Tag: education

Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona Refuses to Say Whether Men and Women ‘Are Physically Different’

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona refused to answer whether or not men and women have physical differences during a House Appropriations Committee budget hearing on Wednesday.

The question asked to Cardona during the budget hearing was in reference to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announcing on Monday that they are blocking males who identify as females from playing in women’s sports.

During the hearing, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) questioned Cardona about the importance of Title IX before questioning him on the physical differences between men and women, according to the Daily Caller.

Title IX is the federal civil rights law that protects individuals from sexual discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive financial assistance from the federal government, according to Thomson Reuters.

“Would you agree that Title IX was necessary to help establish women’s sports because women can’t fairly be expected to compete on biological male teams?” Harris asked Cardona.

While Cardona initially attempted to skirt the question, after being asked by Harris not to filibuster, he agreed that Title IX is important.

Harris then asked Cardona if he would “agree that women are physically different from men.”

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Pres. Biden’s budget proposal seeks to spend $3 billion for teacher DEI training programs

President Joe Biden’s budget proposal seeks to set aside billions of dollars to push progressive gender, sexuality and race ideology at home and around the globe.

Released this week, the $7.3 trillion budget also proposes spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to train school teachers in diversity, equity, and inclusion dogma.

The White House touted the spending in its announcement of Biden’s budget, which includes $3 billion to “advance gender equity and equality worldwide.”

That $3 billion figure is several hundred million dollars higher than the 2023 budget request.

Funding for domestic projects of the same kind are robust as well though, including for public education to “improve the diversity of the teacher pipeline.”

In fact, Biden’s budget prioritizes training a new generation of teachers who embrace progressive ideology on race, gender, and sexuality.

For example, the budget includes $30 million to increase the number of teachers who go through the Hawkins Centers of Excellence, a federal effort that sets up programs to trains teachers in inclusivity on race, gender and sexuality.

Those training programs must be set up at minority-focused colleges such as historically black colleges and universities or colleges focused on serving Native Americans or Hispanics.

Once established, the taxpayer-funded program must “examine the sources of inequity and inadequacy in resources and opportunity and implement pedagogical practices in teacher preparation programs that are inclusive with regard to race, ethnicity, culture, language, and disability status and that prepare teachers to create inclusive, supportive, equitable, unbiased, and identity-safe learning environments for their students.”

In another similar funding item, the budget sets aside $95 million for the Teacher Quality Partnership Program, another federal effort that administers grants for training teachers.

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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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“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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U.S. students’ math scores plunge in global education assessment

U.S. students lag behind their peers in many industrialized countries when it comes to math, according to the results of a global exam released Tuesday.

Why it matters: U.S. students saw a 13-point drop in their 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) math results when compared to the 2018 exam.

  • The 2022 math score was not only lower than it was in 2012 but it was “among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics” for the U.S., per the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country note.

Zoom in: While the U.S. scored below the OECD average in math, it managed to score above the OECD average in reading and science.

  • The 2022 results found that U.S. students scored one point below their 2018 reading score and three points below their 2018 science score. However, their performances in those areas were higher than in 2012.

The 2018 PISA assessment found that U.S. students straggled behind their peers in East Asia and Europe, per the Washington Post.

What they’re saying: In a statement Tuesday responding to the latest results, Education Sec. Miguel Cardona praised the U.S. for moving up in the world rankings but acknowledged “there’s much work to be done.”

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Texas School District Removes Convicted Prostitute From Multiple Roles, Including Sex-Ed

The Godley, Texas, school district removed a woman appointed to assist with deciding things like age-appropriate material for sex education after learning she was a convicted prostitute.

FOX 4 in Dallas reported that the woman, identified as Ashley Ketcherside, also advertises online as an escort, with one site listing one of her personas as active last month.

While the idea of having a convicted prostitute work for a school district may have some scratching their heads, the issue raises concerns for others about background checks in the Godley Independent School District (ISD) and across the state.

