Draining the swamp: American education is ripe for improvement

Commentary by James Shott

Among the many hot topics since Donald Trump won election as the 45^th President of the United States is America’s education system. Once at the top of the nations of the world in educating its young, America has lost ground.

Jon Guttman, Research Director of the World History Group, wrote in 2012 that “[a]s recently as 20 years ago, the United States was ranked No.1 in high school and college education,” and that “[i]n 2009, the United States was ranked 18th out of 36 industrialized nations.” He attributes that decline to “complacency and inefficiency, reflective of lower priorities in education, and inconsistencies among the various school systems.”

In 2010 at a Paris meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), President Barack Obama’s first Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who served from 2009 through 2015, said this:

“Before the 1960s, almost all policymaking and education funding was a state and local responsibility. In the mid-1960s, the federal role expanded to include enforcing civil rights laws to ensure that poor, minority, and disabled students, as well as English language learners, had access to a high-quality education.

“As the federal role in education grew,” Duncan said, “so did the bureaucracy,” adding that the U.S. Department of Education often “operated more like a compliance machine, instead of an engine of innovation,” and that it concerned itself with the details of formula funding, and not with educational outcomes or equity.

He went on to say that the United States needed to challenge the status quo, and to close the achievement and opportunity gaps. Five years later, the U.S. still lagged behind many other countries.

The findings in the 2015 Program International Student Assessment (PISA), described by CNN as “a benchmark of education systems conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of the world's richest economies,” finds the U.S. education system improved since the last assessment in 2012 in the areas of science, math and reading.

However, that improvement leaves American students ranked behind the students of 24 other countries, among the 72 participating nations. Teens in Singapore, Japan and Estonia led the more than half a million 15-year-olds in the 2015 assessment, the primary focus of which was science, with math as the primary focus in 2012.

President Jimmy Carter signed the federal Department of Education into law in 1979, and since it became active the following year, American education has gotten worse, as measured by these international assessments. Marginal or negative performance is not unusual for federal agencies, however. President-Elect Donald Trump, like Ronald Reagan before him, has called for abolishing the Department of Education, citing the need to cut spending.

Looking back to the formative years of the republic, we find the Founders established only four cabinet level activities: foreign relations through the State Department; national defense through the Department of War (now Defense); taxation and spending through the Department of the Treasury; and enforcement of federal law through the Attorney General (now the Department of Justice).

The increase of federal agencies has no doubt produced some benefits, but does their performance justify the costs incurred?  They have produced huge growth in government control of our lives, and enormous expense. Today there are nearly four times as many cabinet level agencies as the Founders thought necessary.

The federal education effort has many sins on its list, but the primary sin is the shifting of control of local schools to Washington by dangling federal dollars in front of state school officials, which they can earn in return for giving up some degree of control over their schools. Federal influences also contribute to the infestation of standardized testing, which in moderation can provide benefits, but when a typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten classes and 12th grade, that is over the edge. Eighth-graders, it is said, spend an average of 25.3 hours on standardized testing.

Trump has named Betsy DeVos to become education secretary. Her bio explains that in education she “has been a pioneer in fighting to remove barriers, to enact change and to create environments where people have the opportunity to thrive,” and that her political efforts are focused on advancing educational choices. She currently chairs the American Federation for Children.

Like all of Trump’s cabinet selections so far, DeVos is seen as unqualified, criticized for her lack of experience in education and for pushing to “give families taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to attend private and parochial schools, pressed to expand publicly funded but privately run charter schools, and trying to strip teacher unions of their influence,” according to an unflattering story in The New York Times.

Perhaps the contrary is true, however. Given the lackluster performance of the Department of Education when run by apparently qualified people, someone with other strengths just might be able to turn the department into a positive influence on what is broadly considered a mediocre education system.

Schools are best operated by those closest to the students, so returning control to states and localities will be a good first step.

Cross-posted from Observations

Higher education under attack from within, by disaffected students

College campuses – once the bastion of diverse opinion, a garden where ideas thrived, where contrary viewpoints were freely expressed – are fast becoming cesspools of narrow-mindedness that stifle free speech, where political correctness rules over common sense, where free thinking is discouraged, and they are occupied more and more by students offended because someone expressed a different opinion, didn’t pay proper deference, or wore the “wrong” costume on Halloween.

Student protests are returning to 1960s/70s levels, and arise because some students think that there aren’t enough minority professors on campus while others decry a lack of “social justice,” and some have called for hunger strikes over what they perceive as a lack of support for students of color.

