained completely flat. That is to say, stagnant.

The U.S. is now above the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average in reading, but alas, not because U.S. reading performance has improved. Rather, other countries have seen declines in reading achievement, despite increases in education spending.

In mathematics, however, U.S. performance has steadily declined over the past two decades.

Those are the findings from the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA exams, released last week.

As The New York Times’ Dana Goldstein reported:

About a fifth of American 15-year-olds scored so low on the PISA test that it appeared they had not mastered reading skills expected of a 10-year-old, according to Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers the exam.

What’s more, the achievement gap between high- and low-performing American students has widened.

The international findings mirror last month’s National Assessment of Educational Progress report, which revealed that math and reading scores across the country have continued a years long stagnation, with students largely showing no progress in academic achievement.

Just one-third of students in the fourth and eighth grades reached proficiency in math and reading nationally on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is administered every two years.

As with the Programme for International Student Assessment’s findings that the achievement gap stubbornly persists for American students, the National Assessment of Educational Progress highlighted similar findings within the U.S.

The scores of students who are among the lowest 10% of performers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have dropped significantly since 2009.

The stubborn achievement gap is not new, but the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Programme for International Student Assessment provide additional data points on its persistence.

As Harvard professor Paul Peterson writes in The Heritage Foundation’s new book “The Not-So-Great Society”:

The achievement gap in the United States is as wide today as it was in 1971.

The performances on math, reading, and science tests between the most advantaged and the most disadvantaged students differ by approximately four years’ worth of learning, a disparity that has remained essentially unchanged for nearly half a century.

One of the more recent, major pieces of federal intervention sold as a way to improve American standing in education was the Common Core State Standards Initiative promoted during the Obama administration.

Common Core national standards and test, proponents argued, would catapult American students to the top of the math and reading pack. It was time, they argued, for the U.S. to have the same “epiphany” Germany did in the late 1990s, and adopt centrally planned national standards and tests.

Germany now lags the U.S. in reading, according to the new Programme for International Student Assessment data, and is far below Canada, a country that does not have national standards.

Indeed, our neighbor to the north has performed consistently well on the Programme for International Student Assessment since 2000, significantly outpacing the United States, and has neither national standards, nor a federal education department.

Canada’s is a decentralized education system, in which Canada’s 10 provinces set education policy.

The fact that Common Core didn’t catalyze improvements in the U.S. isn’t surprising. Large-scale government programs rarely, if ever, do.

But neither have the myriad federal programs created since No Child Left Behind in 2001, nor have the more than 100 federal K-12 education programs created since President Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society initiative in 1965 designed, ostensibly, to narrow opportunity gaps between the poor and the affluent.

Heritage’s Jonathan Butcher and I detail Yuval Levin’s theory of government failure in “The Not-So-Great Society.” Levin explains that large-scale government programs fail for three reasons:

  1. “Institutionally, the administrative state is ‘dismally inefficient and unresponsive, and therefore ill-suited to our age of endless choice and variety.’”
  2. “Culturally and morally, government efforts to ‘rescue the citizen from the burdens of responsibility [have] undermined the family, self-reliance, and self-government.’”
  3. “Fiscally, large-scale federal programs supporting the welfare state are simply unaffordable, ‘dependent as it is upon dubious economics and the demographic model of a bygone era.’”

Federal government efforts to improve education have been dismal. Even if there were a constitutional basis for its involvement—which there isn’t—the federal government is simply ill-positioned to determine what education policies will best serve the diverse local communities across our vast nation.

The sooner we can acknowledge that improvements will not come from Washington, the sooner we’re likely to see students flourishing in learning environments that reflect their unique needs and desires.

Lindsey Burke

Lindsey M. Burke researches and writes on federal and state education issues as the Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research. Twitter: .

©2024. All rights reserved.

NYC: High school students call teacher ‘dirty Jew,’ praise Hitler, write ‘Free Palestine’ on classroom door

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It’s impossible to tell from this report whether these students are under the influence of the likes of Sneako, a popular “influencer” who has converted to Islam and praises Hitler, and Nick Fuentes, a supposedly “America First” agitator who mocks the Holocaust, or whether they are Muslim students. Either way, dark clouds are on the horizon.

Antisemitic teens terrorizing Jewish teacher with Hitler jabs, death threats as NYC school refuses to discipline them: ‘I live in fear’: lawsuit

by Susan Edelman, New York Post, March 2, 2024:

A Brooklyn high school has become a haven for Hitler-loving hooligans who terrorize Jewish teachers and classmates, The Post has learned.

On Oct. 26, just three weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis, 40 to 50 teens marched through Origins HS in Sheepshead Bay waving a Palestinian flag and chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Kill the Jews!” staffers said.

The hateful procession was shocking even for Origins, a school rife with bias and bullying, insiders told The Post.

“I live in fear of going to work every day,” said global history teacher Danielle Kaminsky.

According to interviews with multiple staffers, and a Jewish student’s safety transfer request, recent hate incidents include:

A student painted a mustache on his face to look like Hitler, and banged on classroom doors. When someone opened, he clicked his heels and raised his arm in the Nazi gesture, security footage shows.

Three swastikas in one week were drawn on teachers’ walls and other objects, a manager found.

A 10th-grader told Kaminsky, 33, who is Jewish, “I wish you were killed.”

Another student called her “a dirty Jew” and said he wished Hitler could have “hit more Jews,” including her.

Students pasted drawings of the Palestinian flag and notes saying “Free Palestine” on Kaminsky’s classroom door. One scribbled note that said simply, “Die.”

The teen tormentors have so far faced no serious discipline under interim acting principal Dara Kammerman, who has done little beyond contacting parents in an effort to practice “restorative justice,” staffers said.

“She is perpetuating an antisemitic environment and a school of hate,” said Michael Beaudry, campus manager of the Sheepshead Bay building that houses Origins and three other schools. “The students continue these behaviors because they know there won’t be any consequences.”

In response, the city Department of Education said it will launch a probe: “There is currently no evidence that these claims are true, but we are investigating the claims.”

In a disturbing instance in late January, a group of boys came into Kaminsky’s classroom at the end of the day, and cornered her, laughing, she said.

“Miss Kaminsky, do you love Hitler?” one asked.

“I was so taken aback,” she said. “I did not respond, and they all gave the heil Hitler sign.”

Frightened, Kaminsky quickly left her classroom….

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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Predator and prey: before the jump

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Experts Worry that Illegal Immigration Is Affecting the Education System

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Since the beginning of the border crisis in which millions of illegal immigrants have flooded into the country, American citizens have been affected in various ways, most notably by the spike in crime.

Some sanctuary cities have recognized that crime is out of their control and have sought changes in their sanctuary policies. Saturating news headlines are cases of illegal immigrants stealing, assaulting, raping, or even murdering innocent American civilians. In addition, taxpayers are funding the housing, food, and health care of people who aren’t legally in the U.S., with taxpayer money funding gender transition procedures as well.

