THIS IS WHAT ARE WE PAYING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO TEACH OUR KIDS?????

[Geee]

Expecto Inutilem Gradus! Duke Offering a 'Spell Book' Course

The description reads in part:

We will explore the feminist and queer communities who have gravitated towards spells, incantations, and Tarot decks to provide a greater insight into a dominant world that was not made for them.

Ah, there you go! I knew feminism and queerness would be in the mix somewhere! To wrap up the coursework:

For your final project, you will create your own personal grimoire, or spell-book. Yes, you read that right—a spell book! This non-traditional assignment challenges the distinctions we often put between writing, crafting, art, and magic, and it will provide a space to try new things. Your grimoire will likely be playful, at times somber, but ultimately the tenor of your book will be defined by what excites you. (sic)

Yes, the final project is a spell book. Any surprises?

[Geee]

The Dark Relationship Between U.S. Universities and An Anti-American School Controlled By Terrorists

Birzeit University, located just outside of Ramallah in the West Bank, is home to an overwhelmingly Hamas-affiliated student government that holds on-campus terrorist parades. It also has relationships with some of America’s most prestigious universities, despite the fact that its leadership and faculty openly harbor pro-terrorist and anti-American sentiments.

The chairwoman of Birzeit’s Board of Trustees denied Hamas’s brutality and rape on October 7, and the school’s official account called for “glory to the martyrs” days after the attack. Yet its relationships in the United States remain largely intact — it has active relationships with Harvard University, Rutgers University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others across the country.

 

Harvard University is set to host a “Palestine Social Medicine Course” next month at Birzeit, where students will learn about “settler colonialism.” Rutgers University affirmed its relationship with Birzeit in May amid student encampment protests and William Paterson University entered into an agreement with the Hamas-run university in 2022 for exchange programs, sharing curricula and joint degree programs. Other schools, such as MIT, have recently co-hosted conferences, invited Birzeit professors for speaking events, or had student groups visit its campus.

Experts say the university has “gone off the deep-end” since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terrorist attack, with leadership openly defending the actions and broadcasting lies about the conflict.

[Geee]

Nonprofit Sues Northwestern University Over Discriminatory Affirmative-Action Hiring Practices

“Faculty hiring at American universities is a cesspool of corruption and lawlessness. For decades, left-wing faculty and administrators have been thumbing their noses at federal anti-discrimination statutes and openly discriminating on account of race and sex when appointing professors,” Mitchell wrote in the lawsuit. “This practice, known as ‘affirmative action,’ is firmly entrenched at institutions of higher learning and aggressively pushed by leftist ideologues on faculty-appointments committees and in university DEI offices. But it is prohibited by federal law, which bans universities that accept federal funds from discriminating on account of race or sex in their hiring decisions.”

[Geee]

Vermont Health Department Discourages Saying 'Son' and 'Daughter' in Classrooms

Vermont’s Department of Health on Wednesday urged teachers and coaches to adopt more "inclusive language" in school by avoiding terms like "son" and "daughter."

 

"Use ‘child’ or ‘kid’ instead of ‘daughter’ or ‘son.’ This is gender-neutral and can describe a child who may not be someone’s legal son or daughter," the health department instructed in a Facebook post, noting that "equity in the classroom is an essential piece of a productive and healthy learning environment."

School staff, the post continued, should also say "family members" rather than "household members" as family members may not necessarily all live in the same home, and "family" rather than "extended family" as relatives other than parents could be "important parts of a core family unit."

"This post was intended to encourage using inclusive language when you don't know someone's family situation. This is especially important in settings like classrooms, afterschool programs, and sports teams," the department added in a comment underneath the post.

The department's advisory comes amid a growing progressive push nationwide to impose more "inclusive language" for the transgender crowd, with new terms including "penis owners" and "menstruating people." A top health official in New York City preferred the term "birthing people" instead of "mothers."

[Geee]

‘What Did You Learn in School Today?’ - Armstrong Williams

It is an undeniable reality that children are the custodians of our future, destined to shape the world we leave behind. Children indisputably hold the responsibility of safeguarding our future and have the inherent potential to influence the world we will ultimately pass on.

It is an obvious fact that our children will become our leaders in the future, succeeding us, as well as their own descendants and subsequent generations. A nation that desires its leaders to continue the lessons learned in the past must educate them accordingly.

This is why developed nations expend a significant portion of their gross domestic product on education, and it is why terrorist states teach their children the ideologies of their terror groups.

 

The United States allocates 6.1% of its gross domestic product toward education. The U.S. is ranked 36th globally based on this number. However, it is comparable to the expenditure levels of most major developed nations.