If students don’t like a professor’s point of view, or they detect “microaggressions” in the classroom, they feel led to demand the professor resign or be fired. You are a Hispanic kid and someone wears a sombrero and a poncho on Halloween, it’s time for a protest.

And did you know that the First Amendment makes some college kids feel unsafe? Would you ever have imagined that such an idea could take hold on an American college campus?

The vice president of the Missouri Students Association, Brenda Smith-Lezama, told MSNBC last week, "I personally am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and for other students here." Poor little thing must be terrified listening to rap or watching television or movie drama. And she suffers under the delusion that her comfort is more important than someone else’s.

While these kids have yet to accomplish much, they believe the world must work to calm their fears, perceptions that may be adequate to drive protests and hunger strikes, but their perceptions do not necessarily reflect reality. The concerns expressed by these students are precisely the types of things the liberal attitudes that prevail on campuses today work to eliminate.

Many of the complaints have a racial element, but they really center on hypersensitive feelings about things that have always been normal aspects of life. Suddenly, these normal campus happenings that students – white students, black students, Asian and Hispanic students, female students – have dealt with successfully for decades and with little or no difficulty, are now scary and threatening.

College once was a place where kids learned to think. Today, many of them seem to know only how to feel; emotion rules rationality. Listening to different ideas used to be enlightening, mind-expanding. Now, it makes the kiddies cry for their mommies.

Missing from these children-in-adult-bodies is even the suspicion that not everything revolves around them, that they are not the be-all and end-all of the known universe.

And they also want someone to pay their college loans off for them, because … well, just because.

The process of gaining entry to an institution of higher learning is long established and has worked well for decades. Colleges and universities are places where the qualified my go to advance their education, and most of the onus is on the student to fund their education through parental help, scholarship assistance, student loans, the GI Bill, or good old hard work. And then it is the student’s responsibility to perform as expected academically to complete their degree requirements, and then go out and get a job and become a productive member of society.

That is called “life,” and life is not a smooth ride, most times. But tens of millions of Americans have successfully navigated the sometimes-troubled waters successfully without being coddled and nursed along the way. Conquering challenges and facing adversity head-on build character.

The whining behavior demonstrated on several campuses recently shows a fundamental failure of thousands of young people to have learned the basic rules of life, and have their minds grow up at the same rate as their bodies.

However, bowing to the whims of students is letting the inmates run the asylum. College is a place for learning, or once was. Professors led the learning process, administrators ran the school, and the students worked hard and did what they had to do to master the material at a satisfactory level. If students weren’t happy in a particular environment, or couldn’t hack it, they were free to leave. Or they could simply adapt. If that dynamic isn’t restored very soon, we may as well shut down colleges, because they will no longer provide a benefit.

As bad as this is for higher education, it is much worse for America. A generation or two with millions of young people among them who can’t cope with the simplistic problems of going to college surely won’t be able to be good citizens, to hold down jobs in a productive economy, or staff a strong, able military capable of defending the country, or even make sensible decisions about for whom they will vote. They can hardly be expected to weigh complex arguments rationally, when anything that doesn’t agree with their narrow ideas makes them hide under their beds.

This is what liberalism hath wrought, and it will most likely get worse.

State Board acts to allow the light of day into public schools

Commentary by James Shott

An email last week from the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and a story in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph the following morning noted that the West Virginia Board of Education voted to open up state teaching standards so that students would be able to consider both sides of a contemporary debate.

Say, what? The state Board of Education had to have a special vote to allow more than one side of a critical issue to be studied in West Virginia’s public schools? Well, yes, more or less, since the Next Generation Science Standards that the BOE was considering for adoption were worded such that global warming is settled science, and therefore not a proper topic for debate.

During the deliberations on the standards last December, the Charleston Gazette reported that BOE member Wade Linger requested several changes be made to the standards prior to their being offered for public comment, like this one: “There was a question in there that said: ‘Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century,” Mr. Linger was quoted as saying. “... If you have that as a standard, then that presupposes that global temperatures have risen over the past century, and, of course, there’s debate about that.” He suggested adding the words “and fall” after “rise” to the sixth-grade science standard, and that change some others were adopted.

Then the Gazette reported on January 14 that following a period of public comment the BOE yielded to criticism from “teachers, professors and others,” and withdrew the changes, and again opened a period of public comment.

