Category: Education & Schools

If a foreign goobermint forced this kind of education system on us, it would be considered an act of war.

Students cannot pass a basic citizenship exam: A shameful indictment of our education system.

A new semester is upon us, and as a political science professor at Suffolk Community College in New York, it’s important for me to gauge what my students already know about American government and politics.

Early on in my teaching career, I found that students came into college lacking a basic understanding of the founding of our country, the Constitution, the roles and responsibilities of our institutions, and the core American political philosophies, including concepts of liberty and freedom.

I decided the best way to measure my students’ understanding of the American government was to issue two assignments. On the first day of class, I give my students a citizenship exam asking very basic questions about our founding and our system of governance. Some of the questions include:

The overwhelming majority of students fail the exam. After twelve years of administering this exam, only 348 students have passed out of 2,176. A shameful indictment of our K-12 education system.

Even worse, the passing rate has dropped compared to when I first began giving the exam and has been stagnant over the last five years.

Sadly, this semester is no different. The pass rate for the test is 70%. Out of the approximately 175 students, only 11 of them were able to pass the exam.

For the second assignment, I provide them with Chapter 1 of the Russian Constitution, replacing Russian Federation with the United States, and Duma with Congress. It is important to note that the Russian Constitution, crafted in 1993, begins with “We the multinational people…,” and that Chapter 1 consists of 16 Articles.

Students are asked to provide a one-paragraph written response sharing their thoughts on this constitution. Realistically, their response should be one sentence: this is not the United States Constitution.

Instead, many will write how they never actually read the U.S. Constitution, which is horrifying given the number of years they have attended school prior to taking my course. Others will reference Article 7 where it explains “…guaranteed minimum wages and salaries shall be established, state support ensured to the family, maternity, paternity and childhood, to disabled persons and the elderly, the system of social services developed, state pensions, allowances and other social security guarantees shall be established,” and praise the foresight of the founding fathers.

Needless to say, when I reveal the results and my deception, the look on the students’ faces is priceless. The shock, embarrassment, and shame can be seen in their expressions. These exercises, however, have proven to be an invaluable tool to make my classes more successful, and they dramatically improve student engagement.

There are three objectives behind these assignments.

The first is to open students’ eyes to how unfamiliar they are with the country they are living. As I explain to the students, they have opinions about everything, but how can they say what the government should/should not be doing when they do not know why the government exists, the institutions within the government, and the roles and responsibilities of these institutions?

The second objective is to teach students to think critically, ask questions, be suspicious, and speak up. After I tell the students what they read, some students will respond that they found it strange that the founding fathers would be talking about minimum wage, pensions, and other 20th and 21st century issues.

My response is always the same, “Why didn’t you say anything or do a quick internet search?” Interestingly enough, they reply that since I am the professor, they trusted me, and I would know more about the subject matter than they do.

Even though they had questions, they went against their gut instincts and blindly complied with the assignment. I explain to my students the importance of questioning everything and thinking critically, regardless of who is providing them with the information.

My final objective is to get the students eager and more interested in the subject.

After the exercises, I begin to probe the students in an effort to understand how it’s gotten this bad. The overwhelming majority of students state that throughout their K-12 education, they were never required to read the U.S. Constitution. This is extremely frustrating, because by the time these students get to my course, not only should they be able to easily identify the Constitution, but it should also be seared into their minds.

The good news is that as my students progress throughout the semester, they understand the intent of government and how our system works. They gain the ability to formulate their own ideas on the issues and develop stronger arguments supported by solid evidence.

As an educator, it is not my role to indoctrinate them on what they should believe. Instead, it is my responsibility to assure they know how the American government operates, nurture their academic development, spark their intellectual curiosity, and get them to think critically about the issues.

After “The Great Shaming,” they are eager to learn.

While many criticize the younger generations, out of my nearly two-decades of experience, I am always amazed at how my students show a profound respect for one another and are much more open-minded than many would believe—far more open-minded than some of the people doing the teaching. Every semester, my students learn as much from me as I do from them, and I have little doubt the same will happen this semester.

San Diego teacher defines ‘fascist’ to class as ‘whites,’ ‘heterosexuals,’ and ‘Christians.’

EXCLUSIVE — A teacher from Madison High School in San Diego claimed fascists are synonymous with the “modern-day Republican Party” and “white, Christian, heterosexuals,” according to a student at the school. Speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, the high school student detailed the teacher’s unhinged definition of a “fascist.”

The school began the 2022-23 year on Aug. 29. The alleged incident occurred at the high school last Thursday.

“Immediately, I walk in and notice on the board, it says, ‘The Republican Party is the fascist party, and it does not fit the mold of a Democratic Party,'” the student told me. “It’s the first thing I saw when I came in.”

The student took a picture of this and shared it with me. It read, “As it is currently constituted, the Republican Party is now a fascist organization that no longer fits the category of a conventional Democratic Party.”

