Tag: education

College Students Are Testing at the Level of 10-Year-Olds

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”

According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries — a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler.

The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.

The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math. Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent — only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.

It seems there are numerous compounding explanations for these test results: pandemic-era learning gaps leading to lower levels of preparation, declining college enrollment forcing schools to lower admissions standards, and lower levels of public funding for education, to name a few.

The results also coincide with the explosion of large language models like ChatGPT, which by many accounts have carved out a new floor for academic failure in both K-12 and college-level education.

While there’s no denying how complicated the issue is, there is evidence that removing technology from classrooms altogether could offer an immediate boost.

In one classroom in Minneapolis, for example, a literature and English teacher banned phones and laptops, requiring all coursework to be done on pencil and paper. As the school-year started in September, just 46 percent of the students involved said they felt confident about their reading skills. A few months later in February, that number stood at 95 percent.

Though it’s just one classroom, something is clearly off the rails in the education systems of the richest countries of the world — and the longer it goes unaddressed, the more students will be pushed into the world with the reading skills of 4th graders.

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Cynthia Nixon’s wife gets $200k city gig after ‘Sex and the City’ star’s Mamdani endorsement

The Mamdani patronage machine has hired the wife of lefty actress Cynthia Nixon as an educrat making $203,500 a year, The Post has learned.

Christine Marinoni is working as the chief of mass engagement at the Family and Community Empowerment (FACE) office at the Department of Education, according to a well-placed DOE source.

The DOE source said this was Mamdani’s reward to the former “Sex and the City” star after she endorsed him during the mayoral primary.

Nixon held a fundraiser for Mamdani in March 2025 and raised over $200,000 for the socialist mayoral upstart.

“So thrilled to host a fundraiser for the incredible Zohran Mamdani whose clear message & ambitious plan for a more affordable NYC is exactly what we need right now,” she posted on Instagram at the time beside a picture of her and Mamdani standing together grinning ear to ear.

The hire is already drawing sharp comparisons to New York’s most notorious political machine.

“It’s painfully fitting that inside Tweed Courthouse, a DSA machine reminiscent of Tammany Hall is handing taxpayer-funded jobs to the well-connected spouses of multimillionaire celebrities,” another source, a City Hall insider, said.

When reached for comment, Nixon denied that her wife was rehired by the DOE for political reasons, and declined to speak further. Marinoni could not be reached for comment.

Marinoni previously worked as special assistant to the chancellor during the de Blasio administration and made $131,708, according to public data.

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Waste Of The Day: Stolen Education Grants

Topline: A North Dakota woman was convicted last month of five counts of theft for stealing $131,000 in state grants meant for after-school programs.

Key facts: Faith Dixon, 47, was one of the top recipients of $2 million that the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction awarded in October 2021 for its Out of School Time program to support children impacted by school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Her nonprofit, Faith4Hope, instead sent the funds to her then-husband’s food stand, her brother’s music and production company and her sister-in-law’s dance studio, according to court documents reviewed by InForum.

Dixon’s lawyers claimed she disbursed the money in “good faith” to help children, despite the conflicts of interest. But assistant attorney general Jeremy Ensrud showed some of the funds were spent on Dixon’s own “day-to-day living expenses.”

Dixon’s ex-husband pleaded guilty to theft last year. He admitted the grants to his food stand were not spent on providing culinary classes to children, as he promised the state.

Dixon’s other family members truly did spend their grants on helping children, Ensrud told InForum.

Last October, Dixon took a plea deal that would have sent her to prison for only 4 to 11 months, but she backed out because she had received “bad legal advice.” Now, she will serve 4 to 10 years.

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Six California Cities Ranked Among Top 10 Least Educated In US

Six California cities ranked among the top 10 least educated metropolitan areas in the United States, according to a report by WalletHub published on June 29.

Looking at the 150 most populated metro areas, the city of Visalia ranked as the second least educated, while Bakersfield was fourth, and Modesto, Fresno, Stockton, and Salinas followed.

All six are in central California.

The other four metros that rounded out the top ten were all in Texas – McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Brownsville-Harlingen, Beaumont-Port Arthur, and El Paso, at first, third, ninth, and tenth least educated, respectively.