Experts are also pointing to how illegal immigration is affecting the education system, as Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, explained on Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.”

FRC President Tony Perkins highlighted that “the ongoing border crisis undermines our nation’s education system” and is “often left unmentioned.” But the reality, Kilgannon said, is that both poor and wealthy districts are affected by the illegal immigrant students coming in.

“Americans are very generous,” she said, “and it’s hard for us to turn down a student at the schoolhouse door if they present themselves to learn.” But even so, most schools don’t have a choice on whether they accept the illegal migrants, which then places an added and significant “strain on the budget,” Kilgannon added. And she explained how a lot of them come in without an ability to speak English, which requires special services.

Financial strains, in particular, are hard on the high poverty areas, Kilgannon described, because they’re already struggling to fund their schools. They hardly have enough money for the legal American citizens, she noted, but additionally, “it affects wealthy areas too because of the drug crisis.” As drug overdoses at schools increase, Kilgannon discussed the growing controversy over “whether or not the school is notifying parents when children overdose at school.”

She added, “But the reason that kids are overdosing at school is because, for one thing, there’s poor control over the environment by the people who are running the schools. But there’s [also] an increase in drugs coming across the border. … There’s more availability of these drugs, and it’s causing all kinds of pressures to be put on many, many areas of our society. And of course, it’s happening to our school system as well.”

As a former state legislator, Perkins highlighted that what he used to see were parents who had to deal with very strict rules about which schools they could attend based on the district they lived in. But with illegal immigrants, he shared that those same rules don’t apply. “I mean, we’re making our own citizens have to live within the boundaries and the rules, but then someone who’s not even a citizen of this country can come in and go wherever they want, and we have to pay for it,” he said. Kilgannon agreed and stated “there are so many rules that they do not have to follow that regular American citizens have to follow.”

Perkins observed that it looks like “these schools are just expected to absorb the cost of the Biden administration’s immigration policy.” Kilgannon referred to it as “an unfunded mandate,” which can be defined as “regulations or other requirements imposed by a higher level of government on a lower one, but without accompanying appropriations to cover the cost of compliance.” Both Perkins and Kilgannon reflected on whether “local governments could take action against the Biden administration for that reason.” Kilgannon added, “I certainly would want to if I were running a school system that was dealing with these kinds of things.”

In addition, Perkins briefly mentioned how these education concerns caused by illegal immigration only add to the concern over declining test scores and proficiency rates with each year. Considering this push for schools to cater to the Biden administration’s open border policy, he concluded, “I would just think at some point a state’s got to draw the line and say, ‘We’re not doing it.’ … [T]his is absolutely out of control.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

UC Berkeley’s Hitler Youth Accost Jewish Speaker & Attack Jewish Students

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University of California, Berkeley, administrators have offered no apology to Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat, whose speech to a campus Jewish group was abruptly canceled by the university after violent protesters choked a female student attendee, spit in another attendee’s face, and broke into the auditorium where Bar-Yoshafat waited onstage….more here.

Berkley Schools:  Nazi Youth/Hamas Chapter Running Loose in District

By

The Berkeley schools have declared themselves a chapter of Hamas.  Teachers and Administrators openly and quietly are going after Jewish teaches and students.  This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

“The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) “knowingly allowed its K-12 campuses to become viciously hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students,” according to a copy of the complaint, filed with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Parents who have signed onto the complaint say anti-Semitic incidents in the schools have “positively surged” since Hamas conducted its unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

“At BUSD, a virulent wave of anti-Semitism swept through its schools immediately following the massacre,” the complaint alleges. “Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop anti-Semitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards.”

Reminder;  Like the Nazi’s, Communists, using Karl Marx principles are also Jew haters—so this should be no surprise that the Communist city of Berkeley promotes Jew hating.

Berkeley Public Schools Hit With Federal Complaint Over ‘Severe and Persistent’ Anti-Semitic Bullying

Complaint alleges hallway chants of ‘kill the Jews’ and anti-Semitic teacher rants in support of Hamas

Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon,  2/28/24  https://freebeacon.com/campus/berkeley-public-schools-hit-with-federal-complaint-over-severe-and-persistent-anti-semitic-bullying/

A public school district in Berkeley, California, was hit with a federal complaint on Wednesday alleging it has failed to stem an escalating series of anti-Semitic incidents that include hallway chants of “kill the Jews” and anti-Semitic teacher rants in support of the Hamas terror group.

The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) “knowingly allowed its K-12 campuses to become viciously hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students,” according to a copy of the complaint, filed with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Parents who have signed onto the complaint say anti-Semitic incidents in the schools have “positively surged” since Hamas conducted its unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

“At BUSD, a virulent wave of anti-Semitism swept through its schools immediately following the massacre,” the complaint alleges. “Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop anti-Semitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards.”

The complaint, filed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, follows a flurry of similar federal filings against many of America’s top universities, including Harvard, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania, among others. Like its college counterparts, the Berkeley school district stands accused of becoming a dangerous place for Jews and Israelis.

“Reported incidents of anti-Semitism include school ‘walkouts’ praising Hamas with students shouting ‘f— the Jews’ and ‘KKK,’” according to the complaint. “Teachers use class time to propagandize that the Hamas massacre was admirable ‘resistance.’ Following their teachers’ lead, students bully their Jewish peers and deride their physical appearance.”

Berkeley Unified did not respond to a request for comment.

Parents have reported this behavior to school administrators, the complaint says, but the district “has done nothing to address, much less curtail, the hostile environment that has plagued BUSD for over four months.”

The ADL and Brandeis Center are asking the federal government to open a formal probe into the school district to determine if the Jewish population’s civil rights are being violated.

Anti-Semitism is allegedly “normalized throughout BUSD. And teachers have responded with threats.”

In one case, a teacher approached a parent who had complained and said, “I know who you are, I know who your f—ing wife is and I know where you live,” according to testimony included in the federal filing.

Perhaps taking a cue from their instructors, students have harassed their Jewish classmates, telling them, “it is excellent what Hamas did to Israel” and “you have a big nose because you are a stupid Jew,” according to incidents relayed in the complaint.

“While Berkeley Unified School District plasters its buildings with ‘United Against Hate’ posters, Jewish hate is ignored,” said Berkeley Unified parent Ilana Pearlman.

In the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Berkeley Unified teachers and administrators have allegedly staged walkouts “denigrating Israelis and calling for the elimination of Jews.”

“Teachers, staff, and administrators,” the complaint states, “have participated in and encouraged students to join walkouts, depriving Jewish and Israeli students of a safe place to learn and all students of instruction.” In some cases, these events have taken place during school hours.

In another case cited in the complaint, an unnamed art teacher “spent significant class time imposing his anti-Semitic views on students by showing them violent pro-Hamas videos, projecting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic images during class.” This includes an image of a fist holding a Palestinian flag punching through a Star of David.

The complaint outlines other similar incidents, including anti-Semitic harassment, that has left Jewish students shaken and scared about going to school each day.