“We had no idea what was going on in her personal life. She was always very friendly and personable,” Godley ISD School Board trustee Kayla Lain told the station.

Mary Lowe of the nonprofit group Families Engaged for Effective Education commented on Ketcherside being a convicted prostitute and working on a council that recommends “appropriate grade levels and methods for human sexuality instruction” within the district.

“I don’t see any community wanting that to be the standard for their school district,” she said.

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Professors: Free Speech And Intellectual Diversity Are Not Essential To Higher Education

In “The Indispensable Right,” I discuss how academics are now leading an anti-free speech movement on campuses that challenges the centrality (or even the necessity) of free speech protections in higher education. The latest such argument appeared this month in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Two Arizona State University professors — Richard Amesbury and Catherine O’Donnell — wrote that free speech concerns yield too much to the “right wing” and that free speech should not be given the protection currently afforded by universities and colleges. Indeed, they argue that free speech may be harming higher education by fostering “unworthy” ideas.

Amesbury teaches religious studies and O’Donnell teaches history at ASU. They wrote an article titled “Dear Administrators: Enough with the Free Speech Rhetoric! It Concedes Too Much to the Right-Wing Agenda.”

The two academics challenge the long-held view of the centrality of free speech to higher education. Notably, many of us have been alarmed by the erosion of free speech on our campuses, but Amesbury and O’Donnell seem to worry that there is still too much protection for opposing views. Worse yet, they suggest that the free speech objections are often part of a right-wing funded agenda.

In fairness, to the two professors, they do not reject the overall value of free speech, but challenge “the assumptions that free speech is a cardinal virtue of higher education, and that colleges should aspire to a diversity of opinions.” They insist that higher education is about finding truth and that means that false ideas are inimical to our mission as educators. Indeed, they question the need for “intellectual diversity”:

Our contention is that calls for greater freedom of speech on campuses, however well-intentioned, risk undermining colleges’ central purpose, namely, the production of expert knowledge and understanding, in the sense of disciplinarily warranted opinion. Expertise requires freedom of speech, but it is the result of a process of winnowing and refinement that is premised on the understanding that not all opinions are equally valid. Efforts to “democratize” opinion are antithetical to the role colleges play in educating the public and informing democratic debate. We urge administrators toward caution before uncritically endorsing calls for intellectual diversity in place of academic expertise…

A diversity of opinion — “intellectual diversity” — isn’t itself the goal; rather, it is of value only insofar as it serves the goal of producing knowledge. On most unanswered questions, there is, at least initially, a range of plausible opinions, but answering questions requires the vetting of opinions. As some opinions are found wanting, the range of opinion deserving of continued consideration narrows.

As a threshold matter, what is so striking about this argument against intellectual diversity is that it is made at a time with little such diversity in most departments. Seeking a wider range of viewpoints on departments does not “concedes too much to the right-wing agenda.” It acknowledges a growing problem across higher education, It is an educational agenda that has prompted many of us to raise the reduction of intellectual diversity.

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Pentagon Official At Office Overseeing Elementary Schools Arrested In Human Trafficking Sting

Stephen Francis Hovanic, a top administrator for the Pentagon’s school system in the Americas region, was arrested on Nov. 15 in a human trafficking sting in Coweta County, Georgia, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Hovanic, 64, of Sharpsburg, Georgia, was arrested on suspicion of pandering, according to a press release the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office provided to the DCNF. Eva Tedder, administrator for the sheriff’s office, said Hovanic told the jail staff he works for the Department of Defense (DOD) located in Peachtree City, Georgia, where the Department of Defense Education Activity’s (DODEA) Americas division is located, according to the agency’s website.

A booking photo of Hovanic, which the Coweta County sheriff’s office shared with the DCNF, shows a man who closely resembles the man in DODEA Americas Chief of Staff Stephen Hovanic’s biography on the agency’s website. Photos of both men show a distinctive scar across the chin.

The biography also states that Hovanic lives in Sharpsburg, Georgia.

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