Tag: education

New York City Department Of Education Created Marxist Propaganda For Comic Con

This years NYC Comic Con was held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, marking the end of a four-day celebration of pop culture, comics, anime, and more. The event featured major announcements from Marvel Television and Animation, including the confirmation of the release date for X-Men ’97 Season 2 and the debut of the new series VisionQuest on Disney+ in 2026.

One of our honey badger reporters went to Comic Con yesterday in New York City, and guess what she found?

The event also included Marxist comic books created, distributed, and branded by the New York City Department of Education.

The publications were titled — Civics For All Comics Group, and featured the Young Lords Organization (YLO).

Question – is Mamdani already the mayor?

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Zohran Mamdani plans to phase out Gifted and Talented program in NYC elementary schools

Mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani wants to phase out New York City’s Gifted and Talented program — the democratic socialist’s latest move to revert to ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s era.

Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, said Thursday he would eliminate the accelerated learning program at the kindergarten level, something that’s likely to anger parents, who have been passionately divided on the issue.

The gifted classes would remain active through the school year, but would no longer be available next fall, he said.

Critics have attacked the coveted learning model as racist due to the higher number of white and Asian students that gain entry through the exam.

But backers argue getting rid of the classes would eliminate opportunities for thousands of bright students from low-and-middle income families.

Mamdani’s proposal would be the first step in undoing the program across all elementary schools — a controversial change inside the Department of Education made by de Blasio on his way out the door in 2021, and reverted by Mayor Eric Adams when he took office.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom Threatens to Withhold Billions from State Colleges Signing Trump ‘Compact’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has threatened to withhold billions in state funds from any college that signs an agreement to support President Donald Trump’s education agenda.

Deemed the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” the Trump administration seeks to require universities to adhere to “rules written by the administration in a variety of areas, including admissions, hiring, free speech on campus, teaching and the use of endowments,” per KCRA.

“Institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those below, if the institution elects to forego federal benefits,” the compact states.

Gavin Newsom denounced the compact as a “radical agreement” and pledged to withhold billions in state funds should any college cooperate with it.

“IF ANY CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY SIGNS THIS RADICAL AGREEMENT, THEY’LL LOSE BILLIONS IN STATE FUNDING — INCLUDING CAL GRANTS — INSTANTLY. CALIFORNIA WILL NOT BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS, PROFESSORS, RESEARCHERS, AND SURRENDER ACADEMIC FREEDOM,” Newsom said in an intentionally uppercased statement as a troll of President Trump.

At least nine universities in the country have received the compact, with only one — University of Southern California (USC) — residing in the Golden State.

“USC is a private school that receives Cal Grants from the state. Cal Grants are part of the state’s financial aid program that provides funding to students that does not need to be paid back,” per KRCA.

“According to the California Department of Finance, USC received a total of $28.4 million in Cal Grant funding in the past year. The independent AICCU intuitions together received $227.6 million in total in that same year,” it added.

Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman for the White House, said Newsom opposes the protection of free speech.

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Government Education Is Unconstitutional, Says Top US Law Professor

Government education of children funded by taxes represents an unconstitutional establishment of religion and as such, it violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and protections for religious liberty, warns Liberty University Law Professor Jeffrey Tuomala in a powerful new paper. Tuomala’s unequivocal conclusion that state “education” must go joins a growing chorus of legal arguments seeking to fundamentally re-think American education. Indeed, more and more prominent legal minds are now openly arguing that government schools violate the Constitution and must be shut down.   

Writing in Volume 18, Issue 4, of the Liberty University Law Review under the headline “Is Tax-Funded Education Unconstitutional?,” Tuomala takes aim at what he describes as government schools’ efforts to exert illegitimate control over the minds of students. He concludes that government schools must give way to privately funded Christian education.

The explosive paper, published last year, argues that the worldview underpinning public education falsely divides reality between “secular” and “religious.” And yet, a proper definition of religion such as those offered by some of America’s founders in the late 1700s would blow up the whole system.

“The present critique is not simply based on an originalist theory of constitutional interpretation, but rather it reflects a law-of-nature principle that civil government has no jurisdiction over the mind,” argues Tuomala in the abstract of his paper, which runs well over 100 pages.  

Part of the problem is longstanding public and judicial confusion about the meaning of the term “religion” itself. As Tuomala explains in his paper, the U.S. Supreme Court has never made a serious effort to define it, other than mentioning past sources. And so, he goes to great lengths to help properly define the term by citing legendary legal minds of the past.

Two of America’s most important Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — put a great deal of thought into the meaning of religion. Tuomala cites their views in his paper, describing in depth how Virginia, under their guidance, disestablished the official Anglican church and instituted religious freedom.