“The Berkeley public school district is just one of many districts in California and other states that are experiencing an extreme wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic language and incidents in the classroom and the schoolyard,” said Rachel Lerman, vice chair and general counsel for the Brandeis Center. “Since October 7, there have been continual anti-Israel rallies, taking kids off campus without parent permission, where students are provided with signs and permitted to call for the extermination of Zionists and Jews. Students feel free to engage in anti-Semitic speech and bully their Jewish classmates because a number of their teachers tolerate and even encourage it. Meanwhile the administration does nothing in the face of widespread parent complaints.”

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

FL Rep. Chase Tramont: ‘There is no objection to the teaching of facts and truth of history. In fact, we demand it!’

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Republican Florida Representative Chase Tramont of Port Orange, Florida took to the floor of the House this week to defend our history and refute the “big lie” that Republicans are somehow trying to censor the teaching of history in a new bill that outlaws the use of ideology to interpret hard fast facts.

Chase is a cosponsor of a bill that requires an honest rendition of our past, warts and all.

The bill prohibits teacher preparation programs, EPIs, and Level I and Level II school leader preparation programs from distorting significant historical events or including a curriculum or instruction that teaches identity politics, violates the Florida Educational Equity Act, or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.

The bill requires all teacher preparation programs and EPIs to afford candidates the opportunity to think critically, achieve mastery of academic program content, learn instructional strategies, and demonstrate competence

The bill requires Level I and Level II school leader preparation programs to afford candidates the opportunity to demonstrate mastery of program content, including instructional leadership strategies, coaching development, school safety, and continuous improvement efforts.

Representative Chase Tramont, “…[A]nd for the future education of my son who will be introduced to the world on Wednesday, I am proud to stand on the right side of protecting our history today.’“

WATCH: Representative Chase Tramont Defends History

©2024. Volusia GOP. All rights reserved.

Jewish Students Tell House Committee: ‘It’s Open Season on Jews on Our Campus’

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Jews are fair game now. This is exactly what Jewish students and academics experienced in Nazi Germany.

For years, the growing Jew hatred on college campuses was ignored or excused. Before my colleagues and I were banned, we experienced vicious, violent hatred.

No one stood with us. Or took action.

What did they think was going. to happen?

‘I didn’t come to study in a living laboratory of antisemitism’

In DC, Jewish students tell House committee: ‘It’s open season on Jews on our campus’

Months after the Education and Workforce Committee hearing that contributed to the resignation of top school presidents, Jewish students say the hatred continues unchecked

By: Jordana Horn, Times of Israel, March 1, 2024:

NEW YORK — The House of Representatives’ Education and the Workforce Committee held a bipartisan roundtable Thursday with Jewish students from nine American universities to hear testimony about their experiences with antisemitism on campus.

Testimony given before the Education and Workforce Committee’s last hearing in December led to the resignations of Harvard University president Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill.

“These students are dealing with antisemitism at their respective universities on a daily basis. Their courage to speak out and share their stories will give the American people a new look at what is truly happening on college campuses around the country,” Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said before the roundtable in a statement. “This roundtable will help inform the committee’s next steps in the antisemitism investigation as it continues to hold postsecondary education accountable for rampant antisemitism.”

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Democrats’ lawfare against Trump!

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GUESTS & TOPICS

REVERAND BEN JOHNSON

Rev. Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand. His writings have also appeared in The (UK) Guardian, Human Events, The Stream, Real Clear Policy, Conservative Review, The Daily Caller, and have been cited by National Review, CBS News, and Fox News. He was managing editor of FrontPage Magazine and U.S. Bureau Chief at LifeSiteNews. He is the author of two books on tax-exempt foundations, as well as Party of Defeat (2008, Spence, with David Horowitz). Before turning to online journalism and editing, he spent more than a decade in all facets of radio broadcasting, including news and talk.

TOPIC: Teachers agree! Trans, CRT Lessons Hurt Rather Than Help Schools!

MARTHA ZOLLER

Martha Zoller is a conservative strategist, activist, policy expert, and pundit with extensive campaign and government experience. For twenty years, Martha has hosted radio programs and was named to the Talkers Top 100 Radio Shows in America multiple times. She was a regular contributor on Cable and Broadcast News and served as a longtime panelist on Fox 5 Atlanta’s The Georgia Gang. Martha is the host of “Morning Talk with Martha Zoller” heard weekdays on WDUN AM550 and WDUN FM102.9.

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©2024. Conservative Commandos Radio Show. All rights reserved.

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10 Times as Many Teachers Say Trans, CRT Lessons Hurt Rather Than Help Schools

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A new survey reveals a cavernous gap between teachers’ unions and the views of most parents, teenagers, and teachers on whether public schools should teach LGBT ideology to students — and whether parents should have the right to opt their children out of those classes.

While elite teachers’ unions such as the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) believe schools should teach sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) classes to children, their customers — parents and students — disagree, as do many of their members, according to a series of new polls released last week.

More than 10 times as many teachers said debates over LGBT ideology, including sexual orientation and gender ideology, “have had a negative impact on their ability to do their job,” compared to 4% who said they improve learning, according to the Pew Research Center: 41% to 4%. Social Studies and English teachers were the most likely to say SOGI topics harmed their teaching time; they were also the classes most likely to discuss those issues, the survey found.

Yet some left-wing activists are working to change that. MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, donated $10 million to a group that instructs math teachers to “infuse social justice into mathematics.”

Teachers, Parents, and Students Do Not Want LGBTQIA+ Issues in the Classroom

Half of all teachers say “students should not learn” about gender identity issues in school, including 62% of elementary school teachers, 45% of middle school teachers, and 35% of high school teachers. Among those who believe the school should weigh in on such divisive topics, 33% of teachers say gender “can be different than sex assigned at birth,” while 14% believe in biological sex. More than twice as many elementary teachers believe transgender ideology as believe in biology; the proportion reaches three-to-one among high school teachers (45% vs. 15%).

The poll apparently shows those supportive of transgender beliefs are more likely to address the topic in school. Just under one-in-three teachers say sexual orientation or transgender ideology come up occasionally (21%) or frequently (9%). But teachers who belong to the Democratic Party were 15 points more likely to confess that LGBT issues creep into their classrooms than Republican teachers (36% to 21%).

Although a plurality (48%) of teachers believe parents should be able to opt their children out of transgender ideology indoctrination classes, one-third of instructors believed such classes should be compulsory.

“On both topics, parents’ views were more evenly split than the views of teachers,” according to the Pew survey. For instance, a majority of parents (54%) believe they should be able to determine whether teachers can subject their children to trans ideology.

The largest percentage of teens do not want to hear about LGBT ideology in the classroom, either: 48% say the topics should not be taught at school. Teens are also slightly more likely to believe in biological sex than in transgenderism (26% vs. 25%). But Democratic students are 525% more likely than Republican students to say gender identity is not tied to physiognomy.

