Many colleges have what they call a liberal studies degree. What this means is that you earn a degree by taking whatever classes appeal to you. You take the basics like math, writing, etc., but then you take so many ‘upper level’ courses to get a degree.
What happens if you take that concept and build an entire college around it? The result is NYU Gallatin. A school where students take classes in some random subjects for a period of years and then receive a degree that is, let’s say, a bit eclectic.
These are real majors that NYU students are going into debt for. This is not satire. pic.twitter.com/rNXWhTeCrC
So how do the graduates of this school do in the working world?
69% of them are women, 28% men, 2% are other
77% employed, 17% still in school, 6% unemployed
Of those who are employed, most are employed by NYU and make an average of $59k per year.
$59k per year. In Manhattan, where there is a fast food joint right across the street serving $20 cheeseburgers. Keep in mind that a nursing associates degree in Florida, where the taxes and cost of living are much lower, sees a new nurse starting at $65k.
Waste of money, and Biden is forgiving their student loans.
I agree that affluence and success on standardized tests are correlated. However, as is often said, correlation does not prove causation, but causation does require correlation. In this case, I do agree that students who test well are more likely to come from affluent households. The reason for this is simple: a person who values knowledge or is intelligent is more likely to pass these traits on to their offspring.
The basic theory here for the left is that all people are equal, meaning the same. If all people are the same, than any disparate outcome MUST be due to some unfair advantage and not due to the poor choices made by the loser. That is false, and demonstrably so.
As an example, Asian culture values the family and respect for elders as well as considering education to be a gift. For those reasons, Asian families support and push their children to work hard, respect teachers, and succeed. This is why Asians score so well on tests, earn high grades, and are generally successful in life at a rate higher than any other demographic.
On the other end of the spectrum, black families are usually single parent households, with there being little to no respect for authority figures, and possess a general dislike for education, work, or testing. As a result, blacks score lower on tests, are more likely to be lawbreakers, and are more likely to be victims of crime. This lack of work ethic, nuclear families, or respect for education is reflected in their lack of success at, well, anything.
This would be true within these demographics as well- the more respect there is for work, the more likely there will be success.
For the left, testing HAS to be eliminated. They have been claiming that math is racist. English is racist. Testing is racist. So is the credit scoring system, economics, the criminal justice system, and every thing else that exposes the left for what it is- the last refuge of people who are such losers in life that all they can do is vote for a living, and the politicians who use them as useful idiots to garner money and power for themselves.
That’s why any white person who wins is somehow a racist cheater.
This morning, I posted about the teachers and staffers at a Broward County high school that are being investigated for violations of state law for allowing a tranny to play girls’ volleyball. Now NBC news is reporting that “Students staged a walkout while some held signs in favor of trans rights, while others chanted “trans lives matter.” Watch this report on the supposed “student outrage.”
Bullshit. Let’s see what REALLY happened:
There are eight students and 5 school employees in this picture. The only person holding a sign is obviously NOT a high school student. Take a good look at that sign, because here is the SAME sign, this time being held by a student.
This so-called student staged walkout is nothing of the sort. It was led and organized by the teachers and staff. These sorts of walkouts usually are. The reassignment of the staffers was announced at the end of the day on Monday, and by noon on Tuesday, the walkout had been organized, complete with handmade signs, and was taking place. This wasn’t a grass roots student protest. This was obviously orchestrated by teachers and staff.
Back in 2018, Miguel over at Gunfreezone did a story about walkouts being staged in Marion County, Florida in support of gun control. A well placed anonymous source told him that teachers and county staffers had organized the walkout. Now that I am no longer a teacher and no longer employed by Marion county, I can tell you that I was that anonymous source. That tip that I made to his blog was how Miguel and I became friends IRL. I had read his blog for years and trusted his writing, and knew that I couldn’t post about my employer on my own blog, so he was kind enough to keep my name out of it.
Any teacher or staffer who organized, participated in, or encouraged students to leave class for this activity needs to be fired and have their Florida teaching credentials revoked. Any parent whose child is being subjected to this use of them as a political pawn should immediately sue the school district. The state department of education needs to immediately step in and investigate the entire county. If it is found that the Superintendent (who in FL is elected) was involved in the planning of this astroturfed walkout, that would be illegal and the Governor needs to remove him from office and appoint a replacement.
