Tag: education

De Blasio Moves To End NYC’s ‘Gifted and Talented’ School Programs

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio (D.) on Friday ordered the total elimination of the city’s advanced-learning programs in public schools. The move is a major concession in the closing months of the mayor’s term to racial-equity activists who have long called for getting rid of the classes.

The classes, known as “gifted and talented” programs, group together elementary school students who perform well on an admissions exam they take when they’re four years old. Under de Blasio’s overhaul, the programs will be phased out, with the current cohort of enrollees being the last to learn in gifted classes through elementary school.

Critics of the gifted and talented programs say they enforce racial segregation in schools and stand in the way of racial equity. The gifted classes comprise about three-quarters white and Asian students, according to the New York Times. But an April poll found that a majority of New Yorkers support the programs.

“The era of judging four-year-olds based on a single test is over,” de Blasio said in a statement. The mayor proposed an alternative to the gifted and talented programs that would see students assessed at the third grade and offered “accelerated instruction” in classes with other students receiving standard instruction.

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Mass. teachers union says standardized tests have allowed ‘white supremacy to flourish’

A teachers union in Massachusetts claim the state’s standardized testing has “allowed white supremacy to flourish.”

The Massachusetts Teachers Association wants to strip the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as a part of graduation requirements for students.

“The implementation of the MCAS and other standardized tests has had the exact opposite effect of what was supposed to occur when the system was introduced more than 20 years ago,” said MTA president Merrie Najimy in a statement.

The union is backing a bill to give students “multiple pathways” to show their educational competency apart from the MCAS standardized testing.

“Public schools in predominantly Black and brown communities have been taken over by state bureaucrats who have been using standardized testing as a tool not to improve opportunities for students,” continued Najimy, “but instead as one to pry public education from the hands of the families and educators who know best what their students need.”

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Calif. parents want answers over school board member’s ‘disturbing’ sexual tweet about teen boy

Some parents in Chula Vista, Calif., want answers from local school board member Kate Bishop regarding vile messages posted some years ago on Twitter that went viral recently after a father who was concerned about the messages posted them to his social media account.

“I’m pretty sure I hit my sexual peak today. Somebody bring me an 18-year-old boy, STAT!” Bishop wrote in 2012, adding the hashtag “#hormones.”

A second post in 2o11 said, “Off to the park to see what hot 3-year-olds my kid can hit on,” that came with the hashtag “#ValentinesDay.”

The school district’s interim superintendent has put some distance between those tweets and the school district, while Bishop herself has acknowledged the posts were “past mistakes” and attempts at humor.

But that hasn’t completely mollified some parents including Katie Davidson-Brock, a native of the city and a mother of three, one of whom attends Chula Vista Elementary School.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, she said she believes “that someone with this type of character is unfit to serve” on the school board.

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Mayor Calls for Ohio School Board to Resign Over ‘Child Pornography’ Material

The mayor of Hudson, Ohio, said he is asking all five school board members to resign or face potential criminal charges over high school course material that was described as “child pornography” by a local judge.

“It has come to my attention that your educators are distributing essentially what is child pornography in the classroom,” Mayor Craig Shubert told the Hudson City Schools board, which oversees Hudson High School, according to video footage. “I’ve spoken to a judge this evening. She’s already confirmed that. So I’m going to give you a simple choice: You either choose to resign from this board of education or you will be charged.”

The incident stemmed from parents saying their children received an inappropriate writing prompt assignment found inside the book, “642 Things to Write About,” in a liberal arts class.

According to Amazon reviews of the book, several of the writing prompts include describing sex or similar topics, while others warned that it isn’t meant for younger writers or students. Another prompt asked students to drink a beer and describe how it tastes or how to commit a murder, reports said.

“Do not sexualize our kids! The raw filth that snuck past the gatekeeping functions of this board of ed. in ‘642 Reasons’ was disgusting,” parent Morris Norman said at the Hudson board meeting, reported News5.

