Meme - "In Finland, charging fees for tuition is illegal, which means rich kids have to mix with normal kids, which means rich families had to make sure the school their kid went to was good which meant the rich were prompted to invest in public schools. Finland, take a bow"
Private education is not prohibited in Finland - "Since August 2020, more than 18,000 users have shared on social media claiming that private education in Finland is “forbidden” , “eliminated” or “abolished” . In September 2021, it circulated again, but it is false: Finland does have private schools. What is prohibited is basic education for profit."
Left wingers love control and hate choice (the unanimity in the comments was notable). They love fake news too
Nicki Neily on X - "ICYMI: @DefendingEd obtained internal NEA documents showing the union’s upcoming training doesn’t focus on academics, but on attacking Republicans as “racist and transphobic,” pushing race-class-gender narratives, and promoting gender-transition guides for staff."
Poor student results are proof that they need to spend even more on education
Ohio school under fire for material prompting kids write about sex - "An Ohio mayor is asking all five school board members of his town to resign or face possible criminal charges over high school course material that he said a judge called "child pornography." Hudson, Ohio Mayor Craig Shubert made the statement during a board of education meeting after multiple parents complained about the content of some writing prompts contained in a book called "642 Things to Write About" provided to high school students enrolled in a college credit course called Writing in the Liberal Arts II. Parents said there was a prompt that asked students to "write a sex scene you wouldn't show your mom," and another which said "rewrite the sex scene from above into one that you'd let your mom read." Another prompt asked students to drink a beer and describe how it tastes. Parents said they felt these writing prompts and others were not appropriate for high school students. One speaker said he was "appalled" by the content and requested that cameras be put into the classroom so parents could monitor what is being taught to their children. Another speaker said the material was "disgusting" and that it amounted to "grooming.""
Connecticut school district asks eighth-graders to share their sexual desires in assignment - "A school district in Enfield, Connecticut was left with pie on its face after asking eighth-graders to share their sexual desires in the form of pizza toppings. 'Now that you know this metaphor for sex, let's explore your preferences!' explained the instruction pamphlet distributed to students in a recent health class at John F. Kennedy Middle School. 'Draw and color your favorite type of pizza,' it added. 'What's your favorite style of pizza? Your favorite toppings? What are your pizza no-nos? Now mirror these preferences in relation to sex!' As if that wasn't explicit enough, the instructions offered some suggestions. 'Here are some examples: Likes: Cheese = Kissing. Dislikes: Olives = Giving oral.'"
Meme - Frank McCormick @CBHeresy: "One thing I’ve realized after working with teachers for 12 years is that it’s very hard to get them to commit to political or ideological neutrality in the classroom because:
A. They view teaching as an inherently political act intended to turn students into political units (activists/“change agents.”)
B. They attach moral value to their beliefs, and thus view the proliferation of those beliefs as a moral obligation.
C. They do not recognize particular beliefs as political or ideological, and believe they’re “just teaching truth.”
D. When trying to be balanced, requiring students to compare two sources or opinions, they engineer- purposefully or unwittingly- the lesson to bring students to certain conclusions."
*French cartoon of life in the year 2000 with students all listening via headphones to books thrown into a hand-cranked machine*
Stunted Capital on X - "Some K-12 schools used to group kids by ability based on test scores to pursue the most reasonable amount of academic rigor for every child It was mostly abandoned due to black kids disproportionately testing into the below average groups Everyone should read "Hobson v. Hansen and the Decline of D.C. Schools" By Jack Despain Zhou"
Niels Hoven 🐮 on X - "Yes, grouping kids by ability is one of those obvious educational interventions that shows positive results every time we try it. Students are happier, teachers are happier, and test scores go up. Naturally, it's opposed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Education Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and many other groups who drive education policy"
SPENCER on X - "idk why we treat academics & sports differently"
Michael Druggan on X - "If lowering gaps at all cost is the goal we should start hitting the smart kids in the head with a hammer"
Niels Hoven 🐮 on X - "Modern education policy is basically “how do we hit the smart kids in the head with a hammer, legally?”"