The left is claiming that the student was “outed” by adults who complained. Uh, a boy openly playing on a girls’ sports team is not closeted. This is total fake outrage and child grooming that is being staged by public employees who are doing this during their taxpayer funded workday. Public employees are prohibited by law from participating in political activism while “on the clock” and are also prohibited from grooming students for this kind of thing.
Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, suggested that the staffers being reassigned might not have known they were breaking the law by allowing the trans student to compete on the team.
“It’s getting harder and harder for our educators to really understand everything that’s happening,” she said. “Our teachers don’t always understand new laws that come out, old laws that have been out.”…
[The school district’s Superintendent] said it is unclear if the principal or staffers were aware they were breaking the law, which will be a part of their investigation.
This is also bullshit. If a gunowner gets arrested for having a braced pistol, will they be permitted to walk away because they didn’t know that their formerly legal pistol had been declared illegal by bureaucratic fiat? Of course not. As a teacher’s union president and the school superintendent, it is YOUR responsibility to inform your members and employees of any changes in the law that affect their employment. The law prohibiting trannies from playing girls’ sports isn’t a new law, it’s been in place for more than two years.
Public education has been nothing more than a leftist indoctrination center for decades. Schools are being used to groom children as sexual objects and future communists. Get your kids out of public schools, now. It is time that we as taxpayers demand that we stop funding the political action centers called public schools.
The President of the Chicago Teachers Union and the union strongly oppose school choice, including both charter and private schools. The President, Davis Gates, said school choice initiatives siphon money from public schools and are partly to blame for the lack of resources available to neighborhood schools.
That’s all well and good, except national and local pro-school choice groups found out that the President of the union sends her freshman son to a Catholic school on the South Side. She is pissed off because people revealed her decision to send her son to a private high school while publishing his picture and name.
“We live in a time with extremist political rhetoric, and it has led to violence,” she said. “My children, my family should not have to endure this. And doxing a child is violent, and it’s unacceptable, and it needs to be rejected and decried by every institutional leader. It’s just not okay.”
CTU President Davis Gates, believing that her own hypocrisy shouldn’t be pointed out in the press
When her oldest child reached 7th grade, she and her husband looked at their neighborhood school. They were upset that the local public school didn’t have a school newspaper, classes on web design, or a student council. According to her, the public school didn’t have the resources or sports opportunities that the private school had.
“You have to wonder: If the teachers union leader who wants to kill school choice has made the private school choice for her own child, how convincing are her arguments against school choice for low-income children with few options for breaking the cycle of generational poverty?”
Illinois Policy Institute
I wonder how the teachers that she is representing feel about the leader of their union stabbing them in the back like that.
Although the Department is a relative newcomer among Cabinet-level agencies, its origins goes back to 1867, when President Andrew Johnson signed legislation creating the first Department of Education. Its main purpose was to collect information and statistics about the nation’s schools. However, due to concern that the Department would exercise too much control over local schools, the new Department was demoted to an Office of Education in 1868.
Over the years, the office remained relatively small, operating under different titles and housed in various agencies, including the U.S. Department of the Interior and the former U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services).
Beginning in the 1950s, political and social changes resulted in expanded federal funding for education. The successful launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik in 1957 spurred nationwide concern that led to increased aid for science education programs. The 1960s saw even more expansion of federal education funding: President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” called for the creation of many programs to improve education for poor students at all levels—early childhood through postsecondary. This expansion continued in the 1970s with national efforts to help racial minorities, women, people with disabilities and non-English speaking students gain equal access to education. In October 1979, Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88). Created by combining offices from several federal agencies, the Department began operations in May 1980.
In the 1860s, a budget of $15,000 and four employees handled education fact-finding. By 1965, the Office of Education had more than 2,100 employees and a budget of $1.5 billion. As of mid-2010, the Department has nearly 4,300 employees and a budget of about $60 billion.
In 1868, there was concern that the DoE would exert too much control over local schools, so it was demoted to an “Office of Education” with four employees and a budget of $15,000. It was made into a cabinet level department in 1979, under Jimmy Carter. Since then, it has grown to 4,300 employees and a $60 billion budget. It now issue orders to local schools encompassing everything from curriculum to what they must serve for lunch. I would say that the fears of “too much control over local schools” was well founded.
