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EDUCATION

Remote Learning Fails the Test New research finds student scores fell more sharply where virtual learning was prevalent.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/remote-learning-fails-the-test-nber-study-schools-11638463245?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Accumulating evidence shows the damage of school shutdowns. Now a working paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research documents how much remote learning reduced student achievement, especially for low-income and minority children.

The researchers—from Brown University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and MIT—examine the relationship between in-person learning and third- through eighth-grade student scores in 12 states. They found that the share of students who scored “proficient” or above declined in spring 2021 compared to previous years by an average of 14.2 percentage points in math and 6.3 percentage points in language arts.

What’s more, “these declines were larger in districts with less in-person instruction,” the authors note. For example, they found that “offering full in-person instruction rather than fully hybrid or virtual instruction reduces test score losses in math by 10.1 percentage points (on the base of 14.2 percentage points).” In language arts, the losses for full in-person instruction were cut by 3.2 percentage points. In short, remote and hybrid instruction were linked to two to three times more learning loss.

Losses in language arts were “significantly larger in districts with larger populations of students who are Black, Hispanic or eligible for free and reduced price lunch,” the researchers note. This isn’t surprising since lower-income parents may not have had the time or financial means to provide additional academic support to children. But here’s the kicker: The study also found that districts with lower test scores and more black students also offered less in-person learning.

A PRO-PARENT EDUCATION AGENDA

https://christopherrufo.com/?mc_cid=d89864f563&mc_eid=9bde3e8efb

Parents in Virginia and across America are acutely aware of the cultural changes taking place in society, most notably occurring in public schools. We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, believe that state lawmakers should empower parents with insight and influence over their child’s education. 

We therefore call for state legislators to enact policies that families and students desperately need to reject the racial prejudice inherent in Critical Race Theory, maximize transparency around what is taught in K-12 classrooms, and secure education choice.

In other words, policymakers must listen to the voices of the parents who spoke in this past election.

Every generation is responsible for transmitting the lesson that America offers equality under the law and the opportunity for human flourishing to everyone regardless of their race, ethnicity, or country of origin.

Public schools are a crucial setting where children should be taught this lesson.

Schools occupy a unique place in their local communities as the institutions where policy and culture meet: Lawmakers provide taxpayer resources to teachers with the implicit understanding that they will impart lessons about reading, writing, and math, along with equality under the law, to their students. We trust the children learning these lessons to apply what they learn as they become the new parents, neighbors, employees, and lawmakers.

Around the country, however, many professional associations and some educators are betraying taxpayers and parents, not infrequently with the support of policymakers. They do so by supplementing lessons about math and reading and civic responsibilities with intolerant, racially discriminatory pedagogy. 

An avowedly Marxist worldview known as “critical theory” has spread within American culture. Over the past several decades, its racially biased application, Critical Race Theory, which “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law” has taken root. The goal of CRT, according to the discipline’s own godfather, was that “scholarly resistance will lay the groundwork for wide-scale resistance.” Critical Race Theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings, the professor credited by NPR with bringing CRT to education, has declared that it’s hard to find a social studies textbook that doesn’t include or promote these concepts.

University of Toronto’s Jewish Problem Social justice warriors seek to blacklist and purge pro-Israel Jews from campus. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/university-torontos-jewish-problem-richard-l-cravatts/

As if to confirm the depth of its anti-Israel animus, the Student Union of the University of Toronto at Scarborough (SCSU) passed a poisonous motion during its virtual November 24th meeting stipulating that the student union “reaffirm its commitment to the BDS movement by . . . rais[ing] awareness about Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine and war crimes against Palestinian peoples;” in light of this, the union decided the University must “refrain from engaging with organizations, services, or take part in events that further normalize Israeli apartheid . . ,” and even ban speakers from campus who “support the military occupation of Palestine.”

More insidious was an item from an original motion passed in 2013 that will require that any kosher food brought to campus must be sourced from firms that do not support “Israeli apartheid,” not to mention the creation of a pernicious “BDS List” that will serve to blacklist organizations that support Israel.