One wonders exactly what “teachers, professors and others” fear from opening debate on this topic, or any topic?

CFACT reports that Executive Director Craig Rucker, and climate news and information service editor Marc Morano, along with students from West Virginia University and Marshall University who belong to CFACT Collegian chapters at the schools, all testified before the Board.

On April 8 the Board voted to open up teaching standards to permit students to consider both sides in the climate debate by a 6-2 vote. CFACT reported that, “Supporters of the changes, including board members Wade Linger and Tom Campbell, argued that ‘science is never settled’ and that debate will lead students into a deeper understanding of the issue.”

Let’s congratulate the state BOE for finally getting it right, and award special kudos to Mr. Linger and Mr. Campbell for their leadership in blowing away the dark clouds of censorship, and opening the way for contrary ideas to be voiced and discussed. And let’s also acknowledge the efforts of CFACT and WVU and MU students for taking a stand for openness in public education.

Some issues are considered beyond debate, like that the Earth orbits the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth, that day follows night and night follows day, and that the Earth is not flat. But that does not mean that there can’t be any discussion or that some can’t reject those ideas if they so choose.

In the early 1600s it was “settled science” that the Earth was the center of the universe, a view held by virtually all scientists of the time and by the Catholic Church, supported by Biblical references. Then came Galileo, a scientist who professed heliocentrism – a sun-centered system in which Earth and other heavenly bodies all orbited the Sun – a theory he had developed through observations.

His heretical ideas, like those of today’s climate realists who disagree that man’s activities are contributing to any meaningful degree in the Earth’s temperature, were out of step with the current dogma, but were correct that Earth was not the center of the universe. For daring to express contrary ideas, Galileo faced the Inquisition, and in 1616 was ordered “... to abandon completely... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.”

Galileo was correct that Earth was not the center of the universe, and his theory displaced the previously held “settled science” of geocentrism. Only later would Galileo’s heliocentric idea be found to also not be completely accurate. Settled science once again fell to objective investigation.

One gets the idea that climate alarmists’ positions are so weak that they have to prevent contrary views from being aired for their ideas to win the day.

However, limiting discussion of controversial topics is precisely the wrong thing to do. Why would any reasonable and objective person object to discussing opposing views of important issues such as global warming/climate change, abortion, gun control, vaccinations, the “right” and “wrong” kinds of foods and drinks to consume? As BOE members Linger and Campbell pointed out, such openness will lead only to a deeper understanding of the issues.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the concept of standards of learning, but school boards at every level must be careful to assure that by adopting a set of standards they are not actually imposing ideological perspectives on young, impressionable minds.

Cross-posted from Observations

America’s schools reflect cultural problems

The news about U.S. education from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is much less than satisfactory, showing that Americans aged 16 to 34 – the so-called millennial generation – scored lower than their peers in 15 of the 22 countries participating in the assessment, despite being regarded as the most educated generation in U.S. history.

The group ranked last for numeracy, tied with Spain and Italy, and last in problem solving in technology-rich environments, tied with the Slovak Republic, Ireland and Poland.

The Educational Testing Service, which reported the results, notes that America’s huge investment in K-12 education has produced disappointing results when compared with students in other countries.

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) commented on the report’s conclusions that “while more young Americans have attained higher education levels since 2003, those who have at least a high school education have demonstrated declining numeracy scores.”

The PIACC assessment is not the only discouraging news on the education front.

Reporting on an analysis of achievement differences in 28 countries in the Organisation (sic) for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), NCPA notes that the U.S. has a higher percentage of 15 year-old students living in single-parent families than all countries except Hungary, with the U.S. showing 20.7 percent of those students, and Hungary having 20.8 percent. The average of all countries with 15 year-olds living in single-parent families is 13.7 percent, meaning the U.S. has half again more than the average of OECD countries.

Ludger Woessman of the University of Munich performed the analysis, and NCPA notes that he reported that “single-parent homes tend to have fewer resources – and less time – to devote to their children, and various studies indicate that children of single parents in the United States face greater emotional distress and have lower educational attainment,” and that generally, “children of single-parent families score lower than students in two-parent families, on average scoring 18 points worse.”

The difference in performance between single- and two-parent families is more pronounced in the U.S., amounting to approximately one grade level, and is further affected by socio-economic status, immigration status, and parent’s education levels.

Not that additional proof is needed that our cultural decay, particularly where the family is concerned, has far reaching implications, this information ought to serve notice that if we don’t restore traditional American values and reestablish stable families, our future is bleak.

