RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://tomklingenstein.com/the-american-classroom-is-more-broken-than-you-think/

For those who follow politics and current events, it should be evident that something has gone wrong with America’s public K-12 schools. A recent Pew Poll found that over half of Americans believe public education is heading in the wrong direction, with 69% of those concerned saying that schools are not spending enough time on academics and 54% saying that teachers are bringing their political views into the classroom.

These concerns of the public are well-founded. Math and reading scores are at their lowest in decades. Eighty percent of recent high-school graduates report being taught Critical Race Theory concepts in school such as “America is a systemically racist society” and “White people have unconscious bias that negatively affects non-white people.” Sexually explicit LGBTQ+ books line the shelves of school libraries, with parents who request their removal smeared as transphobic book banners akin to Nazis.

For conservatives, the solution seems simple: Get rid of Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ+ ideology in schools, and education will go ‘back to normal.’ While this is a step in the right direction, things are not so simple. This is because the foundations of public education in America — instruction, curriculum, management, discipline — have dramatically eroded over the last few decades. 

Not long ago, the purpose of school was understood to be the education of students, and deviations from that purpose were regarded with suspicion. Teachers stood at the blackboard and taught from textbooks while students sat at their desks, took notes, and answered when called upon. Students were expected to be punctual and well-behaved, and to master the material given to them. Teachers were expected to be professional, knowledgeable, and impartial. 

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/03/one-third-of-k-12-students-behind-grade-level/

A recent study shows that roughly one-third of American K-12 students in the 2023-2024 academic school year are behind their grade level in a variety of subjects.

As Axios reports, the data was compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through their “School Pulse Panel,” a survey of almost 4,000 grade schools that are considered nationally representative. The data from June of 2024, taken from the responses of 1,651 schools, shows that there has been virtually no change from the 2021-2022 school year, when 33% of students were learning at a level that was below their actual grade.

The study also examined the differences based on geographic region and locality, discovering that schools in the Western United States are performing worse than any other area of the country, with about 40% of students behind their grade level. When comparing urban areas and rural areas, the study found that 38% of students in city schools are behind their grade level, compared to 31% of students in suburban schools.

These findings further confirm that the long-term effects of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns are continuing to be felt today, with the biggest impact being on American education. The quality of schooling in America plummeted sharply while schools were shut down, with virtually no improvement after the implementation of “remote learning” and “hybrid” schooling that combined partial in-person education with continued remote learning. Even after returning to full in-person schooling, many students have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels in their education.

Some of the strategies being employed by schools to combat this decline include hiring even more teachers, with 55% of schools choosing this strategy due to it being either “very” or “extremely effective.” Another 35% of schools are also spending more time focusing on target areas, while 18% are engaging in family outreach.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/elite-universities-and-the-diversity-game

Since the Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina in June 2023 that repealed race-conscious admissions policies, many observers have wondered what would happen to the racial makeup of elite universities. In the past, such schools have proudly advertised the data on the racial makeup of incoming freshmen. So far this year, most have remained strangely silent.

Last week, however, MIT broke the silence by reporting that the percentage of underrepresented minorities enrolling had precipitously dropped. Whereas black and Hispanic students, respectively, made up 15 percent and 16 percent of MIT’s Class of 2027, the Class of 2028 is just 5 percent black and 11 percent Hispanic. Meanwhile, Asian Americans have increased their enrollment from 40 percent to 47 percent, while the white share stayed essentially unchanged at 37 percent. That Asian Americans were the primary beneficiaries of the removal of racial preferences is consistent with the work we have published on the SFFA cases.

Both MIT and the media advertised the changes in the racial makeup of incoming freshmen as reducing diversity. The Chronicle of Higher Education described it as a 36 percent drop in racial diversity. Despite no change in the share of white enrollment, NBC News claimed that “The university’s white and Asian American student populations have increased, while all others have declined—some even down to zero, according to MIT.”

While MIT is to be lauded for actually releasing its numbers, the picture is more complicated than MIT and the media let on: it depends heavily on how one defines “diversity.” As MIT and the media are using it, the term seems to mean “representative of the national population.” Asian Americans are a diverse group, representing many different cultures and ethnicities. But MIT and the media treat them as a monolith. To them, the diversity they bring as individuals of particular cultures and ethnicities is less important than their representativeness of the U.S. Asian-American population as a whole.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/demystify-the-ivies

Long before Hamas’s attack on Israel last fall, Americans had grown skeptical of their elite universities. The safe spaces, the academic-speak elevating inane ideas, and the cancellations of nonprogressive arguments all suggested institutions adrift. Events on campuses since October 7 destroyed any lingering illusions. The anti-Israel (and often anti-American) frenzies seemed tolerated, if not supported, by university administrations and even encouraged by some faculty. It has been a disgraceful spectacle.

