Tag: education

A Massachusetts School District Rolled Back Advanced Classes. Teachers Are Starting To Revolt.

In 2021, a school district in Newton, Massachusetts, got rid of advanced classes in a bid to increase racial equity. But instead of reducing achievement gaps between racial groups, teachers are now sounding the alarm that the strategy is resulting in classrooms that serve neither struggling students nor high achievers. 

According to a Boston Globe article by reporter Carey Goldberg, several parents brought up similar concerns with the new policy—but say they were smeared as “racists” and “right-wingers.”

Goldberg writes that, in 2022, a group of three moms—all Democrats—started a petition to create a parental advisory panel for the school district. The move was motivated by what one parent described as “ideology superseding student needs,” following the school district’s decision to place students in “multilevel classes.” In these new classes, rather than sorting students by ability, students would learn together in the same classroom. The school also decided to stop allowing advanced math students to skip a year to access higher-level classes. The parents also shared concerns that the school’s approach to race and identity issues “emphasized differences rather than commonalities.”

The women say they were branded as far-right conservatives motivated by racial animus rather than a genuine concern for academic opportunities. According to Goldberg, Parent Teacher Organization newsletters urged parents to speak out against the petition at a public meeting. An email from local activist group Families Organizing for Racial Justice said that the petition was “tied to the apparent belief that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts that take race into account compromise academic excellence” and claimed that some petitioners “challenge the need for any activities related to micro-aggressions, inclusion, respect or belonging.”

“The mothers and their allies found themselves portrayed online and in public as dog-whistling bigots doing the bidding of right-wing national groups. Social media comments painted their side as ‘racism cloaked as academic excellence’ and ‘right-wing activism cloaked as parental concern,'” Goldberg wrote. At one meeting, a speaker compared those who supported the petition to “white women who helped perpetuate segregation and white supremacy.”

But years later, the Newton mothers are being vindicated. Teachers themselves are now openly criticizing multilevel classes, arguing that it isn’t serving students’ needs.

Keep reading

There’s Been a Major Change in Attitude at the Department of Education

Each day, it seems like we learn a little more about the new Donald Trump administration. On Friday, Trump’s Department of Education made it appear as if it might embrace homeschooling. If so, this is a huge change from the Joe Biden administration, which was downright hostile toward any type of education that didn’t involve placing children in public school classrooms and indoctrinating them. 

Trump’s Education Department has a new blog on its website, and the very first post, which was published on Friday, is called “Homeschooling: The Lifeline We Didn’t Know We Needed.” It’s written by Stephanie D. Birch, a mother of two and homeschool advocate.  

It starts by recognizing that every child is unique and learns in different ways at different speeds, a concept that’s seemingly been lost in this country for a while: 

I remember how shocked I was when my three-year-old began reading. I quickly realized the educational pathway we planned would not meet her needs. I saw in her eyes that she had unlocked the magic of reading, and I knew the prescribed educational path would stifle her, leaving her mind yearning for more.  

We set out on an empowering journey that led us to homeschooling – the lifeline we didn’t know we needed. It gave us the space and flexibility to craft an education as unique as our children, nurturing their hearts and minds, and giving them the chance to grow into their best selves.   

Birch goes on to explain that she once fell for the stereotypes about homeschooling herself but that, upon embracing it, it her family saw changes she couldn’t imagine: 

I once believed in stereotypical misconceptions about homeschooling: Children lacking socialization, overly sheltered, and stuck completing worksheets. The truth is, homeschooling allows my children to learn, grow and blossom at a pace tailored to their rhythm for each individual area of study. For the kids who are neurodivergent, creative, or otherwise don’t fit the “traditional” mold, homeschooling allows them to shine. We’ve witnessed our kids thrive in things like STEM, art, robotics, fencing, martial arts, dance, and traveling to new places where they can immerse themselves in different cultures and histories in ways textbooks alone could never teach.  

I will point out that the fine print on the Education Department’s blog says, “Blog articles provide insights on the activities of schools, programs, grantees, and other education stakeholders to promote continuing discussion of educational innovation and reform. Articles do not endorse any educational product, service, curriculum or pedagogy.”  But if the first post is about homeschooling, I’m going to go out on a limb and say we’re heading in the right direction. 

Of course, this comes just a few days after Trump signed the “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families” executive order, which promotes school choice and supports putting decisions about education back into the hands of a child’s family, regardless of their geographic location or socioeconomic status. And it’s a complete 180 from the last administration, which wanted to have total government control over, well, just about everything, but especially education. 

