Across America, many urban school districts are on life support, and in some places, the plug is ready to be pulled. This dire reality is routinely discussed, but missing from the conversation is the ever-growing dropout rate in urban schools. No, not the student dropout rate, but that of teachers. The teachers’ dropout rate is a result of burnout after their ambition is crushed by a climate of cultural adversity. In other words, their ‘save the kids’ optimism dissolved into a ‘run from the kids’ reality. These teachers anticipated teaching life-changing lessons to the kids but ended up learning life-changing lessons from the kids. Continue reading →

To deliberately deprive a child of a good education is a sin against the child and the nation. To abuse a pupil’s trust is despicable. To manipulate history in the classroom as a means to promote a political or religious ideology is diabolically unethical. To throw away teaching methods that work for practices that do more harm than good is a tragedy. To walk out on a classroom of pupils for personal gain is maniacally egocentric. Sadly, this is precisely what is happening to children in public schools today. Continue reading →

“The honeymoon is over.” Instructors who award low grades in humanities disciplines will likely be familiar with a phenomenon that occurs after the first essays are returned to students: former smiles vanish, hands once jubilantly raised to answer questions are now resentfully folded across chests, offended pride and sulkiness replace the careless cheer of former days. Too often, the smiles are gone for good because the customary “B+” or “A” grades have been withheld, and many students cannot forgive the insult.
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America’s school children are falling even further behind other nations in the core subjects of reading, mathematics and science, according to a new study released this week.

The worrying data, compiled as part of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), found that the academic performance of 15-year-olds in the U.S. has remained relatively flat in recent years, while other nations have experienced significant growth.
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(During his campaign for the Presidency,) Ronald Reagan called for the termination of the Department of Education. But instead of disappearing, the Jimmy Carter creation has become a federal leviathan with no signs of abating in growth.

Reagan’s Secretary of Education Terrell H. Bell thwarted Reagan’s and the Christian right’s plan to do away with the cabinet level bureau. Bell, an educator by profession, was instrumental in publishing a report on the national status of our schools. Bell had the National Commission on Excellence in Education, which he created in 1981, prepare a document in 1983 called “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.”

Like a small pebble tossed into a pond sends out many ripples, A Nation at Risk–through fear-inducing rhetoric and a call for more government intervention into traditional states’ rights–set off a movement in education which could not be stopped. Whether Bell took this action to save his job, or whether he differed ideologically with Reagan doesn’t matter now. The genie was let out of the bottle and we’ve paid a high price for allowing the Department of Education to have too much power. Continue reading →

A tenured professor tells the truth about academia on his way out the door

Higher education is a vast industry about to face years a crisis. Like housing, it has expanded based on unsustainable debt. And like the American auto industry, it got fat, lazy, inward-focused, and expensive during its decades of monopoly on certification of higher end new labor force entrants. Now, with the growth of digital versions of higher education, it faces a competitor/industry entrant that has lower costs and high quality (at least potentially).

After decades of raising tuition at about three times the rate of inflation, the higher education bubble looks to be popping.

Philip A. Schrodt, who just retired from Pennsylvania State University after decades as a tenured professor of political science, has written a scathingly honest swan song about academic life. He is a gutsy man to do so, even on his way out the door. He is still living in the college town of State College, PA, and no doubt he will face some consequences for his truth-telling. Continue reading →

The Department of Education spends billions of dollars annually, and touts phase three of its “race to the top,” but the sad fact is that based on testing results, American education is on a race to the bottom. We spend more than any other nation on earth yet rank in the bottom quartile (26th out of 34) of OECD (developed) nations in the latest international comparison, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).

We are paying filet mignon prices and getting Sonic Burger results, in other words. I guess the upside is that our unionized teachers have such great job security that they can hardly be fired once they get “tenure.” Oh, and the benefits and retirement pay are outstanding.

Naturally, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, is calling for even more money. Continue reading →

What would you do if you received a threatening letter from your child’s school, demanding that you take your youngster to a medical doctor and dentist at the whims of the school administrators, or risk being reported to the child welfare authorities?

Parents in at least two states have gotten exactly such letters. Police State USA reports:

Under the auspices of keeping children healthy, the government has usurped the role of “parent” away from actual parents. The state ­ not legal guardians ­ is determining when and how children should be subjected to outside business influences. Continue reading →

Do you want your kids to be taught that the earth has too many people and that they should have no more than two children for the good of the planet? Yes, I know that this sounds absolutely crazy, but this is actually the kind of propaganda that is being forced upon our young people all over America.

The population control agenda is being relentlessly pushed in high school textbooks, in classroom instruction and by outside organizations that are given constant access to our high school students. As you will see below, the number one population control organization in the United States, Planned Parenthood, conducts nearly 900 presentations in high schools in the Los Angeles area every single year. And the population control propaganda gets even worse once our kids go off to college. I know – I spent eight years in the classroom at U.S. public universities and most parents would be absolutely horrified to learn what their children are being taught. Continue reading →

Do you want your kids to be taught that the earth has too many people and that they should have no more than two children for the good of the planet? Yes, I know that this sounds absolutely crazy, but this is actually the kind of propaganda that is being forced upon our young people all over America.

The population control agenda is being relentlessly pushed in high school textbooks, in classroom instruction and by outside organizations that are given constant access to our high school students. As you will see below, the number one population control organization in the United States, Planned Parenthood, conducts nearly 900 presentations in high schools in the Los Angeles area every single year. And the population control propaganda gets even worse once our kids go off to college. I know – I spent eight years in the classroom at U.S. public universities and most parents would be absolutely horrified to learn what their children are being taught. Continue reading →

Guy walks into a restaurant and orders “scrambled eggs and some kind words.” Waitress brings the eggs. He smiles, “Now how about the kind words?” Waitress whispers, “Don’t eat the eggs.”

