RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/asian-students-and-nyc-exam-schools?token=

New York City’s exam high schools are, in many ways, the crown jewels of the city’s public education system. They’re prestigious, rigorous, and STEM-focused. And, importantly, admission to them is determined by student performance on a single test. They’re meritocratic engines that allow smart, hard-working kids to get a kind of education that would be otherwise inaccessible to many of them.

They also tend to have high concentrations of Asian American students, sometimes over 50%. My guest Wai Wah Chin, Charter President of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, thinks this accounts for recent efforts by the mayor, the schools chancellor, and others to change admissions standards. According to Wai Wah, this attempt to make these schools “look more like the city” by admitting more black and Latino students entails discriminating against Asian American students who have earned their spot by virtue of their test performance.

This is a controversial issue, and it’s not confined to New York. Below, Wai Wah outlines why exam schools are so important, and why she is fighting to preserve a model educational program.

GLENN LOURY: Now we have actually collaborated on something. I should mention this right at the outset. The Pacific Legal Foundation produced and Rob Montz the filmmaker oversaw the production of Dream Factories, I believe is what the documentary is called, which is an investigation of the controversy in New York City about the specialized exam admissions high schools—Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant, and Brooklyn Tech—in which you, that controversy, have been very actively involved. Maybe we could start by you telling us a little bit about the controversy and about your role in it and where things are standing now on that set of issues in New York City.

WAI WAH CHIN: Thank you, Glenn. It was great to be with you in Dream Factories. We, of course, didn’t meet at that time because the shooting of the film happens quite separately in different pieces. But I think it captured a lot of the emotions of a very important topic. And the important topic is about excellence in our schools, meritocracy, and also the anti-Asian discrimination that’s happening in the schools here in New York, as well as in many other areas in education across this country.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/democrats-kids-education-parents-rep-elise-stefanik-rep-virginia-foxx

When Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe stated, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” it wasn’t a mere slip of the tongue during a heated debate.

Just days later, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona refused to accept that parents should be the primary stakeholder in determining educational programing for their children.

And last week, in an unprecedented move, the Department of Justice directed the FBI to investigate and prosecute concerned parents at school board meetings, without citing even one bit of evidence that these alleged “threats” are beyond the capacity of local law enforcement. Nor did the DOJ disclose that Attorney General Garland’s family has a profit interest in marinating the presence of racist theories in schools.

It is a naked ploy to suppress parental dissent.

These actions have made clear that today’s Democrat Party is on the side of the school bureaucracy instead of students and families.

Democrats seem to believe that America’s schools and schoolchildren are better off with parents on the sidelines – a position that is dangerously detached from reality. It also reveals just how far the Left will go in pursuit of government control over every aspect of American life.

The deep frustration we are seeing at school board meetings is the expression of parents’ unsatisfied with the direction of their children’s education, while simultaneously aware that they are left with no other options.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/10/17/virginia-parents-announce-not-domestic-terrorists-march-in-washington-n1524549

By the time Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland realizes what an incredibly stupid memo he wrote to the president accusing parents of ‘”harassment and intimidation” of school board members, his boss will probably be a lame-duck president ready to be put out to pasture.

Republicans couldn’t have drawn it up any better. What’s the best way to show how radical the Biden administration is? How about threatening parents with a federal investigation because they want a say in what their children are being taught?

That parental pushback will take substantive form on October 17, when there will be a “Not a Domestic Terrorist” rally in front of the Department of Justice Building.

The parental pushback issue has roiled the Virginia gubernatorial race. Democrat Terry McAuliffe made the gaffe of the race — so far — when he said he didn’t “think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” His opponent, Republican Glenn Youngkin, is firing with both barrels, blanketing the state with $3 million in ads about education.

That, along with Garland’s stupidity, has given a sizable edge on the issue to Republicans.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/16/our-kids-cant-read-write-or-do-math-but-are-no-1-in-critical-race-theory/

America’s crumbling education system is in the news. On October 5, Joe Biden managed to disgorge some dismal indicators as to the future prospects of America’s youth compared to the rest of the developed world. 