Teenage students are more likely to feel uncomfortable hearing about transgender or sexual orientation issues than feel comfortable (33% vs. 29%). More than twice as many Republican students are more likely to feel uncomfortable hearing about such topics than to feel comfortable.

Only 14% of all teens say transgenderism or homosexuality “has never come up in any of their classes.”

The poll seems to indicate many teachers believe parents have too much say in their children’s education. While a plurality of teachers said parents had “the right amount” of influence, teachers were more likely to say parents had “too much influence” than not enough (32% to 19%). Democrats were 42% more likely than Republicans to believe parents had too much influence.

Republican-leaning teachers are more likely to honor parents’ views on these subjects, the poll found: 69% of Republican teachers say schools should not be in the business of teaching LGBT issues, and 80% say parents should decide whether their children attend such classes. Half of Democratic teachers say public school LGBT classes should be mandatory, and 53% say schools should teach transgender ideology.

A strong majority of teachers (58%) belongs to the Democratic Party, Pew noted.

Asian and “[w]hite Democrats are more likely than [b]lack and Hispanic Democrats to say parents should not be able to opt their children out of learning about sexual orientation and gender identity,” Pew stated. In all, 53% of Asian Democrats and “six-in-ten [w]hite Democrats say this, compared with 42% of Hispanic Democrats and 34% of [b]lack Democrats.” A plurality of black Democrats say parents should be able to opt out of LGBT indoctrination (46%, compared to 34% who oppose it).

Teachers’ Unions Out of Touch with Students, Poll Shows

The views of teachers, parents, and students strongly conflict with the stance of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, the three-million-member NEA and the 1.5-million-member AFT. The NEA provides model legislation to teach LGBT ideology in public schools and carries out numerous training sessions to promote gender ideology to teachers.

The NEA’s “Pronoun Guide” includes “Ze, Zim, Zir, Zay or Zee.” It urges teachers, “Inspire and encourage your student” with its two-page list of “LGBT+-affirming books.” It instructs teachers in 33 states how they can obtain a free “Rainbow Library” from GLSEN.

“You can use your work environment,” e.g., the classroom, “to show support for students of all backgrounds — for example, by hanging a Black Lives Matter poster or Pride flag or making clear that you will use a student’s personal gender pronouns,” the NEA advises teachers.

The union’s leadership has strongly emphasized its commitment to radical LGBTQ advocacy, regardless of parental objections or, seemingly, state law. “We will say gay! We will say trans!” bellowed NEA President Becky Pringle at the group’s 2022 Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly, taking aim at the popular “Parental Rights in Education” law, signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), who went on to win a rousing double-digit reelection months later. The bill says teachers may not “encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” before the fourth grade. The NEA stated its union members would “validate our students,” presumably when children’s gender choice conflicts with their parents’ values.

The NEA’s chief union rival, the AFT, “also coached its members on how to inject gender identity politics into the classroom,” found a report from the Defense of Freedom Institute. The AFT’s Together Educating America’s Children (TEACH) conference last July held sessions on “Affirming LGBTQIA+ Identities in and out of the Classroom” and “The TGNCNB [Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming, Nonbinary] Inclusive School and Classroom.”

Teachers in Tennessee’s Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, which strongly supported President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, learned that the U.S. operates as a “system of oppression” that confers “privilege status” on “white,” “able-bodied,” “men, cisgendered,” “heterosexual,” “Christian” Americans; but the U.S. allegedly brands an “oppression status” on any “person of color”; “woman, trans, nonbinary, genderqueer,” “LGBQ+, polyamorous”; and people whose religious views are “pagan.”

The LGBTQ movement’s advocacy goes outside the classroom to the restroom, locker room — even the hotel room. Last summer, teachers at Governor’s Ranch Elementary School in Littleton, Colorado, attempted to force a fifth-grade girl to share a bed with a boy who identified as a girl on an overnight field trip. Last July, the AFT adopted a resolution supporting “inclusive” policies allowing men to access female facilities, “including, but not limited to, bathrooms and locker rooms.” AFT President Randi Weingartenwalked away from a reporter who asked her about girls who do not feel safe undressing in front of boys in their locker rooms.

“Both teacher unions ignore the reality that most teachers want to teach, not affirm a student’s gender identity, either due to their personal values or their beliefs that doing so oversteps their authority and encroaches on the role of parents,” says the Defense of Freedom Institute.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Teachers Ran LGBT Education Program At Dallas School Without Approval: REPORT

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An LGBTQ program that partnered Dallas Independent School Districts (ISD) teachers with a local transgender care-providing clinic was never approved by Dallas ISD officials, documents obtained in a public records request by the Dallas Express showed.

The Out for Safe Schools program reportedly partnered the district with a transgender-affirming clinic called the Resource Center, which allegedly provides transgender patients with hormones. The program educated teachers on how they could be “allies” to the LGBTQ cause, according to the outlet.

This partnership agreement was allegedly signed by the Resource Center, but not by any Dallas ISD officials, according to the Dallas Express.

“The department said there was no executed agreement,” JoAnna Talley, public information coordinator for Dallas ISD, told the Dallas Express.

Despite this apparent lack of support on behalf of the district, the program was reportedly operating anyway, the outlet reported. Further documents obtained by the Dallas Express allegedly show that the program was struggling to recruit teachers.

“Update. We still only have one person signed up for today,” Mahoganie Gaston, the LGBTQ youth support services coordinator for Dallas ISD, said in an April 2021 email, according to the outlet.

“Ok. Let’s go ahead and cancel today & ask today’s participant to attend in May. Hopefully, the trustees can push out the training in the areas they represent & attendance will be higher for the final two sessions,” Rafael McDonnell, an employee of the Resource Center, responded, according to the outlet.

Mentions of the Out for Safe Schools program were allegedly taken off the websites of Dallas ISD and the Resource Center after the Dallas Express exposed the program previously, according to the outlet.

The Dallas ISD LQBTQ support center did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

Recently, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office permitted Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to refuse to hand over documents in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) pertaining to the $90,000 they paid to Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago since 2021, as reported by the DCNF.

The payment was reportedly for a series of training sessions from the hospital’s Sexuality Education Program, which includes “age-appropriate” lessons on anal sex and “gender-affirming” sexual communication, according to the hospital’s website. The denial was made on the grounds that Illinois law protects “course materials” from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, according to the DCNF.

AUTHOR

THOMAS MCGIFFIN

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Criminal’: Legal, Parental Advocates Sound Alarm On Blue State Bill Allowing Minors To Consent To Medical Procedures

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Why are Americans becoming more stupid?

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“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” ― Aristotle

Why are Americans becoming more stupid?

Our entire education system needs a revolution

By: Joel Kotkin, Unherd, February 26, 2024:

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind,” said Winston Churchill.

