Tag: dumbing down

The bar exam will no longer be required to become a licensed attorney in Washington

The Washington Supreme Court approved multiple new avenues to become a licensed attorney in the state Friday, none of which require taking the bar exam. 

The court approved new ways for law students to become licensed attorneys in the Evergreen State. One method is an apprenticeship program for law school graduates who work under an attorney for six months, then submit a portfolio for review. The other option is to complete 12 credits of skills coursework, 500 hours of hands-on legal work prior to graduation, and submit a portfolio for the Washington State Bar to review.

“These recommendations come from a diverse body of lawyers in private and public practice, academics, and researchers who contributed immense insight, counterpoints and research to get us where we are today,” Washington Supreme Court Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis said in a statement. “With these alternative pathways, we recognize that there are multiple ways to ensure a competent, licensed body of new attorneys who are so desperately needed around the state.”

Law clerks can also become lawyers without going to law school by completing standardized education courses under the guidance of an attorney and 500 hours of work as a licensed legal intern. 

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court created the Bar Licensure Task Force to examine alternative paths to becoming a licensed attorney in the state. The task force looked at the “efficacy of the Washington state bar exam” and assessed “disproportionate impacts on examinees of color and first generation examinees.”

While Washington’s alternative licensing program has a DEI element, states with similar programs have implemented their programs for other reasons.

California is considering DEI as a barometer for expanding its licensing program that would help students “avoid the heavy expense of preparing for the traditional bar exam — a burden that falls disproportionately on historically disadvantaged groups, including first-generation graduates, women, and candidates of color,” according to Reuters.

The new avenues to becoming licensed address the “serious legal deserts problem” in Washington and “help remedy the fairness and bias concerns with the traditional licensure,” according to Seattle University School of Law Dean Anthony Varona, co-chair of the task force. 

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Artificial Intelligence In The Classroom Can Only Offer Artificial Educations

Educators are grappling with how to approach ever-evolving generative artificial intelligence — the kind that can create language, images, and audio. Programs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot pose far different challenges from the AI of yesteryear that corrected spelling or grammar. Generative AI generates whatever content it’s asked to produce, whether it’s a lab report for a biology course, a cover letter for a particular job, or an op-ed for a newspaper.

This groundbreaking development leaves educators and parents asking: Should teachers teach with or against generative AI, and why? 

Technophiles may portray skeptics as Luddites — folks of the same ilk that resisted the emergence of the pen, the calculator, or the word processor — but this technology possesses the power to produce thought and language on someone’s behalf, so it’s drastically different. In the writing classroom, specifically, it’s especially problematic because the production of thought and language is the goal of the course, not to mention the top goals of any legitimate and comprehensive education. So count me among the educators who want to proceed with caution, and that’s coming from a writing professor who typically embraces educational technology. 

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Academics embrace new ‘deficit framing’ concept to justify unprepared, underperforming, or immature students

ANALYSIS: In other words, there isn’t a problem with students entering college grossly unprepared. The problem is college is too challenging. Those that say otherwise are colonizing subjugators.

It is an open secret among college professors and university administrators that college students aren’t what they used to be.

They struggle with lengthy reading assignments and basic vocabulary. They don’t know rudimentary algebra. They can’t add or subtract fractions. They complain that deadlines, hard exams, and required attendance are impediments to their success.

Yet, although some professors view these deficits as problems to be fixed, many in academia have embraced bits of pedagogical fluff intertwined with fashionable DEI that suggest there is something demotivating if not bigoted about acknowledging deficits as deficits and holding students to basic academic or professional standards, while implying bad grades and a lack of maturity on the part of students are simple quirks educators just need to better accept.

One such fluffy concept is that of “deficit framing,” sometimes referred to as “deficit thinking” or a “deficit model lens.” As defined by education researcher Chelsea Heinbach in a 2021 interview, deficit thinking is “the belief that there is a prescribed ‘correct’ way of being — also known as the norm — and anyone who operates outside of that norm is operating at a deficit.”

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“American Students Are Falling Behind”: Poor Math Scores Are Now A National Security Threat

The most recent results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) highlight a concerning trend for U.S. students in the field of math.

In comparison to their counterparts in other industrialized nations, American students are falling behind. The rather sobering results revealed a 13-point decline for U.S. students when compared to the 2018 exam.

In stark contrast, 28 countries and economies managed to either maintain or improve their 2018 math scores, with countries such as Switzerland and Japan leading the way—and leaving the United States in the dust. These considerably more successful nations share a number of common characteristics, including, most notably of all, shorter school closures during the pandemic, as noted in the report.