Joe didn’t quite say it, but America’s kids, the product of an obscenely well-funded school system, rank last in the developed world in reading, writing, and math, making homegrown stupidity a far more pressing problem in modern-day America than homegrown terrorism. 

Yet conservatives have continued to insist, throughout the COVID lockdowns and quarantines, that kids are missing out on an education. 

To paraphrase Joan Rivers, how can you miss out on a rash? (When Madonna accused Lady Gaga of stealing her music, the great, late, lady Joan wanted to know how you could steal a rash.) 

A particularly startling fact caught my attention in the Economist. “At 15, children in Massachusetts, where education standards are higher than in most states, are so far behind their counterparts in Shanghai at math, that it would take them more than two years of regular education to catch up.” 

This last fact is enormously telling and alarming. It tells you that America’s best schools and students can’t compete with the world’s best.

As the author further quipped cynically, “American children came top at thinking they were good at math, but bottom at math.”  

There’s no doubt that American kids are drowning in self-esteem. As someone who had warned, in the early 2000s, about unrealistic, dangerous levels of self-esteem, I would contend that inflated self-esteem and narcissism not only mask failure, but create pumped up nihilists, ready to unleash on their surroundings, unless met with palliative praise. 

Yes, self-esteem is the royal jelly upon which America’s children are raised. Our child-centered, non-hierarchical, collaborative, progressive schooling has produced kids who do not believe they can or should be corrected; and when they are corrected, they lash out in anger or bewilderment. 

Indeed, to listen to our university students speak is to hear a foreboding amalgam of dumbness and supreme confidence combined. Yet they are often high achievers in the kind of schools “tailored” for just such sub-par output. The achievement bell curve has been skewed. 

With welcome exceptions, the young can hardly string together coherent, grammatical sentences. They open their mouths and out tumble nothing but inane, mind-numbing clichés and banalities spoken in gravelly, grating, staccato tones. Vocal fry, the linguists call this loathsome sound. 

Once upon a time, linguists would have sent our Eliza Doolittles for elocution lessons. Make her sound less rough, more refined. 

Eliza, of “My Fair Lady” fame, was treated paternalistically, no doubt. Pedagogic paternalism can be fixed; not so a student’s studied ignorance. And these days, the Kardashian-style guttural growl is considered precious. Linguists name it and study it, instead of crushing it. 

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/576462-schools-become-crucial-battleground-heading-into-midterms

Schools are emerging as the latest battleground for both parties ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Debates over coronavirus restrictions and curriculum in the classrooms have dominated campaign messaging, forcing candidates to address the issues head-on in key areas like the suburbs.

It’s also left parents and experts concerned that kids are on the front lines of a political battle that has turned highly contentious over the past year.

The battle has also turned highly personal for families and educators debating how much of a role parents should play in their students’ education.

Republican candidates have seized on conservative complaints about issues like critical race theory and LGBTQ issues in school curriculum, while Democrats have zeroed in on the importance of coronavirus restrictions in classrooms.

Both parties are looking to use the education-related issues to appeal to parents on issues that impact their children’s day-to-day lives.

“When it comes to issues like education, you can view that as a quality-of-life issue,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright.

While schools and classrooms have been at the center of some of the country’s most hot-button issues in the past, including racial integration and prayer in the classroom, the coronavirus pandemic has reinvigorated the education debate in 2021.

Republicans say conservative enthusiasm around education reached a fever pitch during the pandemic, when parents became more aware of their children’s curriculum when they were home during lockdown. The party also pushed back against coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions, arguing it negatively affected the learning environment.

Democrats, on the other hand, have argued that coronavirus restrictions are needed in schools to keep children safe and to stop the spread and mutation of the virus.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-10-15-how-to-be-a-conservative-student-on-a-university-campus-today

It gets harder and harder to be an independent thinker in the midst of one of those indoctrination and groupthink factories known as a university. Step out of line, and at any moment someone can claim to be offended or “triggered” by something completely bland that you may have said. Next thing you know, someone will have tattled on you to the administration. And you know exactly what the administration will do: They will simultaneously mouth platitudes about “free speech” while making every kind of threat, veiled or not, to bring you into line.