Keep reading

New Jersey Teachers No Longer Required to Pass Basic Literacy Test

Aspiring teachers in New Jersey are no longer required to pass a basic skills in order to be certified.

New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy passed Act 1669 as part of the state’s 2025 budget in June to address a teacher shortage, Read Lion reports. The law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025. Individuals seeking an instructional certificate will no longer need to pass the Praxis Core Test, a basic skills test for reading, writing, and math that is administered by the state’s Commissioner of Education.

“We need more teachers,” Democratic Sen. Jim Beach, who sponsored the bill, said in May 2024 when the chamber cleared the bill in a 34-2 vote. “This is the best way to get them.”

Just a few months prior, Murphy also signed a similar bill into law that established an alternative pathway for teachers to sidestep the testing requirement. According to Read Lion, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), a teachers union, was a driving force behind the bill and called the testing requirement “an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession.” NJEA is associated with the National Education Association (NEA).

Keep reading

Real Truth About Maryland’s Blueprint: Expensive Ineffective Reform Designed By Bureaucrats

It’s the same old song and dance from the education establishment. Design a ridiculously expensive, cumbersome reform to save public education, the same public education they ruined. Invite politicians, elite college professors, corporate CEO’s and other big name policy makers to draft the reform. Sprinkle in a token few “educators” and tell them all to “shoot for the moon” when writing the reform. Pretend that funding is unlimited. Throw in every unproven pet educational program du jour. Then, convince lawmakers that the reform as written is the only way to assure the successful futures of our children.

Never ONCE during the entire process think about nuts and bolts of the reform and whether it will actually work or not. When the reform fails, write articles on how it’s not that the reform itself that is flawed, but the “unrealistic goals, insufficient management, and inadequate funding” of the program that are lacking, with strong emphasis on funding being the blame.

And so here Maryland is in year five of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education leviathan spending bill and local governments and the state are discovering that, surprise, it’s not working and it’s not sustainable. What do the creators of the bill do?

They shift the blame off the people who created the mess and on to those who need to implement and pay for the mess.

In his article in MARYLAND MATTERS, December 16, 2024, Kalman Hettleman, one of the members of the Kirwan Commission who developed the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, bemoans the fact that the Blueprint has become a huge problem for state and local educators and education agencies as they fight to fund the full implementation.

Hettleman is a renowned “expert in education” and has a resume that includes being a past member of the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education (Kirwan Commission), member of Baltimore City school board, deputy mayor of Baltimore City, Maryland secretary of human resources, and Baltimore City director of social services. He had many other government positions in his career*. He is also the author of two books and numerous articles on public education. He was never a teacher. However, he has written several education books including this one:

It’s the Classroom, Stupid: A Plan to Save America’s Schoolchildren (New Frontiers in Education): Hettleman, Kalman: 9781607095491: Amazon.com: Books

From the summary of this book on Amazon:

In this book, Hettleman presents a bold, unconventional plan to rescue our nation’s schoolchildren from a failing public education system. The plan reflects the author’s rare fusion of on-the-ground experience as school board member, public administrator and political activist and exhaustive policy research. The causes of failure, Hettleman shows, lie in obsolete ideas and false certainties that are ingrained in a trinity of dominant misbeliefs. First, that educators can be entrusted on their own to do what it takes to reform our schools. Second, that we need to retreat from the landmark federal No Child Left Behind Act and restore more local control. And third, that politics must be kept out of public education.

Keep reading

Experiments on Your Kids

Just this week, the Boston Globe published an article by Newton South High School math and physics teacher Ryan Normandin admitting that an allegedly progressive education experiment had been a failure.

Mind you, it was obvious to every single person on this planet that this experiment would fail.

But in the minds of these people, your kids exist to be experimented on, and to help usher in the progressive future.

Here was the experiment:

Let’s put all students in the same math class, regardless of skill.

Let’s put all students in the same foreign-language class, regardless of skill.

You already know a major motivation behind the policy: why, separating students by academic skill level yields insufficient “diversity” in the classroom.

Not keeping up with the latest in modern educational theory, you might have asked a coarse question like, “Will this new arrangement mean a better education for my kids?”

Oh, dear reader. The thought never even crosses their minds.

Precisely what you’re assuming would happen, happened.

Keep reading

Explosive Report Exposes Biden-Harris Regime Weaponizes Dept. of Education Against Christian Colleges and Universities

The Biden-Harris regime has turned the Department of Education (DOE) into a battering ram against Christian colleges and universities.