And judging by the state of education in America, it seems both of those empires could soon crumble. The dysfunction is evident from top to bottom: from Ivy League outposts down to the secondary schools. Both are producing a generation that is ill-informed, illiterate and innumerate. In other words, a generation increasingly ill-suited to function as productive citizens in a democracy.

One might expect, then, that the creation of a raft of new universities and schools focused on doing something different would seem like a fundamental necessity. After all, young people are deserting college in droves, with enrolments down by 15% over the past decade; in the lower grades, it’s common to hear talk of “zombie schools”, the product of more than 20% of pupils being “chronically absent”.

And yet, the emergence of these still-small shoots have terrified the educratic establishment. Some claim the shift in emphasis towards classics and civics, now occurring in places such as Florida’s New College, is “sinister development” by nefarious Right-wingers. Similarly, the teachers’ unions have resisted a number of moves to create charter schools — which increase choice in the public system — because they are part of a “war on schools”.

In some cases, the defence of failure is breathtaking. Blue states such as Illinois have worked to all but eliminate charters, even as the Land of Lincoln boasts 53 schools where not one student can do grade-level math and 30 where none can do so in English. These schools are overwhelmingly in Chicago, where a significant increase in spending per student since 2019 seems to have made no impact.

Yet Chicago’s failures are wholly representative. The most recent National Assessments of Educational Progress found that only 27% of eighth graders are proficient in reading, 20% in math, 22% in geography, and a mere 13% in US History. The Covid lockdowns may have accelerated the deterioration, but scores have continued to decline since the pandemic ended. IQ scores, which had been rising for decades, are now falling even among college students.

More influential here is education’s gradual radicalisation, which has its origins at the top of the food chain. Already in 2018, one study of 51 top-rated colleges found that the proportion of liberals to conservatives was generally at least 8 to 1, and often as high as 70 to 1. Five years later, nearly three in five US professors admitted to self-censoring to avoid offending administrators and students.

Continue reading.

A READER’S COMMENT:

“This is now [a] state of war, fifth generational war – from the inside, not kinetic, but lawfare against the society in order to destroy it. Destroy morals and ethics, the sense of fairness, destroy the understanding that rights only work when tied to responsibilities. Break the family – get young to not marry, be bisexual or gay if possible. Create mental illness (phones, entertainment industry, the ‘health departments, vaccine), increase Crime, increase anti-social behavior, import a vast number of unsuitable people, cause them to not absorb in the native culture to fragment society. Destroy religion. Destroy patriotism.

Remove enlightenment liberalism (the writers of the USA Constitution, for example) and replace the philosophy with Postmodernism, which is basically Satan’s creed. Grow debt past the ability to pay to service it, award entitlements to the public sure to bankrupt the nation as they have to be borrowed to pay them out – then have to borrow to ‘service’ that debt’s interest payments, which is called a ‘doom loop’, borrowing to pay interest on debt….. Make home ownership unaffordable to young so they do not have Families. Basically do everything the UNIParty’s of all Western Nations do – abetted and run by their ‘Deep States’ and Globalist masters. Keep ‘Forever Wars” burning to justify a secret Police state, the ‘Security Services’ are now watching you, their resources turned inward….

But enough listing – I am sure you know a hundred more insane things being done – and even enforced, to destroy us all. (Kneeling?) drugs, homelessness, just endless.

At the heart of it all is to destroy Enlightenment and Classical Education. One which has good and evil – not ‘correct and incorrect.’ The people are utterly powerless once you replace that with Postmodernism Liberalism. No morals, No ethics, nothing of ultimate importance.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Florida Weighs Allowing Chaplains in Public Schools

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The Sunshine State is considering giving students access to chaplains in public schools. On Tuesday, the Florida State Senate’s Appropriations Committee on Education voted to approve Senate Bill 1044, which would allow chaplains to volunteer to offer counseling at public and charter schools.

The text of the bill states, “Each school district or charter school may adopt a policy to authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide supports, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.” The bill would require volunteer chaplains to pass a background check and would further require school administrators to publicize any chaplain’s religious affiliation and obtain parental consent before a student begins counseling.

Similar bills have been advanced in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas over the past year, facing backlash from Democrats but also some criticism from conservatives and Christians, who fear that the lax requirements around the volunteer chaplain position may allow for atheists, Satanists, and others to present themselves to children as chaplains.

Pastor Jay Johnston, Family Research Council’s chaplain and National Prayer Director, told The Washington Stand, “In speaking with church and ministry leaders about this opportunity to place chaplains in schools, it is suitable from my view if churches who adhere to biblical instruction could commission chaplains and send them to schools — if they have chaplains who know Jesus and have a pastoral heart to minister and bring forth spiritual guidance as they speak life, hope, and encouragement to students, faculty, and parents.”

“However, there is a downside to this,” he continued. “If church and ministry leaders don’t seize the opportunity and chaplains take up positions in schools that are without Christ or associated with a cult, it could give the enemy a foothold and expose the student body to spiritual darkness.”

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, also commented on the good that school chaplains could achieve. “The specifics of the Florida bill may not be perfect,” she told TWS, “but the need that Florida legislators are seeking to address is very real. As a general matter, as long as the chaplain is actually a pastor who has theological training and ministry experience, I think school chaplains would be a blessing to everyone in the school: students, faculty, staff, and parents.”

However, she also warned, “But when I think of my own public school system where I live, I can easily imagine the approval by school officials of a chaplain in drag, an atheist chaplain, and worse. And that is obviously worse than no chaplain.”

A spokeswoman for the Florida Catholic Conference explained to TWS that although the state’s Catholic bishops have not taken an official stance on the legislation, “We recognize the good that chaplains can do in schools by helping students to address their spiritual and emotional needs. We are pleased that parents will determine the services their children will receive as well in districts that choose to establish chaplaincy programs.”

Reverend James Golden, pastor of Mt. Zion AME Church and the co-founder of Pastors for Florida Children, was among those critical of the bill’s lax qualification requirements. He told lawmakers on Tuesday, “We cannot reduce this important job to somebody who is just able to pass a level two background check.” Golden’s comments echo complaints voiced by a coalition of 100 active chaplains in Texas when the Lone Star State advanced similar legislation last year. In a letter, the chaplains wrote that the Texas bill “allows a school district to give any employee or volunteer who can pass a background check the title of ‘chaplain.’ This is simply not enough. Professional chaplains have specific education and expertise to fulfill our role in helping others engage their own religious practices and traditions.”

The Texas chaplains also wrote, “As trained chaplains, we strongly caution against the government assertion of authority for the spiritual development and formation of our public school children. We would never provide spiritual care to someone without their consent. And when children are involved, parental consent is necessary.” Florida’s new legislation, however, specifically addresses this concern.

The Sunshine State’s bill also addresses another concern raised in Texas last year. The Texas chaplains made it clear, “Because of our training and experience, we know that chaplains are not a replacement for school counselors or safety measures in our public schools… We cooperate with mental health counselors — we do not compete with them.” While the Texas bill specified that “a school district may employ a chaplain instead of a school counselor to perform the duties required of a school counselor” (emphasis added), Florida’s bill does not replace counselors but simply adds chaplains.

