Tag: public schools

Far-Left Philly Teacher Who Called Herself ‘Black and Palestinian’ Begs Her Comrades for Mercy as The Surprising Truth About Her Background is Revealed 

A Philadelphia woman is being compared to the infamous former NAACP President Rachel Dolezal after her cover as a Palestinian and black woman was blown up by other woke activists.

The New York Post reported on Wednesday that Hannah Gann, a Philadelphia teacher, was forced to admit that she invented her identity as a Palestinian after her comrades grew suspicious of her background and confronted her over it.

“I lied about my identity and have been lying for years. I have no Palestinian or Tunisian heritage,” Gann wrote on Instagram.

“I am a white woman of significant privilege and wealth. Anyone who supported me was manipulated and should not be judged as a result of their support for me,” she added.

In a subsequent video, Gann continued groveling to her comrades and revealed more about how deep her lies ran.

“I hid the truth or outright lied about my background to everyone in my life,” she stated.

Gann additionally claimed she “allowed half-truths and obfuscations to grow into outright lies” because she “genuinely wanted to commit to the work I was doing.”

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Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Racism Is Why Her Daughter Can’t Do Math

Nikole Hannah-Jones has curated herself an extremely lucrative, notoriety-winning career by blaming white people for black people’s problems. In her latest article for The New York Times Magazine, she does it again. It’s titled, “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?”

In it, the creator of the scholarly abomination known as the 1619 Project admits that her warped educational ideas have harmed her daughter’s future and their relationship. When her daughter finally convinced her parents to let her attend a more challenging high school, she went from getting straight As in math to “barely keeping up”: “After an assessment, the center’s director called me in and told me that Najya knew very little algebra and had huge gaps in many of the building blocks of math that she should have learned in elementary school, like mastery of long division and fractions.”

This was after Najya had gotten As in a previous algebra class and been on her middle school’s honor roll. For elementary, Hannah-Jones and her husband had deliberately enrolled their daughter in one of New York City’s worst public schools, which Hannah-Jones calls “a poor Black one.” In 2016, Hannah-Jones’ daughter was literally on the cover of NYT Magazine to flaunt her mother’s decision.

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Woke NYT, 1619 Project writer deliberately sent daughter to troubled schools as a ‘sacrifice’ — and it backfired spectacularly

The writer behind the New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project deliberately sent her daughter to poor Big Apple schools as a “sacrifice” to try to boost the education system — and no one is angrier than the kid.

The teen is now “boiling” mad — badly behind her peers after finally being allowed to enroll in a more rigorous high school, her mother revealed in a bombshell bizarre essay.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, 50, enrolled her only child in two struggling Brooklyn public schools beginning in 2015 — as part of a battle to change what she characterized as systemic racism, despite having the “connections and time and status” to get the girl into the city’s best schools, she wrote in the Times Magazine on Sunday.

That “status” included top-notch education of her own and financial security — she and her husband bought a $1.5 million Bed-Stuy brownstone in 2018.

But she said she still decided to offer up her daughter’s education for the cause of bettering the experience of black students in city schools.

By her own account, Hannah-Jones’ daughter Najya knows she was cheated by her parents.

“So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” the girl yelled in one fight, according to the essay. “Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”

Hannah-Jones wrote of her decision, “We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there.

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SURPRISE! Study Finds Blue States With the Strongest Teacher Unions Also Have the Lowest Reading Scores

Liberals would have you believe that strong teacher unions equate with strong schools and solid results, but a new study found the exact opposite.

Of the states included in the study, blue states with the strongest teacher unions also happened to have the lowest reading scores.

Conversely, red states cited in the study, which give less attention to teacher unions, score much higher.

FOX News reports:

Powerful teachers’ unions share striking link with states struggling to teach kids to read

States with stronger teachers’ unions tend to have weaker literacy performance and have adopted fewer of the policies credited with improving reading outcomes, according to a new analysis from a center-left think tank.