This recent vote is the latest in a long campaign of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic actions at the University of Toronto, activism which has created a hostile climate for Jewish students, a situation which has not gone unnoticed. In June of 2020, for example, B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, together with two U of T professors, Stuart Kamenetsky and Howard Tenenbaum, produced a lengthy and substantive report, “Confronting Antisemitism at the University of Toronto: A Path Forward,” written for the University’s president, Meric Gertler. That report, which fastidiously reviewed a long list of anti-Israel events and their deleterious effect on Jewish students, went largely ignored by the university’s administration, troubling in light of the many bigoted events cataloged in the report.

At this particular university, specifically, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) has the dubious distinction of being the only student union in Canada with a committee dedicated solely to promoting the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and in 2019 outrageously rejected Hillel’s request to recognize the “Kosher Forward” campaign to have kosher food offered on campus since, as the Union decided in their grotesquely anti-Semitic way, Hillel is pro-Israel and therefore kosher food should not be allowed.

What is next for the purge of anyone who might be considered pro-Israel? No Jews allowed in cafeterias that use Soda Stream products? The removal of Jewish names from endowed professorships or campus buildings if those benefactors supported Israel? Will “Open Hillel” centers—those renegade Hillels which allow pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel dialogue and events to take place in their spaces—be allowed to remain on campuses but conventional, pro-Israel Hillels not?

Michael Bloomberg: Why I’m Backing Charter Schools The public school system is failing. My philanthropy will give $750 million to a proven alternative. By Michael R. Bloomberg

https://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-bloomberg-why-im-backing-charter-schools-covid-19-learning-loss-teachers-union-11638371324?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

American public education is broken. Since the pandemic began, students have experienced severe learning loss because schools remained closed in 2020—and even in 2021 when vaccinations were available to teachers and it was clear schools could reopen safely. Many schools also failed to administer remote learning adequately.

Before the pandemic, about two-thirds of U.S. students weren’t reading at grade level, and the trend has been getting worse. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the nation’s report card, show that in 2019, eighth-grade math scores had already fallen significantly.

Teachers understand the severity of the problem, and many are doing heroic work, yet some of their union representatives are denying reality. “There is no such thing as learning loss,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, head of the Los Angeles teachers union, in an interview with Los Angeles Magazine this past summer. “Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience.”

What nonsense. How about reading, writing and arithmetic, the critical skills we are funding schools to teach?

Instead of giving students the skills they need to succeed in college or in a trade, the public education system is handing them diplomas that say more about their attendance record than their academic achievement. This harms students, especially those from low-income families. When and if they graduate, they will try to find work in an economy that values knowledge and skills above all else, and their old schools will say to them: “Good luck!”

Other nations are rising to this challenge and racing ahead, but we are moving backward, creating an economic and national-security crisis that will worsen over time. Unless we have the courage to rebuild public education from the bottom up, we will continue to doom our most vulnerable to a life of poverty and, in too many cases, incarceration.

We know what works, because we can see it in real time. Success Academy’s network of 47 public charter schools is serving New York children whose families predominantly live below the poverty line. Their students are outperforming public-school students in Scarsdale, N.Y.—the wealthiest town on the East Coast and the second-wealthiest town in America—by significant margins. Yet a statewide cap on charter schools is blocking Success Academy from expanding.

The University of Austin: a meteor aimed at higher ed? ‘Liberal educators’ might sneer but they’re very worried Peter Wood

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/university-austin-meteor-higher-education/

Americans are beginning to seek alternatives to our established menu of colleges and universities. In fact, not just Americans. Students from other countries are also choosing alternatives to studying in the US. The combined effect has been a sharp drop in American college enrollment, which is down overall by about 8 percent over the last two years, and more than 14 percent at community colleges. International student enrollment is down a total of 15 percent, but that masks an even more serious problem: enrollment of new foreign students fell last year by 46 percent.

Some of this, of course, is due to Covid. And some of it is due to a demographic shift: fewer babies born 17 to 20 years ago means fewer young people to fill the seats in lecture halls. But other contributing factors are more mysterious. Why has there been a precipitous drop in the number of males who choose to go to college? (The male/female ratio among students is now 4:6.) Why have so many colleges declared themselves “systemically racist”? Why have colleges turned campus life into a pressure cooker of ideological conformity? Why do those who run colleges and universities think their path to success is to copy what all the other colleges and universities are doing?

