Upside Down Growth

A website called Education Next posted the following:

Ah-ha. Those numbers are hard to argue with. The education department may characterize an additional assistant principal as “instructional” spending, and the assistant principal may even have some roles such as coaching teachers or disciplining students that affect instruction. But an administrator is an administrator, regardless of whether she is based in a school or in a district office, just like beer is beer regardless of whether it is bought at the supermarket or at the liquor store.

To put this into perspective, from 1990 through 2011, K-12 student enrollment in America increased .04 percent, from 2012 through fall 2023, K-12 student enrollment in American increased 5.2 percent (article here). I don’t object to the fact that the number of teachers increased by a higher percentage, but I do question the number of administrators, principals, and assistant principals hired between 2000 and 2017. It appears to me that the problem is not the about of money we are spending on education, but rather where we are putting that money.

The article at Education Next concludes:

The optimal number of administrators, or of federal and state regulations, is something about which reasonable people may differ. Reasonable people may also differ about the optimal ratio of administrators to teachers, and of both to students. Not all administrators are bad; surely there are cases in which hiring additional administrators at the school or district level have improved student outcomes. Without full-time administrators, compliance burdens fall more heavily on classroom teachers or risk going unmet. Some charter schools have strategically split the principal role into an operations leader and an instructional leader, a move that adds an administrator but may well be good for school quality.

One reason, though, that politicians got away with allowing the number of $100,000-a-year administrators to grow four or seven times as fast as the number of teachers is that even when someone smart like Philip K. Howard does blow the whistle on it, the first reaction of too many academics and mainstream journalists is to snipe at him and deny the reality of the situation, instead of investigating or following up the news he unearthed.

It seems that there are many reasons our schools are failing. It’s time to examine all of those reasons and change the current paradigm.

Most Parents Already Knew This

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a study released Monday by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute. The study shows the complete failure of the Common Core academic standards to educate American children.

The article reports:

A study released Monday by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute reveals a historic drop in national reading and math scores among U.S. students since the adoption of the Common Core Curriculum Standards a decade ago.

“Nearly a decade after states adopted Common Core, the empirical evidence makes it clear that these national standards have yielded underwhelming results for students,” said Pioneer executive director Jim Stergios in a statement. “The proponents of this expensive, legally questionable policy initiative have much to answer for.”

The study, titled “The Common Core Debacle” and authored by education policy researcher Theodor Rebarber, asserts the “shocking trends” in American student performance in critical math and reading skills since the creation of the U.S. Education Department 40 years ago recommends reevaluation of federal involvement in education.

Performance in reading and math since the adoption of Common Core has especially declined in the nation’s lowest-achieving students – many of whom come from low-income families and failing public schools – widening the achievement gap and creating further inequality.

Supporters of Common Core, however, touted the Obama-era federally incentivized standards would be “rigorous” and also “level the playing field.” The Common Core State Standards Initiative boasted that the standards are “important” because:

[h]igh standards that are consistent across states provide teachers, parents, and students with a set of clear expectations to ensure that all students have the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life upon graduation from high school, regardless of where they live. … The standards promote equity by ensuring all students are well prepared to collaborate and compete with their peers in the United States and abroad.

Rebarber observed, however, that while national fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores were rising at about half a point each year from 2003 to 2013, since that time, reading scores have dropped.

One of the unintended consequences of Common Core is that many parents are getting involved in their children’s education after being alarmed at what they are being taught and what they are not being taught.

The article notes:

“Several of us allied with Pioneer Institute have been pointing out, ever since it was introduced, the deeply flawed educational assumptions that permeate the Common Core and the many ways in which it is at odds with curriculum standards in top-achieving countries,” Rebarber said.

In the wake of the Common Core “debacle,” a national organization of parents has risen and is calling for an end to federal involvement in education and a return to policy-making at the local level.

United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) has produced Truth and Lies in American Education, a film focused on what the coalition of parents says is “the scheme behind the workforce development model of education and liberal indoctrination of children in government schools”

…“The sustained decline we’re now seeing, especially among our most vulnerable students, simply cannot be allowed to continue,” Rebarber also said.

“It’s time for federal law to change to allow states as well as local school districts to try a broader range of approaches to reform,” he added. “With a more bottom-up approach, more school systems will have the opportunity to choose curricula consistent with our international competitors and many decades of research on effective classroom teaching.”

It’s time for parents to take back their children’s education. Some of the states that claim to have removed Common Core have simply renamed it. Teach your children phonics,  and teach them to ‘carry the one.’

 

 

What Are We Doing To Our Children?

Watch the video below that appeared on American television while considering the fact that the family is the building block of American society:

If children can be taught to be part of their community at the expense of being part of their family, the community can shape their views in ways that might not be in agreement with their family values. If children can be taught to value the ‘common good’ over property rights, part of the foundation of America’s prosperity can be dismantled.

The United Nations was established for the purpose of promoting freedom, democracy, and world peace. At least that’s what we were told. It has since drifted from those ideals. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlines rights given by government. There is no mention of the concept in the U.S. Declaration of Independence that rights come from God and that governments are put in place to protect those rights. The education group of the United Nations focuses on teaching children a perspective based on the UN’s ideals of sustainable development which do not include the concept of nation states or individual freedom.

It should be noted that a document posted on the UN education agency’s website about “Education for Sustainable Development” states, “Generally, more highly educated people, who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes.” The UN ‘toolkit’ for global sustainable education explains, “In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability.” So the UN sees education as a threat to their agenda.

The concept of ‘The New World Order’ has been the goal of some in our government for a number of years. This concept is tied up with the United Nations and the move in American education to create ‘global citizens.’ There is nothing wrong with the concept of teaching children to consider themselves citizens of the world as well as Americans, but we are not teaching them to be American citizens. We are not teaching them about the values in America that are worth defending.

So where am I going with this? America is the biggest obstacle to those who believe in the “New World Order” (which means a one-world government ruled by an elite group of people). The New World Order is simply tyranny on a global scale. The public school education our children are getting is preparing them to be open to this form of government. Our AP History courses are distorting our history, the Christian values upon which our nation was founded are being undermined and mocked, and the foundations of America are being attacked in our public schools (and also in some of our private and parochial schools).

Right now, the answer to this problem is homeschooling. Until enough parents wake up and hold local and federal officials accountable, I don’t see the curriculum in our public schools changing.