Tag Archives: education

91%

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That’s the outcome of a Freedom Economy Index survey of 70,000 small businesses, of whom 905 responded, producing a survey with a 3% margin of error and a 95% confidence interval for the outcome.

And having delayed the lede, here is that outcome.

Fully two-thirds of the respondents think college graduates have educations that are useless to business needs, and another quarter of them think those graduates don’t have very useful educations. Here are some of the comments from respondents, which the survey reported verbatim:

  • The Talent shortage will just get worse because high schools and colleges produce no talent.
  • The skills should be taught in highschool [sic].
  • A good work ethic would be a good place to start!
  • They don’t show up to an interview, and work is too hard, 9-5 is such a struggle.

And this:

Four-fifths of the respondents’ positions range from don’t care about hiring a graduate of a “major” school to strongly less likely to hire such a one. Some more verbatim comments:

  • I found that graduates with the aforementioned scholastic achievements typically have an incompatible ideology with my business culture.
  • We would hire someone with hands-on experience over someone that read about it in a book.
  • I only care about skills. If you ain’t got the skills you ain’t got a job.

And these two, which pretty much speak for themselves:

Businesses—small businesses, anyway—are catching on to the utter failure that is our current generation of colleges and universities.

The survey itself covers a broad range of items of concern to the small business community; it’s well worth reading in its entirety.

Selfish

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And from that, a Texas bill that would create universal/State-wide school choice—paid for by Education Savings Accounts of $10,500 per K-12 student—is on the brink of failure to pass. Much progress has been made, courtesy of Governor Greg Abbott (R) having convened a special session of the Texas legislature for the purpose. However, here we are on the last day of that session (as I write), and the failure brink is caused by a few rural Republican representatives.

The bill would let any Texas parent withdraw his student child from a public school that parent deemed unsuitable or failing to educate his son or daughter and transfer him/her to a different school (typically charter, voucher, or private) more to his liking.

However.

…some rural Republicans have joined Democrats in resisting ESAs. Their claim is that because their districts have few private schools, education choice doesn’t help their constituents.

Be clear on that. Because a rural Republican’s constituents wouldn’t be helped by universal school choice (I’m eliding the questionability of that claim), no one anywhere in Texas should be allowed that choice.

How very Progressive-Democrat of these selfish rural…Republicans. In the event, Abbott has committed to extending the current special session or calling a new special session, if his school choice bill does not pass in the current session.

Intrinsically Inferior

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The Oregon State Board of Education has waived, essentially, all high school graduation requirements—demonstrated competency in reading, writing or math—and is allowing anyone and everyone who had the initiative simply to enroll in a high school to graduate with a high school diploma.

Board members said the standards…harmed marginalized students since higher rates of students of color, students with disabilities, and students learning English as a second language ended up having to take the extra step to prove they deserved a diploma, The Oregonian reported.

The OSBE and the Progressive-Democratic Party-run Oregon State legislature and governor can’t be bothered to do the work of taking their own steps to fill those gaps and eliminate the need for the students’ “extra steps.” No, these…persons…have completely written off the minority students, along with those with disabilities and those taking (or not?) ESOL, and have simply eliminated all learning requirements.

Because, apparently those students are intrinsically inferior and unable to learn the material.

This is yet another example of the despicable bigotry of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Don’t Take that Federal Money

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That’s what Tennessee is considering regarding Federal education funding transfers—$1.8 billion worth, especially since the money comes with mandates and other strings. Breaking the addiction to Federal dollars will sting: Tennessee has collected some $14.85 billion in its own tax revenues through August of this year, which projects to about $22.28 billion for the year; those $1.8 billion represent about 8% of Tennessee’s domestic income.

To see if such a rejection is “feasible,”

Tennessee lawmakers appointed a 10-member panel to determine whether the state can reject $1.8 billion in federal education funding over mandates attached to the money, such as standardized testing.
The group, which consists of five senators and five representatives and includes two Democrats, will “report on the feasibility of the state rejecting federal funds and recommend a strategy to reject certain federal funds or eliminate unwanted restrictions placed on the state due to the receipt of such federal funds if it is feasible to do so[.]”

Tennessee’s House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R, 25th District):

Any time the federal government sends money, there are always strings attached to those dollars, and there is always a possibility that it opens the state up to other regulations or restrictions[.]

The sting would be worth it, though. Any time it’s possible for a State to get its domestic affairs out from under the Federal government’s…thumb…is a good time to do so. I know of no statute, Federal or State, requiring any State to accept Federal transfers. In the event, it’s straightforward for a State to adjust or rescind any State law that applies such a restriction.

“Employment Violence”

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Boston University has laid off some 15 staffers of the university’s Center for Antiracist Research. BU’s School of Social Work Clinical Assistant Professor and faculty lead for education and training at the Center for Antiracist Research, Phillipe Copeland, claims that’s violence.

This act of employment violence and trauma is not just about individual leaders. It’s about the cultures and systems that allow it to occur. And too often rewards it. Antiracism is not a branding exercise, PR campaign or path to self-promotion. It is a life and death matter[.]

Never mind that the Center remains a strongly going concern (for good or ill), and its founder, Dr Ibram X Kendi, remains its Director.

Copeland went on:

Taking a program [he’d resigned from the Center and founded Fellowship program otherwise within the Center] from the Black faculty member that created it is apparently what BU considers “antiracism” and “diversity and inclusion.”

And that gives the game away. The idea that only a Black person can teach matters regarding Blacks—which necessarily involve whites, Hispanics, Americans with Asian heritages—is itself a most insidious form of racism.

Still, if this is what employment “violence” looks like to the Woke, the fastest and most direct way to mitigate that violence, if not to eliminate altogether, is for employers, Boston University in particular, to not hire these folks in the first place.