It’s well past time to get rid of the Department of Education. There is no reason for this bloated department to make decisions for each state and how it will run its schools. You can’t say that test scores are any better or worse, because it is impossible to know. There is no way to measure performance of students in 1979 and compare it to now. Tests that were taken by students have been changed several times over the years, so that it is impossible to determine whether or not students today are any better or worse off than counterparts from other time periods.
It’s obvious that they feel merely being enrolled in a course means receiving credit for it.
“Honestly, they could still put us in the classes now,” Tripp said. “Them refusing to do that just lets us know how much they really don’t care.”
It isn’t like they could earn credit in a week.
I know that teachers and the education system catch a lot of flack, and deservedly so. However, there still are teachers out there that care, and this is an example of what happens when a teacher who cares holds students to a standard.
This attitude of high school graduation being a right is one of the reasons why our nation is so ill informed.
The State Board of Education shall waive initial general knowledge, professional education, and subject area examination fees and certification fees for: (d) A retired first responder, which includes a law enforcement officer as defined in s. 943.10(1), a firefighter as defined in s. 633.102(9), or an emergency medical technician or paramedic as defined in s. 401.23.
It goes on to authorize a sign on bonus to retired first responders and honorably discharged veterans who sign on to be full time teachers for a minimum of two years. In my case, it’s too little, too late, but it may attract some better teachers. I only dread the current leftie woke military members entering education.
It then goes on to authorize teachers to use force in self defense:
(i) Press charges if there is a reason to believe that a crime has been committed on school property, during school sponsored transportation, or during school-sponsored activities. (j) Use reasonable force, according to standards adopted by the State Board of Education, to protect himself or herself or others from injury. (2) For purposes of this section, in cases in which a teacher faces litigation or professional practices sanctions for an action taken pursuant to subsection (1), there is a rebuttable presumption that a teacher was taking necessary action to restore or maintain the safety or educational atmosphere of his or her classroom.
That would have been a huge help when I was hung out to dry after being attacked in my classroom. This new law isn’t perfect, but it is obvious that Florida is trying to improve some long standing issues in education.
Sometimes when you are teaching, you have to simplify a problem so that students can understand the concepts involved. I will explain. When I was a teacher, I was trying to explain to my Honors Class (I think chemistry, might have been physics. It’s been awhile) how to do a unit conversion using a method called dimensional analysis. It’s a pretty common way of solving equations that is used in the physical sciences.
I first learned the dimensional analysis when I was in the Navy at NucField A school and at Nuclear Power School. It’s handy for solving a lot of things. Dimensional analysis is a method for solving various problems that, once mastered, allows for the rapid solution to unit conversions, various physical problems (like Ohm’s law), medication dosage calculations, and more. It reduces calculation errors and is a very handy skill to have. I use this method all the time to calculate drug dosages, and used it as a firefighter to calculate hose pressures and other useful numbers.
I was teaching it to my students by giving the students a list of things I wanted converted from one item to another. The worksheet that I gave them was a list of problems that were easy to solve, but included the following instruction:
Show all of your work, including the proper setup of the dimensional analysis method. Your work is part of your answer, and any problem that does not include the showing of your work in the proper format will be marked as incorrect and will receive no credit.
The questions were things like:
Convert a $5 bill to nickels
How many toes would 22 people have?
How many legs would 123 ants have? (they each have 8 legs)
etc
So one of my students answered:
100
220
984
And promptly got a zero for a grade. Yes, the math was correct, but I wasn’t looking for the mathematical solution, but a solution that showed me that he had mastered the method of dimensional analysis. Anyone with fourth grade understanding of arithmetic can tell you that 22 people have 220 toes. I knew that they could do simple math, because it was a requirement to have already passed Algebra and Geometry as a prerequisite to even be in my class. This was an honors course where students could receive college credit at the end of the course.
It was important that they understood the concept so when we went on to more complicated problems, they would have the skills needed to solve them. It wasn’t about the math of that particular problem, it was about knowing HOW to use dimensional analysis. That way, when you get a problem that goes like:
A sample of calcium nitrate, Ca(NO3)2, with a formula weight of 164 g/mol, has 5.00 x 1027 atoms of oxygen. How many kilograms of Ca(NO3)2 are present?