The principles articulated by those towering Founding Fathers during the critical battle in Virginia laid the foundation for the Constitution’s First Amendment. That provision, which prohibits federal laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, cannot be understood without the historical context.

In the Virginia Declaration of Rights, Madison and George Mason defined religion succinctly: “The duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it.” Jefferson, meanwhile, blasted state efforts to interfere with one’s views. “Almighty God hath created the mind free,” he wrote in the “Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom.”

And yet, today, government is shaping the minds of over 60 million American children by “educating” them for at least five days a week for 12 years with ideas that are profoundly religious. “Public schools have become the chief means by which all levels of civil government have established religion in the United States,” explains Tuomala’s paper.

Ironically, even John Dewey, widely recognized as the architect of America’s modern government-school regime, acknowledged that his humanistic views were deeply religious. More and more, values, morals, and modes of thinking that are outright pagan are taught to children in government schools as if they were the only possible truth.  

Despite the godlessness and even pagan nature of modern government-controlled education, there are powerful similarities with what the Constitution prohibits in terms of religion. “The parallels between the forms of state-church relationships and state-school relationships — as establishments of religion — are striking,” Tuomala continues.

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States Sue HHS Over Order to Remove ‘Gender Identity’ in K-12 Sex Education

A coalition of 16 states and the District of Columbia is suing the Trump administration to keep materials they say “recognize and affirm gender identity” in their federally funded K-12 sex education programs.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in Oregon, is co-led by the attorneys general of Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington.

At issue is an order from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that prohibits what it calls “gender ideology” in lessons supported by two federal grants: the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) and the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) program. Both are used to teach teenagers about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Citing President Donald Trump’s order that no federal dollar should go into indoctrinating children in “radical, anti-American ideologies,” the HHS in August demanded that 46 states and territories remove references to gender identity from teaching materials or risk penalties, including the suspension or termination of funding. The deadline for them to comply with the conditions is Oct. 27.

“Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas,” Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary for HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, said at that time. “The Trump Administration will ensure that PREP reflects the intent of Congress, not the priorities of the left.”

The suing coalition argued that the order violated Congress’s spending power, and that terminating the funding through these programs will result in a loss of at least $35 million and will “harm the very populations Congress intended to help.” The coalition members also argued that compliance would conflict with their own laws and policies requiring “inclusive” sex education curricula.

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New Jersey Democrats Want to Force DEI and Wellness Checks on Homeschooled Children

Democrats in New Jersey are being accused of trying to mandate DEI instruction for students who are homeschooled because parents want to escape the state’s mandated brainwashing.

In an article for The Daily Economy, Corey DeAngelis said that there is more than meets the eye to some proposed state legislation.

DeAngelis said Assembly Bill 5825, which purports to ensure “oversight of home education programs,” is actually “a power grab that threatens the very foundation of parental rights.”

“The parent or guardian shall submit a copy of the curriculum that will be utilized in the home education program, which shall be aligned with the New Jersey Student Learning Standards,” the bill reads.

The catch, he noted, was that diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum is as integral a part of state standards as reading, writing and arithmetic.

Assembly Bill 5796 calls for a child who is homeschooled to be inspected annually by an official of the school district in which that child’s family lives and undergo “a general health and wellness check.” The bill says the individual inspecting the child should be a counselor, social worker, or nurse.

DeAngelis said that putting parents under the thumb of the very educators they have sought to distance themselves from is an attempt to drag “homeschoolers into the same ideological quagmire they sought to avoid.”

“Parents who’ve chosen to educate children independently often do so to avoid the heavily political worldviews imposed in government classrooms. By effectively compelling homeschooling families to parrot political narratives on race, gender, and identity, such mandates confirm the odd ownership many Democrats feel over people’s kids,” he wrote.

Tethering homeschooling families to the schools they fled suggests New Jersey Democrats believe “government school administrators, not parents, hold ultimate authority over a child’s upbringing.”

“The Democrats are inserting the government as a wedge between children and their families,” DeAngelis wrote.

Will Estrada, senior counsel at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, said to Reason that no states force homeschoolers to align with public school curriculum.

He noted that the curriculum imposed by a state is often the reason parents opt for homeschooling.

Estrada also said that “public schools are there to educate children enrolled in the public school, not to do health and wellness checks on children in the community at large.”

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Southern States of Mississippi and Louisiana Go Back to Teaching the Basics in School – Now Lead Liberal States Like California in Literacy

Anyone who follows education news, or just has children in public schools, knows that we have an education crisis in this country right now.

Grade school students in multiple states cannot read or do math at grade level. The problem already existed years ago, but shutting down schools during Covid-19 made things even worse.