Back in 2005 Bloomberg Business reported that “Today's U.S. workforce is the most educated in the world,” citing statistics showing that 85 percent of Americans had at least a high school diploma, more than three times as many as in 1940, and that five times more Americans had a college degree over that same period.

It was this focus on education that Bloomberg cited as the reason for the U.S. economy being the world’s largest.

But Bloomberg offered this warning: “But now, for the first time ever, America's educational gains are poised to stall because of growing demographic trends. If these trends continue, the share of the U.S. workforce with high school and college degrees may not only fail to keep rising over the next 15 years but could actually decline,” citing a report by the nonprofit National Center for Public Policy & Higher Education. The report goes on to say that as highly educated baby boomers age out of the workforce, young Hispanics and African Americans, who are far less likely to earn degrees, will replace them, and those replacements will earn less, and therefore drive down the standard of living.

Today we have a growing number of young people less interested in getting an education, and an education system that provides far too many of those who do go to school an inadequate education.

There are many examples where public schools seem to have renounced common sense and adopted politically correct paradigms. In one, a six year-old boy was suspended for “sexual harassment” for giving a female classmate a peck on the cheek. A high school senior was given in-school suspension for the felonious act of saying, “bless you” when a classmate sneezed. A seven year-old boy was suspended for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun, and supposedly saying “Bang, bang.” An elementary school impounded a third-grade boy’s batch of 30 homemade birthday cupcakes because they were adorned with green plastic figurines representing World War II soldiers.

It is important how many Americans are high school and college graduates, but more important is that they actually command useful information that prepares them to be good citizens and get and hold a job. If we have become more concerned with infecting schools with politically correct nonsense, or focus more on test results than on making sure students know American and world history, can perform functional math, can communicate effectively, understand basic science and economics, and can think critically, diplomas and degrees will mean little or nothing.

Education must again become purely the domain of states and localities, and parents must have not only primary responsibility for how their kids perform in school, but they must also have the ability to send their kids to schools that perform best.

When you are self-absorbed, you can’t see the forest for the trees

Commentary by James Shott

Life provides lessons for us in unusual ways. Occasionally, it is someone totally missing something obvious that provides the lesson. Here is a very good example of that.

A photograph posted on Facebook shows a woman holding up a sign. The sign says: “I have a Master of Arts degree in Women’s Studies. However, the only job I can find is as a bartender at a local restaurant. I owe over 60k in student loans. I am forced to rely on food stamps and WIC to support my son. Is this the ‘American Dream’ I worked so hard for? I am the 99 percent occupywallstreet.org.”

The lesson is there for all to see, but the woman – let’s call her “Ms. OWS,” – not only didn’t learn from her experience, she didn’t even suspect there was a lesson there. That experience was only an opportunity to complain that America hasn’t provided a better life for her.
The lesson that unless you are independently wealthy or have someone to support you while you go to school, you don’t borrow 60 grand to pursue a degree in a subject area that will not equip you to support yourself and your child and pay for the education that you have just received totally escaped her notice.

Like the make-believe class college kids used to joke about, “Underwater Basket Weaving,” Women’s Studies, is not a viable career field. To prepare for supporting yourself you study accounting, engineering, computer technology, law, medicine, chemistry, elementary or secondary education, or one of the other majors where jobs are available. But Ms. OWS, probably without a gun to her head, instead chose Women’s Studies.

The Occupy Wall Street movement with which Ms. OWS so closely identifies, includes some pie-in-the-sky idealism, like:
    •    The right to economic justice, including a living wage for all, regardless of the job, or the level of skills or experience one has
    •    Debt forgiveness for all debts
    •    Free college education
    •    Open borders

These goals are not merely unrealistic; they are dangerous. None would be good either for the country or for its inhabitants. Someone has to pay for the higher wages, the free college education, and the debt forgiveness, and that won’t be the people who think about life like Ms. OWS does; it will be the people who approach adulthood responsibly, and prepare to take care of themselves.

Movements like Occupy Wall Street seem to attract those disaffected souls who, for whatever reason, have not learned what life is about, expect to be provided for, and become indignant when life does not provide to them the rewards to which they believe they are entitled, due to nothing more significant that they were not aborted and draw breath.

Like Ms. OWS, they float through life indulging in the things they like, neglecting to seek out things that will prepare them for life as a responsible citizen, and then contributing to society and the wellbeing of our country.