“Higher education doesn’t guarantee better financial opportunities in the future, but it certainly correlates with it,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said in the report.

“The most educated cities provide good learning opportunities from childhood all the way through the graduate level.”

As Dylan Morgan reports for The Epoch Times, to determine the ranking, WalletHub equally factored in the share of adults at least 25 years old who have a high school diploma or higher, who have at least some college experience, who have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and who have a graduate or professional degree.

Visalia ranked last among the 150 metros in percent of bachelor’s degree holders and percent of graduate or professional degree holders.

It ranked 107th highest in median annual household income, and there appeared to be a general correlation between income and education rates across the nation.

However, Visalia still had a lower poverty rate than the state average—11.3 percent compared to 11.8 percent, according to U.S. Census data—and Stockton ranked as having the 31st highest median household income while Salinas ranked as 26th highest, though those two cities were near the bottom in education.

Education and income rate correlations may not reflect California’s higher cost of living and regional economic structures, such as the Central Valley’s reliance on agriculture, an industry that has not historically required higher education the same way other California hubs have, such as Silicon Valley.

The San Jose metro, home to Silicon Valley, ranked as the fourth most educated in the United States.

WalletHub said that more than 55 percent of the San Jose metro’s population over the age of 25 have at least a bachelor’s degree, while nearly 28 percent have an advanced degree. .

It also ranked third for university quality. San Jose is near Stanford University and has Santa Clara University and San Jose State University in the center of the metro.

The nearby San Francisco metro area, which is home to the University of California—Berkeley, ranked as the eighth most educated.

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One-Third Of Americans Can Barely Read, But They Can Still Vote

As Americans gear up for our country’s 250th Independence Day, a shamefully small percentage of the rising generation truly understands what we’re celebrating. On the latest Nation’s Report Card, only 22 percent of eighth graders had a proficient understanding of civics. A measly 14 percent were proficient in U.S. history.

This cohort, which was tested as eighth graders in 2022, graduated from high school this year. In practice, this means that emerging adults are woefully unprepared to take on the responsibilities of citizenship.

Most of this cohort is now eligible to serve on juries; less than half knew that the Bill of Rights guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Almost all of them will be eligible to vote in this year’s midterm elections, yet only 34 percent knew the functions of the three branches of government. All of them will participate in civic life, whether as neighbors, citizens, taxpayers, parents, or perhaps all of those things. This makes it all the more concerning that 31 percent could not identify why freedom of expression is important for a healthy society.

Ten generations ago, a group of patriots – most of whom were young adults – laid the groundwork for the greatest country the world has ever known. They did a lot of writing, winning the war for public opinion through Common Sense and The Federalist Papers. There was no public school system at the time, but there was a public that was willing and eager to read these texts, which most young people cannot understand today.

Now, not only are the public schools failing to deliver a history and civics education, they are also failing to teach the reading skills students would need to educate themselves on these topics.

Thanks to decades of under-education, 28 percent of American adults rated at or below the lowest level of literacy on an international assessment. That number is likely to worsen over time. Long-term trend results released by the National Assessments Governing Board last month show that 42 percent of 13-year-olds cannot summarize main ideas of long passages, identify paraphrases of what they’ve read, or connect related ideas in longer texts.

Without these skills, they stand little chance of being able to understand or appreciate the genius of the founders in their own words. It is sad yet unsurprising that American pride has declined along with the quality of our education system. According to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, only 34 percent of young adults say they are proud to be an American. American pride increases by age group, topping out at 66 percent among Americans 65 and older.

A resurgence of patriotism will require the rising generation, and every generation after it, to read and understand our founding documents and their philosophical underpinnings that have propelled this country through a quarter millennium of innovation. This cannot happen without radical honesty about the dismal state of American education.

Right now, there is a culture of silence around the true status of our schools. According to Gallup, “nine in 10 parents believe their child is at or above grade level in reading and math.” It’s hard to blame them for this erroneous belief, given that “roughly eight in 10 students in the U.S. receive mostly B’s or better.”

America’s public schools are sites of educational malpractice, covered up by educational fraud. No one in the public school ecosystem has the incentive to be honest about what a student can and cannot do.