According to an explosive report by the American Principles Project (APP), the DOE’s Office of Enforcement, resurrected by President Biden, has disproportionately targeted faith-based institutions, imposing massive fines and creating a hostile regulatory environment.

According to the report:

Days before his inauguration then President-elect Joe Biden wrote in a statement that “ensuring freedom of religion remains as important as ever” and that government must safeguard “bedrock protections.” No one should be “afraid to attend a religious service, school, or community center,” the statement asserts.

That statement is not representative of what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually believe. Since assuming office, the administration has waged an unprecedented assault against Christian colleges, universities, and students, while systematically protecting “elite” public and private institutions, foisting woke ideology on reluctant students, and enabling antisemitic, violent protests on campuses across the nation.

It’s done so by weaponizing the Department of Education’s Office of Enforcement—an obscure subsidiary of the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) that was created with the implicit intent of shutting down schools and programs that do not conform to the administration’s radical agenda.

This campaign, which has been advanced under the auspices of protecting students from “predatory” colleges and universities, threatens to erode traditional family values from higher education and financially squeeze and shut down schools that align with Christians’ values and beliefs.

Data analysis from the American Principles Project reveals that nearly 70% of enforcement actions by the Department of Education targeted faith-based or career-focused schools, which represent less than 10% of the student population.

Institutions like Grand Canyon University (GCU) and Liberty University—two of the country’s largest Christian universities—faced record-setting fines of $37.7 million and $14 million, respectively.

Keep reading

America’s First Legal Launches “Parents’ Rights Toolkit” To Help Families Protect Children From Woke Educators

America’s First Legal (“AFL”) just launched a “Parents Rights Toolkit” to help parents protect children from woke educators and policies in K-12 schools, colleges and universities.

The AFL toolkit includes template letters and other resources to help parents file civil rights complaints with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights under:

  • Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex;
  • Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin; and
  • The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (“PPRA”), which protects parents’ rights to know about and opt out of divisive race and gender-related lessons and curricula.

The toolkit additionally includes state-specific Freedom of Information template letters that can be used when making public records requests.

Keep reading

Get the Government out of the Classroom

President-elect Trump has nominated former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education. President-elect Trump promised that, if confirmed, Mrs. McMahon would “spearhead” the effort to “send education back to the states.” This has led some people to wonder if Linda McMahon may be the last Secretary of Education.

The Constitution does not give the federal government any role in education. Instead, education is left in the hands of state and local governments and private citizens. For almost 200 years American children were provided with education largely free of US government interference.

In the 1950s, a significant federal intervention in education was created as a response to fears that America was losing the “space race” to the Soviet Union and thus needed to improve science education. In this instance, the Cold War contributed to the growth of federal government involvement in education.

The Department of Education was created in 1979. Since then, presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have expanded federal funding and control of education with little or no improvement in student performance. Anger over their children being denied a year or more of education over fears of covid caused many parents to abandon government schools. Many other parents began challenging the use of schools to indoctrinate children in “woke” ideology. Some of these parents started attending school board meetings and running for school boards.

Woke education also caused more parents to abandon government schools. The key to improving education quality and stopping schools from promoting a political agenda is restoring control over education to those most concerned that children receive a quality education and who best know children’s unique needs and abilities: parents.

The best way to empower parents is to restore parents’ control over the education dollar. Fortunately, President-elect Trump has proposed adding a 10,000 dollars tax credit for homeschooling parents to the tax legislation Congress will consider next year. Tax credits should also be made available for private school tuition and any educational expenses — such as supplies, tutoring, or costs related to participation in an extracurricular activity — of parents who choose to send their children to government schools. Tax credits should also be available for donations to programs helping low-income students attend private schools. Education tax credits should be paired with cuts in the Department of Education. Americans will always spend generously on education. The question is who should control the education dollar: politicians and bureaucrats or parents.

Keep reading

REVEALED: Woke Seattle school board chief who shut down gifted and talented sites because they had too many white and Asian students was accused of RACISM by colleagues during anti-racism training scheme

The woke Seattle school board chief who shuttered its gifted and talented programs because they had too many white and Asian students was previously accused of racism by a colleague, documents from the probe show. 

Along with another board member, in 2021 Chandra Hampson was found to have violated the policy against harassing, intimidating and bullying over their treatment of two black employees who were working on an anti-racism plan. 

The anonymous complainants accused Hampson of launching ‘an orchestrated campaign of bullying, escalating intimidation, gaslighting and retaliation’ against them, according to the investigation report. 