Florida Senate Bill 1044 is now being reviewed by the State Senate’s Rules Committee. If approved by the state legislature, it will go into effect July 1.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Henry Blackaby — Experiencing God Face to Face

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

New York Times ‘Journalist’ Accused of Participating In Oct. 7th Hamas Attacks Wins Journalism Award

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The New York Times proudly announced last Monday that it had “won three George Polk awards, including two for its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.” Those prestigious journalism awards went to “Samar Abu Elouf and Yousef Masoud of The Times” for “photojournalism for their photographs of the conflict from inside Gaza, capturing the horrific toll of Israel’s airstrikes on civilians, including the death and injury of many children.” The Times neglected to mention, however, one telling detail: Masoud has been unmasked as a member of Hamas who participated in the Oct. 7 jihad massacres inside Israel.

The Paper of Record shows no sign of firing Masoud or returning the George Polk award he won, but the Jerusalem Post had the story on Thursday, noting that the media watchdog Honest Reporting had “highlighted his accreditation to a photo provided to the Associated Press, with the caption, ‘Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis southern Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.’ How had Masoud gotten on the scene so quickly, so as to be in a position to take this picture? Honest Reporting “questioned Masoud’s explanation of his presence that he’d been woken up at 5.30 a.m. by rocket fire even though the firing only started an hour later.”

What’s more, “Masoud’s name was included in an investigative report from November showing that journalists from leading news outlets, including The New York Times, AP, Reuters, and CNN, joined Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip on October 7 to document the events with their cameras.” The New York Times responded indignantly: “The accusation that anyone at The New York Times had advance knowledge of the Hamas attacks or accompanied Hamas terrorists during the attacks is untrue and outrageous. It is reckless to make such allegations, putting our journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza at risk.”

Honest Reporting, however, said that claims it had “jeopardized the safety of all media working in Israel and the Palestinian territories” were nothing more than “a deliberate attempt to deflect from the real issues we raised.” And that’s true. Why doesn’t Masoud explain how he came to be on the scene of a Hamas operation on the morning of Oct. 7, and why he stated that he was awakened by rocket fire an hour before the rocket fire started?

After all, there is nothing remotely implausible about the idea of a New York Times “journalist” being a Hamas operative. Honest Reporting pointed out the Times’ “backing of a decision to rehire Gazan freelance filmmaker Soliman Hijjy despite HonestReporting previously revealing how he had praised Hitler on social media.” What’s more, the Times and the rest of the establishment media have for years been consistently anti-Israel, and have worked assiduously to whitewash the bloody reality of Islamic jihad. Why would the Times, or any other establishment propaganda arm, hesitate to hire a supporter of Hamas and fanatical hater of Israel and Jews? Media observer Hugh Fitzgerald states that “save for a single columnist — Bret Stephens — the New York Times has no one on its staff, among its hundreds of reporters, columnists, and op/ed contributors, who could be described as willing to give Israel a fair shake.”

We have just recently discovered how closely the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) collaborated with Hamas, allowing the jihadis to operate on UNRWA premises, employing Hamas operatives, and teaching hatred of Jews and Israel in its textbooks for Palestinian schools. If this could happen before the eyes of a watching world, what would possibly prevent a “journalist” from a deeply biased and essentially pro-Hamas outlet from going whole hog with his support for the jihad terror outfit?

The New York Times has a great deal to answer for, far beyond Yousef Masoud. Masoud may indeed have been a Hamas jihadi, in which case his George Polk award should be rescinded and the Times should not use him again. But the fact that none of that is likely to happen is in large part a result of the Times’ indefatigable efforts to make support for jihad violence respectable and mainstream. The Times should at this point perform a thoroughgoing soul-searching, and a wholesale reevaluation of its uncritical support for jihadis. But nothing is much less likely.

AUTHOR

Robert Spencer

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Journalist Participated in Hamas massacre, Ecstatically Displayed Soldier’s ID Card, Helmet and Magazine

Yet Another Muslim Journalist Working for The New York Times Praises Hitler

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 7: Politicized Education—Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is

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Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite themselves. The globalist war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. The tactical attack plan uses asymmetric psychological and informational warfare to destabilize Americans and drive society out of objective reality into the madness of subjective reality. America’s children are the primary target of the globalist predators.

The three pillars of faith, family, and flag were established as the infrastructure of freedom in the United States of America. Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of an educated citizenry for sustaining ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. The infrastructure and moral tenets in American culture were derived from both the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition our Founding Fathers embraced.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. —John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798

Our Founding Fathers recognized literacy as the cornerstone of critical thinking and the transfer of information. They knew that an educated, moral, responsible adult citizenry was necessary to sustain and grow our fledgling nation.

Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country. —Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district—all studied and appreciated as they merit—are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty. —Benjamin Franklin, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (ed. 1864)

It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country. ––Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Reading remains the most fundamental skill required to preserve and protect our constitutional republic. The enemies of freedom targeted American education tactically, to undermine literacy in order to achieve an unaware and compliant citizenry decades before that infamous phrase was associated with John Podesta and Hillary Clinton. Children were always the strategic target because they are the future of America.

Industrialists John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were major influences in the evolution of American education. Teachers College at Columbia University was endowed with $500,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1902. In that same year John D. Rockefeller created the General Education Board (GEB) with a gift of $1 million. The GEB provided funding and influence to shape American schooling. Rockefeller is quoted as saying, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers; I want a nation of workers.” Education was being recalibrated to emphasize vocationalism, to produce future factory workers for industrialists’ needs. The GEB was subsumed by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1960.

The idea of mandatory education in the United States was embraced and promoted by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie advocated for a teacher certification system, and donated millions of dollars to establish libraries and universities across the country. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching[i] (CFAT) was originally established as the Carnegie Foundation with a $10 million gift by Andrew Carnegie in 1905, “as an independent policy and research center called to ‘do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education.'” (Carnegie Foundation History)

Since its inception, CFAT has had a powerful influence on American education, particularly in its efforts at quantifying and standardizing education. In 1906 it introduced the Carnegie Unit, a measurement of education credits required for high school curriculum and graduation requirements. The CFAT pension program, which became an independent nonprofit organization called Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association[ii] (TIAA) in 1914, was linked to participation in curriculums using the Carnegie Unit in high schools for graduation, and to colleges and universities for admission.

A 2015 CFAT study authored by Elena Silva, Taylor White, and Thomas Toch, “The Carnegie Unit: A Century-old Standard in a Changing Educational Landscape,”[iii] discusses the history and future of the Carnegie Unit. From the report:

The Carnegie Unit and the Credit Hour (p. 8)

The standard Carnegie Unit is defined as 120 hours of contact time with an instructor, which translates into one hour of instruction on a particular subject per day, five days a week, for twenty-four weeks annually. Most public high schools award credit based on this 120-hour standard (one credit for a course that lasts all year; or half a credit for a semester course). And, while state and district coursework requirements for graduation vary, most states require a minimum number of units, typically expressed as “Carnegie Units.” A typical high school student earns six to seven credits per year over a four-year program of high school.