School board at San Diego high school
Dry-erase board in San Diego high school where a teacher categorized today’s Republican Party as a fascist organization
Taken by an anonymous student

But the teacher didn’t stop there. He continued with his radical left-wing indoctrination by listing whites, Christians, and heterosexuals as groups that are “fascist.” The student took a picture during the class that shows how the teacher defined “fascist.” On the classroom’s white dry-erase board, the teacher wrote the word “fascist,” underlined it, and listed the words: Trump, heterosexual, white, Christian, and hatred of foreigners, immigrants, and minorities, among others.

“Then, he goes to this board and writes ‘fascist’ on it, and this really struck me. He immediately made the comparison of the Republican Party to the Nazi Party. And that was really offensive to me,” the student said. “He listed the Republican Party and the Nazi Party as similar. And that’s just ridiculous, and I took offense to that. So I took a picture of it.”

Then, the teacher continued to insult and denigrate different groups of people, according to the student.

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“He goes on to insult white people and Christian people, automatically putting them under … that they’re automatically fascist,” the student said.

When I asked the student if the teacher said anything specifically about insulting whites and Christians, the student expanded on what the teacher said.

School board at San Diego high school
Picture of how a teacher defined “fascist” on a dry-erase board at a San Diego high school
Picture taken by an anonymous student

“He just kind of put up that they’re fascists, and they support a fascist government,” the student said. “Immediately — he didn’t even ask the class about it. He just made the assumption right away that whites and Christians automatically support a fascist government.”

This happened in an English class at the high school. I asked the student to elaborate on what learning about fascism has to do with the class’s syllabus.

“We were supposed to be learning how to make an argument for an argumentative essay,” the student said. “And the first thing he turns to is that. Then, he just got to the definition of fascism and what he thinks. He put down the Nazi Party and the modern-day Republican Party, which is just ridiculous.”

This is the dangerous kind of indoctrination that occurs in schools today. Parents who lack alternatives to public schools must be vigilant. What happened in this classroom wasn’t education. It wasn’t teaching about the sins of our country’s past — a justification left-wingers often use to brainwash students subtly to parrot their own political beliefs. No, this was overt indoctrination through bullying high school students at a public school in California. Taxpayer money was used to teach students that fascists are akin to whites, Christians, heterosexuals, or Trump supporters.

“This completely caught me off guard,” the student said. “This is an English class. This isn’t a political class or anything. I signed up for the class to learn how to write papers and stuff,” the student said. “I didn’t sign up for the class for a teacher to be trying to shove his ideology down my throat.”

Unfortunately, this is what many teachers do today. Their priority is spreading such radical, left-wing political ideologies. They want to indoctrinate, not educate. And they feel so comfortable about it that they do it openly.

Texas private school to allow staff to go about day armed

Armed staff may well be the best way to protect students in our schools. Yes, it’s a shame that we should even need to have this discussion–our schools should be safe from such monsters–and in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to. Yet we don’t live in a perfect world, though. We live in this one.

As a result, bad things happen in schools, as we’ve seen all too recently. What’s more, armed staff actually can protect our kids.

For one private school in Texas, that fact stands and they’re not going to pretend it doesn’t.

Faith Academy is planning on implementing a program that will allow teachers and staff to carry weapons at school.

The private Victoria Christian school is joining several area school districts in taking advantage of a Texas law that gives school officials the authority to let private individuals have guns on school premises, which is otherwise illegal.

This provision is often called the “guardian plan” or “guardian program,” though that name is not official.

Unlike most of the public school districts that have implemented such a plan, Faith’s teachers and staff will have the guns on their person during the school day, according to Principal Larry Long.

These staff members will be trained and certified, but I’m mostly shocked at the idea that some of the armed staff in the public schools don’t carry the firearm on their persons.

What are they supposed to do, ask the mass shooter for a time-out so they could get their guns? “Excuse me, Mr. Killer? Can we press pause for a moment so I can get my gun, then we can do this all fair-and-square?”

Yeah, let me know how that goes.

Victoria Academy is clearly thinking straight on this. If the teachers have their guns on their person, they can respond in an instant, as opposed to potentially having to run to wherever they’re stored and gaining access under stress.

Look, schools are a favorite target of mass shooters. Part of the reason for that is because they know they’re unlikely to face much in the way of armed resistance. The idea that the supposedly armed staff don’t actually have ready access to their weapons isn’t likely to be much of a deterrent.

Yet this case? Yeah, I can see things going very differently if someone were to pick this school.

However, I also think that it isn’t going to happen. For one thing, mass shootings at a school are very rare, but also because now people know the teachers at Victoria Academy are armed and will have their weapons on them.

The two things combined provide a blanket of protection over this school like few others.

Anti-gun voices can scream about armed staff at schools if they want, but we’ve seen too many instances where a good guy with a gun made the difference. The last thing I want to ever write about again is innocent kids being killed in their classrooms.

Teachers and staff with guns can make sure I never do.