Perhaps it’s not entirely their fault. We have a segment of our society that imagines it is possible to achieve Utopia, and a large group of pandering vote-seekers all too willing to promise it to them, and who provide a few goodies at taxpayer expense in return for votes and a cushy career in government.

And then there’s government, itself, at all levels. Even in cases where young people show some initiative, and take steps to help themselves, they are often thwarted by bureaucratic absurdity, as in these examples reported by The Daily Signal:

** Chloe Stirling started a business in her kitchen called “Hey, Cupcake!” In addition to selling her goods to friends and neighbors, she donated some to charitable events, including a fundraiser for a student with cancer, and delivered cupcakes to residents in a senior home. Not good enough! Illinois health officials declared that she lacked the necessary permit to operate and told her to close up shop.

** A zoning official in Holland, Mich. shut down a 13-year-old’s hotdog stand because he was supposedly competing with nearby restaurants.  Nathan Duszynski had planned to sell hotdogs to raise money for his disabled parents. The boy’s mom has epilepsy and his dad has multiple sclerosis. Within minutes of opening his stand, a zoning official ordered him to cease operating because he lacked a license.

Bah! Humbug!

Is this a great country, or what? On the one hand there’s a substantial number of people who think they are entitled to whatever they think they are entitled to, and lack the motivation to get off their duffs and earn their rewards, and on the other hand people in government stupidly apply rules to punish young people who take the initiative to earn something through work.

But then there was a pleasant breeze of tolerance and common sense wafting its way north from Dunedin, Fla. where 12-year-old T.J. Guerrero operates a lemonade stand to raise money for summer activities with his friends and family. After one neighbor complained to the city, Mayor Dave Eggers visited the stand, enjoyed some lemonade, and praised the youngster’s initiative.

Perhaps all is not lost. But we must be vigilant.


Cross-posted from Observations

Local schools increasingly under the thumb of the federal government

Commentary by James Shott

A video produced and distributed by Restore Oklahoma Public Education (ROPE) contains information that should concern all of us. The organization focuses on local control of education, and highlights issues it finds objectionable. This video highlights a survey being given to 6th graders at St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana without parents’ knowledge or permission.

It features a mother, Brooke Falgout, who has pulled her daughters from St. Mary’s public schools after she learned of objectionable questions on a school survey one of her daughters had taken upon entering the 6th grade, which the daughter didn’t mention to her mother because she didn’t want to upset her. However, Mrs. Falgout became concerned when another mom told her about the survey.

She said the survey asked questions such as:
    •    Have you ever looked at porn? How did it make you feel?
    •    Would you ever take pictures of the girls in the locker room and put them on social media?
    •    Is your mom a good mom? Does she spend time with you?
    •    Do you get snacks after school?
    •    It asked personal questions about mom and dad, their family life and “how it goes.”

She thinks such questions are out of line, and suggested that a 6th grade boy who never thought about porn before, and didn’t know what porn was, has now been made aware of it and as a result may be interested in it.

When she asked school officials about the survey, Mrs. Falgout said they told her that the kids really didn’t have to answer the questions. But she said they were given the survey and most likely did read it, and may not have realized they shouldn’t answer the questions.

Mrs. Falgout said that the school caused a breach between her and her daughter, evidenced by the fact that her daughter was reluctant to even discuss the survey with her mom.

Information presented at the end of the video explains that these surveys “are normally given to satisfy federal data collection for the Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools and also an FCC Internet ‘safety’ requirement.”

The ROPE video advises parents to tell their children to refuse to take these surveys, and that “parents have the right to educate their children in the way they see fit. Public schools cannot force children to do anything against the wishes of the parent.”

There are competing perspectives on this particular issue and others of similar nature. The important question is, which topics are genuinely the proper business of school officials, and which are clear invasions of the privacy of individuals living in a free society?

The public schools operated by the individual states are increasingly under the thumb of the federal government, as the statement in the video demonstrates.

Another example of unwarranted and unwelcomed intrusions comes from the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which took effect July 1. This law makes illegal “any foods and beverages sold to students on school grounds that are not part of the Agriculture Department’s school meal programs.”

Prior to this law taking effect, the USDA only controlled food in school cafeterias, but the new law expands federal control to food anywhere on campus during the school day. While it hasn’t yet banned school bake sales for fund raising, Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, indicates that eventually it will, and also will eventually control food sold at school sporting events any time, at any location.

