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Education Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 20, 2017 18 Comments
Newsela is a relatively recently-established educational resource that purportedly specializes in non-fiction content for the nation's K-12 schools, teachers, and students.  It sprung up as a private partner of Common Core, and the service reaches at least 75% of America's K-12 classrooms. Newsela recently came under fire for its 9/11 instructional material. Newsela's 9/11 "Fact Sheet" included reference to Israel's "long and shady history" and to Israel as belonging, originally, to Muslims. A historical impossibility. Nonetheless, this drivel was published far and wide, and America's 5th and 6th grade students across the nation were spoon-fed it. Newsela has, under pressure from parents and alarmed educators, retracted and corrected the materials, but not before the damage was done.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 04, 2017 29 Comments
We've all heard the same advice: get good grades in high school and get a bachelor's degree. A bachelor's degree has become so common that a lot of people have entered graduate school to get a master's or a PhD. That push has led to a shortage of tradespeople, especially as those in jobs usually described as "blue collar work" grow older. So what do we do now? Some states have started to push more money to promote vocational education.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 01, 2017 6 Comments
Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has vetoed the Democrat education funding bill because he viewed it as a major bailout for Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The Chicago Tribune reported:
Rauner rewrote the measure to take away a $250 million block grant that Chicago Public Schools has long received and also changed how the funding formula weights CPS pension funding when dividing up new money for schools.

Posted by Miriam Elman on July 23, 2017 7 Comments
Anti-Israel propaganda is common on America’s college and university campuses. But as we’ve highlighted in a number of recent posts, this biased messaging appears to be filtering down into the U.S. public school system. In 2015, we documented an effort to indoctrinate children in an Ithaca, NY 3rd grade classroom into becoming “freedom fighters for Palestine”. Then last February we reported how the NY State Education Department and the Board of Regents became embroiled in a controversy over the insertion of an offensive anti-Israel cartoon into a global studies Regents exam administered to 10th graders. These cases are important to document and record because they provide accumulating evidence of the expansion of the anti-Israel and BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement’s propaganda campaign. Now a new study by CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) offers another sobering example of biased anti-Israel curricular materials working their way out of higher education and down the chain into several U.S. public schools.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 13, 2017 11 Comments
Last week, the left in Illinois celebrated when the Senate and House overturned Republican Governor Bruce Rauner's veto of the massive income tax hike and budget bill that concentrated on education. This is the first time in three years the cash-strapped state has a budget. Now Rauner and the Democrats will head back to the table to discuss education funding. The bill that passed the House and Senate already has faced criticism that it favors Chicago schools (shocking, right?) over others.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 06, 2017 15 Comments
Attorney generals in eighteen states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit against Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos over the delay of implementing regulations sculpted to protect any federal student loan borrowers defrauded by for-profit colleges. The attorney generals state that DeVos has illegaly delayed these regulations, which should have gone into affect on July 1. From Politico:
The rules, known as “borrower defense to repayment,” sought to make it easier for defrauded student loan borrowers to seek debt forgiveness. They also prohibit colleges from requiring students to resolve complaints against their school through arbitration rather than in court.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on July 03, 2017 5 Comments
With economic and diplomatic ties at all-time high, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a 3-day visit to Israel starting tomorrow, making it the first ever visit by an Indian premier to the Jewish State. The historic visit comes as both countries mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations. India-Israel "relations are upbeat holding huge potential," said Dr. Anju Kumar, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Israel. "India and Israel are complementary economies. India, given its huge population has lot of demand for technology in order to increase agricultural productivity, water efficiency and recycling, post-harvest treatment, digitisation and making its cities smart. Israel has many such innovative technologies which can be adapted to Indian requirements."

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 18, 2017 18 Comments
If you're wondering why President Trump's Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos needs millions of dollars in security, this is one of the reasons. DeVos is trying to make improvements in her department but is being predictably cast as someone who doesn't care about civil rights. Erica L. Green writes at the New York Times:
Education Dept. Says It Will Scale Back Civil Rights Investigations The Department of Education is scaling back investigations into civil rights violations at the nation’s public schools and universities, easing off mandates imposed by the Obama administration that the new leadership says have bogged down the agency.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 16, 2017 16 Comments
For the past two decades, school districts around the nation became obsessed with testing due to horrendous federal government standards. As a result, recess was abandoned by many school districts with disastrous results. But now schools have realized the importance of recess and physical activity for kids, especially younger ones. Schools who have reintroduced recess have found a huge improvement in children's behavior and overall well-being.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 20, 2017 27 Comments
A federal court has thrown out a lawsuit against Irving, TX, and the local school district brought on by Ahmed "Clock Boy" Mohamed and his family after authorities arrested him in September 2015. From Fox News:
The lawsuit alleged that the city of Irving and Irving school district discriminated against Ahmed Mohamed at Irving MacArthur High School in September of 2015. Mohamed, a Muslim teenager who was 14 years old at the time, brought a homemade clock to school to show his engineering teacher. But an alarm on the clock went off in his English class and the teacher confiscated it. He was sent to the principal’s office.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 01, 2017 5 Comments
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has announced his department wants to make a few changes to the school lunch programs that former First Lady Michelle Obama pushed through. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Schools, which receive federal funding for meal programs, won’t have to meet certain guidelines for whole grain, sodium and milk. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said the decision comes after years of feedback from schools and food-service experts, who have faced challenges meeting meal regulations; and from students, some of whom have complained that the meals aren’t appetizing.

Posted by Miriam Elman on April 24, 2017 26 Comments
On February 15 two 17-year-old central NY high school students—Jordan April and Archer Shurtliff—raised objections to a homework assignment in which they were required to either oppose or defend the extermination of Jews. Their teacher, Oswego County High School teacher Michael DeNobile, asked them to
write an internal memorandum within the highest ranking offices of the Nazi party in regards to your support or opposition to the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”
Presumably the goal was to teach the students critical thinking, thereby promoting one of the Common Core’s desired skills.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 30, 2017 27 Comments
The country has changed. When I was growing up in the 1970's in Massachusetts, everyone in my neighborhood played with toy guns sometimes. If one of those wasn't available, a stick was the next best thing. Thanks to relatively new "zero tolerance policies" children can't even think of doing such things. A little girl in North Carolina just learned that lesson. The Blaze reports:
School suspends 5-year-old girl for ‘turning a stick into a gun’ Officials at a North Carolina school suspended a kindergarten student for playing with a “stick gun” on the playground.
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