 

But money isn’t everything. Investing billions of dollars in education would be futile if the curricula provided to students are insufficient. This is the reason why we observe poor educational outcomes in many low-income neighborhoods, where a large amount of money is invested per student but performance is below that of neighborhoods spending less per student.

Despite its status as one of the lowest-performing school districts in the nation, Baltimore County Public Schools allocates approximately $22,424 per student. Most problems in Baltimore County can be attributed to cyclical poverty and the prevalence of single-parent households.

[Geee]

A third of K-12 students are behind grade level

About a third of U.S. K-12 students this school year are behind grade level, according to a recent survey.

Why it matters: Schools are still dealing with the long-term effects of remote schooling and other pandemic-era learning disruptions.

How it works: The data, current as of the end of the 2023-24 school year, is from the School Pulse Panel, a monthly National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey of nearly 4,000 nationally representative grade schools.

• For the June 2024 data, 1,651 of those schools responded.
• The idea is to track key education metrics in near real time as teachers and administrators grapple with post-pandemic learning loss and other challenges.

The big picture: The 2023-24 results are pretty much flat from the end of the 2021-22 school year, when 33% of students were behind grade level.

[Valin]

1 hour ago, Geee said:

A third of K-12 students are behind grade level

Maybe we should spend More Money?  Here in MPLS we're only spending $20,000 per student!

[Geee]

22 minutes ago, Valin said:

Maybe we should spend More Money?  Here in MPLS we're only spending $20,000 per student!

When my kids were in school I looked at the high school budget published in the newspaper. The big money didn't go to the teachers. The big money went to the administrators. Wonder what the break down of that twenty grand actually is?

[Valin]

46 minutes ago, Geee said:

When my kids were in school I looked at the high school budget published in the newspaper. The big money didn't go to the teachers. The big money went to the administrators. *Wonder what the break down of that twenty grand actually is?

That 20 Grand is from yeas ago, so its got to be insane now.

* Gonna go Waaay Out On A Limb and say DEI.

[Geee]

How Mao is Outsmarting Madison in American K-12 Classrooms

In a legislative blitz last week, the House of Representatives passed 25 bills to counter Beijing’s growing influence and protect Americans from threats associated with everything from drones and biotechnology to electronic vehicles. But legislators should not ignore one of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) less noticed but no less concerning campaigns: CCP Confucius Classrooms in American K-12 schools. 

Beijing has created these unobtrusive beachheads in which Mao is essentially masquerading as Mr. Rogers to expand its influence and gain access to American education and community leaders. With these pint-sized outposts, the CCP is exploiting the democratic system designed to limit American governmental power to instead accumulate power and promote Beijing’s authoritarian interests inside the United States.

The CCP likes to tell its story in ways intended to shape how individuals think about China, normalizing or minimizing autocracy and thereby promoting positive historical and cultural narratives about China while diminishing the United States. For Beijing’s storytellers, the Confucius Classroom provides direct access to captive audiences consisting of America’s most impressionable listeners. :snip:

[Geee]

‘Ghost dollars:’ Universities secretly take billions in foreign money, report says

American colleges and universities are accepting billions of dollars in foreign money without reporting it, according to a new report.

The National Association of Scholars released the report, which says that taking money from foreign governments and organizations without reporting it has become commonplace among American universities.

“Higher education is awash with conflicting interests,” said NAS Fellow and report author Neetu Arnold, who added that universities "search for partnerships and grants abroad, sometimes from adversarial governments."

From NAS:

By using public records requests, we compiled the amounts of reported and unreported foreign gifts to universities. We found that from 2010 to 2016, universities failed to disclose some 54 percent of all reportable gifts. During the Trump administration, particularly after the ED’s investigation found $6.5 billion in unreported foreign funds, disclosures by universities far exceeded the total amount we could find by records requests by $1.7 billion. Under the Biden administration, universities returned to the status quo – underreporting gifts by at least 39 percent.

Arnold said universities also seek out and compete for foreign grants.

“These grants and payments come with stipulations,” he continued. “One stipulation, Section 117, requires that universities disclose foreign gifts to the Department of Education. Yet, many universities fail to do so, even when threatened with extensive and embarrassing investigations.”

NAS has begun digging into the extent of those foreign donations, a number which is not fully known. They have created a “Foreign Donor Database” to track the billions of “ghost dollars.”