Given the abundant evidence of federal over-reaching, it is not beyond comprehension that some day if you have forbidden food products in your glove compartment or trunk on school property, you might have violated a federal law.

The federal government believes it can dictate to schools owned and operated by the individual states what food they may or may not serve, among other things. Is there any limit to the government’s hunger to control everything? Apparently not as long as federal money is involved, and schools do rely heavily on federal funding.

It gets worse: A Richmond, Virginia pre-school sent a message home to parents, part of which said: “I have received word from Federal Programs Preschool pertaining to lunches from home. Parents are to be informed that students can only bring lunches from home if there is a medical condition requiring a specific diet, along with a physicians note to that regard.”

Just how the federal government regards the freedom for Americans to make basic decisions about life is revealed in an argument government attorneys put forth defending the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on the interstate sale of raw milk: “There is no 'deeply rooted' historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds … Plaintiffs' assertion of a 'fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families' is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish."

That statement is breathtaking in its ignorance of our history and values, and in demonstrating the boundless arrogance of the federal government.




Cross-posted from Observations

Update from the classroom: Common Core is on the chopping block

Commentary by James Shott

With US secondary school students lagging behind many other nations in educational performance, combating this with a voluntary education initiative developed and operated by the states received much favorable attention.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative “seeks to establish consistent educational standards [in English Language Arts and Mathematics] across the states as well as ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- or four-year college programs or enter the workforce,” according to the Common Core State Standards Initiative Website.

At one point 45 of the 50 states had signed up. But as time passed and the program evolved, 17 states have seen things that have caused them to adopt the language standards but not the math standards, to question the program generally, or to drop out altogether.

The most recent to bail out is Oklahoma, following the lead of Indiana in March, followed just days before Oklahoma’s exit last week by South Carolina.

“We are capable of developing our own Oklahoma academic standards that will be better than Common Core,” Governor Mary Fallin said in a statement released by her office. “Unfortunately, federal overreach has tainted Common Core. President Obama and Washington bureaucrats have usurped Common Core in an attempt to influence state education standards.”

She continued: “What should have been a bipartisan policy is now widely regarded as the president’s plan to establish federal control of curricula, testing and teaching strategies.” Oklahoma will return to the standards previously in place, and develop new standards aimed at meeting the needs of industry and academia.

In South Carolina, Governor Nikki Haley signed legislation that requires a committee to review and implement a new set of academic standards by the 2015-16 school year, and return to the former assessment tests by 2014-15.

In a letter supporting the legislation, Gov. Haley said the following: “South Carolina’s educational system has at times faced challenges … that cannot be solved by increasing our dependence on federal dollars and the mandates that come with them. Just as we should not relinquish control of education to the Federal government, neither should we cede it to the consensus of other states.”

As an early supporter of Common Core, Indiana’s recent rejection is seen as pivotal, perhaps encouraging other states to abandon the program, as well. What drove the Hoosiers away? Growing criticism over costs imposed by the program, and concerns that eventually it would evolve into a national education standard.

Stating Indiana’s thinking on the subject, Governor Mike Pence said, “I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level. By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and are uncommonly high, and I commend members of the General Assembly for their support.”

Missouri reportedly also has legislation to withdraw awaiting approval by governor Jay Nixon. And North Carolina is moving in that direction.

Complaints from North Carolina parents over the unfamiliar material and believing the standards to be an intrusion by the federal government prompted legislative action that would maintain state control over education standards. Both houses of the legislature have approved measures to replace Common Core standards with new ones to be created by an appointed commission.

These two measures must be reconciled and submitted to Governor Pat McCrory, who has expressed support for Common Core, before the withdrawal will be complete. The measures passed each house by margins that could override a veto. Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia also are resisting the program.

This resistance actually began several years ago, just after the standards were developed in 2009. Five members of the 30-person Common Core validation committee refused to sign on to the standards, two of whom are experts in content: Stanford University’s James Milgram, professor emeritus of mathematics, and the University of Arkansas’ Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform emerita and co-author of Massachusetts’ highly regarded ELA standards.

When 17 percent of the committee doesn’t support the standards the committee designed, that signals trouble in paradise.

These rejections reveal two important things. First, these 17 states recognize Common Core is something different than what they were led to believe it would be, and objections to some specific content and methods arose, convincing some states that they can do better. And, second, these states are resisting the statist, authoritarian federal government, and its “Washington knows best,” one-size-fits-all approach.