DeSantis removes Broward County school board members after grand jury report

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis removed and replaced four members of the Broward County school board on Friday after a grand jury that was convened to examine the failures that led up to the 2018 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida recommended the action. DeSantis said in a statement that it’s his “duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance”; pointing to evidence laid out in the grand jury report released last week that found the ousted board members had displayed all of those disqualifications when it came to a program called SMART.

In the 122-page report released Friday, the panel recommended that DeSantis suspend board members Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson. A former member, Rosalind Osgood, also was targeted, but she has since been elected to the Florida Senate and taken office.

Levinson, the board’s chairwoman, angrily slammed the report as a “political hatchet job” orchestrated by the governor.

“It is nasty partisan politics. He should be ashamed of himself,” she said.

… Former Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie resigned last year after he was indicted for allegedly lying to the grand jury. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. The district is the nation’s sixth-largest, with more than 270,000 students at 333 campuses, and an annual budget of $4 billion.

The school board has nine members, including two, Debra Hixon and Lori Alhadeff, who were elected after Hixon’s husband Chris and Alhadeff’s daughter Alyssa died in the Stoneman Douglas shooting. They ran on platforms promoting better campus security. Alhadeff, in particular, has frequently been at odds with the targeted members, particularly over Runcie’s performance before his resignation.

Stand with Parkland, the group that represents most of the victims’ families, issued a statement that applauded the report, saying it “proves what we already suspected – acts of incompetence, negligence and coverup and a School Board (that) is unwilling to face the facts.” President Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina died in the attack, called on DeSantis to remove the four members from the board.

The grand jury said that Runcie’s and the accused board members’ “uninformed or even misinformed decisions, incompetent management and lack of meaningful oversight” has led to massive cost overruns and delays in a school safety and education program approved by county voters in 2014. The report says the $1 billion program that was supposed to be completed in 2021 is now projected to cost $1.5 billion when it is finished in 2025 — estimates the jury called “wishcasting.”

“This doubling of time and almost 50 percent increase in cost did not happen overnight,” the grand jury wrote. “It was a slow-boiling frog that resulted from years of mismanagement from multiple (district) officials whose mistakes were compounded by the Board, which has….refused to hold (district) leadership to account.”

I suspect this will be a broadly popular move around the state, though perhaps less so in Broward County itself. As for the new school board members, two of them have previous experience serving on school boards, and all four appear to have solid credentials in the community. And with the governor merely following the recommendations of the duly empaneled grand jury, the complaints from ousted school board members like Levinson that this is nothing more than “nasty partisan politics” isn’t likely to resonate with most voters.

According to the grand jury’s 122-page report, district officials and the ousted board members displayed “an almost fanatical desire to control data and use it to manipulate public perception,” and were seemingly more interested in the building the district’s “brand” while treating students more like statistics. If the voters of Broward County disagree with that conclusion I suppose they can always re-elect the now-former board members at the next opportunity, but for now there’s a new board, and one that’s hopefully more accountable to parents, students, and staff… not mention one that a grand jury doesn’t accuse of being more interested in student safety than public relations.

Biden’s Student Loan ‘Cancelation’ Plan Could Cost Taxpayers Up to $60,000,000,000 Over Next 10 Years

On Wednesday, the White House released the details of its so-called student debt “cancelation” plan. President Joe Biden also gave remarks about the announcement later that day. While the president and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre failed to give a satisfactory answer about the cost, the Committee for a Responsible Budget (CRFB) has estimated that it will cost between $440 billion and $600 billion over the next 10 years.

Wednesday’s release from CRFB, a non-partisan group, noted that it has come to a rough estimate of $500 billion.

The release also spells trouble for any perceived benefits from the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which the organization had positive things to say about. The CRFB’s reference to a law it had praised makes its concerns even more potent.

From this release, with added emphasis:

The changes announced today will likely cost more than double the amount saved through the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, completely eliminating any disinflationary benefit from the bill. We will be releasing an inflation estimate of these student debt changes in a subsequent analysis, but the package is likely to increase inflation by more than a year-long extension of the pause, which we previously estimated would add up to 20 basis points to the Personal Consumption Expenditure inflation rate. The proposed loan changes also do nothing to reduce the amount of borrowing moving forward, setting up a future administration to be called on to cancel debt again.

It is extremely troubling to see the Administration reverse the legislative progress made on deficit reduction. It is long past time that student debt repayments resume, and now it is even more important for policymakers to enact changes that reduce deficits through spending reductions and revenue increases in order to put the national debt on a downward sustainable path.

The organization also released a statement from its president, Maya MacGuineas, which emphasized her disappointment with the move. Her statement began:

This announcement is gallingly reckless – with the national debt approaching record levels and inflation surging, it will make both worse. Policymakers have already spent $300 billion on student debt relief—none of it paid for, and this would add another $400 to $600 billion, again, none of it paid for. This action by the White House is completely at odds with their talk of deficit reduction. It could add twice as much to the deficit as was just saved from the Inflation Reduction Act, completely eliminating any deficit reduction and then some. With the stroke of a pen, the President undid a year’s worth of work on the fiscal front.