Niels Hoven 🐮 on X - "Since roughly the 1990’s, the main goal of education policy has been to “close the achievement gap”. When high achieving students excel, they grow the achievement gap, and so education policymakers look for ways to hold them back"
wanye on X - "Education is such a mess, because the actual practitioners of education don’t understand that basically the entire point of education is to widen gaps. That’s literally what education is. You take a mixed group of people who can only get so far on their own and then you give them all the tools they need to excel and the smartest and most capable people in the group are going to use those tools to pull away from everybody else. That’s literally what education is."
Meme - Rachael Jefferson, PhD: "Ability grouping feels intuitive, but decades of research shows it often widens gaps rather than supports learning. Mixed-ability classrooms can do this through flexible grouping, targeted feedback, and open projects (as you suggest). It is a wicked problem though!"
Niels Hoven @NielsHoven: "Yes, that is literally the point. We should allow smart kids to excel instead of holding them back to the lowest common denominator They will achieve more if we let them"
John Rich🇺🇸 on X - "PARENTS: Start dropping lawsuits on your schools, and on the actual, specific individuals at that school who are targeting your kids. READ THIS👇 Exposing children to obscene or pornographic material is very often considered a form of child sexual abuse, child endangerment, or a specific offense such as “exhibiting obscenity/harmful material to a minor.” The exact criminal charge depends on the jurisdiction, the age of the child, the nature of the material, and the intent or context. Federal law: 18 U.S.C. § 1470 makes it a federal crime to knowingly transfer obscene material to a person under 16 via any means (including the internet), punishable by up to 10 years."
Meme - "Why is talking sexually at work considered sexual harassment, but talking about sexuality to kids in elementary school considered essential?"
Emil Kirkegaard on X - "A reminder that educational interventions do not generally work. They sometimes appear to work because researchers cheat with the analyses (p-hacking, fraud etc.). However, occasionally, 3rd parties do planned studies with large samples. Given this high quality evidence, the results are basically 0. Almost nothing works. This actual gold standard evidence sets the prior for every other random intervention that no one has done an actually rigorous evaluation of (so far)."
Libs of TikTok on X - "Minneapolis Schools SUED over alleged ANTI-WHITE DISCRIMINATION The DOJ has launched a lawsuit against Minneapolis Public Schools over a policy that shields "teachers of color" from layoffs and requires the district to rehire them first. The lawsuit also claims that members of an organization called "Black Men Teach Fellows" were given priority for special benefits. UNREAL"
Mike Solana on X - "imagine paying $50 billion for public schools. they're about as dangerous as the locale juvenile detention center, and half the kids can't read. every year you're told their failure is your fault, because you don't give the communist teacher's union enough money."
Palmer Luckey on X - "The NYC Department of Education spends more on education than Japan's Ministry of Education spends on the entire country of Japan."
Clearly, the problem is they don't spend enough mouney
Meme - late stage capitalist @bentboolean: "Has anyone tried to figure out where the money goes? My kid's class has 30 kids, the teacher might make 150k all in.... Where does the other 1.1mm go?"
Jessica Riedl @JessicaBRiedI: "Assuming an average of 2 school-age kids per family, that's enough money for NYC to instead hire 450,000 recent college graduates and give each family a full-time, in-home school tutor at an annual salary of $70,000 plus health care, school supplies, etc."
"New York City Public Schools Spend $42,000 Per Student Annually Amid Low Proficiency and High Absenteeism. New York City public schools spend $42,000 per pupil annually, the highest in the U.S. Only 56% of students are proficient in reading and math, with 35% chronic absenteeism. Elite schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science perform well, contrasting with overall system performance."
