Meme - Richard Hanania @RichardHanania: "Poll finds that 90% of whites support Brown v Board of Education, which famously banned segregation in schools. That's higher than the 80% of blacks who support the decision. The question explained what the case was about, so they weren't confused by this."
Richard Hanania on X - "68% of Americans say more should be done to integrate blacks and whites in school. 26% say less. Of course, no one stops whites from moving their children into black schools but they don't. This is the difference between stated (politics) and revealed preferences (markets)."
Mom Is Pulling Her 1st Grader Out Of School Because She Refuses To Sign A Homework Paper - "One mom decided to “unschool” her child after not signing her son’s homework paper, which resulted in him not receiving a reward... Rhae explained up front that she is “not a homework mom.” So, when her son presented her with a piece of paper she had to sign and date as confirmation that he did his homework, she wasn’t having any of it. “I have four kids, and I run a massive business through social media,” she said. “I don’t have time.” Rhae’s son explained to her that he would not receive a reward, known as a “fuzzy,” if he didn’t turn this piece of paper in. But she was adamant. “You’re not going to get punished for something I’m not doing,” she said. Eventually, Rhae’s son told her that everyone else in his class had five fuzzies, except for him; he only had one. Rhae felt that her son was being “targeted” and insisted he be moved to another classroom until the end of the year."
The Systemic Racism Canard's Consequences - "Black and Hispanic students have markedly higher suspension and expulsion rates than whites and Asians. The Obama administration determined that these disparities needed to be remedied. Rather than address the possibility that the higher rates of suspensions and expulsions weren’t due to systemic racism but to the fact that blacks and Hispanics engaged in misconduct meriting such discipline at a higher rate than whites and Asians (e.g., in 2015, 12.6 percent of blacks engaged in a physical fight on school property versus 5.6 percent of white students), the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education and the Civil-Rights Division of the Department of Justice issued a guidance that, among other things, triggered federal investigations of schools whose suspension/expulsion rates differed materially by race. Such investigations can be extremely expensive and time-consuming for schools. So, quite magically, the year after the guidance was issued, the suspension/expulsion disparities disappeared; i.e., black and Hispanic students who engaged in behavior that previously would’ve resulted in suspension or expulsion remained in class. For anyone with a grain of common sense, the results were predictable. Teachers who testified on the matter before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported classrooms out of control, even teachers being severely beaten. There also was a marked increase in the number of students who reported being bullied and a significant decrease in the number of students who felt safe on school grounds (resulting in an increase in the number of students who reported not attending school at least once in the preceding 30 days due to fear of violence). Vandalism, graffiti, and disruptive classroom behaviors rose as well. Overall academic performance declined when schools banned out-of-school suspensions and expulsions. Those disproportionately affected by the chaos were black students who wished to learn. The “systemic racism” canard is a prescription for public-policy disasters in areas ranging from criminal justice to education to economic policy. Unfortunately, it’s a rhetorically powerful and politically useful tool. So media, academia, politicians, and woke corporations will continue to repeat it to the detriment of minorities in particular, and America as a whole."
Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "In states like California and Virginia, some school districts have launched so-called "antiracist equitable grading" initiatives to decrease the number of D and F grades given to blacks and Hispanics."
If a black or hispanic student doesn't do the exam and you fail him, that's racist. Left wingers want equal outcomes regardless of merit or effort
Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "In recent years, researchers have found that around two-thirds of differences in school achievement can be explained by differences in children's genes. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797613486982… Three years ago, the official California state task force assigned to come up with a new "antiracist" math curriculum for public schools stated that it rejected the idea of innate talent and ability. Leftwing science denial almost always boils down to rejection of any scientific findings that threaten sacred equalitarian beliefs relating to race and sex."
