Hot Education Topics

Schools fail to teach history

I love history; my wife doesn’t. But we both appreciate the importance of American history and its impact on political thought. Unfortunately, American history is not being taught to students.

Two of the biggest problems are:

• Liberal teachers who teach anti-American hatred and liberal ideology.
  
  
• Multicultural textbooks that water down American history and go overboard in bringing up obscure personalities and events just to show diversity. They leave out important events, thoughts and lectures. And they go out of their way to be critical of America's past.

Now, the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy has helped produce a survey called The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions.

Last year, they surveyed more than 14,000 randomly selected college freshman and seniors at 50 colleges and universities.

Here are a couple of surprising results:

• Seniors scored just 1.5% higher on average than freshman on American history and the economy.
  
  
• If the survey were a test, seniors would fail with an average score of 53.2%, or an F.
  
  
• College seniors at Brown, Georgetown and Yale knew less than freshman about history, government, foreign affairs and the economy.

The complete report can be seen at: www.americancivicliteracy.org.

School board elections and teachers unions

In the past we’ve discussed the unreasonable conflict of interest regarding teachers unions supporting and donating money to the candidates and elected officials who give union members raises and benefits.

Here is a letter from a school board candidate and her thoughts: "I also ran for school board in Vista, CA, and lost by less than 1%, about 300 votes. I am a member of the CTA teachers union and my dues were used against me to pay for my opponent's campaign. The VTA [Vista Teachers Association] union made my life rough. Someone poisoned my dog and called my husband with kidnapping threats if I did not drop out. The last threat came to my daughter's school.

“The teachers union did their internal polls and found that I just may win this election and upset their 14-year control of the board, so they did their best at a last-minute smear campaign, which cost them lots of money (my dues). I have also had three flat tires in the last month due to brads in the tires causing a slow leak.

“My platform was to teach kids to speak, read and write in English, starting with kindergarten.”

Follow-ups: school board elections

I’ve talked about how unfair it was for teachers unions to finance and campaign for board of education candidates who set their benefits and salaries. Here is a report from Steve Hemingway, who ran for school board.
(I hope he runs again.)

"The union's primary issues are increasing membership and the salary/benefits of members. Only secondarily do they advocate the professionalism of its members or the education of children. In 2005, they chose three candidates who would support their goals. The union gave over $5,000 per candidate, which enabled them to send mailers. This was a huge benefit that made the difference for these ‘go-along’ candidates.

"This practice is not new. The other two candidates on the unified school district board were also union-picked. This results in homogeneity of thought that is often out-of-step with parents and citizens. There is no objectivity or independent thinking. No one advocates for quality of education for children except as an unintended side effect of increasing salaries and benefits for the union membership.

"If there was a way to block funding of candidates by teachers unions, it would help restore independence, responsibility and accountability to the electorate. It would help put candidates on a level playing field."

High school and college students often must violate their own political or religious beliefs to pass a class by a liberal teacher.

But at Missouri State University, this denial of a “marketplace of ideas” has been taken to an even more abusive level.

A suit has been filed by the Alliance Defense Fund that will hopefully prevent Missouri State University and other colleges from practicing blatant religious discrimination.

One social work student, Emily Brooker, was assigned a project promoting homosexual foster homes and adoptions. Part of the requirement was to write a letter to the Missouri legislature supporting homosexual adoption. She refused to do the assignment because of her religious beliefs.

She was forced to go to an official school grievance hearing, accused of violating three of the standards of “Essential Functioning in Social Work Education.” The three categories were diversity, interpersonal skills and professional behavior.

During the hearing, university staff asked such questions as, “Do you think I’m a sinner?” and “Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?”

The sad fact is that all across America colleges are requiring students to agree to liberal positions to pass classes and achieve such goals as a social work degree.

This behavior is a clear violation of First Amendment rights. Students attend college to achieve a higher education, not to be harassed about their religious beliefs or personal values.

Let me know what you think. Email me at craig@electionforum.org.

Question of the week: School board election madness

A growing trend is for school board candidates to get a nice contribution from the teachers unions.

Then the teachers unions get a nice increase in salary, benefits and perks from the school board members.

Should teachers unions be allowed to donate to school board candidates?

Holding students back at an early age can push them ahead later

According to the National Review, holding back low-performing students helps them academically. A Florida policy requiring third-grade students to perform at a certain level on the state’s reading test to receive an automatic promotion to the fourth grade showed that underperforming students who repeated third grade made significantly greater academic progress than similar students who were promoted despite their lack of skills.

Taxpayers robbed through county child-care programs

A grand jury report concluded that welfare recipients could be defrauding taxpayers of $500 million annually through that county’s child-care programs.

Half of the $41.1 billion in funding for the CalWORKS program is lost to fraud because the Department of Public Social Services doesn’t verify that welfare-to-work recipients meet the requirements for child-care payments.

Basically, this lack of accountability encourages fraud for all parties involved.

It pays to be a teacher in america

Based on job growth, pay, stress levels and other factors, Money magazine and Salary.com have ranked software engineering number one on their Best Job in America List. So what’s second? College professors, who average a 30-hour work week and spend 31 days on vacation.

School Board Association boos school choice

Members of the National School Board Association booed U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.     

Why? She advocated school choice for parents.     

In the next issue, we will talk about Utah’s upcoming voucher system, which will provide every Utah parent with school-age children a voucher worth from $500 to $3,000 based on family income, redeemable at any eligible private school.

Our failing schools: An interesting insight

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy...     

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good?"          

—Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc.    
 

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