Only a third of NYC 4th graders deemed 'proficient' in math as Big Apple students lag behind state, national averages: test scores - "Two-thirds of New York City fourth graders are not proficient in math and even fewer proved proficient in reading, the “Nation’s Report Card” released Wednesday shows – despite the Empire State funneling more money into its schools than any other state in the nation. The abysmal results reported in the national exam officially known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress came to light as New York school districts are spending a whopping $89 billion this academic year. And across the five boroughs, public schools spent an average of $21,112 per student in fiscal year 2023-24, though dozens of schools shelled out a large chunk more – up to $60,000 a student, records show... The shockingly low scores are compounded by the fact that New York state spends more money than other states on nearly everything — teachers’ salaries, benefits and pensions, school construction, services for immigrants or non-English speakers and even electrifying school buses, according to an analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission."
Clearly, this is because of racism and the fact that they don't spend enough, and it's all Republicans' faults. Time to mock red states and spend even more money on teacher salaries
New York’s Class-Size Law is Wreaking Havoc - "In September 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul signed S960, a bill limiting the size of classes in New York City public schools. The law phases in class-size limits—20 students for grades K–3; 23 students for grades 4–8; and 25 students for high school—over six years. Fast forward to today: the implementation of the class-size law is causing predictable disruptions in Gotham. Parents and experts warned from the beginning that the law would be expensive, hard to implement, and generate, rather than reduce, inequality. Three years in, their fears remain valid. Smaller class sizes mean more classes—and more teachers. New York City’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) estimated that the new law would cost the city between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion annually to hire the number of additional instructors required to comply with the law. This would make the city’s public schools, already projected to spend more than $42,000 per pupil, even more inefficient. And that’s before construction costs. Most public schools lack space to accommodate new classrooms and will have to expand their existing buildings, or erect new ones, to comply with the law. The Class Size Working Group’s minority report estimates that fully implementing the law will require $17 billion to $22 billion in school-construction costs. Even if the city could afford these expenses, it’s unclear where schools would find qualified instructors, given Gotham’s teacher shortage. The law’s most troubling effect will be to worsen inequality. Schools with the largest class sizes are typically high-performing and in the highest demand. Reducing these schools’ seats gives students fewer opportunities to attend high-performing schools. The law does nothing for low-performing schools, which typically serve low-income students and are already under-enrolled... In School District 25 in Queens, the Community Education Council passed a resolution to remove all pre-K and 3K classes from the district’s elementary schools to comply with the law. The resolution suggests that their only other option would have been to repurpose rooms currently used for arts, science, or libraries... As then-chancellor David Banks warned in a 2023 interview with the Daily News: “If you’re going to prioritize the budget for class size, that means you’re going to have to deprioritize the budget for other things, which could be after-school programming or arts programming or mental health services or a whole range of things that aren’t about opening new classrooms and hiring new teachers.” Mayor Adams initially opposed the class-size law, but Albany and the United Federation of Teachers eventually forced his hand. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has spoken in the law’s favor and voted for it as a state assemblyman in 2022. If he pushes forward with full implementation and disrupts the city’s most popular public schools, he will inevitably face backlash from parents and educators."
This doesn't stop the people obsessed with class size
Thread by @StatisticUrban on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Blue states tend to do better in K-12 education because they are wealthier and have higher rates of parents with tertiary education. But if you adjust for those ingrained advantages, blue state performance diminishes, and the south broadly emerges as leaders.
Obviously not universal - many blue states retain a top 20 score, two in the top 10. But it's underwhelming to say the least. For worse or better, many education reforms undertaken in the past 15 years in blue states have been duds, while the playbook states like Louisiana and Mississippi followed has yieled incredible results.
Methodology
Here's just flat raw scores if you prefer.
And you may compare with funding."
Thread by @Austen on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Mississippi switched to a phonics/science of reading curriculum and began requiring that students who weren't reading at grade level be held back. Worked like a charm. California Teachers Union is vehemently in opposition of doing the same thing, killing the bill in CA.