 

 

[Geee]

Book Tells Kids Republicans ‘Don’t Believe In’ Immigrants While Dems Are The Party Of Lunch And Free Stuff

Just because your middle schooler can’t vote doesn’t mean he’s not the target of election materials designed to make him sympathetic to Democrats. A book in the “Who HQ” series (published by Penguin Random House) titled “What Is A Presidential Election?” introduces kids to leftist talking points about the Electoral College, Donald Trump, and government spending, to name a few.

In a two-page spread, the book’s author, Douglas Yacka, presents kids with 10 sentiments and then tells them, “If you answered ‘Yes’ to more of the odd-numbered questions, you agree with many ideas held by Democrats.” If you answered “Yes” to even-numbered statements, you might be a Republican, Yacka explains.

[Valin]

1 hour ago, Geee said:

Book Tells Kids Republicans ‘Don’t Believe In’ Immigrants While Dems Are The Party Of Lunch And Free Stuff

Just because your middle schooler can’t vote doesn’t mean he’s not the target of election materials designed to make him sympathetic to Democrats. A book in the “Who HQ” series (published by Penguin Random House) titled “What Is A Presidential Election?” introduces kids to leftist talking points about the Electoral College, Donald Trump, and government spending, to name a few.

In a two-page spread, the book’s author, Douglas Yacka, presents kids with 10 sentiments and then tells them, “If you answered ‘Yes’ to more of the odd-numbered questions, you agree with many ideas held by Democrats.” If you answered “Yes” to even-numbered statements, you might be a Republican, Yacka explains.

Comment At Amazon

love dogs

3.0 out of 5 stars Not 100% neutral as hoped

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2024

Verified Purchase

We homeschool our son, who lives in a house divided, politically. I was hoping for a totally neutral book on pres elections for a unit study of obvious extra-significance right now. I’m thumbing through the materials I’ve gathered for a unit on elections, civics, constitution. This book, as another reviewer noted, cites that Biden seeks re-election. Oops! But more disappointingly, I also agree that it leans a hair left. How? By semi-subtly making comments that put people in a negative light, namely Trump. Was it so much to ask for a totally unbiased book? I thought it wasn’t as this series usually delivers well in that regard. But I was wrong and for the first time this gives me pause about buying more books from them. My son can handle that and it’ll be a good talking point (about TDS, haha), but I felt I should mention it in case this is a deal breaker for another family.

15 people found this helpful

[Geee]

'A Mockery Of Education': Dean of Michigan State’s Top-Ranked Ed School Is a Serial Plagiarist, Complaint Alleges

The dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education, Jerlando Jackson, plagiarized extensively over the course of his career, according to a complaint filed with the university on Thursday, lifting text without attribution and raising questions about his fitness to lead one of the top teacher training programs in the country.

The complaint includes nearly 40 examples of plagiarism that span nine of Jackson’s papers, including his Ph.D. thesis, and range from single sentences to full pages. It adds to the allegations of research misconduct already facing the embattled dean, who was a coauthor on several papers implicated in complaints against diversity officials earlier this year, including Harvard University’s chief diversity officer, Sherri Ann Charleston.

[Geee]

Texas Teachers Busted Knocking Out Kids with 'Sleepy Stickers'

Two Northgate Crossing Elementary School teachers in Spring, Texas, have been placed on leave as police investigate them for allegedly slapping "sleepy stickers" on kids to make them fall asleep.

 

A young girl brought a sticker home to show her mother, Lucy Luviano.

"She said, 'It is a sleeping sticker," Luviano told local media. "I asked, 'Where did you get this?' And she said, 'My teacher gives it to me for sleeping time."

Luviano brought the patch to the school to demand answers and threaten a police investigation. "We did say we wanted to file criminal charges if this is something that is true," Luviano revealed.

[Geee]

U. of California faces lawsuit for not hiring illegal aliens

The University of California faces a lawsuit for not offering jobs to illegal aliens in accordance with a January decision by the Board of Regents.

“A UCLA alumnus and a university lecturer, represented by attorneys from the law firm of Altshuler Berzon LLP, Organized Power in Numbers, and the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at the UCLA School of Law, filed a lawsuit against the University of California (UC) for discriminating against undocumented students enrolled at the institution,” a UCLA law news release stated.

 

The petitioners are UCLA alumnus and campus organizer Jeffry Umaña Muñoz and UCLA lecturer and executive director of Immigrants Rising Dr. Iliana Perez, according to the release. Immigrants Rising is an organization that helps illegal aliens acquire education and pursue careers, according to its website.

UC’s Board of Regents decided by a vote in January to suspend for one year the implementation of its policy that allowed the hiring of illegal aliens.