Tag: public schools

Are Teachers Really Underpaid?

Teachers are underpaid, right? It’s a near-universally repeated maxim. Kamala Harris thinks so. So does Betsy DeVos. However, the reality is a bit more complicated. 

For the 2023–24 school year, the average public school teacher salary was just under $70,000—well over the average for bachelor’s degree graduates ages 25 to 34 (though many teachers have master’s degrees). 

West Virginia paid teachers the least, at around $52,000 per year, while California paid them the most, with an average salary of over $95,000. According to the National Education Association, teacher salaries top out at over $100,000 in 16.6 percent of districts. However, salaries have generally stagnated. From 2002 to 2020, inflation-adjusted teacher salaries declined by 0.6 percent while as per-pupil spending increased. 

The reality is that teacher salaries vary widely between states and districts, especially when looking at pay adjusted for the cost of living, making it difficult to make generalizations. Adding to the murkiness, pay doesn’t seem to motivate teachers as much as many people think. 

According to a December 2023 report from the National Center for Education Statistics, when public school teachers were asked why they decided to leave the profession, only 9.2 percent said it was because they needed higher pay.

A study from earlier this year also concluded that, among teachers who choose to leave their jobs, most don’t earn more in their new position. “The median employed leaver makes less than before they left teaching and their earnings do not recover nearly a decade after exit,” reads the study by University of Chicago and University of California, Irvine researchers. “These broad trends…suggest that factors other than earnings may have contributed to exit decisions for the average leaver.”

“In other words, the economic argument around the teacher pay gap has some holes,” wrote education reporter Chad Aldeman last week in an analysis of this and other studies looking at teacher compensation. “Ironically, the political and media attention focused on teacher wage gaps may also be contributing to a sense that teachers are paid less than they actually are. People tend to underestimate how much teachers actually earn, and that could discourage would-be educators from considering the profession in the first place.”

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School Monitoring Software Sacrifices Student Privacy for Unproven Promises of Safety

Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the country don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their school districts’ decision to install AI-powered monitoring software such as Gaggle and GoGuardian on students’ school-issued machines and accounts. As we demonstrated with our own Red Flag Machine, however, this software flags and blocks websites for spurious reasons and often disproportionately targets disadvantaged, minority and LGBTQ youth.

The companies making the software claim it’s all done for the sake of student safety: preventing self-harm, suicide, violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. While a noble goal, given that suicide is the second highest cause of death among American youth 10-14 years old, no comprehensive or independent studies have shown an increase in student safety linked to the usage of this software. Quite to the contrary: a recent comprehensive RAND research study shows that such AI monitoring software may cause more harm than good.

That study also found that how to respond to alerts is left to the discretion of the school districts themselves. Due to a lack of resources to deal with mental health, schools often refer these alerts to law enforcement officers who are not trained and ill-equipped to deal with youth mental crises. When police respond to youth who are having such episodes, the resulting encounters can lead to disastrous results. So why are schools still using the software–when a congressional investigation found a need for “federal action to protect students’ civil rights, safety, and privacy”? Why are they trading in their students’ privacy for a dubious-at-best marketing claim of safety?

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Children of Big Brother: What It Means to Go Back-to-School in the American Police State

It’s not easy being a child in the American police state.

Danger lurks around every corner and comes at you from every direction, especially when Big Brother is involved.

Out on the streets, you’ve got the menace posed by police officers who shoot first and ask questions later. In your neighborhoods, you’ve got to worry about the Nanny State and its network of busybodies turning parents in for allowing their children to walk to school alone, walk to the park alone, play at the beach alone, or even play in their own yard alone.

The tentacles of the police state even intrude on the sanctity of one’s home, with the government believing it knows better than you—the parent—what is best for your child. This criminalization of parenthood has run the gamut in recent years from parents being arrested for attempting to walk their kids home from school to parents being fined and threatened with jail time for their kids’ bad behavior or tardiness at school.

This doesn’t even touch on what happens to your kids when they’re at school—especially the public schools—where parents have little to no control over what their kids are taught, how they are taught, how and why they are disciplined, and the extent to which they are being indoctrinated into marching in lockstep with the government’s authoritarian playbook.

The message is chillingly clear: your children are not your own but are, in fact, wards of the state who have been temporarily entrusted to your care. Should you fail to carry out your duties to the government’s satisfaction, the children in your care will be re-assigned elsewhere.

This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today: where parents have to worry about school resource officers who taser teenagers and handcuff kindergartners, school officials who have criminalized childhood behavior, school lockdowns and terror drills that teach your children to fear and comply, and a police state mindset that has transformed the schools into quasi-prisons.