Eight of the 10 states to score among the worst in the Progressive Policy Institute’s (PPI) assessment of early-literacy policies were home to powerful teachers’ unions. Among the top 60% of states in terms of early-literacy policy scores, only four had strong teachers’ unions.

Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Indiana, all Republican-leaning states with weak unions, were among the states with the best literacy outcomes. Maine, New York, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington and Rhode Island, blue states, were among the worst.

The pattern isn’t universal. Maryland, a blue state with a strong teachers’ union, has posted strong reading results, while South Dakota, a red state with a weaker union, has struggled. The differences suggest union strength and party control alone don’t explain states’ reading performance.

It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?

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California high school grads score 4.0 GPAs but can’t do basic math, professors say

California high school students are scoring more straight A’s than ever – but it’s not necessarily because they’re getting smarter, according to data and education experts. 

The number of college applicants reporting flawless GPAs of 4.0 or higher has doubled over the past decade even as state testing shows a post-pandemic plunge in reading and math comprehension — revealing a grade-inflation crisis that’s sending students who can’t even do fractions into top universities.

Over the past decade, the number of students applying to the University of California system with straight A’s skyrocketed from 52,989 in 2015 to 103,138 for the class of 2025, with a notable jump during the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2022, according to UC data reviewed by The Post.

It’s part of a dangerous slide in grading standards as teachers are backhandedly encouraged to hand out inflated marks, according to critics like Glenn Sacks, who teaches social studies in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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Christian teachers fired in Canada over beliefs now face losing their licences

Two Ontario teachers who say they were fired after refusing to compromise on their Christian beliefs are facing another professional battle, this time, one that could cost them their teaching certificates altogether.

I first interviewed Matthew Alexander in 2023, after he and his wife, Nicole, were suspended from their teaching positions in different schools. Matthew had spent 24 years in education without disciplinary issues and had held leadership positions in schools. Nicole, who also had an unblemished record, was teaching kindergarten.

According to Matthew, after their son, Josh Alexander, made headlines for taking a stand against biological males accessing female washrooms at his high school, he and his wife appeared to become targets despite neither of them teaching at their son’s school.

Matthew says the board raised concerns about his association with Josh, the Christian youth organization Save Canada and even Christian pastors he had been photographed with. Nicole, meanwhile, was suspended after quietly removing a Pride flag someone had placed on her kindergarten classroom door.

The couple says they were ultimately given an ultimatum: agree to comply with the board’s requirement that they “celebrate and affirm LGBTQ issues in the classroom” or lose their jobs.

The Renfrew County District School Board later terminated the couple on October 26, 2023. “We had never discriminated against anybody, always had warm, welcoming classrooms,” Matthew told me. “But somehow if we won’t celebrate, we’re not allowed, not allowed to teach.”

Now, the Alexanders are facing an investigation by the Ontario College of Teachers, the regulatory body responsible for their professional teaching certificates.

Matthew said the implications could extend far beyond simply losing the ability to return to the classroom.

“The ramifications are broad, wide and very serious,” he said, warning that an adverse professional ruling could carry significant financial consequences and affect future licensing opportunities.

The couple has joined forces with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which is assisting with their legal defence through crowdfunding efforts as they continue their fight.

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New York makes it official: Our high school diploma is worthless

New York’s race to the bottom in education continued apace Monday, as the Board of Regents scrapped the requirement that the state’s high schoolers actually learn something to graduate.

For 30 years, students needed to pass at least four Regents exams — in math, English, science and Global Studies — to earn a diploma. To be clear, this standard was the barest minimum. The governing board kept lowering the score needed to pass the tests, watering down the results. 

But it was something: A tangible requirement — a responsibility — that showed we as a state cared about accountability.

And that’s exactly the word that the Teachers Union hates. It meant parents and politicians would start to question why a whopping 15%-20% of students didn’t meet graduation requirements. Testing highlighted bad instructors and bad schools. As usual, COVID is partly to blame here. The Regents board “temporarily” lifted requirements during the pandemic, and graduation rates rose to 87% in 2022. When the Regents tests returned, the state rate fell to 85%. The city’s: 81%. It was the largest year over year percentage drop in 20 years.