Is there any way for you to come out ahead? Within the last few days, a small number of students — one at Yale and two at Arizona State — have given tutorials on how to win at this game. To be fair, these students got a big assist from the fact that the crazy leftists who run these places have gotten so confident of never facing any pushback that they no longer hesitate to engage in conduct that is completely indefensible.

Example number one for today comes from perhaps the looniest of all the loony left schools, the Yale Law School. It all started with plans by the Native American Law Students Association to co-sponsor a Constitution Day (September 17) get-together with the Federalist Society. On the 15th, a second-year law student named Trent Colbert — who is a member of both organizations and, unlike Elizabeth Warren, is actually part Cherokee — sent out this email inviting NALSA members to the event:

Before reading further, see if you can spot what about the email may be offensive to the finely tuned antennae of an uber-woke Yale Law School “diversity” monger.

Aaron Silbarum, writing on October 13 at the Washington Free Beacon, recounts what happened next:

Within minutes, the lighthearted invite had been screenshotted and shared to an online forum for all second-year law students, several of whom alleged that the term “trap house” indicated a blackface party. “I guess celebrating whiteness wasn’t enough,” the president of the Black Law Students Association wrote in the forum. “Y’all had to upgrade to cosplay/black face.” She also objected to the mixer’s affiliation with the Federalist Society, which she said “has historically supported anti-Black rhetoric.”

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Whether the current Administration is the most corrupt in the history of our nation, I leave to those better qualified to decide. But, as we know from the influence peddling of Hunter Biden and the recent revelations of Merrick Garland’s son-in-law’s business ties to the teaching of critical race theory, there is no question as to its corruption. S.W.

Terry McAuliffe was correct in the sense that it would be impossible for a school to design individual syllabuses for each child. Nevertheless, the input of parents should be sought, not denied. As the NCPIE (quoted above) expressed, when parents do take an active interest in the education of their children they achieve higher grades, gain better social skills and more easily adapt to school.

It was once rare for any American of any political persuasion to deny the importance of parents in the education of their children. As educator and author Dorothy H. Cohen (1915-1979) once observed. “No school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children’s best interests.” Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s weaponization of the Justice Department has put that partnership at risk. In response to a letter to President Biden from the National School Boards Association, which likened parents’ protests to acts of domestic terror, Mr. Garland said he would use the Patriot Act against those parents who have “threatened” school boards for the teaching of critical race theory-type themes, adopting NEA New Business Item 39[1], cancelling history and tradition, distributing sexually explicit curricular materials, and allowing transgender bathrooms.

Violence against any person, including school board members, is a crime, but disallowing dissenting voices of parents is a violation of their First Amendment rights. As for the rights of public schools to teach what they choose, consider Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2011 dissent in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants: “The ‘freedom of speech’ as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors without going through the minors’ parents or guardians.” To arbitrarily ignore parents’ concerns is what one would expect of a totalitarian regime more interested in indoctrination than education, not from the world’s foremost and oldest constitutional republic.

In America, education flourished when it emphasized the basic elements or reading, writing and arithmetic, and, as students progressed, when it encouraged skepticism, inquiry and empiricism. Unfortunately, public school education today de-emphasizes education in favor of equity, to achieve graduation rates that reflect the racial composition of the student body. Standardized tests have been eliminated. The Regent Exams in New York have been watered down over the years, and in 2019 a commission was established to potentially eliminate the exams as a requirement for high school graduation. In this past year, New York’s Mayor de Blasio ordered the elimination of the city’s gifted and talented programs. In Oregon, Governor Kate Brown signed a bill ending a requirement that high school students prove they are proficient in reading, writing and math before they are granted diplomas.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/school_parents_will_save_america.html

Has the time for normalcy bias passed?  Domestic espionage scandals involving a presidential administration, Marxist race riots, stolen elections, global pandemic, none of these affairs are normal. Normalcy bias is the idea that any number of contemporary abnormalities that we’re experiencing as a society is just another in a series of oddities that will pass and that what life demands most is that we’re comfortable.  Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul often spoke of what it took to drive change in the public. Namely, he suggested that hitting people in their wallets and bellies would demand change. I submit that messing with the children is proving equally effective.

