School-Wise News: Autumn 2021
*** Pressured by the teachers’ union, the Los Angeles School District never opened during the 2019-20 school year. At the same time, it demanded that teachers not teach remotely for more than four hours a day BUT receive their full pay. *** Almost 66% of students...
Money, Money, Money 2021: Over-Extended and in Debt
Biden’s on-the-table $3.5+ trillion “Build Back Better” so-called infrastructure package expands the child tax credit, provides paid family leave, an expansion of ObamaCare, even a hefty electric vehicle tax credit. Lots of freebies and not just for the needy,...
COVID’s Relentless Hold on Schools and Their Added-On Responsibilities
We all said 2021 would be different than locked down 2020. Vaccines were coming on the scene, the world reopened, and life as we knew it would be ours again. Except it isn’t... Districtadministrator.com’s Mark Zalaznicki, in his September 28 piece, “School Closings...
September was National Recovery Month: Did You Notice Amid All the Mixed Drug Messages Coming out of the States and D.C.?
Recent preliminary data from the CDC shows that there more than 5,200 overdose deaths in Pennsylvania alone in 2020, 16% more than in 2019. Nationally, the news is even grimmer: 93,000 Americans died from overdoses in 2020, a 29% more than 2019’s 72,000. And the...
Why the Union League is honoring the great patriot, abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass with a new portrait, by John Meko, Jr.
On September 14, 2021, The Union League Legacy Foundation unveiled a new painting, a portrait of the great abolitionist and patriot Frederick Douglass. The event comes during a time when Douglass’ beliefs and values, including natural rights, limited government and...
America’s Schools, Teachers, and Students: The Stats
According to current National Education Association data, the 3 highest and lowest teacher salaries: New York: $87,738 Massachusetts: $86,315 California: $85,892 South Dakota: $49,993 Florida: $49,583 Mississippi: $47,655 According to 2017-18 data from the National...
America Veers Left At a Cost
For starters, an early August 2021 Fox News poll found that: 59% of registered Democrat voters hold positive views of socialism. 49% of those voters believe in capitalism *** Oregon’s Democratic Governor Kate Brown recently signed a bill removing proficiency standards...
The 2021 Changing Face of American Schooling
*** A new Quizlet data study found that: High schoolers in such states as Florida, Georgia, and Texas that offered some or all in-person instruction during the pandemic returned to “pre-CCOVID” levels during fall 2020. For Florida, it was a 95% of pre-pandemic...
Devil Tech or Saving Grace?
Tech, the end all and be all of American life, has revolutionized everything from how we get our meals, shop, learn, and be entertained, and, in the process, we’ve made the providers rich, including the billions spent by schools to be on the cutting edge of...
Critical Race Theory: The Fallout
Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley, in his July 13 “Critical Race Theory Is a Hustle,” wrote: “A majority of American fourth- and eighth-graders can’t read or do math at grade level, according to the Education Department. And that assessment is from 2019, before the...
Remote Instruction: The Costly Learning Downside
Look up remote in a thesaurus, and you’ll find not just the usual distant and far-off, but also lonely, disconnected, and isolated, perfect descriptors for the distance learning foisted on millions of students in March 2020 when America was locked down, schools...
Scholar Rick Hess Takes on Anti-Racist Education and the NEA Adopts the CRT
Writes Rick Hess, American Enterprise Institute resident scholar and Education Policy Studies director: Media is ablaze with coverage of the heated resistance to ‘anti-racist’ education and Critical Race Theory (CRT). Much of the discourse, at least in education...
Bill Maher Takes on Far-Left Thinking 18- to 34-Year-Olds
Back in late April, HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher lambasted millennials saying that they are advertisers’ favorites because they’re the most gullible demographic. For instance, he notes, that when it comes to the under 35 crowd… *** 33% favor abolishing the...
Google Docs Gets “Inclusive,” Autocorrecting What It Considers Offensive in Your Writing
Google Docs seems to think it has the right to make suggestions and/or autocorrect your writing, making it more inclusive and politically correct via its predictive text algorithm. “That,” explains Daily Wire’s Chrissy Clark, “uses one of two things: machine learning...
Brandeis University’s Oppressive Language List
Brandeis University: A private, co-ed university with an acceptance rate of 30% charges students big bucks to attend: Tuition: $59,408 Mandated Activity Fee: $598 Room/Basic Double: $9,380 Board/12 meals + 850 points/semester: $7,070 TOTAL: $76,457 Add-ons include,...
Progressive Thinking Takes Hold across America as Do Anti-Semitism and Anti-Police Sentiments
Everything we do and say matters; everything we do and say has consequences... *** Tweeted New York Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar, “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable...
From the Flag and THC to Anti-Gender Reveal Parties and Sexualized Entertainment: A Changed America
First, chivalry died, then civility, ethics, morality, and gratitude came tumbling after, straight into the divisive 2020s, not just applauded by millions, but promoted, too, even on the 4th of July. *** U.S. track and field, hammer throwing Olympic bronze medal...
Ready or Not: The New National Civics Guidelines
Released on March 1, “The Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy” write Education Week’s Stephen Sawchuk and Sarah Schwartz, "center on the idea of ‘reflective patriotism,” meaning that “students should learn to feel committed to this country and the ideals it...
Standardized State Tests: Waste of Time or Effective Measure of Student Performance?
The ball got rolling with President George W. Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), next made its way to Obama’s Common Core Standards (CCS) online assessments and 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and then landed on Biden’s lap. He, despite a year of...
Did Pandemic Ed Tech Get It All Wrong?
Writing that “getting ed tech wrong would be a bitter pandemic legacy, American Enterprise resident Scholar and Education Policy Studies director Rick Hess cites several examples of bad ed-tech habits that developed during the lockdown “compromising instruction and...