RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/charter-schools-enemies-block-black-success-11592520626?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

For decades, there has been widespread anxiety over how, when or whether the educational test score gap between white and non-white youngsters could be closed. But that gap has already been closed by the Success Academy charter school network in New York City.

Their predominantly black and Hispanic students already pass tests in mathematics and English at a higher rate than any school district in the entire state. That includes predominantly white and Asian school districts where parental income is some multiple of what it is among Success Academy students.

New York’s charter school students are predominantly black and Hispanic, and live in low-income neighborhoods. In 2019, most students in the city’s public schools failed to pass the statewide tests in mathematics and English. But most of the city’s charter school students passed in both subjects.

Such charter school results undermine theories of genetic determinism, claims of cultural bias in the tests and assertions that racial “integration” is necessary for blacks to reach educational parity with whites.

Back In 2013, a higher percentage of the fifth-graders in a Harlem charter school passed the mathematics test than any other public school fifth-graders in the entire state of New York.

The success of New York City’s charter schools is not only a threat to educational dogmas. Competition from charter schools is an existential threat to traditional public schools in low-income minority communities, which tend to have even lower educational outcomes than traditional public schools as a whole.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/17/harvard-eliminates-sat-and-act-from-its-application-process/

The elite Harvard University has announced that it will be removing the SAT and ACT scores requirement from its application process, citing the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, according to The Daily Caller.

The change will go into effect for all prospective students applying for the class of 2025. In a statement, the university said that the pandemic “has created insurmountable challenges in scheduling tests for all students, particularly those from modest economic backgrounds.” The statement also seems to confirm that the removal of the test score requirement will not be permanent, saying that “we believe this temporary change addresses these challenges.”

Instead, applying students will be asked “to send whatever materials they believe would convey their accomplishments in secondary school and their promise for the future.”

Other universities have already permanently dropped the SAT and ACT requirements, including the entirety of the University of California system, which encompasses 10 different colleges across the state. Far-left “civil rights” groups have falsely claimed that the score requirement amounts to discrimination against poor students and minority students.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/16/how-our-anti-american-education-system-made-riots-inevitable/

Rioting social justice warriors are remaking the world as they see fit, consistent with what they’ve been taught from K-12 to the highest echelons of learning.

The past fire-lit weeks in America’s cities have made clear that the protests, and the riots that attend them, have little to do with the condemnable alleged murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.

Even in the non-violent demonstrations, protesters can be seen burning the American flag, an act that just 30 years ago engendered such outrage it spurred Congress to pass an unconstitutional law, but doesn’t even warrant coverage today. In broad daylight, protesters have defaced and toppled statues dedicated to any and all figures of America’s history.

Lest anyone think the mob’s Year Zero behavior stopped with the slaveholding Confederacy, in Boston a monument to the 54th Massachusetts, an all-black Union regiment during the Civil War, was among those vandalized. Matthias Baldwin, an early abolitionist, got the same treatment in Philadelphia, as did the lesser-known Rotary Club founder Paul Harris, whose plaque in Washington D.C. was marked simply with an ignorance-acknowledging “probably a racist.” The monument to the author of the Emancipation Proclamation on the National Mall was likely spared only because of the protection of the National Guard.

As John Daniel Davidson has noted, toppling statues is not a good sign for the future of the republic; it looks a lot less like a policy conversation about police reform than it does regime change and revolution.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/14/in_the_war_for_social_justice_academic_freedom_is_an_early_casualty_143444.html

WASHINGTON — In the war for social justice, academic freedom is an early casualty. Consider the plight of UCLA Accounting Professor Gordon Klein.

A student sent Klein an email, screenshots of which were reviewed by Inside Higher Ed, that asked for “no-harm” grading for the final exam. (That term means counting a grade only if it improves a student’s overall course grade.) The student also asked for shorter exams and extended deadlines for black students who attended protests after the death of George Floyd.

Inside Higher Ed described the email as “a request from students who identified themselves as nonblack allies of their black peers.”

Klein wrote back that he “gives black students special treatment” and then asked for the names of black classmates; he had been conducting class online and wasn’t sure about students’ ethnicity.

Klein also wondered if some white students, say those from Minneapolis, might be traumatized and in need of an edge as well. And what of students of mixed race? He questioned how he could give a “no-harm” test when the final exam is the only exam of the semester. And he wondered how Martin Luther King Jr. might have reacted to the suggestion that students be evaluated based on the “color of their skin.”

