Category Archives: education

A Blow for Standards

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And it’s struck by California’s state Supreme Court, yet, which is the controlling factor in setting the passing score, the cut score, on the State’s bar exam which prospective lawyers must pass in order to practice in California.

The Court has decided to keep the cut score at its current level, which is the second highest in the US.  The State’s law school deans are in an uproar over that; they wanted the cut score significantly lowered.  They’re complaining that

many competent graduates will continue to suffer the consequences of not being able to become certified to practice….

The deans decline to explain how are “graduates” can be considered competent if they can’t pass the test that assesses their competency.

Their excuse for wanting the standard lowered is risible.

Bar-exam-passage rates for incoming lawyers have plummeted in California in recent years, in parallel with similar drops in other states….

Of course, this couldn’t be a degradation in the quality of teaching through lowered standards of expertise credentialing, or of students through lowered admission standards, or both.

Never mind that UCLA’s first-time pass rate of 82% proves that the current cut score is not too high.  Gotta lower standards, the deans say, to meet declining performance rather than requiring the hard work of elevating performance to meet standards.

Here’re a couple of thoughts: do a better job of teaching. It looks like an old jibe that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach, is thriving in California.

Also: do a better job of selecting students for admittance. Not every snowflake who takes a notion to be a lawyer should be one.

Integration

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It seems a New Jersey high school, Cliffside Park High of the town of Cliffside Park, has a teacher who insists English—or as she put it, American—be spoken in her classroom.

…men and women are fighting. They are not fighting for your right to speak Spanish. They are fighting for your right to speak American[.]

Of course, she’s being called a racist for insisting that folks assimilate into American culture rather than our culture be bent into the home country’s—every home country’s—culture.

Never mind that the reason folks come to the United States is for the advantages our culture offers compared to the country they’re leaving.  Altering ours to match the home country culture not only would defeat the purpose of the trip, it would destroy our nation for us citizens already present.

None of which means we require lock-step adaptation.  One of the strengths of our American culture is that we absorb—we culturally appropriate—the best practices of those old country cultures.  But there’s a critical directionality to that absorption.  Marvin Moreno, an alumnus, displayed the magnitude of the failure of our public school system with his objection to the teacher’s objection:

You go to school to learn, you don’t go to feel attacked by someone you believe is an educator[.]

Confusing being taught uncomfortable things with being attacked is itself strongly instructive.

One More Reason

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…for charter and voucher schools, this time provided by the Biloxi (public) School District.  They’ve banned Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird from its 8th grade classrooms.  Why?

…some of the book’s language “makes people uncomfortable.”

Never mind that proper education must make people uncomfortable because it challenges their preconceived notions, it makes them think, it makes them think for themselves.  It even confronts students with uncomfortable aspects of our history, like Atticus Finch explaining to his daughter, Scout, the term “nigger-lover.”  Or Tom Robinson referring to himself, ironically, as a nigger.

No, we have to raise precious little snowflakes unable to take care of themselves in adulthood.

Never mind, either, that the Web site associated with the district says that

To Kill A Mockingbird teaches students that compassion and empathy don’t depend upon race or education.

Instead, the school has ducked the question:

School board Vice President Kenny Holloway says other books can teach the same lessons.

No, very few do, and those that do don’t do it nearly as well.

Projecting

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KKK robes are on display as part of Baltimore artist Paul Rucker’s installation entitled “Rewind,” now installed at York College’s Wolf Hall in York, PA. The college barred the public from seeing the art exhibition on slavery, white supremacy and racist violence against blacks, deeming it “potentially disturbing to some.”

York College spokeswoman Mary Dolheimer issued this statement, and she actually was serious:

The images, while powerful, are very provocative and potentially disturbing to some. This is especially the case without the benefit of an understanding of the intended educational context of the exhibit[.]

Because we ordinary American citizens are just too stupid to understand anything without our Betters to “guide” us.

We’re also just too far into our victimhood fragility to be able to handle a bit of art.

Or because the self-important Left is wrapped up in their collective learned helplessness, and they assume everyone is at least as fragile.

Due Process and Colleges/Universities

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Recall the Department of Education’s 2011 egregious and cynically biased Dear Colleague Letter and its attack on due process and equal protection under law.  Things are being restored to legitimacy under the  Betsy DeVos DoEd via interim guidance just issued.

Colleges can now apply a higher standard of proof when determining guilt in sexual misconduct cases and must offer equal opportunity for the accused and accuser to have legal advisers participate in their hearings, according to interim recommendations issued by the US Department of Education on Friday.

Because

The Education Department on Friday formally rescinded guidelines issued by the Obama administration in 2011 and 2014….

There is one item to be cleared up; hopefully it will be when formal, final guidance is issued by DoEd.

Schools now have the discretion to apply either the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, or the higher “clear and convincing evidence” standard….

The criminal standard, preponderance of the evidence, must be the only standard allowed.  And the accusation must be investigated by the police, not by ad hoc amateurish kangaroo courts and pseudo-investigators of school faculty or staff.  A victim of sexual misconduct is not helped in the slightest by a jumped up school tribunal bent on social justice rather than justice.