RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-ed-sec-says-low-civics-scores-show-students-need-critical-race-theory/

You have to give the promo lefties credit for staying on message. No cult member has ever been as determined to ignore everything factual, moral or legal in pursuit of the agenda. They start fires and then show up to pour more gasoline on them while warning that cuts to the arson department will undermine our best defense against fires.

After lefties, doing the bidding of teachers’ unions, closed the schools, the educational system ceased to function leading to catastrophic drops in test scores. None of the lockdowners has been willing to claim their share of the credit and Biden’s Secretary of Education manages to suggest that poor civics scores is proof that we need to teach kids more critical race theory.

Knowledge of civics among the nation’s eighth-graders fell for the first time since the federal government began testing children under the current framework in 1998, according to new results that come amid a broader concern about pandemic-era learning loss.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, known as the Nation’s Report Card, also show a 5-point decline in average scores in history.

Biden’s Secretary of Education, who kept trying to close schools, has some thoughts on the matter.

“The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress further affirms the profound impact the pandemic had on student learning in subjects beyond math and reading,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement, noting the abysmal math and reading NAEP scores released last fall.

“It tells us that now is not the time for politicians to try to extract double-digit cuts to education funding, nor is it the time to limit what students learn in U.S. history and civics classes,” the secretary said.

We spent insane amounts of money on a school system that did not function because the primary beneficiary of all that ed spend, bureaucrats, teachers’ unions and assorted administrators, decided to close the schools. If we want to increase spending on schools, let’s claw some of that money back from their salaries and budgets.

And no matter how much we spend, it’s not going to get any better because education isn’t a money game. It’s a parent game. All the stats clearly show it. If the parents don’t care, then a student has to be really dedicated to overcome that hurdle. And how many kids are?

https://www.city-journal.org/article/public-educations-days-of-reckoning

Public school districts across the United States closed for unprecedented periods during the Covid-19 pandemic. Enrollments plunged, as students either headed to private schools or stayed home for schooling. Other children simply disappeared from schools and remain unaccounted for even today by school officials. Now, because of this exodus, school districts nationwide are grappling with another kind of closing: empty classrooms and underused school buildings are prompting waves of school shutdowns, as education officials look to downsize their operations in response to smaller student populations and disappearing Covid bailout funds. In many communities, the process is messy, with parents, teachers, and teachers’ unions objecting. But failing to act will only worsen budget deficits at a time of economic uncertainty.

According to an international study, American schools closed for an average of 70 weeks during the pandemic—far longer than schools shut down in most European countries, though the length of closures varied by state. Schools in Texas and Florida, for example, were closed for just a fraction of the time that schools in California and New York were shuttered. In all, public schools lost some 1.2 million students in the first two years of the pandemic. Some migrated to private institutions, where enrollments grew by 4 percent, while homeschool numbers rose by 30 percent.

Among states sustaining the biggest losses are California, which saw public school enrollment shrink by some 245,000 in two pandemic years, and New York, where enrollments fell 80,000 in the same period. In these states and elsewhere, Covid accelerated a trend already underway. School enrollment had peaked in many states in the mid-2010s and begun slipping shortly after, a result of fewer births, outmigration, and modest growth in homeschooling and alternative schools. New York State, for instance, has lost about 6 percent of its students, or 120,000 children, since 2016. California’s enrollment has dropped by 382,000 students since the 2014 school year.

https://thespectator.com/topic/china-influence-puzzle-confucius-institutes-ccp/

A“Chinese puzzle” in its classic version is a game where you must fit a variety of ill-assorted boxes inside other boxes. The term came to mean any intricate problem, especially one in which what looks like the way forward leads only to new obstacles.

These days, in which we are warned not to use ethnonyms for fear of giving offense, it might be safer to say something like “brainteaser.” But the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to manipulate American society genuinely deserve the old term.

The news this past week adds a few curious details to those efforts. Details first; explanations to follow.

Professor Charles Lieber, former chairman of Harvard’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department, had been facing a possible sentence of twenty-six years in federal prison for actions related to his involvement with a CCP program. A federal jury found him guilty on all felony charges, but the prosecution oddly reduced its recommendation to ninety days. On April 26, Judge Rya W. Zobel handed down a sentence of two days in prison
According to the New York Times, at the beginning of 2022, the FBI had more than 2,000 open investigations dealing with Chinese theft of US information and technology. The Biden administration promptly shut them all down
The Department of Defense announced in March that it would grant waivers to colleges that wish to host Chinese influence operations. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) prohibited the disbursement of federal defense dollars to all colleges that host these Chinese operations. The new rule essentially voids the law
A bill has been introduced in Congress, the “Transparency in College Foreign Payments Act,” that would require the disclosure by universities of the name of the foreign government and its agency that provides funding to and the name of specific campus recipients of this funding. The key person in the House is Congressman Jim Banks who serves on the new House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the US and the Chinese Communist Party

What’s going on? Let me back up several steps.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/we-love-masturbation-correct-princeton-university-hosts-drag-show-featuring-student-guest-performers/

“We’re here to have a f***ing drag show,” the drag queen Rhedd Rhumm said to kick off Princeton University’s annual drag performance on Saturday.

The two-hour show featured student and guest performers, and was sponsored by the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center and the Princeton Pride Alliance.

“Gender is a construct. I’m a woman right now, and in about two hours, I will be a full man,” Rhedd Rhumm said.

“If there was no queer kids here at Princeton, Princeton would not exist,” the performer added.

The event was headlined by drag-queen performer Kim Chi, who was a contestant on season eight of the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race. Kim Chi has nearly two million followers on Instagram and is the owner of a makeup line.