Which brings us to the fact that urban public school teachers are about twice as likely as non-teachers to send their own children to private schools. That is, many public school teachers whisper to parents, “Don’t eat the eggs.”

About 11% of all parents — nationwide, rural and urban — send their children to private schools. The numbers are much higher in urban areas. One study found that in Philadelphia a staggering 44% of public school teachers send their own kids to private schools. Continue reading →

Guy walks into a restaurant and orders “scrambled eggs and some kind words.” Waitress brings the eggs. He smiles, “Now how about the kind words?” Waitress whispers, “Don’t eat the eggs.”

Which brings us to the fact that urban public school teachers are about twice as likely as non-teachers to send their own children to private schools. That is, many public school teachers whisper to parents, “Don’t eat the eggs.”

About 11% of all parents — nationwide, rural and urban — send their children to private schools. The numbers are much higher in urban areas. One study found that in Philadelphia a staggering 44% of public school teachers send their own kids to private schools. Continue reading →

A new development in education is deciding what “literacy” should be in the 21st century.

With a swirl of technological breakthroughs all around us, elite educators are gaga at the plethora of excuses for pooh-poohing subjects routinely taught in the dark age known as the 20th century.

The National Council of Teachers of English recently announced: “Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy.” Continue reading →

June 19, 2011 ~ If you want to fix America, you have to fix America’s broken education system; and you must start by getting rid of the one we have.

I’ve been up in front of too many classrooms in too many different schools, and had lunch in too many different teachers’ lounges, to be wrong about this. I have also sat through more school board meetings, in more towns, and pored over more school budgets, than I care to remember.

Here are a few suggestions for getting out from under the costliest and least effective education establishment in human history. Continue reading →

Thousands protest at Texas Capitol in opposition to education cuts

March 13, 2011 ~ As I watch and read about the huge protests (led mostly by UNIONS) in the different states that are dealing with massive budget deficits I have this ‘thought’ that keeps running through my head related to the *education* focus. The ‘thought’ is how many of these teachers teach mathematics? How many of these ‘students’ have studied mathematics and passed the grade? How many of these protesters have ever lived within THEIR means, not using CREDIT to live on? How many of them have ever reached into their wallets and find it EMPTY? Finding it EMPTY, do they go into the stores they want things from and DEMAND that they be GIVEN what they want even though they have no money to pay for it? Continue reading →

What you are about to read, is lengthy, yet important, in the understanding of the funding and politics, which is the devastation, caused by Affirmative Action – a misnomer, if ever there was one. So, I may ask, who gained freedom from this misguided program, and who was enslaved? No one gained their freedom – for there was nothing achieved by these actions – other than a big bill.

Due to the original publication date in January of 2011 – there may be broken links embedded which are no longer active – but the sentiment and the insanity rage on. Inhale this rendering from our archives. ~ (Ed.)
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The following was originally published by the Federal Observer Blog on May 13, 2010. ~ (Ed.)

There can be no doubt that functional illiteracy maims the ability of adults to achieve well in contemporary life. However, there are a number of emerging factors that suggest that not only is literacy a problem, millions of adults may also be functionally inorate. – Tom Sticht

1993 report Adult Literacy in America, based on the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) lead the U. S. Department of Education to claim that almost half of America’s adults were functionally illiterate. A decade later, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) reiterated that claim.

There can be no doubt that functional illiteracy maims the ability of adults to achieve well in contemporary life. However, there are a number of emerging factors that suggest that not only is literacy a problem, millions of adults may also be functionally inorate, that is, their abilities to speak, listen, and converse well in the oral language are so poorly developed as to pose problems in achievement, too. And here I am not talking about foreign-born, non-English speaking immigrants. I am talking about adults born in the United States who speak English as their native language. Continue reading →

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” – C. S. Lewis

For well over a century, the systemic dismantling of traditional education is an essential objective of transforming America into a despotic dependency.

Education is a process, not an indoctrination. Schools should be about tutoring in the methods of critical thinking. Sound techniques and competent teachers can assist learning development. However, it has been decades since public schools provided a positive function. Dysfunctional Public Education Is No Accident sums up the issue:

“Government schools have worked their socialization for several generations, with alarming success. Their objective is not the education of the individual pupil, but the assimilation of the next generation into society. The kind of conversion that is sought, impedes independent thinking. Areas of inquiry are now limited to ‘PC’ approved viewpoints.”
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Ask Any Teacher!

Dorsey High School is touted by many, with a certain amount of pride, as one of the larger African American campuses in the unwieldy Los Angeles Unified School District. “Dorsey Pride” is the mantra yelled out at all the football games, and the Dorsey “Dons” are regularly visited by college football scouts for the depth of its football program.

For those of us teachers that remained outside of this sportsman’s Valhalla (99% of us), our lot was one of damage control and toeing the line when it came to grading, testing, and dealing with irate coaches whose superheroes dipped below that fatal 2.0 grade point average. Continue reading →

I have reported many times in the pages of the DeWeese Report about how public school classrooms are being used, not for the teaching of academic knowledge, but for behavior modification to change the student’s attitudes, values and beliefs. Barack Obama is now driving to control classroom curriculum based on United Nation’s Globalism. Many parents want to deny this is happening. “Not in my child’s school,” they tell me. If you still don’t believe it’s happening in EVERY school that takes public money, then read below, open your eyes, and know the truth about what happens to your child in the schools you send them to every day. Continue reading →