The recent announcement of the formation of a new institution, the University of Austin (UATX), which intends to break with the herd mentality, was met with met with high praise in many quarters, and with extreme disdain by many supporters of the legacy institutions. Let’s stick with the disdain for the moment. Hank Reichman, professor emeritus of history at California State University and former American Association of University Professors (AAUP) vice-president, is about as close as one could get to the perfected voice of higher education’s leftist establishment. The day after UATX sent out its birth announcement, Reichman happily noted in a post titled “Welcome to Rogues’ Gallery University” that the announcement had “garnered widespread ridicule on academic social media.”

What was it that prompted the ridicule? Reichman focuses on the members of UATX’s board of advisors, and borrows the sneer of the progressive law professor Paul Campos who characterizes these advisors as “our most ludicrously self-regarding and mawkishly preening intellectuals.” The rest of Reichman’s essay is a long string of ad hominem attacks against individual UATX advisors.

Replacing History with a ‘Narrative’ The Left’s vicious assault on America. Mary Grabar

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/we-cannot-rest-mary-grabar/

Voters this election rejected the teaching of The 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory, as proven by the results of Virginia’s gubernatorial race and, less publicized but as equally telling in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, where nineteen-year-old, Nicholas Seppy won a seat on the school board. Seppy said he thought that the history of slavery should be taught in the classroom, but it should be taught objectively.

I agree with him. That’s why I wrote Debunking The 1619 Project and before that Debunking Howard Zinn.

So hats off to Christopher Rufo who exposed these toxic materials and to Seppy and Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin who listened to parents who were rightfully outraged.

But we cannot rest. The radical “educrats” who believe they are the ones to remake your children never do.

Over the years I have seen how “educators” introduce a topic, put on a pretense of retreating, and then sneak back. This happened with the teaching of Ethnic Studies in California, which was withdrawn for about eighteen months after complaints about antisemitism. Then—surprise!—it was signed into law by the governor. Superficial changes had been made but the promotion of politicized ethnic identity—what the educrats wanted—will remain for all California high school graduates.

Similarly, the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which claims to “establish clear, consistent guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade,” was rebranded under various names by states. But the damage remains as demonstrable knowledge of the subject matter was replaced by students’ ability to “collaborate” and accept “diversity.” As I pointed out back in 2012, Common Core broke down the distinctions between nonfiction and fiction. English teachers were tasked with having students read “cold” such historical materials as the Gettysburg Address.

Shutting Down Pro-Israel Speech at Duke Defending the Jewish state from lies is not allowed. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/shutting-down-pro-israel-speech-duke-richard-l-cravatts/

As if further evidence were needed for the hypocrisy about who may say what about whom on college campuses, the recent action by the Duke Student Government to withhold recognition to a new pro-Israel student group seems to confirm that academic free speech is not always free depending on who is speaking. On November 9th, DSG President Christina Wang made the outrageous decision to veto the recognition of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) after the group posted a response to an anti-Israel Duke sophomore, Elyana Riddick, who had captioned a now-deleted Twitter post about SSI by writing, “My school promotes settler colonialism.”

“To Yana and others like her,” SSI posted on its Instagram account, “please allow us to educate you on what ‘settler colonialism’ actually is and why Israel does not fall under this category whatsoever. These types of narratives are what we strive to combat and condemn, which is why Duke’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel has been officially established & is here to stay,” the post read.

While it seems that denouncing Israel, as Ms. Riddick did, as a racist colonial occupier of stolen Arab land is perfectly acceptable, SSI’s response to her was obviously totally unacceptable, violating, it seems, her sensibilities and right to express disdain for groups with which she disagrees.

Ms. Riddick posted on Twitter, a social media platform that is open for all to see, so she certainly could not and should not have what lawyers refer to as an “expectation of privacy,” since SSI did not quote her from statements she made in a private conversation or email exchange, for instance, where she had not agreed to have her opinions publicized.

And, more to the point, her counter-factual assertion that Israel is an example of settler colonialism is precisely the type of slander against the Jewish state that groups like SSI have as their mission to answer back to—and particularly when that type of characterization of Israel is both historically and factually inaccurate and slanderous. The campus enemies of Israel have regularly tried to suppress pro-Israel views from being heard or even debated in an honest dialogue with those with pro-Palestinian viewpoints, and the DSG’s decision to drop recognition of SSI at Duke achieved that very situation, making it impossible for SSI to correct falsehoods that are the animating content of the anti-Israel campaign at Duke and elsewhere.