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Ohio Schools Can Send Unvaccinated Kids Home for 25 Days — Even If They’re Not Sick

Ohio’s new policy forcing healthy, unvaccinated children out of school for 21 to 25 days after a confirmed case of measles or rubella is drawing fire from parents, lawyers and scientists.

Critics say the policy isn’t needed to protect public health, it could harm children and it may be illegal.

The policy, part of a public health order signed in February by Ohio Department of Public Health (ODH) Director Bruce Vanderhoff, is enforceable even if the unvaccinated student shows no signs of illness or infection.

The policy also applies whenever a mumps or chickenpox outbreak occurs — and it extends to sports and extracurricular activities, not just classroom attendance.

The 21-to-25-day quarantine resets every time a new case or outbreak is reported at the student’s school.

Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, called the policy “cruel and discriminatory” and a violation of the rights of children and their parents or guardians.

“If the policy is to protect the unvaccinated children, the parents should be the ones to decide,” Tucker said.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the “contrast between medical freedom and medical tyranny is blatant” in the policy, which he said “discriminates against people based on medical choice … with zero evidence that they pose a risk.”

Policy could lead to ‘serious risk of vaccine injury’

Ohio’s school vaccine mandates require students to receive routine childhood vaccinations for 10 diseases: diphtheria, hepatitis B, measles, meningococcal, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, rubella, tetanus and varicella (chickenpox).

Earlier this month, Ohio school districts sent letters to parents warning that children who haven’t received two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine will be “excluded from school” for 21 days whenever the school confirms a measles case.

According to the policy, any vaccine doses children received five or more days before the minimum interval or age are “invalid” — so those students are classified as unvaccinated and required to be re-vaccinated.

That could put those children “at serious risk of vaccine injury,” according to Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, which called for the “immediate repeal” of the policy.

In a letter to leaders and members of the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives, the group said Ohio’s policy amounts to a “coercion tactic to bully parents into submitting to vaccination against their conscience out of desperation.”

Most families will be unable to find solutions to keep their unvaccinated children at home for several weeks or months, the letter noted.

Leslie Manookian, president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, agreed that the policy appears deliberately designed to “coerce busy parents into vaccinating their children so they won’t be excluded from attending school and any school-related activities.”

However, Manookian questioned whether the policy will change the minds of parents who have chosen not to vaccinate their kids.

“This policy misses a larger point, which is that many parents would prefer to take the risk of their child contracting measles than to subject their child to the potential risk of the measles vaccines,” she said.

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China’s Communist Party Buying Access to US High Schools

The Chinese Communist Party has pursued a decades-long, multilayered strategy to embed its influence in American education, adapting each time federal investigations closed one channel.

At the university level, Confucius Institutes, Chinese government-funded language and culture centers, peaked at 118 in 2017. In August 2020, the Trump administration designated their US coordinating office a Chinese “foreign mission,” and Congress cut off Pentagon funding to host universities. By 2023, fewer than five remained.

However, the K-12 version of the program, Confucius Classrooms, was never subjected to the same pressure. The State Department reported in 2020 that there were about 500, more than the number of university-level institutes at their peak. No equivalent disclosure law or funding threat targeted school districts. A 2023 investigation by Parents Defending Education found that 143 school districts, including 20 near military bases, were still running Confucius Classroom-style programs.

The same pattern has resurfaced in a new form: the Young Envoys Scholarship (YES) program, administered by the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE). The organization states on its Chinese-language website that it is guided by Marxism-Leninism and Xi Jinping Thought and that it “integrates the Party’s work into the entire process of the association’s operations.”

YES has already reached 83 universities and 27 K-12 schools across 30 states, including Taft High School and at least three other Chicago Public Schools campuses. It operates with essentially none of the federal oversight that eventually reined in Confucius Institutes.