In higher education, students receive “credit hours,” a metric derived from the Carnegie Unit and based on the number of “contact hours” students spend in class per week in a given semester. A typical three-credit course, for example, meets for three hours per week over a fifteen-week semester. A student, then, might earn fifteen credit hours per semester (fifteen is standard full-time registration for a semester, thirty for an academic year) en route to a four-year bachelor’s degree requiring a total of 120 credits.

The report recommended replacing the Carnegie Unit with a system of Outcome-Based Education (OBE). Popularized in the 1990s, OBE is an educational theory that rejects traditional content-based learning that emphasizes rote learning and acquisition of foundational knowledge, and bases the educational system instead on personal pre-determined goals called outcomes. It is the quintessential shift from the WHAT of education to the WHO.

Marketed as deeply personalized, empowering, and student-centric, OBE rejects traditional education as old-fashioned, limiting, and educator-centric. In OBE teachers are facilitators, not educators with authority or expertise. The student-centric focus is not on individual academic achievement, but rather on student social interactions and cooperativelearning experiences.

This seismic shift from traditional to outcome-based education marked the institutional shift of American education from the education our founders envisioned to social activism where outcomes, results, performances, competencies, and standards could all be evaluated with a politicized metric. Outcome-Based Education was the chosen vehicle for social change through education, which was now being used to emphasize political activism and produce anti-American Americans for globalists’ needs.

The 2015 study indicated that one of the biggest obstacles to shifting from the Carnegie Unit to Outcome-Based Education (OBE) was federal financing:

But efforts to further push the boundaries of the design and delivery of higher education face a substantial barrier: the federal government’s requirement that most students taking part in the $150 billion federal financial aid program attend colleges or universities using Carnegie Units. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 25)

The Obama administration was committed to OBE, so it proposed changes to the federal funding model that included other criteria besides the Carnegie Unit:

To promote competency models in higher education, the Obama administration has endorsed a provision in the federal financial aid regulations that extends eligibility under the program to students at institutions that use “projects, papers, examinations, presentations, performances, portfolios” and other “direct” measures of learning “in lieu of credit hours or clock hours” to gauge student performance. It initially extended “direct assessment” privileges to two institutions, Capella University, a for-profit online provider, and Southern New Hampshire University’s College for America. The University of Wisconsin’s Flexible Option, which is led by UW–Extension, received approval for direct assessment in August 2014. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 25)

The Carnegie Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have politicized American education and abandoned their founding missions. The 2015 CFAT Executive Summary states unequivocally that the Carnegie Unit must be replaced in order to facilitate “solutions” sought by reformers. It is political reform disguised as educational reform:

The Carnegie Foundation is committed to making American education more effective, more equitable, and more efficient at this critical junction in the nation’s history. We share change advocates’ goals of bringing greater transparency and flexibility to the design and delivery of K–12 and higher education in pursuit of deeper learning for more students. After studying the Carnegie Unit’s relationship to today’s reforms, we have concluded that American education’s reliance on the Carnegie Unit is an impediment to some of the solutions sought by reformers. Most notably, the federal government’s financial aid rules requiring colleges and universities to measure student progress using Carnegie Units are a barrier to the spread of flexible delivery models in higher education. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 5)

Changing the metrics of education from the Carnegie Unit to OBE weaponized American education, transforming it from its colonial purpose of literacy and support of Americanism to being the political agent for massive social change.

CFAT’s current Mission Statement:[iv]

The mission of the Carnegie Foundation is to catalyze transformational change in education so that every student has the opportunity to live a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was chartered by an act of Congress in 1906. Since then, it has pioneered a broad range of transformative advancements in K–12 and higher education, including the creation of the Carnegie Unit; TIAA; standards for schools of law, medicine, education, and engineering; Educational Testing Service; the GRE; Pell Grants; the Carnegie Classifications; the U.S. Department of Education; and the use of improvement science to build the field’s capacity to improve.

Today, the Carnegie Foundation has set its sights on tackling the nation’s most significant educational challenge: achieving educational equity for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander, and first-generation students, as well as those from low-income households. Carnegie will leverage its expertise, assets, partnerships, convening power, and social and reputational capital to address longstanding educational inequities that impede economic mobility and exacerbate racial inequality.

Historically, public education supported upward mobility and the middle class through education focused on teaching basic skills and fundamental knowledge. The politicization of American education shifted the ideological focus from meritocracy’s equal opportunity to socialism’s equal outcome. It was a seismic shift in both form and content in American education.

We are feeling the aftershocks of this earthquake today. The introduction of racist Critical Race Theory, the staggering increase in functional illiteracy, the profoundly disturbing introduction of pornographic sex education—all are derivatives of the changed purpose of America’s education industry.

Journalist and educational reformer Alex Newman explores the subject in his September 13, 2023, article, “Lesbian-Marxist US Library Boss: School & Libraries for ‘Socialist Organizing’.”[v] Newman writes:

Government schools and local libraries should be used for “socialist organizing,” the self-proclaimed “Marxist lesbian” chief of the American Library Association (ALA) proclaimed at a major socialism conference last week. The library boss has also become notorious recently for hating on parents, families, Christians and anyone else who stands in the way of indoctrinating children.

Speaking after a panel at the Socialism 2023 conference in Chicago organized by a coalition of revolutionaries advocating for the “right” of children to engage in prostitution, among other absurdities, ALA chief Emily Drabinski did not hold back. “Public education needs to be a site of socialist organizing,” she told attendees…. Among other topics, the panel at which Drabinski spoke out included discussion on how teachers could indoctrinate children with Critical Race Theory propaganda, even in jurisdictions that have banned it. “We need to be on the agenda of socialist organizing,” added Drabinski…. The socialism event in Chicago, which featured the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as a supporter, featured panels on abolishing the family and replacing it with government, as well as “best practices for developing socialist programming for kids.”…

“Ms. Drabinski is a supporter of Critical Race Theory, which Montana rejected as discriminatory, and other far-left-leaning ideologies that have no place in our schools and libraries,” said Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen. “By electing a declared Marxist as their President, the ALA has not only turned its back on families, parental rights, and American values—it has turned its back on America itself.”

Taxpayer funds are being weaponized to foment a revolution against the very taxpayers coerced into footing the bill for this dangerous extremism. It is time for all library systems to leave the ALA and for government schools turning children into Marxist revolutionaries to be shut down. The future of America is on the line.

Today’s American education industry is in direct opposition to our Founding Fathers, who understood that an educated citizenry is required for sustaining ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. The American education industry is now the instrument for anti-American propaganda and Marxist indoctrination. Parents can no longer trust their children’s education to it.