Many progressive politicians and organization have referenced student loan debt in the context of how it affects lower-income families as well as minorities. The president in his Wednesday remarks made mention of how “the burden is especially heavy on Black and Hispanic borrowers, who on average have less family wealth to pay for it.”

A Thursday post by CRFB also addressed previous student debt proposals, which actually turn out to benefit upper-class families. “The student debt cancellation proposals that have previously been analyzed are regressive because they provide a disproportionate benefit to higher income and wealthier households. The main reason for this is that people who go to college and beyond are much more likely to earn high incomes and have high lifetime wealth compared to people who don’t go to college,” the post read.

A Brookings report is also mentioned, which found that “the top 20 percent of white non-Hispanic households by lifetime wealth hold 25 percent of all student debt and hold more student debt than all Black/African American households combined. This shows that debt cancellation disproportionately benefits white, wealthier households because those are the people most likely to owe and be paying down their debt.”

The post did acknowledge that Biden’s recently announced proposal could be “less regressive” though and that “it’s not clear at this time how the announced Biden cancellation policy affects the racial wealth gaps.”

Iowa Firearms Coalition applauds the Spirit Lake School Board for plans to arm staff

SPIRIT LAKE, I.A. (Dakota News Now) – The Iowa Firearms Coalition has been working to change security policies in public buildings, claiming the current system has left them vulnerable to attacks. As a result, the Spirit Lake School Board decided to allow members of their on-campus staff to carry guns.

The IFC applauds the decision that was made unanimously by the school board during their Monday meeting. According to a press release from the IFC, 10 staff members who agree to carry and undergo training will be allowed to take part in the program.

“The Spirit Lake School Board clearly loves their children enough to ensure, should tragedy strike, a threat can be addressed,” said IFC President Dave Funk. “We strongly encourage all other Iowa school districts to follow in the footsteps of Spirit Lake. Our children are worth protecting.”

Iowa Code 724.4B, which allows school districts to regulate armed personnel on school grounds, paved the way for Spirit Lake’s decision.

“Having this policy in place serves as a deterrent for anyone who might consider entering our schools with the intent to do harm,” said Spirit Lake Schools Superintendent David Smith in a statement to Explore Okoboji.

Audio of the Spirit Lake School Boarding meeting can be found here: https://bit.ly/3QPs7A4

The Iowa Firearms Coalition, an affiliate of the NRA and NSSF, is a 501(c4) nonprofit and is Iowa’s only effective pro-Second Amendment rights organization.

Gun control not a “resource” to stop mass shootings

If the idea of being involved in a mass shooting, even if that involvement is just knowing one of the victims, is a personal nightmare of yours, you’re probably right to be concerned. They’re awful and the pain of having someone taken from your life like that hurts beyond words.

Believe me, I know.

In North Carolina, a sheriff decided to stop playing around and decided school resource officers will have AR-15s to use to protect students and staff. To say some don’t like that is an understatement.

In the Charlotte Observer, one columnist put his opposition into words.

Madison County, one county over from where I live in Asheville, garnered national headlines recently with an announcement that every school in the N.C. county will be outfitted with AR-15s this school year.

This initiative embodies how many on the right today bend over backward to suggest anything but gun control as the salve for gun violence.

Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood wrote on Facebook, “to exhaust every resource we’ve got to ensure that our kids are safe, that when they go to school, they can learn…and they can go the playground and play, and not worry about some thug who’s going to come out onto the playground and open up on them with some type of AR-15, shotgun, pistol, whatever.”

Only Harwood didn’t exhaust every resource. If he’d done that, he would’ve been advocating for meaningful gun control — a shooter can’t open fire with an AR-15 if they can’t purchase one.

Well, that last paragraph is possibly one of the dumbest ever written in the English language.

First, understand that there are an estimated 20 million or more AR-15s currently in circulation. Does the author think that a new law will magically make them unobtainable for the average citizen? I’m sorry, that ship has long since set sail.

Further, it’s not like the AR-15 is the only weapon used to commit a mass shooting. In fact, handguns are far more commonly used for such horrific acts.

Yet an AR-15 would allow deputies to engage handgun-armed would-be mass shooters at greater range, meaning they could save lives that much sooner without having to close to handgun range. Or, if such a killer has a rifle of some type, he can at least meet them on equal ground.

Moving on…

Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban in 1994, outlawing AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles. As reported by NPR, mass shootings were down in the decade that followed, compared to the decade before (1984-1994) and the one after (2004-2014). Assault weapon bans work.

Except the study referenced used an odd definition of “mass shooting;” one that also happened to reduce tilt the findings more in the favor of the desired outcome. That NPR didn’t critically look at that study isn’t overly surprising.