Back in the day, when the American education system was doing a great job of educating young people, state, county and local school systems bore responsibility for deciding what goals were important and how to achieve them. Somehow, without the central planning of the federal government, American high school graduates managed to be well prepared for the next step in their lives.

America does best when Americans are left to think for themselves and to make decisions and follow the course that best suit their purposes. It’s called “freedom,” and once was the hallmark of our nation.

That’s what built the country, and that is what will restore it.

Cross-posted from Observations

The evidence is mounting: Idiocy is taking control of America

With her parents’ approval, 9-year-old Kamryn shaved her head in support of her friend, 11-year-old Delaney, who is battling neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer, and recently started chemotherapy.

“It felt like the right thing to do,” Kamryn told the local TV station news reporter.

Officials at Caprock Academy in Grand Junction, Colorado, however, told Kamryn she couldn’t come back to class without a wig or until her natural hair grew back because her shaved head violates the school’s dress code.

Wonder if they told Delaney the same thing? 

*****

Schools seem to have a magnetic attraction for idiotic rules:

Several schools have banned students who have applied for admission to colleges from sharing their good news with fellow students because doing so might hurt the feelings of other students.

Another school bans the use of hand sanitizer without written permission. Perhaps a doctor’s note should be required.

And other schools have banned playing tag on the playground at recess. You remember tag? Where kids chase each other around and touch them with their hand when they catch them, saying, “You’re it?” Too dangerous, principals say. 

Josh, a second grader at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, was suspended for two days because his teacher said he shaped a strawberry prebaked toaster pastry into something resembling a gun.

A similar fate befell Nathan, a 10-year-old student at Devonshire Alternative Elementary School in the Columbus, Ohio school system. For his crime of making a gun out of his index finger and thumb, and saying, “boom,” Nathan was suspended for three days. Apparently no one saw or heard what Nathan did, except a teacher. At a meeting with the school principal, his father learned that if it happened again, the punishment could be a longer suspension, or perhaps permanent suspension.

Fortunately, the SWAT team was not called and no one was injured or died from these hideous crimes, and the criminals have been duly punished.

***** 

Did you know that in the land of the free warming your car on a cold day is illegal in some states? Ohio, Texas, West Virginia, Maryland, Colorado, Wisconsin, South Carolina, and some cities in Minnesota forbid it.

In Ohio, if the public servants Ohioans pay to protect them from the criminal element find a resident trying to warm up their icy vehicle, they can be fined $150. In Texas it’s a Class C misdemeanor with a fine of up to $500.

And in West Virginia, the fine for the first offense is $100, but if you are dumb enough to get caught trying to make your car comfortable a second time, the cost is $500.

The reason for these laws is to protect the drivers warming up their cars from their own stupidity, and also to protect others of weak will from becoming car thieves. Apparently, a running but unoccupied vehicle is just too great a temptation for some folks to resist, and these laws punish vehicle owners in order to discourage this selfish behavior, which forces otherwise law-abiding citizens to steal cars.

By that reasoning, banks, retail stores and other business should be fined for deliberately providing strong temptation for people to commit robberies. 

***** 

From Listverse.com’s 10 Ridiculous Cases of Political Correctness: 

“Xbox Live recently banned Josh Moore for violating its gamers’ code of conduct.  His offense?  Filling out his Xbox Live profile.  You see, Mr. Moore lives in West Virginia. More specifically, in FORT GAY, West Virginia. As Microsoft says, the word ‘gay’ is always offensive. Never mind that several US townships incorporate the word into their name, many people have ‘Gay’ as a first or last name, and some homosexuals do identify themselves as ‘gay.’  No, Microsoft obviously had a wise guy in their midst, and he had to go. So, despite a total lack of customer complaints, Microsoft froze Moore’s account and warned him that he could lose his prepaid subscription if he badgered Customer Service further. Fort Gay Mayor, David Thompson, tried to intervene, but was told that the city’s name didn’t matter; the word ‘gay’ was inappropriate in any context. As a result, Moore missed a Search and Destroy competition and his team lost. Microsoft has since carefully reviewed the matter and reinstated Moore with full Xbox Live privileges (translation: the story hit the web).”