SOURCES:

[i] Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

[ii] Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association

[iii] The Carnegie Unit: A Century-old Standard in a Changing Educational Landscape

[iv] Mission Statement

[v] Lesbian-Marxist US Library Boss: School & Libraries for ‘Socialist Organizing’

©2024. Linda Goudsmit. All rights reserved.

Please visit my Pundicity page: goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: lindagoudsmit.com

Where is George Washington?

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When I was a child going to school we studied the Presidents. We played a game with coins and each president had a coin. We were told a story and asked questions and had to attribute each question to a president . The one with the most coin was the winner and got an ice cream.

My favorite story was from George Washington.  ”The cherry tree myth is one of the oldest and best-known legends about George Washington. In the original story, when Washington was six years old, he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree with it. When his father discovered what George had done, he became angry. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.” Washington’s father embraced him and declared that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees.

The first time I heard Obama talk and lie, about spying or Obamacare, Fast and Furious, etc. I realized, they all lie. All the Presidents lie. So where does that leave us. Who do we believe? The media picks and chooses what lie they will report on making its about equal.  The media is bias and will over report the GOP and under report the DNC.

The saddest part to me is: How do we teach our children to tell the truth if their leaders are lying?  Today this generation of children grow up with no heroes except animated characters that they see on the big screen. Where do they go to learn telling the truth is the greatest virtue they can possess?

The family was supposed to teach virtue.  The church was supposed to assist in morality.  American values were to be the finishing touches.  All of that is gone now as the schools no longer teach history. no longer teach truth.  Facts are unimportant and the one with the biggest wallet is the winner. It no longer matters if you lie cheat or steal to get what you want as long as you get it. Today we are petrified if the Speaker of the House or a football team prays before a meeting or event.  We are losing our country because of the lies. The Globalists although smaller in number can cause so much chaos by lying that the misinformed uneducated people will turn on each other and beg the same people who created the chaos for help.

“When people become educated, you can’t control them. You can’t frighten them. People who are educated know their own power and don’t surrender it to others.” Jordan Maxwell

Get your kids out of government schools. Tell your local official to stop taking government grants.  Vet your candidates and look for George Washington.

Contrary to popular belief, George Washington did not buy slaves. He inherited them. At that time in history, there were no big machines to manage farms and slavery was the method used. This had been going on for hundreds of years as the loser of any war became the slave of the winner.

The following quotes are from George Washington via William Federer as we celebrate President Washington’s Birthday. I believe if President Washington was with us today he would say the same thing.

On July 2, 1776, from his Head Quarters in New York, General Washington issued his General Orders:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army.  Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore to resolve to conquer or die …”

In Washington’s Farewell Address, he warned us about Political Parties: However combinations or Associations of the above description may now & then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, & to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

You can find more on the history of President Washington by reading the thoughts in his Farewell Address or listening to Bill Federer on the Prism of America’s Education show today.

Today we will also discuss our health. Americans are not taking care of their health issues and things are about to get worse. Most of our drugs come from CCP-China.  What if those drugs were withheld or worse yet, what about a Cyber attack.  I believe you can only handle the stress of life if your foundation is strong. Your body is your foundation. No one will take care of it if you don’t. Listen to Robert Scott Bell

Remember: 

Everything is connected. Nothing is random, Everything has a plan. All plans are lies. All Globalists want is MONEY, POWER, CONTROL Don’t give them yours. Challenge them with the truth. Doing Nothing is affirmation. Share with your 5.

So join me today

©2024. Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

Show Link: https://www.americaoutloud.news/the-prism-of-americas-education/

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‘Desperate’ for Votes: Biden Expands Student Loan Forgiveness by $1.2 Billion

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On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced a new round of federal student loan debt forgiveness, in which almost 153,000 borrowers will have their loans forgiven at a cost of $1.2 billion to American taxpayers under what the White House has termed the SAVE program. Since Biden took office, he has now canceled over $131 billion of student loan debt. Experts say the policy, which will further deepen the over $34 trillion national debt, is a “desperate” attempt to garner the votes of young college students.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Biden indicated that his administration’s effort to cancel student loan debt is far from over, stating that “we’re pushing to relieve more.” As Penn Wharton estimated last July, the SAVE program is projected to cost “$475 billion over the 10-year budget window.”

The administration’s latest announcement is further proof that Biden is undeterred by the Supreme Court’s decision last June which struck down the administration’s plan to cancel up to $400 billion in student loans held by as many as 43 million people, finding that the HEROS Act of 2003 did not give the Secretary of Education the authority to forgive student loans, as the administration tried to claim. Following the decision, Biden stated, “I will stop at nothing to find other ways” to cancel student loans. Last week, Biden further boasted of ignoring the nation’s highest court regarding student loan forgiveness. “The Supreme Court blocked it,” he said. “But that didn’t stop me.”

Legal experts say that Biden’s latest loan cancellation is unconstitutional. “Despite the Supreme Court clearly saying that under our constitution the president cannot rewrite our nation’s laws, President Biden continues to do just that,” Karen Harned, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Responsibility, told National Review. “With this latest Executive Order forgiving over $1 billion in student loans, the President is once again breaking the law in a transparent attempt to garner votes.”

Observers are also noting that Biden’s policy clearly favors college graduates — one of the most privileged classes of Americans — over those who are less fortunate. “Per the Pew Research Center, there exists ‘a growing earnings gap between young college graduates and their counterparts without degrees,’ and that gap only ‘widened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,’” wrote the editors at NRO on Thursday. “College graduates have better employment prospects, better health outcomes, and lower divorce rates than everyone else. Despite this, the federal government chose to spend around a quarter of a trillion dollars during the pandemic on an unnecessary pause in student-loan repayments. Now it wants to double that number with an amnesty?”

NRO’s Charles Cooke further pointed out that Biden’s student loan policy does not address the underlying issues that have caused Americans to amass billions in student loan debt. “This isn’t alms for the poor; it’s a brazen cash-grab by Joe Biden’s friends. … There’s no principle here; the debts owed by others remain untouched. There’s no reform here; the education system remains exactly as it was before this started.”

Others say that the move boils down to a frantic attempt by a president with historically low approval ratings to capture more votes in November’s election.

“President Biden knows how deeply unpopular he is with young voters and his base, and his student debt plan is a desperate attempt to win them back on the taxpayer’s dime,” Sentinel Action Fund President Jessica Anderson said Wednesday. “Biden hopes that wiping away some student loan debt will make voters forget that he is responsible for record-high inflation, rising food prices, and our stagnant economy. Americans won’t be fooled by Biden’s latest campaign stunt.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are echoing these sentiments. “He unilaterally is forgiving this debt, supposedly forgiving, which means he doesn’t care what the law says — Congress,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) commented on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday. “He doesn’t care what the judiciary says — the Supreme Court. [A]nd yes, of course he’s buying votes. But the rest of the taxpayers, there is no forgiveness [for them]. Someone is going to pay these loans back, and now it’s going to be you, the taxpayer.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

he Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.