Earlier this month, the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. The Nation’s Report Card, was released. It’s not a pretty story. Only 37 percent of 12th-graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math. Among black students, only 17 percent tested proficient or better in reading, and just 7 percent reached at least a proficient level in math.

The atrocious NAEP performance is only a fraction of the bad news. Nationally, our high school graduation rate is over 80 percent. That means high school diplomas, which attest that these students can read and compute at a 12th-grade level, are conferred when 63 percent are not proficient in reading and 75 percent are not proficient in math. Continue reading →

QUESTION: Is it so that the teachers might be able to pick up a part-time job at some burger joint to make ends meet, which still holding on to their meager salaries for the District? Or maybe it is because the District cannot afford ‘Hazardous Duty‘ pay. ~ Ed.

The public school in Campo, Colorado, hasn’t required all its students to come to class on Fridays for nearly two decades. The 44-student district dropped a weekday to boost attendance and better attract teachers to a town so deep in farm country that the nearest grocery store is more than 20 miles away.

“I think the four-day week helped us, initially, in recruiting teachers,” the superintendent, Nikki Johnson, said. “Now that so many districts are on four-day, that’s not much of an incentive.” Continue reading →

Stalin and Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference in 1943

For all those admirers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who believe he was a great president, remove the blinders and face up to the fact that his socialist mindset and administration destroyed the last remnants of the Old Republic. Most of these same cheer leaders for the “New Deal” are in love with big government and seek to empower a federal authority at the expense of the Federalism model that is based upon separations of power and States Rights.
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… when one needs to look at all of this from a different perspective.

(iStock/monkeybusinessimages)

Education experts widely recognize that a strong early childhood education is an important factor to set kids up for success in school. But whether kindergarten is more like preschool or elementary school has long been an open question that leaves teachers caught in-between. For some children kindergarten is the first time they’ve been to school, and at five-years-old they’re still too young to shoulder the anxiety and pressure of benchmark testing. All this leaves kindergarten teachers in a tough spot — they are required to teach an increasingly demanding set of standards, but many are also trained in child development and see the new demands as developmentally inappropriate. Continue reading →

Little progress on closely watched federal test, as big disparities persist

Stock photos for Chalkbeat stories. Photos made at CFI 27. Wednesday, Feb. 4 2015. (Photo Alan Petersime)

Scores on the exams known as the “nation’s report card” have barely budged over the last two years, new data show.

The minimal progress on the federal math and reading exams given to fourth and eighth graders will be a disappointment to officials who have hoped that their policies would boost students’ performance or help close yawning gaps between groups of students. Continue reading →

Texas teacher reveals how ‘rude parents, disruptive children and poor pay’ have forced her to quit her job in viral post… shares photos of classroom items ‘destroyed’ by her students

Julie Marburger, a teacher at a school in Texas, took to Facebook in a lengthy tirade, slamming students, parents and the state for their treatment

A teacher has slammed her ‘disruptive’ students and their ‘rude’ parents over their lack of respect for her ‘poorly paid’ profession in a Facebook rant that’s gone viral.

Julie Marburger, who works at a school Texas, said she had been pushed to quit her role as she feels as though she has ‘no way to do the job I was hired to do… teach kids.’

Along with her status, which has had 322,000 likes and more than 400,000 shares, she posted images of her messy classroom, showing broken shelves, books and even an iPad , explaining that many of the items destroyed by the children were paid for out of her own pocket as she has no budget.

Julie from Utah, who teaches students aged 11-12, revealed she had been pushed to the brink of quitting that day by a ‘disrespectful’ parent who shouted at her in her classroom for holding her son to account. Continue reading →

Editor’s NOTE: What you are about to read is quite long, as we have chosen to post the entire series in a single publication – however – I do not believe that the author is done. I believe that she has far more to say and expect her endeavors to continue. Dig in… it is well worth your time. ~ Ed.

Part I: What’s In Our Schools Will Shock You

While everyone focuses on college, let’s focus on the real problem, K-12. Every coup d’etat has roots in school. The progressive/communist/globalists/socialist (POGS) agenda calls for rewriting history. The children must be indoctrinated. The children must be coerced. The children must be trained to give up individual choice. They must think the same, get the same grades and have the same future outcome. One problem… if everyone is the same, what makes individuals different? The only identifier left is visual. RACE becomes the tool of choice. Children trained in social justice (which is Anti-American) become racist adults, dividing people into groups demanding results from those groups.

Racism MUST BE LEARNED. Racism is trained in school through psychological manipulation using technology. There are 400 data points that are monitored, re-monitored, analyzed, re-analyzed, reconfigured constantly making inferences to nudge and then monitor reactions. We see this happing now as males are being coached to take classes to remove those horrid masculine traits. I can just imagine what horrible actions these men will be responsible for in the future as they lose their self esteem and have to ‘prove’ their existence in some manner.
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The activity program was introduced, on an experimental basis, into the public schools of the City of New York in 1935. Several different descriptive terms have been applied to this variety of “Progressive” education since. It has been called the New Education and the Experience Curriculum but we are of the opinion that the essence of the educational changes implied are best signalized by the name initially used.

It was announced at the time that it would be applied only in the first three years of the elementary schools¾in nine schools, with three schools operating on the traditional curriculum used as controls. Results obtained were to be used, one against the other, in each group of schools. The plan adopted as announced was scientific.

