Crisis in American Education

This newsletter is not supposed to be focused on education, but so many of our recent editions – about teacher strikes, a teacher shortage, politics in the classroom, student loan debt – have fallen into that space.

Today it is national test score data suggesting that American 9-year-olds took a major step backward during the Covid-19 pandemic, when many of them were not physically in the classroom.

Average scores between 2020 and 2022 in math and reading fell “by a level not seen in decades,” according to CNN’s report:

7 points down in math – the first decline ever.
5 points down in reading – the largest decline since 1990.

The scores decreased more among lower-performing students and Black and Hispanic students, suggesting the pandemic was harder on groups of people already struggling.

The results are being interpreted as proof of what many parents, teachers and other sentient beings already suspected: that remote learning was a failure.

“It’s not surprising,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, appearing on CNN’s “New Day” on Thursday. “Keeping in mind a year and a half ago, over half of our schools were not open for full-time learning.”

What is this test? The National Assessment of Educational Progress, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, is known as the “Nation’s Report Card.” It’s a congressionally mandated program within the US Department of Education, and it selects a representative sample of students to project a national picture.

In-person learning. Cardona argued the Biden administration helped get districts back to in-person learning, which may be technically true, but is counter to the perception that Republican-led states were quicker to push their schools to return.

Schools and politics. Republicans have looked to grassroots school board politics – and making sure kids are physically in school – as a campaign issue, although the efforts have veered into disputes over race and gender.  READ MORE...

Students Demand "A" Grades

Students at an elite, private university in New York City are occupying a campus building with the demand that all be given A grades.

The original reason for The New School occupation, which began on December 8, was to support striking faculty members who were lobbying for higher wages and better health care.

Though the faculty strike has since been resolved, a letter of demands now calls for A grades for all students. It says in part: "We demand that every student receives a final course grade of A as well as the removal of I/Z grades for the Fall 2022 semester." The letter insisted, "Attendance shall have no bearing on course grade." (According to the New School’s website, an "I" grade is a "temporary incomplete" and a "z" grade is an "unofficial withdrawal.")

The letter also states that occupying students demand a refund "for the loss of instructional time due to the strike" and that "this tuition refund will be proportional to the duration of the semester during which the strike is in effect."

Students are also calling for the resignations of the school’s president, provost, vice president and the disbandment of the Board of Trustees. Other demands include a tuition freeze from 2023 to 2028. As reported by The Daily Caller, students are also demanding for the university president’s house "be treated as a communal property."

Assistant Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs Amy Malsin commented to Fox News Digital on the unfolding situation: "The university supports peaceful free expression by our students, and we are listening closely to all of our students' concerns."  READ MORE...

Professors Trained At Elite Universities

One in eight tenure-track professors at US institutions got their PhDs from just five elite 

US universities, according to a study.Credit: Paul Marotta/Getty

US universities hire most of their tenure-track faculty members from the same handful of elite institutions, according to a study1. The finding suggests that prestige is overvalued in hiring decisions and that academic researchers have little opportunity to obtain jobs at institutions considered more elite than the ones at which they were trained.

Specifically, the study, published in Nature on 21 September, shows that just 20% of PhD-granting institutions in the United States supplied 80% of tenure-track faculty members to institutions across the country between 2011 and 2020 (see ‘Hiring bias’). 

No historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) or Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) were among that 20%, says Hunter Wapman, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) and a co-author of the paper. One in eight US-trained tenure-track faculty members got their PhDs from just five elite universities: the University of California, Berkeley; Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; Stanford University in California; and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“It’s not surprising, but it is jarring” to see these data, says Leslie Gonzales, a social scientist who studies higher education at Michigan State University in East Lansing. 

“There’s so much brilliant work and training of brilliant scholars that’s happening outside of this tiny sliver” of institutions, including at HBCUs and HSIs — and it’s being overlooked, she says.  READ MORE...

Where Do We Go For The Truth???

1. 
   Do we need to wear facemasks or not?
   
2. Are we protected from COVID if we are vaccinated?
3. Are we really following the science or not?
4. Do facemasks really help?
5. Do we need another lockdown?
6. Do children need to wear facemasks?
7. Are teacher's unions just being self-serving?
8. Are American companies investing in China?
9. Is China growing faster than the US?
10. Does China have a bigger military than the US?
11. Had US educated become diluted?
12. Do Americans know how to retain knowledge?
13. Why is our southern border so open to illegal immigration?
14. Is there a different set of rules for the wealthy and/or powerful?
15. Why do some many Americans use illegal drugs?
16. Is the US still a racist country?
17. Does the mainstream media censor the NEWS?
18. Is our national debt really a problem?
19. Does too much government spending cause inflation?
20. Can you really trust politicians to tell you the truth?

NOTE:  Ever since Donald Trump became President of the USA, we have had problems with the division in this country...  and, it appears that this division is GETTING STRONGER instead of weaker putting us in a position of being NOT UNITED at all...  If fact, we are moving from what MLK Jr wanted which was judging a person on their character not their color...  currently, we want to judge people on their color, not their character.  This is resulting from the BLM movement, and CRT race theory that educators are saying is not being taught in our public schools...  yet, the students come home and say that it is...  We are not being taught that being white is BAD and being black is GOOD...  THAT IS COLOR NOT CHARACTER...   Einstein...