There are two near-universal truths when it comes to K12 education in the United States:
1. The research on what works is clear and empirical, and has said the same thing for a decade
2. Teachers Unions vehemently oppose doing what the research suggests
It really is a tragedy. The Unions are 100% to blame. It's an IQ test we're failing year after year."
By sabotaging children's performance, left wingers can lobby for ever increasing funding. It's brilliant.
Meme - Kane @kane: "Please bro just one more tax will fix it trust me bro"
"California: Change in Spending and Scores since 2013
Spending grew 102% to ~$18,600 per pupil.
Math 8th grade scores fell during the pandemic and are continuing to decline alongside recovery investments.
Reading 4th grade scores fell through the decade even as spending increased."
John Collins @Logically_JC: "So many of our problems could be fixed by properly funding public education."
Clearly, this is Trump's fault and they need to spend even more money to counter the pernicious effects of white supremacy
Left wingers think and/or claim all social problems are because you don't spend enough money. They just want a huge state
Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” on X - "Oh this is hilarious. Sad but hilarious. This study finds (and others confirm) that a teacher earning a graduate degree has a NEGATIVE effect on student achievement Attending a graduate school of education literally makes teachers WORSE at their job"
HOW AND WHY DO TEACHER CREDENTIALS MATTER FOR STUDENT
ACHIEVEMENT?
Clearly, teachers need not one but two graduate degrees so they can teach better
Wall Street Apes on X - "This woman’s 6 year old son “expressed conservative values” in his classroom The teacher created a certificate for him that said “Most likely to become a Dictator” and presented it to him in front of his entire class while classmates called him a “Naziphile” The indoctrination taking place in our education system is a national emergency"
Thread by @arctotherium42 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In 2022, 45% of high schoolers polled say they were taught that "America is built on stolen land" in class at school, and another 22% heard it from an adult there. Students taught all of the "critical social justice" (CSJ) concepts were in fact more likely to agree with them; among those taught "America is built on stolen land" 73% agreed. Among those students taught 5 CSJ concepts, 75% believed whites are responsible for the inferior social position of black people and 44% support preferential hiring and promotion of blacks. Among whites, 58% felt guilty for this. Members of all races felt less comfortable with criticizing a black classmate with more CSJ concepts taught in school. Anyways, teaching students in public schools that the country is illegitimate is crazy and reminds me of the late Russian Empire.
media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/…"
The left wing cope is that there's no indoctrination at school - this is just them learning facts
Book Review: ‘The Cradle of Citizenship,’ by James Traub - The New York Times - "It is hard to think of a period in American history when there were not angry controversies over public education. Still, by any measure conflicts in America today, over everything from history curriculums to school library collections, have become wild and destructive. At bottom, people still ask the right questions — about what kind of country we are and what kind of citizens we want our children to be. But the screamers at school board meetings and the national politicians riling up anxious parents are hardly setting a good example for our children. In the midst of all the cannon fire, it is good to have a cleareyed, unflappable observer like James Traub, the author of “The Cradle of Citizenship,” an illuminating portrait of America’s current education landscape... he saw few examples of overt partisanship from instructors in the classroom, apart from a Minnesota science teacher with a Black Lives Matter poster and a Gay Pride banner on her classroom walls. As in most organizations, the people on the ground were just trying to get the job done while dodging directives raining down from above. But that’s where the good news ends. The real crisis of civics education, Traub discovered, is not that students are learning about 1619 rather than 1776, or the reverse. It is that so many are learning nothing at all. And here he lays responsibility at the feet of the American educational establishment, which has, in the words of one scholar, been turning the “meat of academic subjects into meatloaf.” One of the peculiarities of the American educational system, compared with those in other democracies, is that most public school districts prefer hiring graduates with degrees in education rather than in specific academic subjects like history and physics. This leads to a greater focus on the methods of teaching, expressed in jargon phrases like “inquiry-based learning,” than on acquiring particular knowledge. Traub found a real allergy among public school educators to memorization of