*****

The parents of players on the boys baseball team at a Michigan high school took the initiative to raise private money and do the work themselves to make improvements to the field on which their sons play. But the federal government, which really should have nothing to say about a high school baseball field in Michigan, has intervened, citing federal civil rights law, and noting that the boys facility is now much nicer than the girls softball field. The Department of Justice has threatened fines for Plymouth Canton Community Schools, so the school system will remove the new scoreboard and bleachers put in by the parents.

It would obviously be unfair to simply tell the girls’ parents to get busy and take care of their own improvements, like the boys’ parents did. Better yet, the feds should just keep quiet.

Common Core State Standards Initiative has uncommonly bad problems

I attended a lecture by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush last year at which he spoke positively about the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS), explaining that governors and state commissioners or secretaries of education developed the program. It is entirely voluntary, and is designed to set uniform high education standards in the states that participate.

The idea seems potentially beneficial, given that the states control it and not the federal government. In support, Mr. Bush cites the fact that the U.S. has fallen behind many other countries in educational attainment, and that CCSS can reverse this trend.

“Let me tell you something,” Mr. Bush said recently at the Broward Workshop business breakfast, as reported by The Miami Herald. “In Asia today, they don’t care about children’s self esteem. They care about math, whether they can read – in English – whether they understand why science is important, whether they have the grit and determination to be successful.”

Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio program the host breached the idea that CCSS would be a national curriculum. “In fact, standards are different than curriculum,” Mr. Bush responded, “and that’s where I think the biggest misnomer is where people legitimately get concerned. I would be concerned if we had a national curriculum influenced by the federal government. My God, I’d break out in a rash.” The curriculum, he said, “should be driven by state and local school districts and by policy makers at the state level.”

So, CCSS sounds pretty good. Ideas often fail to reach their expectations, however, and where Common Core is concerned there are numerous examples of how its implementation fails to match up with the high ideals Mr. Bush believes in.

To say that the Common Core approach to basic mathematics is different takes understatement to a new level. If the problem is to find the sum of 26 and 17, we would normally put the addends one above the other, add 7 and 6 to get 13, put the 3 down and carry the 1, then add the 1, the 2 and the other 1 to get 43.

Not so with Common Core math. Here’s how CCSS does it:

Add 26 + 17 by breaking apart numbers to make a ten. Use a number that adds with the 6 in 26 to make a 10. Since 6 + 4 = 10, use 4. Think: 17 = 4 + 13. Add 26 + 4 = 30. Add 30 + 13 = 43. So, 26 + 17 = 43.

Does the CCSS method work? Well, yes, it works. And perhaps some beneficial learning takes place. However it is somewhat like when trying to fly from Washington, DC to New York City, you first fly to Nashville, TN, then to Atlanta, GA, then to Boston, MA then to NYC.

Most important in education, however, is the content presented in the classroom. The most high-minded goals are meaningless if what students actually experience ignores them.

Testifying before the Alabama Senate Education Committee, Becky Gerritson focused primarily on an 11^th grade literature textbook called The American Experience: 1900-Present by Prentice Hall, with the words “Common Core Edition” on the cover. She explained that it contains anti-American themes and misrepresents our nation’s founding, and she supports a bill to allow local school districts to opt out of Common Core.

But where she really got the Committee’s attention was when she began reading six sentences of Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye, which she said is recommended reading for 11^th graders.

What she read produced gasps from the audience, and the chairman stopped her, and did not allowed her to finish. You see, this book recommended for 11^th graders is the story of an 8-year old black girl. The six sentences she chose to read were a graphic depiction of a sex act between a pedophile and the 8-year-old, and contained, among several pornographic phrases that are inappropriate for this column, the F-word that brought the testimony to a close.

Defenders of Common Core might argue that most 11^th graders are familiar with such language and concepts, but that is totally beside the point. It is completely inappropriate for a high school classroom.

And political pressure is also present.

According to Susan Kimball, a kindergarten teacher of 20 years in the Sikeston, Missouri Public School District, her opposition to Common Core resulted in bullying and intimidation from administrators and fellow teachers.

Ms. Kimball related that she was told at an in-service meeting to “be careful about what you post on Facebook, or talk about in the public regarding Common Core.  Don’t say anything negative.  It could affect your job.” But she continued to speak out.

“When I turned in a personal day request to come support the rally for House Bill 1490,” she said, “I was asked by my principal, ‘Do you really want that in your personnel file?’ And then I was bullied and ostracized by my administration, a few other teachers and the president of the school board.  And that continues today,” she said.

Common Core must be carefully investigated and cleaned up before being adopted. Or maybe just scrap it.