Obviously concerned by the findings, the Defense Department has called for a new initiative to provide support for education in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). As The Hechinger Report reported, China, the United States’ biggest rival, has eight times the number of college graduates in these disciplines compared to the United States, while Russia, another major foe, has four times the number of engineers. This alarming disparity, noted the Hechinger Report piece, has prompted concerns beyond the realm of education. The United States’ mathematical failings pose a direct threat to its technological supremacy.

Other commentators have gone a step further. Falling math scores, they suggest, should be viewed as a national security threat. They’re right.

Mathematics plays a critical role in various fields such as the physical sciences, technology, business, financial services, and infrastructure. For instance, geometry, algebra, and trigonometry are fundamental parts of architectural design. Moreover, math plays a significant role in medicine, AI, and quantum computing. Math serves as the foundation for virtually all scientific and industrial research and development. Essentially, mathematics can be seen as the underlying operating system that makes the world go round.

Which begs the trillion-dollar question: What can be done?

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Seattle English Students Told It’s “White Supremacy” To Love Reading, Writing

Students in a Seattle English class were told that their love of reading and writing is a characteristic of “white supremacy,” in the latest Seattle Public Schools high school controversy. The lesson plan has one local father speaking out, calling it “educational malpractice.”

As part of the Black Lives Matter at School Week, World Literature and Composition students at Lincoln High School were given a handout with definitions of the “9 characteristics of white supremacy,” according to the father of a student. Given the subject matter of the class, the father found it odd this particular lesson was brought up.

The Seattle high schoolers were told that “Worship of the Written Word” is white supremacy because it is “an erasure of the wide range of ways we communicate with each other.” By this definition, the very subject of World Literature and Composition is racist. It also chides the idea that we hyper-value written communication because it’s a form of “honoring only what is written and even then only what is written to a narrow standard, full of misinformation and lies.” The worksheet does not provide any context for what it actually means.

“I feel bad for any students who actually internalize stuff like this as it is setting them up for failure,” the father explained to the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.

The father asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution against his child by Seattle Public Schools. He said the other pieces of the worksheet were equally disturbing.

The worksheet labels “objectivity,” “individualism,” and “perfectionism” as white supremacy. If students deny their own racism — or that any of the nine characteristics are legitimately racist — is also white supremacy. Denialism or being overly defensive is a racist example of an “entitlement to name what is an [sic] isn’t racism and that those with power have a right to be shielded from the stresses of antiracist work.”

The father argues the concepts are “incoherent and cannot stand any sort of reasoned analysis.” And he notes that it’s set up to ensure students accept every concept without ever questioning the claims.

“How is a 15-year-old kid supposed to object in class when ‘denial and defensiveness’ is itself a characteristic of white supremacy? This is truly educational malpractice.”

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California School Drops $250,000 On ‘Woke Kindergarten’ Program to “Disrupt Whiteness”, Students’ Grades Dip Even Further

According to The Daily Caller, a California school district spent $250,000 on a ‘Woke Kindergarten’ curriculum while the majority of its students failed grade-level math, reading, and writing.

Woke Kindergarten has been giving teachers at Glassbrook Elementary School in Hayward training sessions for two years and is funded through a federal program for assisting low-performing schools, according to the Chronicle. Test scores for students at the school have fallen under the program, which pushes anti-police, anti-capitalism and anti-Israel messages.

Zeus Leonardo, a professor of education at the University of California Berkeley, says Woke Kindergarten promotes abolitionist education.

Their chief aim is to make “politics part of the framework of teaching,” Leonardo told the Chronicle.

Some teachers questioned using the program because it is linked to insane left-wing politics and activism, the Chronicle reported.

One teacher, Tiger Craven-Neeley, said he supports talking about racism in the classroom but was confused about one of the objectives set by the training to “disrupt whiteness” in the school, according to the Chronicle. He also questioned a trainer who used the phrase “so-called United States.”

Questioning the idea of “disrupting whiteness” got Craven-Neeley temporarily banned from training sessions, he told the Chronicle.

“What does that mean?” Craven-Neeley told the Chronicle. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?”

A teacher who wished to remain anonymous in the program said there could be no divergence from what the program advocates. “It slowly became very apparent if you were a dissenting voice that it’s not what they wanted to hear.”

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Oregon University Will No Longer Give ‘D-‘ Or ‘F’ Grades

Citing a wrongheaded “GPA fixation,” Western Oregon University leaders have announced plans to abolish D- and F grades for students…

They will replace them with “no credit” in an effort to support student success and encourage struggling undergrads to continue their education despite obstacles, they said.