THE ANTI-CRT PARENT GUIDEBOOK Here’s how to fight critical race theory in your school district. Christopher Rufo

https://christopherrufo.com/crt-parent-guidebook/?mc_cid=b2a6b50851&mc_eid=0c92b54a27

The parent movement is the currently most vital force in American politics. Millions of mothers and fathers have rallied to defend their children against racialist indoctrination in public schools. Earlier this month, they won the gubernatorial election in Virginia and sent shockwaves through the political establishment.

To help build on this momentum, I’ve written a guidebook for parents who want to fight against critical race theory in their local communities. The guidebook contains everything you need to know to get started: how to define critical race theory, develop a strong argument, and get organized with other families. It’s free to download, but if you would like to contribute to this work, you can become a monthly supporter here.

Christopher F. Rufo is a writer, filmmaker, and senior fellow of Manhattan Institute. He has directed four documentaries for PBS and is currently a contributing editor of City Journal, where he covers critical race theory, homelessness, addiction, crime, and other afflictions.

Saving children’s books from wokeness A new startup promises a more pro-American approach Bethany Mandel

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/saving-childrens-books-wokeness/

There is something deeply sinister happening in the world of children’s literature. Whereas the children’s section at your local library or bookstore was once filled with fables and fairy tales, it’s now filled with titles like The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish and Race Cars: A Children’s Book About White Privilege and How Mommas Love Their Babies featuring wholesome lines like “Some mommas dance all night long in special shoes. It’s hard work!” The illustrations accompanying that page are an outdoor shot of a strip club at night, with glowing neon lights and a woman protesting for fair wages for strippers.

This is a recent tweet from the author:

Other children’s book writers, those who want to write what was once considered appropriate for kids, are stymied. One aspiring writer told me, “I’ve been in the query process the last two months and I cannot believe how many agents are requesting LGBTQ children’s books.”

Another aspiring author echoed her remarks, shedding light on the inner workings of the process, “The agents and publishers ARE the gatekeepers, making sure the books that are being published are aligned with the current agenda. If you aren’t familiar with it, check out this site. It is a summary of the twitter posts by agents and editors about their manuscript wishlists. Some are so transparent, they will state they only want LGBTQ+ stories, or demand a book set in WWI, ‘but make it queer.’ Some agents have stated they will only accept books on climate change until they have a cohort of writers defending the environment. It is deflating and concerning and frustrating, both as a teacher and as a YA historical fiction writer. The YA historicals that are being published often pervert the history to force a queer romance.”

Can the University of Austin spark a new Enlightenment? Challenging rigid wokeness by building a university Heather Heying

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/university-austin-spark-new-enlightenment/

The University of Austin, America’s newest university, was launched this month. I am one of five founders, because I am convinced that higher education is at considerable risk. A new ideology — sometimes called social justice, and revealed in numerous ways, but most succinctly called “woke” — is taking a huge toll on the free exchange of ideas.

Safe spaces and trigger warnings are demanded by students, and many faculty as well, rather than recognizing that challenge, risk, and discomfort create strength of will, and wisdom. Instead of being the adults in the room, scared and hapless administrators capitulate to their demands.

We are told that borrowing from other cultures is inherently predatory — “cultural appropriation” — rather than being one of the most ancient ways that humans have expanded our repertoire, making connections between both people and ideas. We are asked to believe anew in original sin, this one based on skin color. Faculty and students who step outside of the new orthodoxy risk being ridiculed, shouted at, even chased off campus. Tenure means nothing when a mob is at the door. The very concepts of objective reality and merit are taken to be offensive at best, outdated and untrue at worst.

These are instantiations of a self-limiting ideology that mocks the very premises of America’s founding documents, and of the mottos of many established universities as well. Harvard proclaims veritas; Yale adds lux to the mix. But there is little truth in the woke ideology, and little light.

These manifestations of the new ideology are a caricature of deep thought, from the naivete of the beliefs to the insistence that they not be questioned. But there are forces older and yet more influential in play, which for decades have bent research and curriculum to their will.