Clearly, more funding is the solution
Literacy and Numeracy Are More Heritable Than Intelligence in Primary School - "Because literacy and numeracy are the focus of teaching in schools, whereas general cognitive ability (g, intelligence) is not, it would be reasonable to expect that literacy and numeracy are less heritable than g. Here, we directly compare heritabilities of multiple measures of literacy, numeracy, and g in a United Kingdom sample of 7,500 pairs of twins assessed longitudinally at ages 7, 9, and 12. We show that differences between children are significantly and substantially more heritable for literacy and numeracy than for g at ages 7 and 9, but not 12. We suggest that the reason for this counterintuitive result is that universal education in the early school years reduces environmental disparities so that individual differences that remain are to a greater extent due to genetic differences. In contrast, the heritability of g increases during development as individuals select and create their own environments correlated with their genetic propensities."
Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "In 2020, the Los Angeles Unified School District described standing still in line and talking without raising one's hand as "white middle class norms" which black students should not be expected to comply with under the system's revised disciplinary policies."
"Some students of color receive undue or harsh punishment, (i.e.: office referrals or detention) for not demonstrating behaviors such as standing still in line, raising their hand, or the ability to monitor personal space in ways that are consistent with white middle class norms. This provides video provides an example of unconscious bias."
Meme - "I'm sure the teacher in this classroom is giving completely unbiased lessons to their students. Another ad for homeschooling"
"Look what my teacher put on the wall *pictures of American presidents with a clown face over an upside down Donald Trump*"
School indoctrination and teacher political bias is a far right conspiracy theory and misinformation
Thread by @johnkonrad on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "My wife is a teacher. Here’s excerpts from the special kids election edition of the @NYTimes being taught in some public schools this week. Editors note: grown-ups should not read this
Apparently Trump thinks everyone should be able to buy fully automatic grenade launchers. Trump grew up in Queens but no mention that Kamala grew up in Canada. Specifics on how Trump’s dad made money but none on what type of economics Harris’ Dad taught
The full candidate section:
Personally I won’t be encouraging my daughter to knock on doors during the most contentious election of my lifetime. But that’s just me. This part tracks with Harris’ previous statements that young adults make bad decisions. I have to agree with the NYTimes on this one. WWE stars are pretty cool. Apparently the electoral college is “weird”. More than weird:
Be sure to stay up late on a school night to hear what the MSM talking heads say about each candidate! 🤦♂️
“Because Trump refused to accept the results and claimed the election was ‘stolen’” No mention of Bush v. Gore and the United States Supreme Court?
Advice on how to convince grandpa not to vote for Trump
Obligatory capital riot sidebar
Ok I’m sorry they do mention the 2000 election and Al Gore’s acceptance of the “finality” of the outcome
The big issues kids should focus on:
Health care
Gun violence
Public transit
Being nice
The environment
Taylor Swift is awesome! Ask a Senator! All democrats with a single republican at the very end
The full edition for you to decide on your own"
Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "If systemic racism and white supremacy impede black academic success, why don't they also impede black success in sports or in the music industry? And why don't they seem to have any effect on Asian academic success (other than perhaps a positive one)?"
Austin Berg on X - "BREAKING: All seven members of the Chicago Board of Education have announced they will resign. This is unprecedented. The move comes after weeks of heavy pressure from Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union, demanding board members do two things ⬇️
1. Issue a $300M payday loan to fund the union's contract demands.
2. Fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez for his refusal to support that loan.
So now what happens? Johnson is expected to appoint seven CTU loyalists to the board in order to borrow the money to pay off the union. And fire Martinez. All just a few weeks before elected school board members take office. So rather than respecting the will of Chicago voters, Johnson is hot swapping the entire school board in order to give a massive, taxpayer-funded gift to his largest campaign donor (CTU). This is what happens when a radical teachers union is on both sides of the bargaining table. Early voting is now open in the Nov. 5 election for Chicago's school board. I encourage you to vote for an independent, reform candidate against a CTU-backed candidate. Our city depends on it. Will drop the list of reform candidates below."