The public university announced in a news release this month the changes would start in the fall.

“Students not earning a passing grade will be required to repeat the course and demonstrate proficiency. Our goal is to ensure that students who have met the core competencies and learning objectives graduate and provide every student an opportunity to be successful at Western Oregon University,” Vice President of Academic Affairs Jose Coll said in an email to The College Fix.

Coll, who took the job as provost in June 2023, said in the news release that “GPAs will now be a true reflection of student success and course mastery; failures will no longer mask the demonstrated abilities of our students when they pass courses.”

The news release stated that “the institutional academic grading regulation will reflect a grade range of A through D; the letter grades of D- and F will be replaced with No Credit (NC) for undergraduate students.”

“The difference is that the grade of NC will not negatively impact student GPAs.”

The move comes as data from the school shows that 65 percent of freshmen who drop out of WOU have earned at least one “F,” Inside Higher Ed reported.

Western Oregon University acknowledged students receiving “no credit” are significantly more likely to continue with their education than those who fail classes, leading some to accuse the school of allowing “grade inflation” to occur, according to Inside Higher Ed.

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No diploma? No problem! Navy again lowers requirements as it struggles to meet recruitment goals

The U.S. Navy is starting to enlist individuals who didn’t graduate from high school or get a GED, marking the second time in about a year that the service has opened the door to lower-performing recruits as it struggles to meet enlistment goals

No diploma? No problem! Navy again lowers requirements as it struggles to meet recruitment goalsLOLITA C. BALDORAssociated PressThe Associated PressWASHINGTON

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Navy is starting to enlist individuals who didn’t graduate from high school or get a GED, marking the second time in about a year that the service has opened the door to lower-performing recruits as it struggles to meet enlistment goals.

The decision follows a move in December 2022 to bring in a larger number of recruits who score very low on the Armed Services Qualification Test. Both are fairly rare steps that the other military services largely avoid or limit, even though they are all finding it increasingly difficult to attract the dwindling number of young people who can meet the military’s physical, mental and moral standards.

Under the new plan, Navy recruits without an education credential will be able to join as long as they score 50 or above on the qualification test, which is out of 99. The last time the service took individuals without education credentials was in 2000.

“We get thousands of people into our recruiting stations every year that want to join the Navy but do not have an education credential. And we just turn them away,” said Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, the Navy’s chief of personnel, in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

He said that of the more than 2,400 who were turned away last year, as many as 500 of them could score high enough to get in. He said he has already sent an order to his recruiters to start the new expanded effort, adding, “I’m hoping all my recruiters have called all 2,442 of them in the last 72 hours, and we’ll see how it goes … We’ll try to get some test takers this weekend.”

In the wake of the pandemic, the services have faced significant enlistment challenges. COVID-19 forced the military to shut down recruiting stations and they were closed out of high schools and many public fairs of events where they historically found success reaching prospective candidates.

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Chicago’s progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson announces plans to ax Windy City’s high-achieving selective-enrollment high schools to boost ‘equity’ despite promising not to during election campaign

Chicago’s progressive mayor has announced plans to axe the Windy City’s high-achieving selective-enrollment schools to boost ‘equity.’  

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Board of Education has proposed shifting back toward neighborhood schools – away from the system where kids compete for selective programs.

But when he was campaigning to become Mayor, Johnson put out a statement saying that he would not get rid of Chicago‘s selective-enrollment schools. 

According to the Chicago Tribune, woke Johnson specifically said: ‘A Johnson administration would not end selective enrollment at CPS schools.’

Now, he is seen to be back peddling – by allowing a vote to stop gifted children from lower income backgrounds from academically competing to get into high-performing schools. 

Selective schools cause a ‘stratification and inequity in Chicago Public Schools,’ according to the board’s CEO. 

Chicago has 11 selective-enrollment high schools — Northside College Prep, Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, John Hancock College Prep, Jones College Prep, Lane Tech, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School.

Walter Payton College Prep, South Shore International College Prep, Westinghouse College Prep and Whitney M. Young Magnet School are also on the list. 

The schools are not just the best in Chicago – but rank among the top high schools in the entire country. 

Walter Payton College Prep is ranked 10th best school in the US. Northside College Prep is 37th. Jones College Prep ranks 60th. 

Now, a resolution is up for a vote by the school board on Thursday.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez has prepared a resolution for ‘a transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.’

It would lay out a five-year ‘transformation’ to effectively get rid of selective schools in Chicago – which have been heralded as the gems of the city’s education system. 

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