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Academic Freedom Around the World Declining for First Time Since WWII

The halls of academia have long been regarded as bastions of free thought and scientific inquiry. However, a recent study paints a concerning picture of dwindling academic freedom worldwide. This shift, occurring for the first time since World War II, threatens to undermine global innovation at a time when creative solutions may be needed more than ever.

The research, conducted by a team of international researchers, reveals that after decades of steady improvement, global academic freedom has begun to decline over the past decade. This shift represents the first significant downturn since World War II and raises serious concerns about the future of innovation and scientific advancement.

Academic freedom, the right of scholars to pursue research, teach, and express ideas without undue interference, has long been considered a cornerstone of scientific progress. However, its importance to innovation has never been quantitatively measured on a global scale until now. The study’s findings not only confirm the crucial role of academic freedom in driving innovation but also sound a warning about the potential consequences of its current decline.

To investigate this relationship, the researchers analyzed data from 157 countries over a 115-year period, from 1900 to 2015. They used the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) to measure the level of academic freedom in each country and compared it to innovation output, measured by the number of patent applications and citations.

The results, published in PLOS One, were striking. Countries with higher levels of academic freedom consistently produced more patents and received more citations on those patents. Specifically, when a country’s academic freedom increased by one standard deviation, the number of patent applications rose by 41% two years later, and the number of citations increased by 29% five years later.

However, the most alarming finding was the recent downward trend in academic freedom. After steadily increasing from the 1940s to the 2010s, global academic freedom began to decline in the last decade. This reversal was observed not only globally but also among the 25 leading countries in science.

Based on the study’s findings, the researchers project that the recent decrease in academic freedom could lead to a substantial reduction in innovation output in the coming years. This could manifest as fewer new patents and a decrease in impactful research, potentially slowing technological progress and economic growth.

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Switzerland: The End of Free Speech

Most people in the world view Switzerland as a safe, sensible, fair and free nation. The reality is that behind its pristine veneer, it is as corrupt – if not more – than any other nation, and is becoming increasingly repressive at an alarming rate.

As many of you know, I am Swiss (from my mother’s side) and live in my home country. This has given me a certain vantage point to report on globalism, with Switzerland having been selected to host these dark institutions on our soil back in the 19th century.

Today, I wanted to draw your attention to more local news and the bleak state of free speech here.

While all eyes are on the U.K. at the moment due to their Orwellian crack down on freedom of expression — to the point of jailing people for memes and stickers — and on France as we await more information on Pavel Durov’s arrest, free speech is under unprecedented attack in Switzerland as well.

A friend of mine, who goes by the pseudonym “Barbouille” on X, has just been fined the hefty amount of CHF 4’800, approx $ 5’700 — for a tweet.

His crime? Calling out the indoctrination of children being taught what LGBTQI… stands for in a classroom, under a video posted by another account on March 24, 2023.

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A Back To School Must Read: Trans Gender Toolkit For Parents And Grandparents

Parents and grandparents have been worried and frightened about the impact of gender-transitioning on American families. Some feel lost and as confused as their own children and grandchildren. 

Restore Childhood’s has published a guideline with a simple toolkit to assist families to navigate this terrain. 

They have published An URGENT Conversation: What to Know About Children, Gender & School Policy.

Gender Toolkit has links for a printable postcard, flier and business card, all with QR codes that lead to the toolkit download.

Please share these materials within your schools and communities and use them to hold informed discussions with all stakeholders who work with children. 

This toolkit is intended to rise about the noise and give parents and grandparents information they need to navigate what is being thrown at children today that is invading families who feel helpless when this issue lands on their doorsteps. 

“England’s Cass Review is the most comprehensive published report of systematic reviews of international scientific studies in children with gender dysphoria to date. The recommendations are specific for addressing gender dysphoria in children in the UK, but are applicable to other nations,” states the Gender Toolkit. “There is no expert clinical consensus regarding the treatment of children who meet diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria.”

“About 1,000 U.S. school districts have policies that allow keeping secrets from parents,” states Dr. Erica Anderson, who is a psychiatrist who has been warning Americans that pushing puberty blockers and transition operations on children is dangerous.

It is time that parents and guardians to get informed about the truth instead accepting the medical mantra that if one is not gender-affirming then a child will commit suicide. 

A noteworthy interview pertaining to this topic can be found here on CDM.