Although investigators did not find ‘clear evidence’ that Hampson and her board colleague Zachary DeWolf discriminated against the staffers because of their race, it did conclude that they ‘used their positions and authority to their detriment’.  

Three years later, Hampson is embroiled in a new race scandal at the school over the closure of its controversial gifted and talented programs. 

The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year because they found it had too many racial inequities. 

School bosses said black and Hispanic students were underrepresented at the schools.

According to Seattle Public School data, of the highly capable students in the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent were white, 16 percent were Asian and 3.4 percent were black.

During a January 22, 2020, school board meeting, parents of black students in the Highly Capable Cohort asked the board to consider finding ways to incorporate students of color into the gifted program rather than shut it down.

Then school board vice president Chandra Hampson slammed those parents saying, ‘this is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.’

Keep reading

Department of Education & The GAO; Audits & Incompetence

The Liberal left are miserable given Trump’s statement regarding his desire to eliminate the Department of Education;  children will have no schools – there will be no money for special needs – our education system will collapse…   It already did.

The Department of Education:  Their last audit for September 2023 financial statements was a disclaimer –  “KPMG has not been able to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence to provide a basis for an audit opinion because of unresolved errors KPMG identified in the underlying data, we do not express an opinion”.

In the world of accounting this means KPMG, the auditor, is covering their arse because the financials are ‘misleading and/or unrepresentative of truth’.  The Financial Statements did NOT delineate expenditures – in any definable mode.   Although it did assign $812 million to ‘unknown and improper loss to Taxpayers while identifying “Climate Related Financial Risk”

They spent $100 million on ‘equity’ K thru 12.  Their largess liability is loans which is what they owe back to the Treasury for over-spending.   Their largest Receivable is student loan debt which they are cancelling.  Meaning they could effectively add an additional $1.3 trillion to the Treasury Deficit if they successfully write-off their entire Asset Base.

Income and expense statements typically provided in every financial report are non-existent, MIA.   There is no breakdown of departmental use of funds – which could be a huge basis for KPMG refusing to grant them an audited opinion.  They Are Rogue.  And ANY low life accountant would fear having ANY relation with such a dervish entity given liability and LAWSUITS.

The entirety of their Assets are based on Loan Receivables to students which continue to be forgiven under the Biden Regime.  In 2023 that amount was $94 billion.   The Department’s appropriation of $881 billion in CoVid funds represents nearly 1/5 of the total $5 trillion.  $6.4 billion of CoVid aid was sent overseas.  CoVid funds cannot be traced or accounted for – by the Government Accounting Office.

The government being handed to Trump is a veritable Financial nightmare – MESS.  More than we can possibly realize – it is based on fraud.    Every agency tied to The West is based on Fraud (including NATO which I previously posted in a blog).   The money doesn’t exist.  The debt is likely 500times what is revealed as a direct result.   The US is literally well beyond broke and is hoping to blame it on Trump when reality sets in.

Running America on the backs of lawyers instead of monetary fiscal accounting and economics is our demise.  Lawyers have zero proficiency in finances, taxes or economics..  As a result, they created the Government Accounting Office.   

Gene Dodaro is head of the Government Accounting Office.   He has a BA in liberal Arts.  But to make it all make sense – they gave this BA of liberal Arts, Dodaro, a few awards to elevate his appearance of diligence.   In the Accounting world – a BA is liberal arts – a BS degree is quantitative Accounting.  He is NOT an Accountant.   He is NOT a CPA.   He is NOT an Economist.

Having graduated college in 1973, he worked his entire career within the federal government.  His title in the GAO is “Comptroller”.  In the real world, Comptrollers are responsible for the preparation of all balance sheets, income statements, internal controls and audits.  The previous US Comptroller was David Walker, a CPA who also completed the CAPSTONE program for flag rank military officers.

As a former CPA/Comproller/Finance Director – we used to joke about small corporations hiring their wife’s, sister’s best friend who knew someone who took a couple bookkeeping classes in high school.  To save money.   But we are talking about our Federal Government hiring incompetents who have never actually worked in any capacity as an accountant – running the financial apparatus of our entire COUNTRY.

It makes sense IF the reason was exactly because he was uneducated, an appointment originated by Obama.  It portends to the extant of financial MESS throughout every single government agency for which KPMG is the ONLY auditor.

NATO fails its audits – our government agencies fail their audits – the Department of Defense is missing $33 trillion – no wonder they need to confiscate Syria’s Oil and Ukraine’s $13 Trillion in resources!   To Cover Their ARSES.  To use war as diversions from the financial devastation that they blame on Social Security!

Keep reading