But the author is starting to approach his point:

Harwood represents a bigger problem: the refusal of law enforcement in North Carolina to lead the gun control conversation.

There we go.

The problem is that Harwood and other North Carolina law enforcement officials aren’t pushing his preferred politics. Yet there are valid reasons for this.

For one, Harwood is an elected official, which means his politics are more likely to reflect the beliefs of his constituents. He’s not going to push a “gun control conversation” in a pro-gun county unless he’s looking to retire without having to announce it.

Second, it wasn’t that long ago when people like the author were screaming about defunding the police, and now they’re upset that the cops don’t seem to be on their side?

The truth of the matter is that a lot of law enforcement see what happens when good people are disarmed. They can’t stop criminals from getting guns, regardless of the laws on the books. They’ve seen how those laws completely fail every time they arrest a known felon and find a firearm on them. So, they often come to recognize that gun control isn’t going to do the trick.

They fail to push the author’s agenda simply because they know it to be a complete failure of an idea.

Putting AR-15 in the hands of school resource officers isn’t just a good idea, it’s the only sane one.

Signs Warn About ‘Deadly Force’ at Florida Schools: ‘Teachers Are Armed’
A school district in the Florida panhandle stirred controversy overnight after signs were placed around all public schools warning that staff members are armed and willing to use “deadly force.”

Signs at Florida schools stir controversy

Gulf District Schools Superintendent Jim Norton told Newsweek that the signs are placed on all entrances of each school in Gulf County as one line of defense against potential armed intruders.

“Staff members are ARMED and TRAINED,” the sign read. “Any attempt to harm children will be met with Deadly Force.”

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Gov. Greg Abbott deploys Chuck Norris to help stop the next school shooting

Texas is turning to Chuck Norris to help stop the next school shooting.

With school restarting around the state, Gov. Greg Abbott is touting a safety program that calls on parents, teachers and students to report suspicious activity on the state’s iWatch website.

To promote the reporting system, Abbott has tapped 82-year-old former action movie star Chuck Norris to star in new public service announcements promoting the system.

“Parents, teachers, and students deserve to feel safe and secure returning to school this fall, and who better to help spread the message about the iWatchTexas reporting system than ‘Texas Ranger’ Chuck Norris?” Abbott said in a statement to the media on Tuesday.

Norris was the star of the television series Walker Texas Ranger which ran from 1993 to 2001.

In the new PSAs, Norris says he loves bringing bad guys to justice.

“But law enforcement can’t stop the bad guys if they don’t know who they are,” he says. “That’s why I wanted to tell you about iWatch, a website, phone app and service that allows Texans to report suspicious activity.”

The iWatch system has been in place for several years, but Abbott in June called for ramping up awareness of the system after the Uvalde shooting.

Like other Texas Republicans, Abbott has rejected calls from the left for more gun control measures, saying they are not the solution to mass shootings, instead focusing on mental health resources and school security measures.

The new website is: https://iwatchtx.org or people can call the state’s hotline, 844-643-2251.

Abbott said it is part of a laundry list of steps he’s taken since the Uvalde school shooting where 19 children and two teachers were killed in May. Abbott said he’s ordered comprehensive school safety reviews of all Texas public schools, more training of school-based police and the creation of a new Chief of School Safety and Security position within the Texas Education Agency.

Inside the Massive Effort to Change the Way Kids Are Taught to Read.

As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”

The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.

Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. “In Oakland, when you have 19% of Black kids reading—that can’t be maintained in the society,” says Weaver, who received an early and vivid lesson in the value of literacy in 1984 after his cousin got out of prison and told him the other inmates stopped harassing him when they realized he could read their mail to them. “It has been an unmitigated disaster.” In January 2021, the local branch of the NAACP filed an administrative petition with the Oakland unified school district (OUSD) to ask it to include “explicit instruction for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension” in its curriculum.

Weaver and his co-petitioners—including civil rights, educational, and literacy groups—want schools to spend more time in the youngest grades teaching the sounds that make up words and the letters that represent those sounds. His petition is part of an enormous rethink of reading instruction that is sweeping the U.S. So far this year, five states have passed laws that require training for teachers in phonics-based reading techniques, adding to the 13 that passed such laws last year. And in May, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that elementary schools in the biggest district in the country would be required to adopt a phonics-based reading program.

The timing for such a dramatic change feels especially challenging. Elementary-school teachers are already having to recalibrate after two years of disruption; vicious fighting about public-health mandates as well as what kids should be taught about race and gender; and a widespread parental freak-out about how little their children have learned during the pandemic. Now the most fundamental skill that society asks them to pass along is also being completely shaken up.

But advocates say it cannot wait: in 2019, even before the pandemic upended instruction, only 35% of fourth-graders met the standards for reading proficiency set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an even lower number than in 2017. Only 21% of low-income students (measured by whether they qualify for free school lunch), 18% of Black students, and 23% of Hispanic students can be considered on track for reading by fourth grade. These numbers have been low for decades, but the pandemic has given the dismal results extra urgency. “There have been choices made where our children were not in the center,” says Weaver. “We abandoned what worked because we didn’t like how it felt to us as adults, when actually, the social-justice thing to do is to teach them explicitly how to read.”

