Racism in K-12 Schools

Posted on 19 October 2020 by eehines

It’s rampant in the San Diego Unified School District, even as it claims to be “combatting racism.”

Students will no longer be graded based on a yearly average, or on how late they turn in assignments. …
… Board members say the changes are part of a larger effort to combat racism.

Because most of the poor grades went to minority students, and figuring out why that might be and fixing the underlying problem(s) isn’t something for an educational institution to concern itself with.

Things like turning work in on time and classroom behavior will now instead count towards a student’s citizenship grade, not their academic grade.

This is a preview of Racism in K-12 Schools. Read the full post (308 words, estimated 1:14 mins reading time)

QOTD

Posted on 18 October 2020 by eehines

Or maybe it’s the quote of the week. Or the month. Or the year.

It seems that

[a]t least 44 schools in San Francisco could see their names changed, as officials believe some were named after those with potential connections to slavery, genocide, and colonization, according to a report on Thursday.
The San Francisco School Names Advisory Committee researched school names and identified certain ones for renaming.

The move isn’t sitting well with the folks and their children who will have to live with the outcome of this move. Here’s one concerned parent:

This is a preview of QOTD. Read the full post (179 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

“Sharing a household with children and risk of COVID-19”

Posted on 25 September 2020 by eehines

That’s the title of a medRxiv preprint (unpeer-reviewed) paper that looked at the risk to adults—in particular, Scottish NHS healthcare workers, NHS-contracted general practice service providers, and members of their households—of contracting the Wuhan Virus (my term) when they lived in households with children with ages ranging from new-born to 11 years old. Total participants numbered more than 300,000 adults and children.

The results are correlative rather than causative, but the strength of the correlation is strongly suggestive.

The risk of hospitalization with COVID-19 was lower in those with one child and lower still in those with two or more children….

This is a preview of “Sharing a household with children and risk of COVID-19”. Read the full post (214 words, estimated 51 secs reading time)

American Education

Posted on 4 August 2020 by eehines

Our public school establishment has grown enormously over the last two-and-a-half generations, even as the public school student population has grown not so much, and public school performance as measured by student testing performance has not improved a single minim. The graph gives, as of 2017, the total change of the indicated personnel and student populations; you can see the changes year-by-year here [there’s a replay button at the top of that graph].

Mark Perry put his conclusion succinctly:

This is a preview of American Education. Read the full post (344 words, 1 image, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

Joe Biden, Black Lives Mattering, and Education

Posted on 2 August 2020 by eehines

Daniel Henninger explored the inkblots of the Trump-Biden Presidential contest. One of the blots he mentioned was this:

If Joe Biden wins on the basis of his current policy course, those young black lives will have next to no chance of their schools improving in the next four years.

Indeed. We’ve already seen the Progressive-Democrats’ attitude toward the lives of black children and their education. Eric Holder, the AG under Biden’s heavily touted BFF Barack Obama—and with Biden’s clear knowledge and at least tacit approval—sued Louisiana to block that State’s effort to let black children escape from failing public schools and go to voucher schools for an actual education.

This is a preview of Joe Biden, Black Lives Mattering, and Education. Read the full post (143 words, estimated 34 secs reading time)

Government and Student Debt

Posted on 29 July 2020 by eehines

In an article on the possibility of the Federal government extending its current moratorium on student debt repayment, The Wall Street Journal posed a question to its readers.

How should Congress address the backlog of student-loan payments borrowers will owe after Sept 30?

I say, mostly by leaving it alone. The loans are strictly business arrangements between the borrower and the lender.

In a free market economy, government has no role here, other than to allow student debt to be discharged through bankruptcy like most other debt. Such bankruptcies then must flow with all the ramifications they entail for both the lenders and the borrowers.

This is a preview of Government and Student Debt. Read the full post (202 words, estimated 48 secs reading time)

Opening Schools—Two Schools of Thought

Posted on 23 July 2020 by eehines

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has ordered all schools—private and public—not to open until his Omnipotent State declares it safe to do so. This seems at the behest of California’s teachers unions, which fear competition from private schools—and which are losing that competition, as they’ve been doing for some years.

Catholic school tuition, for instance, costs $1,000-$4,000 per student less than the union public schools, and they provide better education—academic, discipline, moral values. And they’re ready, willing, and anxious to open on schedule.

This is a preview of Opening Schools—Two Schools of Thought. Read the full post (440 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Foolishness

Posted on 16 July 2020 by eehines

The United Teachers Los Angeles union put out a paper earlier this month, and among the union’s claims is this one”

Police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue.

Wow.

There are thousands of blacks killed or traumatized and families traumatized by other blacks every year. Police violence causes more black deaths and trauma than that?

Thousands of black babies murdered in the womb every year. Police violence causes more black deaths and trauma than that?

This is a preview of Foolishness. Read the full post (188 words, estimated 45 secs reading time)

A Thought on Kipp

Posted on 13 July 2020 by eehines

Since I’m thinking about things today.

KIPP Public Schools is a nation-wide charter school organization that has had outsized success in teaching its students, as has virtually all charter and voucher schools and school organizations in the US. It had a motto, Work Hard. Be Nice., which it scrapped in an attempt to pander to the woke gangs.

In defense of that move, Kipp Co-Founder Dave Levin wrote a Letter to The Wall Street Journal. Toward the end of that letter, Levin made the remarkable claim that

Hard work is essential. Character matters.

This is a preview of A Thought on Kipp. Read the full post (187 words, estimated 45 secs reading time)

It’s a Start

Posted on 11 May 2020 by eehines

But it can’t possibly be the final answer; it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has issued the final rule regarding college/university sexual harassment complaints and how colleges/universities must handle them. Along the way, DeVos revoked with finality the Obama DoEd rule that eliminated the rights of the accused.

It allows both the accused and accuser to submit evidence and participate in cross-examination in live proceedings, and both parties can also appeal a school’s ruling. Victims-rights advocates say the provision for cross-examinations could traumatize those alleging misconduct and potentially keep them from filing complaints at all.
It also allows institutions to choose one of two standards of evidence—”clear and convincing,” or the lower “preponderance of the evidence,” which just requires a greater than 50% likelihood of wrongdoing—as long as they apply the standard evenly for all cases

This is a preview of It’s a Start. Read the full post (390 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

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