“Is this legal to do on campus?” Kim Chi joked after performing to the song “Sin Wagon” by The Chicks. Additional performers included the drag queen Vanity Ray, who uses the tagline “the nicest narcissist you’ll ever meet,” drag queen Victoria Courtez, and drag king Maxxx Pleasure. The DJ was Mikey Mo, who is deaf.

“We’re all adults here, so we can talk about sex in a non-judgemental, non-shameful manner, correct?” Rhedd Rhumm asked the audience, adding that his day job is education for sexual and LGBTQ health care.

“So, abortion care is very, very important because not only can women get pregnant, not only can cis[gender] women get pregnant, but non-binary individuals can get pregnant as well, as well as trans-masc[uline] individuals, and anybody that falls between that has the capability of getting pregnant,” Rhedd Rhumm said. “So, if they wanna make that choice to get an abortion, that is entirely up to who? Up to them! Who the f*** am I, why am I gonna tell somebody not to do what they want to do? It’s not my body!”

https://www.nas.org/reports/hijacked?utm_source=commentary&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=hijacked&utm_content=box

America’s Middle East Studies Centers were originally founded to study the politics, culture, and language of Middle Eastern nations. But our analyses and case studies demonstrate that Middle East centers have since shifted their focus to promoting left-wing ideologies. Hijacked: The Capture of America’s Middle East Studies Centers tells the story of how such research can become captured by activist faculty and foreign governments.

In documenting the history of MESCs and the financial arrangements that allow foreign donations to flow to American Universities, Hijacked also offers recommendations to reform Middle East Studies Centers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-board-african-american-studies-ap-course-ron-desantis-florida-emails-817262f4?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Gov. Ron DeSantis is credited with forcing a rewrite of a new high-school AP class in African-American Studies, after Florida balked at such lesson topics as “Black Queer Studies.” Denying pressure, the College Board said the revisions were pedagogical: “This course has been shaped only by the input of experts and long-standing AP principles and practices.”

Yet its own faculty advisers privately castigated this as dishonest spin, according to emails we obtained via open-records laws. “I have patiently and quietly watched the ubiquitous interviews and media assertions that AP would not make changes at the behest of any group beyond professors, teachers, and students,” wrote Nishani Frazier, a University of Kansas professor who sits on the AP course’s development committee. “If this is so, which student, professor, or teacher suggested adding black conservatives to the course over Combahee River Collective?”

Ms. Frazier continued: “We all know this is a blatant lie. In fact, the major changes which occurred came from my unit—and not once did AP speak with me about these changes. Instead, it rammed through revisions, pretended course transformation was business as usual, and then further added insult to injury by attempting to gaslight the public with faux innocence.” The course was “edited behind our backs,” she wrote. “What is unsaid is the failure of AP to recognize both its own institutional racism and how its own lies and capitulation precipitated the creation of a monster of its own making.”

Another professor on the curriculum committee, David Embrick of the University of Connecticut, apparently forwarded Ms. Frazier’s cri de coeur to a sociology professor at Trinity College. “Yikes…Nishani is right here,” Mr. Embrick said. The sociologist’s reaction: “Dude, College Board is f— over y’all.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/schools-are-ditching-homework-deadlines-in-favor-of-equitable-grading-dcef7c3e

Las Vegas high-school English teacher Laura Jeanne Penrod initially thought the grading changes at her school district made sense. Under the overhaul, students are given more chances to prove they have mastered a subject without being held to arbitrary deadlines, in recognition of challenges some children have outside school.

Soon after the system was introduced, however, Ms. Penrod said her 11th-grade honors students realized the new rules minimized the importance of homework to their final grades, leading many to forgo the brainstorming and rough drafts required ahead of writing a persuasive essay. Some didn’t turn in the essay at all, knowing they could redo it later.

“They’re relying on children having intrinsic motivation, and that is the furthest thing from the truth for this age group,” said Ms. Penrod, a teacher for 17 years.

The Clark County School District where Ms. Penrod works—the nation’s fifth-largest school system—has joined dozens of districts in California, Iowa, Virginia and other states in moves toward “equitable grading” with varying degrees of buy-in. Leaders in the 305,000-student Clark County district said the new approach was about making grades a more accurate reflection of a student’s progress and giving opportunities to all learners.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/advanced_placement_us_history_books_defame_trump_and_conservatives.html

Whether you have children or remember your high school days, you remember that Advanced Placement (“AP”) classes attracted the strivers in any schools, the ones who wanted to take an ostensibly college-level class in a given subject, whether to have a more interesting class, to gain college credits or (nowadays) to get extra grade points. These are the kids who pay attention, and who will soon be voting, so it matters tremendously that many of today’s AP U.S. History books defame Donald Trump, a treatment they do not give any other president, including Bill Clinton.

Greg Price took the time to “review five of the most commonly used AP U.S. History textbooks that cover all the way through the presidency.” It was an eye-opening experience and a very disturbing one. Without exception, they repeat as true defamatory claims about Trump, including the disproven Russia collusion hoax, and Clarence Thomas, as well as giving the leftist version of Trayvon Martin’s and Michael Brown’s deaths. One even implies that Trump supporters murdered Brian Sicknick on January 6. Some generally disparage conservatives.

Here’s Price’s summary of the books but I urge you to read beyond the summary. Price backs up his claims with screen grabs from the books:

Nearly all of the textbooks claim “Russian meddling” was responsible for the 2016 election of Donald Trump, despite that narrative being debunked through multiple studies and news reports. A New York University Center for Social Media and Politics study found that Russian Twitter accounts had no measurable impact on the 2016 election. Facebook’s internal investigation also found that 56% of the $100K worth of Facebook ads purchased by Russians in 2016 were viewed on the platform after the election was over.