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They’re ‘Doing Something’ to Our Kids

What happens when you can no longer trust the people responsible for keeping your kids safe? What happens when the “Do Something” crowd only does the wrong thing?

In news that probably sounds familiar to you wherever you live, Salem-Keizer (OR) Public Schools has approved a resolution that further prohibits firearms on school grounds – at all times. Passing in a 4-3 vote, which seems like a very small decision-making group for a district of 65 schools and over 42,000 students.

As reported by the Statesman Journal:

“Salem-Keizer school board members Tuesday approved a resolution further prohibiting weapons on campus, including concealed guns. The vote directs Superintendent Christy Perry to develop and enact administrative policy to implement this…

Staff and students were already not allowed to have concealed weapons in Salem-Keizer schools. The new resolution expands restrictions to include all concealed firearms carried by campus visitors, including parents, guardians, volunteers, guest speakers, organizations renting facilities and other community members.”

But school resource officers? Gone.

But private armed security? Unarmed.

But armed teachers? Nope.

What about local law enforcement? In one of those, do-you-really-need-to-say-this moments, Perry clarified that law enforcement will still be ALLOWED to open carry their firearms onto campus in the event of an emergency. Wow. Thanks.

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Well, ‘when seconds count, the police are only minutes away‘, still applies, even for this. For if THE SCHOOL STAFF doesn’t have access to the guns, those minutes until the police arrive – and if they actually decide to actually do anything except stand around making sure their hands are sanitary- simply means more time is wasted and more people get murdered

AR-15s put in all Madison County schools to enhance security in case of active shooter.

MARSHALL – In response to the Texas school shooting that left 19 children dead May 24, the local school system and Sheriff’s Office are rolling out some beefed up security measures in 2022-23, including putting AR-15 rifles in every school.

Madison County Schools and Madison County Sheriff’s Office are collaborating to enhance security in the schools for the upcoming school year after the Uvalde, Texas, tragedy revealed systemic failures and poor decision-making, with responding police disregarding active-shooter trainings, according to a report from the Texas state house.

“Those officers were in that building for so long, and that suspect was able to infiltrate that building and injure and kill so many kids,” Sheriff Buddy Harwood said. “I just want to make sure my deputies are prepared in the event that happens.”

Madison County Schools Superintendent Will Hoffman said MCS administration has been meeting regularly with local law enforcement officials, including Harwood, to discuss the updated safety measures.

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“How to Spot a Groomer With This 1 Weird Trick”

The Clinical Steps To Grooming Kids Match Exactly How They’re Being Taught In Schools

The steps predators take to groom children for sexual abuse bear a remarkable resemblance to some modern lesson plans in American elementary schools, according to descriptions clinical experts provided to the Daily Caller.

Proponents of introducing Critical Gender Theory curricula and graphic sexual education to young children in schools have rejected the “groomer” pejorative critics recently began lobbing at them. Still, the grooming methods that experts outlined for the Caller bear a striking resemblance to some of the newer sexual education lessons the fringe political left is pushing into classrooms.

The most common tactics groomers employ are cultivating a positive reputation within a community, introducing sexualized topics or imagery to kids, isolating them from their parents, and encouraging them to keep secrets, experts told the Daily Caller. Each of these red flags have manifested themselves in classroom policies or public programs for children across America in recent years.

“I can’t think of too many times where I would think that an unrelated person should say, ‘Don’t say this to your parents,’” Daniel Pollack, professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University, told the Daily Caller.

“[Parents] should be informed [about sex education], especially the younger kids are,” Chris Newlin, executive director of the National Children’s Advocacy Center, said. “I’m just not a fan of things being held secret from parents, and kids being told not to tell.”

Yet a culture of secrets is exactly what’s cropping up in some schools. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that a school could institute a policy in which kids change their gender identity without informing parents. In March, a Texas elementary school told 5-year-old kids not to tell their parents what adults taught during pride week classroom discussions. A new Philadelphia policy requires teachers to hide the transgender status of students from parents.

Examples are international, too: in Canada, one school hosted a “pride dance” that parents were prohibited from seeing.

The dictionary definition of groomer is “the criminal activity of becoming friends with a child in order to try to persuade the child to have a sexual relationship,” according to the Cambridge English Dictionary. Some critics of sexualized education for kids and programs like Drag Queen Story Hour allege that kids aren’t only being groomed for potential abuse, but are being mentally groomed into a particular worldview regarding sexuality and gender.

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Oklahoma Pushes Back Against School Districts That Violated Ban on Critical Race Theory

After two Oklahoma school districts violated the state’s ban on teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT), the state took action to punish them.