Since COVID-19 hit, the children have been inundated with unending fear of disease that largely doesn’t affect them.  They’ve been locked in their homes and out of the classrooms, muzzled with unscientific face diapers, and isolated away from their peers.  They’ve forgone youth sports and extracurricular activities. They’ve learned over a computer screen that has resulted in significant rates of academic failure, perhaps not seen in the history of our education system.  Perhaps worst of all, according to the CDC suspected youth suicide attempts increased by 31% during the pandemic. 

Not content with merely applying the stressors of a novel pandemic, the schools have been indoctrinating the kids with an onslaught of far-left activism.  From inappropriate and mature themes in children’s reading and television programming material to inappropriate interactions in protected spaces like restrooms and locker rooms, the parents have seemingly had enough.  Around the nation, angry parents are showing up to local school boards and county seats with a laundry list of grievances, and Hell hath no fury like a mother scorned. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/guilford-residents-accuse-pro-crt-school-board-candidates-of-illegally-mass-mailing-absentee-ballots/

Amid the heated school board fight over critical race theory that has roiled the sleepy town of Guilford, Conn., community members are alleging that Democratic and independent school board candidates mailed illegitimate absentee ballot applications to constituents.

Five parents new to the local politics scene are running on the GOP ticket for the school board after twice defeating three Republican incumbents, who they claim had earned a reputation for rubber-stamping the district’s equity and inclusion initiatives.

The five newcomers have made it their mission to recapture the progressive school board and restore education integrity in Guilford. Now, they face the challenge of besting a fusion slate of five Democrats and independents to win the vacant seats on the panel and secure a conservative majority to steer the district’s policies away from critical race theory.

On Wednesday, Deborah DeMusis and George Mack, who have lived in Guilford for decades, filed a complaint with the Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission requesting a cease and desist order to halt what they claim to be illegal absentee voting.

Appointed circulator by the town clerk to oversee the strict absentee ballot process, DeMusis first suspected malpractice when she learned that an anonymous individual in the town received an envelope filled with suspect materials. According to DeMusis, the envelope contained a disparaging letter targeting the GOP candidates, an absentee ballot guide directing residents to vote for the Democrats and independents, and an absentee ballot application that was pre-filled with voter information as well as signed, in violation of Section 9-140 of the Connecticut General Statutes.

Moreover, the envelopes that the Democrats and independents sent to voters were unsolicited, another illegality, according to DeMusis and GOP school board candidate Danielle Scarpellino. They said that multiple people came forward with their compromised applications, including the spouse of one of the Republican contenders.

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/10/15/educating_students_about_the_victims_of_communism_110650.html

Many Americans today assume that the threat of Communism subsided with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But “We continue to see Communist and socialist regimes pop up and spread not only in Latin America – for example, in Venezuela and Nicaragua – but around the world,” says Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC). “These regimes regularly kill their own citizens and have a devastating effect on human rights and their national economies.” In fact, over 1.5 billion people – including those living in Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and, of course, China – currently live under oppressive Communist and socialist governments.

Founded in 1993 by a bipartisan, unanimous Act of Congress, VOC is “devoted to commemorating the more than 100 million victims of communism around the world and to pursuing the freedom of those still living under totalitarian regimes.”

Before coming to VOC, Bremberg served as the Trump administration’s Representative of the United States to the Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva. During his time there, which he describes as a “profound and life changing experience,” he “became aware of the challenge of China,” which was “far worse” than he had realized. He notes that the U.N. International Human Rights Council made investigating the United States’ record on racism during the summer of 2020 its highest priority – putting it above China’s appalling human rights violations against Uyghurs, among other ethnic groups within its borders.

“Communist countries by far have the worst record on human rights, past and present,” Bremberg argues. “Their brutality is only outdone by their lies and obfuscations.” Seeing this moral imbalance up close convinced him of the “need to educate Americans about the dangers of Communism today.”

American civic education, Bremberg states, entails not only understanding the structure of our form of government but also the world around us. Pointing to the competing claims of the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission, he notes that while we should be willing to “be self-critical and examine our past,” we also need to view our nation in comparison to others, especially ones existing under Communism’s iron fist.