A complaint was lodged. On June 3, UCLA suspended Klein until June 24 to give administrators time to consider the complaint. Anderson School of Management Dean Antonio Bernardo wrote that it appeared Klein had “disregard for our core principles, including an abuse of power.”

 I just received the school’s appeal which stated:

“This is a moment in history. Our children will ask us one day, if they have not already, what we did as a community to make lasting, positive, and meaningful change from this moment. And we must ask ourselves this same question. Our hope is that the Oakwood community will fulfill its mission and continue as a leading institution committed to the work of racial equity and antiracism.“

As a proud momma of a graduate, an ER doc who assists the National Guard in his spare time, I wrote:

“Our children will ask us why we allowed the destruction of our communities, stood by as law enforcement and civilians were beaten by radical Leftist groups, allowed businesses (including those belonging to blacks) to be burned and permitted looting – all activities that are inimical to a law and order constitutional republic.

They will also ask us if “black lives mattered,” why was there no outcry about the 7,000 black Americans murdered annually, most at the hands of other blacks?  Our children will want to know where the protest was when retired black St. Louis police chief, David Dorn, was murdered as a result of the radical Leftist mayhem.

They will ask us why we didn’t do anything to stop the amalgamation of Maoists, Marxists and Islamic radicals that make up Antifia, BLM, La Raza, CAIR, etc.  Why did we permit the destruction of our cities in the name of one black man with an extensive criminal record who died at the hands of one bad cop?

Most importantly, our children will ask us how we squandered the legacy of our Founders, lost the greatest experiment in liberty and individual freedom the world has every known, defiled the most enduring symbol of freedom (the American flag) and supplanted the greatest document in history insuring self-government, individual liberty and the rule of law in return for the misery of totalitarianism, poverty and lawlessness. 

Our children will scream, “How did you turn the United States of America, where millions of immigrants aspired to live, into Communist China in record time and leave us to live a life of enslavement and misery?”

 Janet Levy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/the-krugman-led-mob-comes-for-academic-freedom/

The Left seems increasingly incapable of living by neutral principles.

The long march through the institutions ends in the university economics department. The digital mob, led by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Michigan professor Justin Wolfers, has arrived at the University of Chicago, where it is pressuring the school to remove Professor Harald Uhlig from his position as editor of Journal of Political Economy, after he criticized Black Lives Matter.

The left-wing economists were triggered (or, more likely, are pretending to be triggered) by an Uhlig tweet contending that BLM “just torpedoed itself” by supporting “defund the police.” Uhlig went on to argue that it was time “for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all.”

The horror!

It is almost surely the case that Krugman and his followers see an opportunity to appropriate and weaponize a cause to undermine those in the University of Chicago economics department who still cling to heterodox positions.

Wolfers, who demands academics talk about racial inequality in the manner he prescribes, says, “I don’t think it’s just or fair that Uhlig, as an editor at the @JPolEcon is an important gatekeeper for economists trying to make their mark. I don’t think the profession’s resolve to look more deeply into racial justice will get a fair hearing under his editorship.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/open_the_schools_without_politics.html

As of June 3, 2020, the CDC reported that there have been 20 deaths in children in the U.S. due to COVID-19. In my home county of Orange in California, no child has died due to COVID-19. JAMA Pediatrics for May 11, 2020 had this to say: “Finally, it is important to emphasize that the overall burden of COVID-19 infection in children remains relatively low compared with seasonal influenza.”

We have never closed schools or forced children to wear masks during an influenza season. Yet, the CDC has issued guidelines recommending face coverings for elementary school-aged children, social distancing, reduced classroom populations, and other suggestions that make little scientific or common sense.

To put some of the COVID statistics into perspective: Motor vehicle injuries are a leading cause of death among children in the United States — in 2017, 675 children 12 years old and younger died as occupants in motor vehicle crashes, and nearly 116,000 were injured. In the same year according to the CDC, drownings claimed the lives of almost 1,000 U.S. children. That is 50 times greater than COVID-19! As a result, would you favor closing down all swimming pools in the United States?

The argument that children should wear face coverings to prevent the asymptomatic spread of the coronavirus to a high-risk teacher or administrator is also fallacious. First of all, there is little if any evidence that asymptomatic children are spreading COVID-19 to adults. Indeed, the World Health Organization issued a report on June 8th indicating little evidence of asymptomatic transmission of the virus.