In response to both Tulsa Public Schools and Mustang Public Schools violating HB 1775, which “protects our children across the state from being taught revisionist history and that ‘one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,’ or that ‘an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted to give the schools an “accreditation with warning,” which is the third of a five-step process.

The warning will require the two districts to show that they have made the changes needed to meet the board’s standards.

The board decided to go a step higher than what HB 1775 recommends, which is disciplinary action for violators of “accreditation with deficiencies,” which is the second step.

According to Townhall, the incident was first revealed when the board found out that the school districts held a training course for teachers including lessons on how “to shame white people for past offenses in history.”

In addition, Tulsa Public Schools was recently found to have made two books with explicit content available to students in middle school.

22 States Sue Biden Admin for Plan to Block Lunch Money From Schools That Reject​ ‘Gen­der Iden­ti­ty’ Ideology

There are two cornerstone truths about the left — and by extension, the Democrat Party. First, the depth of left-wing hypocrisy knows no bounds. Second, there is no low to which the left will not stoop to cajole, threaten, punish, or destroy, if necessary, those opposed to their agenda, or whose agenda they oppose.

This article is about the Biden administration’s latest effort to do the latter.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in May announced that K-12 schools must comply with its interpretation of the ban on discrimination based on sex in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity — and allowing boys to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms — in order to receive federal funding for school breakfasts, lunches, and other food items.

Enough is enough, say 22 state attorneys general, who have joined forces in a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s new “guidance,” naming the USDA as a defendant in the suit, which was filed in the Eastern District of Tennessee, as reported by UPI.

The 22 states are Indiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.

In the lawsuit, the attorneys general argue the USDA’s Guidance is unlawful

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‘Many, many’ Texas teachers seek to carry guns in schools, Tarrant County sheriff says

Many Texas teachers are becoming qualified to carry firearms in schools in the wake of the Uvalde mass shooting, according to Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn. Waybourn was part of a panel of politicians on Tuesday who spoke at an America First Policy Institute summit in Washington, D.C.

He joined Congressman Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt during a panel called, “Provide Safe and Secure Communities So All Americans Can Live Their Lives in Peace.” Pam Bondi and Matthew Whitaker led the session.

Donald Trump was scheduled to speak at the summit Tuesday afternoon. Bondi asked the panelists about various topics on policing and crime in the U.S.. She asked Waybourn what he thought needed to be done in schools in the wake of the deadly shooting in Uvalde. Waybourn apologized on behalf of Texas for the “epic failure of law enforcement in Uvalde.”

Waybourn said schools must be “hardened” to protect kids from shooters, mirroring Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s call for action to better secure schools from potential shooters. To protect schools, Waybourn said, schools need “a good guy with a gun ready to go,” whether that person is a police officer or a “well-trained vetted staff member in that school.”

“And in Texas, many, many teachers are out qualifying today as we speak,” Waybourn said. “And they’re getting ready to go.” The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to questions about where Waybourn received his information on teachers increasingly becoming qualified to carry guns in school. In Texas, school staff can carry firearms in schools as part of the School Marshal program. Through the program, a school district applies for qualification and, if accepted, sends their selected candidate to an 80-hour training course.

Across the state, 62 school districts were qualified through the program for a total of 256 school marshals as of May, Texas Commission on Law Enforcement spokeswoman Gretchen Grigsby told the Dallas Morning News. The names of the districts and marshals are confidential. Transfer of Power A special newsletter from our D.C. Bureau focused on transition to the Biden administration.

Texas has more than 1,200 school districts, including charter schools. Texas also allows staff to carry guns on campus through the Guardian Plan. Under the authority of the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act and the Texas Penal Code, school districts can grant written permission for designated employees to carry firearms on campus.

Texas politicians, such as Attorney General Ken Paxton, have urged schools to arm teachers in the wake of the Uvalde shooting, in which a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in May. Other school districts, including the Fort Worth school district, want politicians to focus on gun laws. On July 12, the Fort Worth school board asked Abbott to call for a special legislative session to pass “common sense” gun law policies to protect students from mass shootings. The America First Policy Institute is a nonprofit organization focused on a policy agenda for Republican leaders.

Mississippi board of education votes to let schools set their own gun policies

The move by the state board of education isn’t likely to lead to armed staff members protecting kids in Mississippi’s few Democratic bastions like Jackson, but now that the board has said individual school districts can set their own policies when it comes to guns on campus many smaller and more rural schools may very well decide that having a few trained and vetted volunteer staffers carrying to protect the students in their care is a good idea.

Late last week the state board of education updated a 1990 policy that barred anyone other than law enforcement from carrying on school grounds, arguing that the old policy conflicts with the state’s “enhanced concealed carry” law. That law specifically allows those with the enhanced carry license to lawfully carry in some “sensitive places” deemed off-limits to those carrying with a regular license or under the state’s Constitutional Carry law, and as of now the board says that districts can choose to permit or forbid employees with enhanced permits from carrying on school grounds.