State of Illinois proposes to mandate racist books for all public school students - "Many of these books are simply too new to be considered essential reading. The Illinois General Assembly is attempting to mandate, by law, the literary canon. The establishment of a literary canon, books that are considered classics, that make their way onto must read lists, is not something that ought be done by an arm of the government. The push to indoctrinate students with anti-racist literature as a means to make them not racist has not been proved to be effective. This is especially concerning as much of what passes for anti-racist is primarily anti-white. In 2021 America, whiteness is an immutable condition that renders the afflicted person unable to overcome the biases that come from having lived their lives with a pale skin tone."
From 2021
Thread by @tracewoodgrains on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "learning the history of Philadelphia's most selective public school. It was established as a middle school for advanced students. In 2021-2022, Philadelphia switched all schools to a unified lottery system, and the school's focus on excellence was systematically dismantled. With the change, the school (along with all other Philly schools) had no discretion over who to admit. Its pipeline was broken: students from the middle school no longer received even priority at the high school. Until 2020, it had an advanced math track for capable students. That track was eliminated due to diversity concerns. In 2022, school administration removed the school's mission statement (to focus on academically talented students for advanced intellectual study). When it resurfaced, language about the accelerated curriculum had disappeared. Even the school's seal changed:
Out with "Dare to be excellent."
In with, ah... "Middle & High School"
Why was the school's curriculum redesigned? Because school leadership did not want to "advantage" Masterman middle school students over other students who would be admitted to the high school. Admissions criteria for the middle school were relaxed dramatically. With that, unsurprisingly, the school's proportion of advanced students cratered. In 2011-2022, its fifth graders became nearly indistinguishable from fifth graders at other schools.
People who target top-performing public schools in the name of "equity" destroy it: while wealthy parents can flee to private schools, talented kids from poor families rely on free options. In the past few years, Philadelphia has chosen to undermine that. View full report here:
Note that the report is from early 2023. Currently checking which, if any, of its recommendations have been implemented for this year. Return to the idealism that built excellence-focused free schools; reject the perverse idealism that seeks to tear them down. Pursue excellence."
Left wingers hate success and excellence
i/o on X - "The urban liberals of the 50s and 60s invested government resources in the creation of selective public schools in which bright lower-income kids could receive a quality of education rivaling private prep schools. Many of the alumni from these schools — almost all of which achieved their goal of becoming drivers of upward mobility — became leading figures in American culture, science, business, and academia. But because admission to these schools was based upon performance on a cognitively-demanding test, the students were overwhelmingly white, and then later, by the 00s, were overwhelmingly Asian and white. So by the time progressives took control of cities and school boards around the country in the mid-2010s, there was a conspicuous and ideologically lucrative target in their sites: Public schools where academic excellence reigned supreme, and where black and Hispanic students were barely in evidence. At the heart of progressivism is a fear and contempt of individual excellence because this excellence is distributed so unequally among different groups."
TracingWoodgrains on X - "Iran can do it. Can we? "The organization recruits students annually through a two-step set of nationwide exams at both middle school and high school levels. The tests are designed to measure intelligence, talents and creativity rather than prior knowledge."
When you hate achievement and love failure, this isn't possible
Meme - Niels Hoven 🐮 @NielsHoven: "Education policymakers want to close gaps between high-achievers and low-achievers. Equal outcomes, not equal opportunity. By supporting the learning needs of high-achieving kids, gifted programs increase that achievement gap, and so they are being dismantled nation-wide"
TracingWoodgrains @tracewoodgrains: "The project of education is, counterintuitively, fundamentally unequal. Everyone starts knowing nothing. As soon as you learn anything, "outcome inequality" increases. Students at every level of knowledge and aptitude deserve chances to learn. That includes high achievers."
Niels Hoven 🐮 @NielsHoven: "The ultimate irony is that killing public gifted programs to reduce achievement gaps ensures that only wealthy families can access academic excellence Underresourced kids get stuck in a system that doesn’t care about them, internalizing every day that their needs don’t matter"
Zarfam @farzamt: "I went to the NORDET school in Iran from 6th grade all the way through high school. Cannot imagine what life would have been like if I went to a normal school. I was bored all the way to 5th grade but after that, it was an amazing combination of students with crazy skills."