Beijing’s objective through YES is blatant. Chinese officials describe it themselves: bring as many young Americans as possible into direct, positive contact with China. Xi Jinping set a target of bringing 50,000 American students to China over five years so that they return as “messengers” of friendship, in the Chicago consulate’s words. According to one participating school official, they will become “multipliers” whose influence will “triple and quadruple” as they carry favorable views of China back into their communities.

The mechanism is emotional and experiential rather than curricular. It includes fully or heavily subsidized trips, personal outreach from Xi Jinping to individual students and schools, staged cultural immersion, and extensive coverage in Chinese state media. As a Parents Defending Education investigation documents, these programs are designed to shape “how youth in the United States view China” before those students are old enough to become policymakers, business leaders, or voters.

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How Lockheed Martin, Raytheon & BAE Systems are propagandizing children to support war through STEM

Raytheon sponsors the Girl Scouts of America. BAE Systems is reading your toddlers their favorite fairytale stories. And Lockheed Martin funds children’s math and STEM festivals. This is done with great fanfare, supposedly to empower and inspire children to pursue their passion for science. In reality, though, these companies are attempting to launder their images and enlist the next generation to become cogs in the military-industrial complex.

All the while, these organizations’ products are being used across the world by the United States and Israel to commit war crimes – in Iran, Yemen, Palestine, and beyond – to target children.

MintPress explores the murky world of the arms companies training kids to bomb kids.

Normalizing War to Kids

When many Americans think of Raytheon (now officially rebranded as RTX Corporation), they don’t envisage rockets and cruise missiles; they think of math. For decades, the second-largest arms manufacturer on the planet has bankrolled a wide range of organizations aimed at getting children excited about STEM subjects.

Since 2009, Raytheon has been the title sponsor of MATHCOUNTS, a non-profit organization that provides engaging math programs for middle school students in every U.S. state, as well as organizing math competitions to find the brightest children in America.

In 2005, Raytheon launched its MathMovesU program, aimed, in its own words, “to inspire middle school students to get excited about math and science.” In addition to the materials provided, it has also spent millions on scholarships, grants, and study awards to thousands of students, teachers, and volunteers.

And its MathAlive! traveling exhibit promises, in rather outdated branding, to take math “2theXtreme”. MathAlive! Has also traveled to several countries in West Asia, including Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia – all of them among the biggest purchasers of Raytheon weapons technology.

The company also enjoys a longtime partnership with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA). In 2017, for example, it launched the GSUSA’s first national computer science program and cyber challenge for middle and high school girls.

“The progress to diversify the STEM workforce needs to be accelerated… At a time when technology is transforming the way we live and work, we can – and should – show young women a clear path to taking an active role in this transformation,” said Thomas A. Kennedy, then-Raytheon CEO; “Working together, Raytheon and Girl Scouts will help girls build confidence to see themselves as the robotics engineers, data scientists and cybersecurity professionals who will create a better tomorrow.”

Raytheon also spearheaded the GSUSA’s “Think Like a Programmer” project, which encourages girls to explore the world of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and developed many of the programming badges available to the scouts.

GSUSA appears proud of this relationship. Its website profiles one former scout who now works at Raytheon as a success story and a model to follow. The article includes a step-by-step guide and a list of tips for those wishing to follow in her footsteps.

Unsurprisingly, Raytheon also works closely with the U.S. military on these matters, establishing four new STEM “centers of innovation” with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in Michigan, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Washington, D.C., all near military bases.

While some might be surprised by the closeness of the relationship between a children’s organization and an arms manufacturer, it is worth remembering that the scouting movement was originally established by Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell, as a stepping stone towards boys joining the military. Baden-Powell was deeply concerned that English boys would not be physically fit enough to fight for their country in any upcoming wars, and designed an organization that would train them both physically and mentally to do so.

Kirsten Bayes from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade was unimpressed by Raytheon’s attempts to improve their image and to train the next generation of weapons manufacturers. “Our view is that arms companies have no place in schools or colleges, and should certainly not be working with children’s educational charities,” she told MintPress, adding:

“Schools and other places of education should be places where children learn, grow and develop their full potential. They should not be a recruiting ground where arms companies whitewash their activities.”

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