vocabulary, chronology and narrative — the elemental material out of which reality-based opinions and arguments can be formed... In other states, too many teachers just seem to have abdicated their responsibilities out of despair, convinced that their students are no longer capable of reading whole books or remembering what they read. “History has been pushed to the side within social studies because there’s too much reading and writing,” as one frustrated teacher in Illinois puts it, on the verge of tears. “That creates too much stress, and it makes the kids feel bad about themselves.” If students do want to engage, their dependence on social media simplifies their views. As Traub discovers, their credulousness toward online sources renders them dependent on present-day culture war influencers whose historical claims they are unprepared to challenge. Against this tide, teachers struggle to get their students to see how the world of the past could be both alien and instructive in a way that might stoke their skepticism. Not all state-funded schools are alike. About a quarter million American children currently attend so-called “classical” schools, many of them charter schools that receive public money but are privately run. In these schools, memorization and recitation are prized, as are classic texts from the Western canon, like Plato’s “Republic” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Many liberals see red when classical charter schools are mentioned, because of their perceived religious bias and a feeling that such schools drain resources from less advantaged ones. One senses that Traub shared their concerns. But as his book progresses, these schools begin to appear as inspiring examples of more rigorous and civic-minded education for many young Americans... In a ninth grade Western Civilization class, children who had started studying Latin in third grade were reading and intelligently discussing an essay by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. In a medieval history class at another classical charter school in Phoenix, one girl argued that St. Anselm must have been more popular in his time than Thomas Aquinas since Anselm believed, as Traub writes, “that faith preceded reason." She was in seventh grade. “It was in classical schools,” Traub observes, “rather than mainstream ones, that I had most often heard the kind of reflective discussion that civic education seeks to foster.” Yes, a large part of the curriculum is devoted to old books. But “if you can speak thoughtfully about ‘The Nicomachean Ethics,’” he remarks, “you can do so about the fairness of our tax system.”... whatever model is used should impart “a solid foundation of linguistic skills, historical knowledge and habits of reflection” and offer “an alternative to the consumerist, vocational, instrumental culture of today’s public education.”"
An education degree actually makes you less good at teaching, so. Left wing theory is not the same as real life practice
Geoffrey Miller on X - "American 'Schools of Education' teach mostly outdated, wildly inaccurate theories about human nature & childhood learning that were debunked decades ago in real behavioral sciences. Often worse than useless."
Meme - The Kids Are Not Alright: "Education has been replaced with activism."
Paut Rossi, Paleoliberal @pauldrossi: ""Kindergarteners are natural social justice warriors." "If we just build upon the mindset of a kindergartener... you can get them to do fabulous things in the social justice realm.""
"Foundations of the work
DIVERSITY
EQuITY
INCLUSION
JUSTICE
The first three terms are the standard. My favorite part of the year is when we talk no just about injustices, but what we can do about it. Kindergarteners are natural social justice warriors
And it's absolutely truly fascinating."
The cope is that this is not indoctrination - just teaching them to be decent human beings
Minnesota middle school removes F from its grading system and will allow students to retake tests - "Students at a Minnesota school will no longer be seeing an 'F' on test papers - no matter how badly they do - and they could be allowed to retake tests. Sunrise Park Middle School in White Bear Lake released a YouTube video this week detailing its new grading system which it says, in part, helps fight systemic racism... Grades also will not be increased or decreased over behaviors, attitude, tardiness, and whether the assignment was turned in late or on time... In the past, the school has made headlines for allowing students to choose how much privilege different social groups have."
Right Angle News Network on X - "BREAKING - A disturbing new trend is emerging across the country, showing leftist teachers guiding very young children, some no older than kindergarteners, in protests against ICE and President Trump."
Black Rebel on X - "Police locate a juvenile driver accused in a hit-and-run that injured a student and instead of keeping kids in class, Fremont Public Schools had them out at a demonstration while administrators “Supervised.” Let that sink in. Kids go to school to LEAR(N) not to be marched outside for activism."