Governors don’t want to preside over falling graduation rates, which would naturally result from raising the standards needed to earn a diploma. Teachers don’t want to deal with parents angry that their kids are bringing home bad grades. Administrators don’t want to deal with teachers frustrated by angry students and parents. As a result, schools cover their own poor performance with good grades, which ultimately lead to diplomas that no longer signify readiness for the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

The only adults in this equation with an incentive to ensure the children are educated are their parents – the same parents who are being lied to, en masse, by public school employees for their own convenience.

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Feds Investigate Maryland State Department Of Education Plus Frederick, Montgomery And Prince George’s County

Today, on the fifty-fourth anniversary of the signing of Title IX, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened new investigations into the Maryland State Department of Education, Montgomery County Public Schools, Prince George’s County Public Schools, and Frederick County Public Schools (the Districts) in Maryland. OCR will determine whether the Districts violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) through policies that permit boys to participate on girls’ athletic teams and access girls’ intimate facilities. 

According to the complaint received by OCR, Maryland’s statewide guidance and district-level policies require schools to allow boys to compete in girls’ athletics and to use girls-only locker rooms, restrooms, and overnight accommodations. The complaint further alleges that when girls objected to sharing sex-separated spaces with boys, the Districts placed the burden on those girls to seek alternative facilities, including distant single-user restrooms, rather than enforcing sex-based protections guaranteed under federal law.  

“The practice of allowing students to access sex-separated programs and facilities based solely on self-asserted ‘gender identity’ is deeply troubling and raises significant legal concerns,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey. “Fifty-four years after Title IX was signed into law, the Trump Administration remains steadfast to enforce its promise to protect women and girls. We will fully investigate these allegations and take appropriate action to ensure compliance with federal law.”  

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New York Education Commissioner Orders New School Board Election After Investigation Finds Clerk Ripped Up Ballots to Rig Race

New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa has ordered a new school board election in the Hempstead Union Free School District on Long Island after an internal investigation found the district clerk destroyed ballots and smuggled them out of her office to help re-elect incumbent board president Victor Prett.

The original election took place on May 19. State officials overturned the results on Thursday after a petition filed by the district’s attorneys alleged serious irregularities.

According to the state’s review, District Clerk April Keys is accused of tearing up ballots and removing them from her office in an apparent effort to benefit Prett, a former school board president who also works as a local DJ performing under the name DJ Vic-Lover.

The investigation concluded that Keys’ actions compromised the integrity of the vote.

Hempstead school district officials had petitioned the state to annul the original results after uncovering evidence of tampering.

State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa accepted the findings and directed that a fresh election be conducted under strict oversight.

The state has appointed Neil Boyd, currently superintendent for the Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES, as temporary clerk to manage the revote.

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Nursing School Owner Pleads Guilty After Issuing Nearly 3,000 Fake Diplomas

Carleen Noreus, who owned two nursing schools in South Florida, has pleaded guilty to her role in a scheme that sold nearly 3,000 fraudulent nursing diplomas, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a June 18 statement.

The defendant, 52, from Plantation, Florida, was president of the Carleen Home Health School Inc. in Plantation and vice president of Carleen Home Health School II Inc. in West Palm Beach.

“Noreus conspired with others to sell fraudulent nursing diplomas and educational transcripts to individuals who had not completed the required coursework or clinical training to earn Registered Nurse (RN), Licensed Practical Nurse/Vocational Nurse (LPN/VN), or Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) credentials,” the DOJ said.

“The fraudulent diplomas and transcripts falsely represented that purchasers had successfully completed the academic and clinical requirements of the schools when, in reality, they had not.”

The documents allowed the buyers to take part in national nursing board examinations. Those who passed the exams obtained nursing licenses and employment in the healthcare sector.

In total, Noreus provided 2,956 fraudulent nursing diplomas through her two schools between April 17, 2018, and Oct. 8, 2025. Of the individuals who obtained fake credentials, roughly 2,274 passed the nursing exams, secured licenses, and gained employment in Florida and other parts of the United States. Both institutions have been shut down by state authorities.

The case is part of the second phase of Operation Nightingale, a multi-state law enforcement action launched in January 2023 to arrest individuals who sell fraudulent nursing degree diplomas and transcripts.

The operation led to 25 individuals being charged for the fraud scheme in January 2023. In a Jan. 25, 2023, statement, the DOJ said that more than 7,600 fake nursing diplomas were issued by three nursing schools in South Florida.