Initial Deception
However, shortly after the plan was put into operation changes occurred. The original plan as announced of nine schools of activity program type and three schools of traditional type was not followed. Newspaper notices told us that the activity program was spreading like wildfire throughout the school system. Before long we were informed that fifty schools had adopted this activity program. It had even extended to the junior high schools. The scientific approach was abandoned. The public was informed, through the press, largely by means of the School Page in one New York newspaper that the plan was being widely accepted and widely approved by superintendents, principals and teachers. It became apparent, within a relatively brief time, that the method used to introduce the plan into our public schools was simply a device to gain initial entry. The professional spirit was strained. Continue reading →

Do you remember sentence-diagramming in school? I do. It was the onerous process of breaking apart individual sentences into their component parts and identifying those parts, like the subject, the verb, the modifiers, and so on.

By the time sentence-diagramming was introduced in elementary school, I had learned how to play the game of school. I had learned that obedience, memorization, and regurgitation of exactly what the teacher wants is the key to school success. I played it well. Looking back, and witnessing how my own unschooled children learn how to write, I realize how arbitrary and artificial learning in school was. Continue reading →

A controversial charter school teacher is back in the news, and one organization says it should send a red flag to parents everywhere.

Kaelin Swaney has been named “Teacher of the Year” by the California Charter Schools Association. Swaney is the kindergarten teacher at Rocklin Academy Gateway who made headlines last year when she read a book about a transgender child to her students before one of them left the class, changed clothing, then returned as part of an effort to reveal that student’s “true gender.” Continue reading →

Sex education in public schools has gone off the deep end. Gone are the days of handing out birth control and practicing putting condoms on bananas. These days your kid is more likely to come away from school with more sexually deviant knowledge than single gay dudes in New York City have thanks to Planned Parenthood’s comprehensive sex ed program that has somehow made it into public school curriculums. These programs teach dangerous and violent practices like BDSM, asphyxiation, gender-bending, anal sex, and let’s not forget “rimming,” which can saddle your kid with nasty parasitic infections. Continue reading →

Classroom of the future

The biggest trend I see for the future is the meltdown of governments at all levels combined with a decentralizing, individual-empowering exponential growth in technology. States, in other words, will self-destruct while people get smarter, stronger, healthier, and freer — they will get a lot smarter, a lot stronger, a lot healthier and from this, freedom from the state will be a natural evolution.

There will be efforts to resurrect states but the attempts will fail. Too many people will recognize the futility of trying to secure their well-being under a monopoly form of government — a government that threatens violence against nonviolent individuals such as taxpayers. As social organizations, states are headed for extinction while technology, in spite of its downsides, will be our liberator. Continue reading →

What you are about to read is dated. How old is it? Who knows – but it is indicative of what is wrong in not only the Educational field – but at all levels of government itself. In the following, an English teacher helps to explain one area that looms large over California’s educational crisis. This English teacher has phrased it the best I’ve seen yet. This should make everyone think, be you Democrat, Republican or Independent.~ Ed.

900 teachers were recently laid off from the Los Angeles Unified School District. They were (at the time) $650,000 over their annual budget.

From a California school teacher – – –

“As you listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware of.

I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a large southern California high school which is designated a Title 1 school, meaning that its students average lower socioeconomic and income levels.

Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park , etc.. where these students are protesting, are also Title 1 schools. Continue reading →

Author LeUyen Pham reads one of her books to second graders at Westerly Hills Elementary in Charlotte. John D. Simmons Observer file photo

State Superintendent Mark Johnson announced a $4.8 million plan to buy books, digital subscriptions and other reading aids for 479,000 K-3 students across North Carolina.

The allotment comes to $200 per teacher in those grades and will be distributed this month to school districts and charter schools. It’s part of North Carolina’s Read to Achieve program, a long-running quest to improve reading that has so far fallen short. Continue reading →

Two New Reports Show Why That’s Bad for Both

Latino teachers are eager to serve as role models and cultural stewards, but they feel their extra work as interpreters for Spanish-speaking families is undervalued, according to a new report from the Education Trust. Many see the additional responsibilities of community outreach as a second job they are expected to perform.

The report comprises responses from 90 Latino teachers in five states (New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, and California) about the complexities of teaching Latino students, as well as their relationships with white colleagues and administrators, and their hopes for professional advancement. Continue reading →

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos struggles to answer basic questions about education on ’60 Minutes’ – and White House isn’t sure Trump was able to make it through the whole interview

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos struggled her way through an interview with ’60 Minutes’ as she tried to pitch her school choice positions and admitted she hadn’t deliberately visited underperforming schools. Continue reading →

Schools are told to stop kids using the term which makes classmates feel left out

Schools around the world are banning the term ‘best friends,’ stopping children from naming their favorite buddy in a bid to ensure classmates don’t feel left out.

A New York psychologist says the trend that started in London is now spreading across the US.

‘The idea of banning the phrase “best friends” is a very intriguing social experiment,’ clinical psychologist Dr. Barbara Greenberg tells CBS in New York. Continue reading →

The following column was originally posted by Kettle Moraine Publications on October 3, 2012. It is quite probable that any embedded links may no longer be active. By republishing these columns from our archives, we hope to establish and focus on the pattern of our declining education system ~ Ed.

Parents and teachers have a daunting responsibility. And one of their responsibilities is to promote critical thinking in the children entrusted to their care. This entails guiding children through careful consideration of all the facets of a reality or issue. This critical endeavor, therefore, requires, in age-appropriate fashion, that the entire picture be provided. Such is not what seems to have happened recently in a civics presentation at Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School in Falls Church City, Va. And, for all we know, this may not be an uncommon occurrence in many of our schools. Continue reading →

Minnesota public school forcing KINDERGARTEN students to study ‘WHITE privilege’

The city of Edina has changed the way it approaches public education, putting social justice above learning. The results will shock you.

For decades, the public schools of Edina, Minnesota, were the gold standard among the state’s school districts. Edina is an upscale suburb of Minneapolis, but virtually overnight, its reputation has changed. Academic rigor is unraveling, high school reading and math test scores are sliding, and students increasingly fear bullying and persecution. Continue reading →