The left want to achieve equity by pulling the successful down
Despite massive funding, public schools continue to fail their students academically - "Schools have been failing for a long time, but the COVID shutdowns and the rise of radical ideologies within the classroom has accelerated the decline. One of the examples drawing attention to how badly schools have failed students and parents is that of a Baltimore City high school student who reached his senior year having only passed three classes, meaning he will have to repeat all of his years of high school. The student’s mother claims she was never notified by the school of her son’s performance and that she believed since the school continued passing him to the next level that he was doing fine. While a district statement insists that the mother did know, that’s not what’s drawing headlines. With a 0.13 GPA, the student ranked 62nd out of 120 students in his grade, meaning 58 other students actually fared worse. Even though he failed 22 classes, he continued to be moved along in his courses and grade level. He also was late or absent 272 times. With so many other students performing equally poor or worse, the school system was systematically passing most students on to the next grade without ensuring that they actually learned the material.".. Many education advocates and politicians claim that more money will solve this crisis, but more realistic observers note that the problem isn’t funding but failing and politically protected school systems and teachers’ unions. To back up their point, they cite the Education Stabilization Fund dollars appropriated to states to prevent lapses in education during the COVID lockdowns, when remote learning was necessary. The Federal government gave out over $200 billion to states in 2020, much of which remains unspent. For example, Illinois has spent less than $5.5 billion of the $10.5 billion it received, while Maryland has spent less than $2 billion of its close to $4.5 billion. Critics also cite evidence showing that higher per pupil funding doesn’t translate to higher achievement. For example, Illinois is eighth in the nation in per pupil spending and all it has to show for it are the aforementioned paltry scores. A 2016 NAEP report showed no correlation between increases in spending and test improvements from 2003-2015. That report isn’t alone... Illinois currently spends more on pensions for adults than everything else combined in K-12 education. Illinois public schools have increased spending per student by 199 percent since 1970 and a majority of students are not being educated, while Chicago Public Schools spends over $27,000 per student per year. “Give that money directly to families, so they can find alternatives,” he demanded. “Only then will schools have real incentives to cater to the needs of students and families as opposed to the other way around.” As we have stated before, government schools aren’t failing. They’ve already failed. Completely. There is simply no other conclusion any rational person could make at this point. Our current public education system is too beholden to the demands of teachers’ unions and political activists. It’s no longer educating, children are suffering, and parents are noticing. A large majority of parents now say they favor school choice, and as the state of Arizona has shown, such a program not only provides benefits for students who leave public schools but also helps students who remain because public school administrators then have no choice but to try and up their game. School choice also costs taxpayers far less than public schools. The oft-used phrase that calls for education departments to “fund students instead of systems” is apt as it allows even the poorest of families to decide where and how to spend educational dollars instead of throwing money into incompetent systems. Government’s way of dealing with any problem is always to spend more money, but spending more money has not fixed this problem. In fact, it’s made it worse and more corrupt."
Clearly, the problem is insufficient money
Meme - Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist @DeAngelisCorey: "The government school system has become more of a jobs program for adults than an education initiative for kids."
"Growth in Administrative Staff, Principals, Teachers, and Students in Public Schools
+95% Principals Administrative Staff
+39% Principals and Teachers
+10% Teachers
+5% Students"
Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist on X - "Los Angeles public schools have lost 26% of their students since 2014. Yet they've increased staffing by 19%. The government school system is a jobs program for adults."
Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Massachusetts residents who go to vote this November are going to see a curious ballot initiative: Repeal Competence Assessment Requirement for High School Graduation. The initiative is being championed by Progressives opposed to standardized tests. Let's discuss🧵
Firstly, who's sponsoring this initiative? The officials are @SenWarren @RepMcGovern @AyannaPressley @RepLoriTrahan and @JimHawkins4Rep. The unions are the MA AFL-CIO and the Teachers Association. The organizations are MassVote and Progressive Massachusetts. And what are their reasons? The official website says having a high-stakes test as a graduation requirement is "ineffective" and "discriminatory". Discriminatory against whom? (1) Non-Whites, (2) people who don't know English, and (3) people with learning disabilities.
The issue, as written by Lori Trahan, is that some students have fine grades and attendance, but they can't pass a test. In frank terms, the proponents of getting rid of this initiative want shakier, more subjective graduation standards because objective ones feel bad.
But the vast majority of students pass this examination, if not on their first try, then on subsequent attempts On a first go, 88% of the class of 2023, 81% of the class of 2024, and 82% of the class of 2025 passed. And it's no wonder, because the test is easy. On the English Language Arts section, you have to read paragraphs and then answer questions about them. You are literally given the answer and told to mark it down. In 2024, this meant reading a portion of Song of the Open Read and then answering questions like:
An example essay question from this section is to write a few paragraphs about some essays on listening skills, in which you argue that listening skills are important. You should really be able to do this after reading two whole essays on the topic. The mathematics section is even easier. For example, you can just plug-and-play with arithmetic sequences: The mathematics section hits students with questions like 'Here's a list of ten magazine prices. What's the range of prices?' or 'What's the median price?' or 'If you remove two magazines and the median is unchanged but the average goes up by $1, what might their prices be?' In other words, the test is not hard.
In recent years, they've added a science and technology/engineering section that asks you about biology and physics. The biology section asks if you paid attention in class. You may not believe this, but the physics section asks the same thing: Did you pay attention to the basics in class?
Since more than 80% of kids pass this test, and the state IQ of Massachusetts averages 104, the mean IQ for people who fail the test will be about 91 if the standard deviation is 15. But some groups, like English Language Learners, will make this calculation erroneous. The real IQ threshold for passing, as a result, is a bit higher than 91. No big deal though, because that's still quite low. The idea that this is a major barrier to kids' graduation should be regarded as pretty insulting to them.
Does this disadvantage "students of color"? If that means Black people, then not really. They do about 0.7-0.8 d (0.76 in 2023, 0.78 in 2024) worse than Whites. If Asians, then they do better than Whites, by (0.20 and 0.11 d in those years). It might be the case that Hispanics are disadvantaged unfairly by not knowing English, because they perform a bit worse than Blacks, and that is generally only observed with really selective samples or a language issue. But the solution to students not knowing English is not to get rid of the test entirely, it is to provide them with a translated test or a nonverbal test! Incidentally, the state has produced translated questions in recent years, so this really isn't an issue.
Who opposes the initiative? The governor, @MassGovernor, the Secretary of Education, @PatrickTutwiler, the former Secretary of Education, @JimPeyser, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Mass. Assoc. of School Superintendents, the Business Alliance for Education, and more. The opposition cites as its reasoning that, empirically, the scores on the test predict long-term success and they adequately measure students' academic skills rather than their socioeconomic backgrounds or school characteristics, unlike measures like GPAs and attendance. Other opponents argue, cogently, that getting rid of standards for the whole state means acquiring subjective standards that vary substantially across it, and do not actually work for ensuring student success. They also argue that teaching to the test is a myth and students should not earn diplomas if they aren't actually prepared.
Frankly, opposition to testing means opposition to gifted kids who might not come from a good background, who might not be able to attend school regularly, and who might be able to show they're ready for the wider world, but not through teachers' subjective measurements. This initiative to strip Massachusetts schools of rigorous graduation standards and appropriate standards for using the only tool they currently have to identify the underserved is going to hurt a lot of kids if it's passed, just as it does everywhere this happens. The only real benefit of getting rid of test-based graduation requirements is going to accrue to those who think everyone should graduate regardless of whether they deserve to. They value equality for its own sake, and that's easily achieved, at a high price."