On Sept. 15, 2025, the DOJ said that 30 defendants were charged and convicted in 2023 as part of the operation. In addition, the department also announced charges against 12 people in phase two of Operation Nightingale.

Thirteen individuals have been charged in the second phase, including Noreus, the DOJ said in its latest statement. Noreus, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each count.

“Nursing licenses must be earned through education, training, and demonstrated competence, not purchased through fraud,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason A. Reding Quiñones.

“By selling thousands of fraudulent diplomas and transcripts, the defendant undermined the integrity of the nursing profession and our healthcare system. The Southern District of Florida remains committed to holding accountable those who profit by corrupting professional licensing processes and placing the public at risk.”

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Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders Announces Big Gains in Test Scores After Schools Ban Critical Race Theory and Gender Nonsense to Focus on the Basics

Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas has announced that the state is making big gains in education after moving to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory, gender nonsense and other forms of ‘social justice’ in schools.

It’s amazing what can be done when schools focus on teaching basic things like reading, writing, and math.

Sanders also encouraged teachers by raising their pay and creating incentives for success. She is basically doing the opposite of every Democrat governor in the country and it’s working.

FOX News reports:

Gov Sanders reveals ‘major breakthrough’ on education as red state positions itself as ‘blueprint’ for nation

As Democrats across the country criticize education programs in red states, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is touting a major achievement in her state she hopes will serve as an education blueprint for all states, regardless of politics, nationwide.

“The thing we’re most excited about is the fact that so many Arkansas students are doing better now than they would have been doing pre-LEARNS legislation,” Sanders told Fox News Digital on the day her office announced a “major breakthrough” in education following implementation of a 2023 Republican-backed statewide education overhaul, known as the LEARNS Act.

The law also raised the minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000, created performance-based teacher bonuses, boosted literacy support, funded school safety initiatives and banned critical race theory and classroom teachings related to critical race theory, gender identity, sexual orientation and sexually explicit materials.

Arkansas public school students are seeing sharp gains on a new statewide exam, with proficiency rates rising more than 7% across all grades and subjects in just three years under the state’s conservative education reforms. Since 2024, student proficiency has increased by more than 7% and by more than 5% since 2025, according to the governor’s office.

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Outrageous: Rice University Offers Course on Taylor Swift Analyzing “Whiteness” and “Nationalism”

In the latest in waste of money on courses at American schools according to Campus Reform, “Rice University, a private research university in Houston, Texas, is offering multiple courses centered on pop star Taylor Swift, including one class examining far-left themes such as “American nationalism and whiteness” through Swift’s lyrics and public image.”

“Rice will offer “COLL 118 Mastermind: The Taylor Swift Eras” this fall, in which students will analyze Swift’s albums as “primary texts” and examine “how a single artist can shape global culture and shift industry standards.”

If you find this absurd you are not alone. Yet again the universities are offering woke courses lacking academic rigor.

The class is focused on Swifts musical trends genres as well as her ownership dispute over her master recordings.

If this wasn’t irrelevant enough “Rice is also listing a second Swift-focused course in its 2026-27 catalog titled “COLL 167 Miss Americana: The Evolution and Lyrics of Taylor Swift.” This seminar course will focus on Swift’s songwriting alongside discussions about “femininity and gender,” “politics and social impact,” and “American nationalism and whiteness.”

University courses wouldn’t be complete without an attack on traditional gender roles and “Whiteness.”

“Students in the class will examine all 10 of Swift’s albums and complete written responses, participate in classroom discussions, and write a final essay analyzing one of her songs.”

In other words no academic rigor and waste of time.

“While it is listed in the 2026-27 course catalog, Rice has not specified whether the “Miss Americana” course will be offered during the fall or spring semester. The university previously offered the same course in fall 2023.”

The fact that this is being offered in Texas shows wokeness has infultrated schools in almost every region and state.

“The university’s undergraduate tuition cost for the 2026-27 academic year exceeds $70,000. The university estimates the total cost of attendance to be $97,000 after fees, housing, meals, books, and personal expenses are included.”

This is insulting to those paying tuition at these schools.

The cost of tuition is getting higher while the courses become more anti American and less academic.

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