Have we finally hit bottom? If so, things may start getting better. A loss of trust and stature could be just what our elite universities need in order to fix themselves.

America’s elite universities remain the envy of the world, with unrivaled academic talent and Nobel Prize–winning research. They still attract talented students and produce leaders in government and industry worldwide, commanding a status that few other schools can match. But their stature has fallen. Some federal judges say that they won’t hire law clerks from Columbia University. One survey found that 33 percent of hiring managers are less likely to hire Ivy League graduates now than five years ago. Employers can’t be blamed, argues Nate Silver, when they assume that many applicants were admitted for dubious reasons, were coddled academically with inflated grades, and are likely to bring divisive politics into the office.

Several trends led to this point. As the American economy transitioned to knowledge-based industries, the returns on college education increased, and elite universities became more important. They also became more desirable globally, enhancing the reputation of undergraduate and professional degrees. More people attended college, placing a higher premium on slots at elite schools. Attendance at such schools was presumed to ensure a job on the fast track. (On average, however, graduates of these universities don’t earn much more compared with similar students from other schools.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/08/ai-in-the-writing-classroom-professor-beware/

Generative artificial intelligence has no role in the walled garden of teaching a student how to write.

For nearly three decades, I’ve had the privilege of teaching media writing to generations of undergraduate and graduate students at Boston University’s College of Communication, helping them week after week to steadily acquire the skills they need to embark on successful careers. However, two years after the arrival and wider use of generative AI, it’s inarguably clear that, at every level of education, these tools represent nothing short of an existential threat to the writing classroom — undercutting the very way we formulate, develop, and express our intelligence.

Although I needn’t rehearse all of the many statistics describing the obvious decline of writing and literacy in our society, the temptation is too great. Last fall, Joseph Pisani grimly noted in the Wall Street Journal, “the average score on the ACT dropped to a new 30-year low, indicating fewer high-school seniors are ready for college.” That lamentable decline aligns with other research showing the number of teenagers who read for pleasure dropping steadily over the past 40 years, while the number of teens who rarely or never read for fun climbed from 8 to 29 percent.

Since writing instructors can confirm that the best way to learn writing is to read voraciously, it’s clear that we instructors already face a steep climb, competing with distractions ranging from TikTok and Snapchat to Netflix and the latest smartphone games. We already have a generation that refuses or is unable to read. Do we now want them unable to write, as well?

Ask virtually any college writing instructor today and you’ll get some variation of issues about student performance: an inexplicable unwillingness to read (either compulsorily or voluntarily), an inability to properly compose sentences that rise above the most pedestrian of structures (at best), or a crippling overreliance on writing and grammar tools whose scope only increases. Those concerns are now exponentially magnified.

With the arrival of gen AI in late 2022, my colleagues and I have been facing a game-changing inflection point: the increasing inability to accurately assess an individual student’s writing talent — their ability to create, develop, and express original thoughts in clear, compelling, audience-centric ways. Even in the face of clear policies prohibiting the use of gen AI in our classes, we now face an onslaught of prefab essays brazenly churned out in seconds by time-pressed, shortcut-seeking students eager to get their tickets punched before moving down the path to their degrees.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/08/campuses-arent-ready-for-the-return-of-encampments/

Indiana University’s confusion over its policies for dealing with demonstrators is likely to prove representative.

As students start returning to their colleges and universities this month, many will find new rules about protests, camping, signage, and other types of “expressive activity” on their campuses. These changes were prompted by last spring’s demonstrations over the war in the Middle East that led to confrontations among students and faculty, disrupted classes and graduations, and in some cases resulted in police action and arrests. Penn, Texas, and Harvard are among the schools reportedly revising their policies.

At its July meeting, Indiana University’s board of trustees adopted a new “expressive activity” policy, which went into effect on August 1. It may provide a glimpse into what higher education is planning to do about last spring’s demonstrations — and why it doesn’t go far enough.

In late April, a group of IU students and faculty (along with outsiders) began what was meant to be an “indefinite” encampment in Dunn Meadow, a portion of the Bloomington campus at which protests had been allowed since the 1960s. In short order, IU’s leadership — after specially trained administration and faculty teams failed to persuade the protesters to dismantle the encampment — asked campus and state police to remove the tents. Several hundred faculty members quickly signed a petition demanding the resignations of IU president Pamela Whitten and her provost, Rahul Shrivastav. Neither resigned, but in response, the university’s trustees retained Cooley LLP to conduct an independent investigation.

The law firm’s July report is disturbing. It describes a chaotic situation in which well-organized demonstrators faced off against understaffed and unprepared “de-escalation” teams and police. After several attempts, the teams succeeded in dismantling most of the encampment, making more than 50 arrests, but allowing the protesters to remain.