The problem can be solved without too much difficulty. The easy problems were not a test of math ability, they were a means of learning a new method for applying math skills that the student already has. A “learn to walk before you try to run” sort of thing.
The child’s parent wrote me and demanded that he receive full credit because he got the correct answers. I tried pointing out the instructions and explaining the reasons behind showing your work. No go. The parent argued that “in the real world” no one cares how you got the answers, just that you ended up with the correct answers. I tried pointing out that, this being school, demonstrating that you have mastered the method is more important than getting the correct answer. The parent continued to argue and demanded that the student receive credit. I refused. They even told me that they would get a lawyer involved. I told them “good luck finding anyone that will support you not showing your work on math homework, when the instructions clearly required it.” Then I told them if lawyers were to be involved, I would be happy to give them my attorney’s number, and their attorney could call mine to arrange a meeting. They hung up on me.
So the parents went to the principal. Nope. They went all the way to the school board, to no avail. The parent finally pulled the kid out of my class and put them into a low level environmental science class.
In this case, the parent did the child no favors.
EDIT: I am editing this to give an example of how dimensional analysis works. Here is the example:
Convert 1 week into seconds:
*Terms on the top AND bottom of the equation cancel out, leaving: (1*7*24*60*60s)/1=604,800 s
Another part of the same bill changes how universities will be able to hire their professors. In the future, professors would be recommended for hiring by the college President, but the board of trustees would have the final say in hirings and firings. The bill would also allow a professor’s tenure to be revoked. The bill explicitly bans state colleges or universities from using woke policies like diversity, equity, and inclusion statements, Critical Race Theory rhetoric, or other forms of political identity filters as part of the hiring process, including as part of applications for employment, promotion and tenure, conditions of employment, or reviewing qualifications for employment.
In other words, there will be accountability, and college professorship will no longer be a liberal jobs program and professors will not be eliminated for failure to be woke enough.
Additionally, the bill bans use of university resources to “promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities…that espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion or Critical Race Theory rhetoric,” whether directly or through grants, contracts, or service agreements. Done are the days when taxpayer money can be used to support liberal causes.
A diploma, whether it is for high school, medical school, or barber college, is a certification from the school that issued it. That diploma states that the school is certifying that the person thereupon named has met the standards for that diploma. Or have they?
Nowadays, that isn’t what a diploma means. It was decided years ago, with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that it was unfair and discriminatory to treat students with intellectual disabilities (what used to be referred to as retarded) the same as other students. So this law was passed to make things more equitable. (Not equal, which is the same standard, but equitable, meaning that they have the same outcome.)
In order to make students with disabilities more likely to have the same outcome, they are granted accommodations. These accommodations can vary. It can mean that they are granted extra time, or are allowed to test in a private room with no one watching them, or that they are even give multiple choice tests with one or more of the wrong choices eliminated. Furthermore, the law goes on to say that there can be no mention of the accommodations on the student’s transcript, diploma, or other certifications. Don’t want them having the stigma of people thinking they had it easier than other students, you see.
As a result, not every student is being evaluated by the same standard. This means that a diploma is no longer a certification, as there is no guarantee that two students who have received that diploma were measured against the same yardstick. Remember that next time you are having your hair cut or being treated by a healthcare professional.
There was a student in my nursing class who received the accommodation of testing in a private room, and was also allowed to have her cell phone in the room with her. She graduated with a 94% test average, the highest in the class. I wonder why. No one on staff could challenge her on it, or she would scream about IDEA and racial discrimination.
The same happened when I was a teacher. All a student needed was a letter from a physician, saying that a student had a learning disability, and the student got all kinds of accommodations. There were some families who had 4 or 5 kids, all with extensive accommodations. It’s the newest way to get your kid that high GPA they’ve always wanted.
It doesn’t just extend to the classroom. Even licensing exams are given with accommodations. The implications are obvious. Your doctor or nurse might be wholly unable to provide you with competent care, but at least we didn’t hurt their feelings by making them seem inadequate.
This also makes licensure and the certification that goes with it wholly worthless.