Now, some states in the south have discovered a cure for the problem – Going back to basics and teaching things like phonics.

It’s amazing. If you focus on teaching kids to read rather than telling them about social justice and gender theory, they actually learn to read. Who knew?

Kelsey Piper writes at ‘The Argument’ on Substack:

Illiteracy is a policy choice

This month, the Department of Education released its latest edition of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized tests better known as the Nation’s Report Card. The results have left me blazing with rage.

In my home state of California, for instance, only 30% of public school fourth graders can read proficiently. Fully 41% cannot even read at a basic level — which is to say, they cannot really understand and interpret written text at all. Eighth graders, as you might expect, look almost as bad…

But scores are not slipping everywhere. In Mississippi, they have been rising year over year. The state recovered from a brief decline during COVID and has now surpassed its pre-COVID highs. Its fourth grade students outperform California’s on average, even though our state is richer, more educated, and spends about 50% more per pupil.

The difference is most pronounced if you look at the most disadvantaged students. In California, only 28% of Black fourth graders read at or above basic level, for instance, compared to 52% in Mississippi. But it’s not just that Mississippi has raised the floor. It has also raised the ceiling: The state is also one of the nation’s best performers when you look at students who are not “economically disadvantaged.”…

First, it’s not just Mississippi — Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee have adopted the same strategies, stemmed the bleeding affecting states elsewhere, and seen significant improvements…

This is the part of the story that has gotten the most attention — teach phonics! And you should, indeed, teach phonics. But making schools adopt the approach took more than a mere nudge. The Southern Surge states have tried earmarked funding, guidance to districts, and outright mandates to accomplish universal adoption.

When schools embrace nonsense like gender and social justice, they do so at the expense of basic and necessary skills like reading and basic math, robbing students of learning the things they will need to succeed in life.

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L.A. School District to Ban Fifth-Grade Plays About U.S. History: ‘Culturally Insensitive’

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is banning a celebrated series of fifth-grade musical plays about American history at a local charter school because, the district says, they are “culturally insensitive.”

For nearly three decades, the fifth-graders at Marquez Charter Elementary in Pacific Palisades have performed musicals about crucial periods in the formation of the United States.

These include Miracle in Philadelphia, about the Constitutional Convention; Hello, Louisiana!, about the voyage of Lewis and Clark; and Water and Power, about the Industrial Revolution. (A fourth-grade play, Gold Dust or Bust, focuses on the history of California.)

The musicals, co-written by Jeff Lantos (with music composed by the late jazz pianist Bill Augustine), are so successful in conveying historical details that Marquez students consistently score off the charts in history assessments.

A 2004 academic study of the Marquez plays observed: “Students who attended Marquez Elementary School scored more than twice as many items correctly [on history tests] as did students from other schools.”

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Educational Crisis: Baltimore High School Fails To Produce A Single Proficient Math Student In Four Straight Years

President Trump’s executive order earlier this year to dismantle the Department of Education comes as the president highlighted a disturbing and inconvenient truth about Baltimore City’s Democratic Party-run “failure factory” school system: 40% of public high schools have zero students proficient in math. This damning statistic follows eight years of Fox45 investigative reporter Chris Papst’s coverage of the crime-ridden city’s education crisis. Keep in mind, the metro area is mainly controlled by leftists at City Hall, with virtually no diversity when it comes to Republicans holding positions of power.

A new report by Papst released this past week may catch the White House’s attention, highlighting yet another inconvenient truth about the stunning failure of Baltimore City Public Schools in terms of academic outcomes, proving that simply throwing more taxpayer funds at the problem is not a viable solution.

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Twelfth Grade Math And Reading Scores Are Worse Than Ever, Thanks To ‘Equity’  

The U.S. Department of Education recently released test results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, showing that American high school seniors’ math and reading scores have dropped to a new historical low.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Twelfth-graders’ average math score was the worst since the current test began in 2005, and reading was below any point since that assessment started in 1992.” Among these high school seniors, only 35 percent of high school seniors are proficient in reading, and a mere 22 percent in math. These troubling statistics contribute to an ongoing downward trend in educational outcomes that we have witnessed in recent years.

Extensive research confirms that extended school closures and remote learning during the Covid pandemic — largely influenced by the demands of teachers’ unions — have played a major role in the significant learning loss students are grappling with today. However, it’s crucial to recognize, as noted by the Journal, that declines in reading and math scores were already evident before the pandemic, and school closures only intensified an already alarming trend. The root cause of the troubling test scores among American youth lies in progressive education policies that undermine merit, favor ideological indoctrination over substantive learning, and promote the reduction of discipline in schools. These policies led to a crisis in education that we now must address.

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