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Court Says ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Can Be Censored By School

A federal court ruling has allowed a school to censor “Let’s Go Brandon,” preventing students from wearing the popular social media meme on shirts.

But a constitutional expert warns that it’s a “dangerous precedent” that will move the nation established on the basis of free speech the wrong direction.

Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, has testified before Congress on constitutional issues, and even represented members in court.

He cited the case of “D.A.” in Michigan, a student ordered to remove his sweater with the phrase on it.

That decision was from Judge Paul Maloney.

“Maloney rejects the free speech claim and rules that school officials can punish a student for wearing a ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ T-shirt. I believe that he is wrong and that the case sets a dangerous precedent,” Turley wrote.

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‘Totalitarian and Unconstitutional’: Tim Walz Ban on Christian Teachers Set to Hit Schools in Just Months

Gov. Tim Walz’s ban on faithful Christians from teaching in Minnesota’s public is set to hit the state’s schools in just months.

It also bans adherent Jews and Muslims.

And a report at the Federalist warns that he is “poised to make similar bigoted, totalitarian and unconstitutional policies” for the entire nation, “should he be elected vice president.”

The report from the publication’s executive editor, Joy Pullmann, explains the state has new teacher licensing rules that will take effect in July 2025, and they will “ban practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims from teaching in public schools.”

It’s because under the plans of the leftist governor, the state will demand that teacher license applicants “affirm transgenderism and race Marxism.”

No license? No job for anyone to teach in the state’s public schools. Or private schools if they require that certification.

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Kamala’s Biggest Lie on Race and Inequality

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is being hailed as practically Joan of Arc for having been bused to a white elementary school in Berkeley in 1969. At the Democratic National Convention last week, Oprah Winfrey whooped that being bused helped instill in Harris “a passion for justice and freedom and the glorious fighting spirit necessary to pursue that passion.”

But what if school busing instead epitomizes the folly and dishonesty of iron-fisted progressive decrees that force other people to pay any price for a mirage of equality? 

During her failed campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination, Harris’s touting of her busing experience was “perhaps the biggest moment of Harris’s [presidential] campaign,” the Washington Post reported on Sunday. The Harris campaign even sold t-shirts in 2019 hyping her confrontation with Joe Biden during a candidates debate on that issue. Harris declared that forced busing was necessary “because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people”—and thus the federal government must intervene. Harris championed Senate legislation to increase the federal push for school desegregation. 

But busing in Berkeley actually illustrates the folly of letting politicians domineer kids and parents in the name of equality. 

In 1967, the Berkeley school superintendent proposed a sweeping busing program to “set an example for all the cities of America.” The first step was effectively to scorn federal law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 specified that “‘Desegregation’ means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but ‘desegregation’ shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.” There was no history of government-mandated segregation in Berkeley. But politicians decided they could no longer tolerate black children going to school in black neighborhoods and white children going to school in white neighborhoods. Busing kids far from their homes destroyed neighborhood schools in the name of equality and made it far more difficult for parents to be involved in their kids’ education. 

More than 50 years after Berkeley started busing, the city’s schools have the worst racial achievement gaps in America, except for those of the District of Columbia. Black students are on average five years behind white students despite endless special programs and interventions to close the gap. Five years is not “close enough for government educational work.”

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Despite Parent Complaints, Suburban Missouri District Keeps R-Rated Books In School Library

When Paula Allen first wanted pornography removed from her child’s school library, she didn’t realize that would be controversial. Everyone, she reasoned, agrees graphic descriptions of sexual intercourse and images of full-frontal nudity found in schools should be immediately removed.

The school board of Missouri’s Cameron R-I district, which serves 1,600 students in a suburb of Kansas City, disagreed. After two years of complaints from parents, this August the district put 36 of 80 challenged books behind the circulation desk, where publicly sponsored pornography continues to be available to minors so long as they have parent permission. Any explicit books that parents haven’t discovered yet, and future books selected by employees who have already used taxpayer funds to buy minors pornography, could still be on the shelves after the district denied parents library access.

“At my very first meeting [with] the superintendent… I all but begged him, ‘Let’s please work together in unity as a group, as parents, we have a concern. You have to address these concerns. Let’s work together,’” Allen explained. “[They] attempted to do essentially a character assassination, to discredit us and to make them, as in the school board and the school district administration, look like victims and make us look like villains. Because we’re standing up for our kids.”

A group of local parents has been battling to protect children in school libraries for more than two years. Allen and Heath Gilbert spoke with The Federalist about their efforts to keep pornographic books out of children’s hands and their school board’s effort to resist. 

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