At the boarding meeting, Erin Meyer, the education department’s general counsel, said state law provides “local school districts with the authority and discretion to determine” its weapons policies. School districts can decide for themselves whether or not employees who hold enhanced carry licenses can bring guns onto school property.

School districts must also adopt policies that apply to non-employees. A 2013 state attorney general’s opinion argued teachers or administrators can refuse to meet with armed people in a “non-public” school area. Mississippi K-12 schools are closed to the public, but a school concert, play or sporting event is open to the public, Cook said.

Patricia Ice, a volunteer with the Mississippi chapter of Moms Demand Action, a gun reform organization, urged school districts to adopt policies that limit firearms on campus.

“Allowing teachers and members of the public to carry guns in our K-12 schools is a dangerous idea that will further jeopardize the safety of students and staff alike,” Ice said. “We need the adults in the room to make evidence-based policy decisions that will actually keep our children safe, rather than making decisions that will put more guns in their classrooms and put our kids at risk.”

Ice can’t point to any issue in states where teachers and staff are authorized to legally carry a firearm on campus as a deterrent to a targeted attack against students, but Moms Demand Action has long opposed the idea anyway. In fact, Moms Demand Action and their parent group Everytown for Gun Safety helped sue to overturn Ohio’s armed school staff statutes, forcing lawmakers in the Buckeye State to craft new legislation this year ensuring that districts have the flexibility to adopt the practice if they choose.

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Ron DeSantis’s ‘Anti-Racist’ Mandate Leads University to Scrub Websites

The University of Central Florida (UCF) is complying with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s law prohibiting schools from accusing people of racism.

In the spring, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Stop WOKE Act,” which took effect on July 1 and laid out the restrictions of how race is taught in schools. It includes barring instruction that claims an individual’s “moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is determined by his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.”

In its reporting of the development, the Associated Press (AP) noted that some critics are outraged that the content has been removed:

In an email, UCF spokesperson Chad Binette said the school recently removed departmental statements that could be seen as “potentially inconsistent with our commitment to creating a welcoming environment — one where faculty objectively engage students in robust, scholarly discussions that expand their knowledge and empower them to freely express their views and form their own perspectives.”

“UCF is committed to building a culture that values respect, civil discourse, and creating a sense of belonging,” said Binette, the school’s assistant vice president of communications.

“This is a complete infringement of academic freedom,” Ann Gleig, a religious studies professor at UCF, said. “The statement was crafted over a period of time with dialogue and input across a person plus faculty trained in philosophy, religion and cultural studies and the humanities.”

“The DeSantis regime has made the anti-racist mission of my alma mater against the law,” Democrat State Representative Carlos G. Smith, a UCF graduate, tweeted. “This is a consequence of HB 7 and the Governor’s out-of-control censorship agenda. This is not freedom.”

The AP reported that according to the Orlando Sentinel, the anthropology department’s website previously said, “We acknowledge that many of us are born with unearned privilege, while others are denied basic human rights.”

For the parents that don’t like this new policy; If I were on the school board, I’d suggest the district have one school with no armed security at all, and send all their children there. Then make sure that it was widely known that all the schools, except for that one, did have armed teachers as well as armed  security officers.

Cobb school board approves measure to create new position that will allow some employees to carry guns
The school board approved the measure with a vote of 4-2.

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — The Cobb County School Board approved a measure Thursday evening during its meeting to create a new position for some employees to carry guns on school campuses. The measure, however, does not include teachers.

The school board approved the measure with a vote of 4-2. Teachers or anyone who oversees a classroom will not be allowed to carry weapons.

The moves comes weeks after a gunman walked inside of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and killed 19 students and two teachers.

However, even with the mass shooting in mind, Thursday night’s vote in Cobb County didn’t come without controversy.

A group of protests delayed the meeting as some chanted “delay the vote.” School board member Dr. Jaha Howard tried to get a motion passed to move the vote to next month, but the board voted against it.

Some parents were outraged over the policy. Laura Judge believes the move could be dangerous.

“You have younger kids that are curious and they’re looking for different things, I don’t want them to happen upon a weapon and then you have older kids that are bigger than some of these individuals and I don’t want them to wrestle a weapon away,” said Judge, who is a parent.

Alisha Thomas Searcy, running for Georgia’s state school superintendent, said the language in the policy is too vague.

“We’re talking about the lives of children, the lives of educators, that deserves the time and attention and thoroughness to sit down with professionals, law enforcement in particular to make sure the right policy is in place,” Searcy said.

With the new measure, employees carrying a gun would be reporting to public safety and would also have to be trained in judgment, pistol shooting, marksmanship, and have a review of current laws relating to the use of force and self-defense. There will also be psychological screening and a background check conducted.

The superintendent can waive the training requirements if the employee has already received law enforcement or military training. The superintendent also has a say in what types of weapons can be used.

Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said the armed employees would not be identified; he said keeping that part a secret will help prevent would-be attackers.