“I asked my daughter if she had been reading a book with inappropriate stuff in it and she said yes,” Monica Havens, a mother of a student who saw the book, told the Akron Beacon Journal.

During the meeting on Monday, Principal Brian Wilch apologized and said teachers “overlooked several writing prompts among the 642” in the book that “are not appropriate for our high school audience.” However, he contended that “at no time were any of these inappropriate prompts selected or discussed, but still they were there and they were viewable, and you can’t unsee them,” reported the Akron Beacon Journal.

But parents, including Norman, said they weren’t convinced.

“The students were told not to take the book home. Why? So their parents couldn’t see it,” said Norman.

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Shocking undercover video reveals Antifa high school teacher admitting to indoctrinating students

In a Project Veritas report released on Tuesday, they expose Inderkum High School AP government teacher Gabriel Gipe for politically indoctrinating students, and stating that he is turning his students into “revolutionaries.”

In an undercover interview with a Project Veritas reporter, Gipe revealed that his intention is to radicalize students with Marxist ideas, giving extra credit for students that go to protests and “community events.”

“I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries … Scare the f— out of them,” said Gipe in the undercover footage filmed by Project Veritas.

“I post a calendar every week … I’ve had students show up for protests, community events, tabling, food distribution, all sorts of things … When they go, they take pictures, write up a reflection—that’s their extra credit,” he added.

Gipe revealed that he indexes students’ political standings throughout the year, and watches as the class inches further left. “So, they take an ideology quiz and I put [the results] on the [classroom] wall. Every year, they get further and further left … I’m like, ‘These ideologies are considered extreme, right? Extreme times breed extreme ideologies.’ Right? There is a reason why Generation Z, these kids, are becoming further and further left,” said Gipe.

Gipe said that a student had anonymously stated on an end of year questionnaire that the Antifa flag in Gipe’s classroom made him uncomfortable.

“I have an Antifa flag on my [classroom] wall and a student complained about that — he said it made him feel uncomfortable. Well, this [Antifa flag] is meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable, so if you feel uncomfortable, I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe you shouldn’t be aligning with the values that this [Antifa flag] is antithetical to,” Gipe said. He went on to say that a violent overthrow of the US government is a necessary solution for today’s society.

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Meet The Marxist Revolutionaries Behind California’s Emerging Ethnic Studies For Public Schools

California’s Democrat-controlled state legislature may pass Assembly Bill 101 into law this week. If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, it will mandate “ethnic studies” as a high school graduation requirement for all California public schools.

“Ethnic studies” is a series of courses that focus on history, but through perspectives advocates see as “marginalized,” including black, Asian American, and Latin American/Chicano studies. California’s adoption of the proposal could set a precedent for the rest of the country.

We now have precise evidence about who has been developing the ethnic studies curricula that could soon be taught to California’s more than 6 million public school children—and they are Marxist revolutionaries.

Union del Barrio is a revolutionary socialist group that has “dedicated [themselves] to struggle on behalf of ‘la Raza.’” They define “la Raza” as the indigenous and Latino inhabitants of North and South America who must unite as “Nuestra América” to defeat colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism. They are fundamentally opposed to the “international capitalist elite that is currently led by United States imperialism.”

Their goals are explicit and extreme: “Revolutionary Nationalism demands a complete transformation of the social, economic, and political institutions that presently form the basis of our oppression,” they argue. Their political philosophy for ethnic studies calls for the complete abolition of borders, government by a race-based socialist collective, and the destruction of Western liberalism.

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Biden Admin ‘Back-to-School’ Transgender Message: ‘We Intend to Enforce Our Ideology’

The Biden administration released a “back-to-school” video that serves as a message it intends to “enforce” its transgender ideology and “use children as enforcers,” states the founder of an organization that helps victims of what she refers to as the “Sexual State.”

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., founder of the Ruth Institute, wrote Tuesday at National Catholic Register about the video released last week jointly by the Biden Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services (HHS) that, ultimately, encourages transgender youth to file federal complaints against their parents, school officials, and other adults who do not immediately affirm their new gender identity.

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