Thanks for pointing out the failures in our school system. As a professor at Cornell University, I noticed that our students are coming in dumber in that they do not have the breadth of knowledge, the depth of knowledge, or the character to seek the truth that previous students had. In part this is because the goal of education has changed to seeking (so-called) equity. To acheive equity the standards were dumbed down.
Moreover, seeking equity actually resulted in greater disparities, because those who were professors or those who could afford tutors gave their children the education that the public schools no longer provided.
I helped create the Franklin Standards, which were written to reverse the dumbing down of content that had been promoted by the Next Generation Standards (2013).
Yep. I’m from Chicago, and it’s been this way for decades. More bureaucracy just means more politics, more red tape, and fewer real solutions. The Democrats have always run things this way—layering on regulations and committees that make meaningful change impossible. I’ve seen firsthand how every so-called “equitable” education reform ends up making things worse by lowering standards rather than creating something that truly uplifts the people they intended to serve.
Perhaps it is not a victory but after reading the story of the young man who asked for a job, people know it's that bad and are looking to take a big knife to slash it hoping some ideologues will be swept away. Yes, the States control education, but because federal money is their bread and butter, maybe the nasties will find another profession if their money dries up. PS - I wouldn't give Gavin Newsome my bright, young, innocent child for 5 minutes let alone 13 years.
Some of this just breaks my heart. It is a complex issue, but - and especially for children 13 and under - it’s also simply about teaching phonetic reading and literacy and basic numeracy. Every child is a unique soul and a disciplined, simple and straightforward classroom helps everyone. That’s what a “department of education” should make the bottom line. The people making the decisions as shown in this film in the state of Illinois should be ashamed of themselves and removed for failure to teach. It saddens me deeply to think that - aside from the useful idiots - the real people in charge want the result to be uneducated, illiterate fools. Now is a kind of dark ages.
an illiterate, sickened populace cannot make good choices (or recognized they HAVE choie) for their lives and remain forever impoverished and ignorant for generations.
Also, sorry, but this really gets me. I was an Illinois resident. I am well familiar with the rot there. You've said it's complex and I'm wondering if because many people feel that way they give up. Why is it complex? There are people all along the ideological and economic spectrum who want a good education. It used to be the key out of poverty. Move the unions out of the way, let the teachers keep order in the classroom (support good teachers who care about kids and learning not ideology) and then let them push the kids to learn and grow to be the best they can be. Bring music back. Bring clubs (chess, debate, etc.)back. Funding for things that went to those student interest and growth opportunities was taken by the union contracts. It will take time, but the solution is straightforward. Sorry... I'm done.
You are right. Educating a child is not complex. It is the bureaucratic and ideological forces going the other direction that make it so. And to our detriment.
It may not be a victory, but it might be a precondition for victory, at least in some places. Not Illinois, I’m afraid, and certainly not Chicago, where the political party masquerading as the teachers union is running things. My kids managed to survive the Chicago public school system by getting into a magnet school, but their kids are going to suburban schools and a Chicago private school.
all this activist crap is meant to harvest and spend the only real currency a young person has which is their energy. they're then used to create a state sanctioned home grown internal army of crazy makers, their real job to destroy what their ancestors built, america. both spectrums of the generations perpetually divested of wealth. it's a criminal act to degrade children and waste their energy in this way and to use them (pornographically) until they are no longer needed, only to have their activism criminalized to the point of ending up in privatized prisons making shitty bras and belt buckles for their unseen masters. yuck. alchemical f*ckery: nigredo to albedo. i tell young black kids on the activism kick, you are being used. claim your life force energy IMMEDIATELY and make a life for yourself or the state will seduce it away from you and use it for their own purposes. autodidacta sono. self taught,i.
There's a serious gap in understanding of the needs of lower-class and lower-middle-class Americans. I was born to a lower-middle-class family, two-months preterm; I was officially diagnosed as hard-of-hearing since birth at 26 years old and with statutory blindness at the age of 52. The school system I attended was hemorrhaging the wealthier students throughout my education; it started off as 20% Black, and was 70% Black by the time I was in high school.
With regard to birthrates and potential impact on education: I have several spreadsheets and articles that might answer some of these issues. 10% of American students are born premature, which is the highest rate of preterm birth in the western world. For Blacks, the rate is 14%, or 1 in 7. This rate has been steady since 1996. With regard to poverty, the CDC does not collect socioeconomic data, only the method used to pay for the birth. With regard to insurance, 49% of mothers giving birth to preemies are on Medicaid; 65% of Black women who give birth to preemies are on Medicaid. Of these 65%, 81% are single mothers.
Officially, 25% of all preemies born are diagnosed with hearing loss since birth; as the greatest number of survivors are born closer to full-term, the rate of diagnosis of disability shrinks. The irony is that the medical establishment has stuck to a definition of hearing loss that only reflects hearing loss in one ear, not two; the official paper detecting this issue appeared in 1982 and was confirmed in 1984. There are too many issues that arise from this research:
1. At what point should people be diagnosed with hearing loss when it is binaural?
2. They only function in the office, whether in a tiny doctor's office, or in a soundproof booth; my experience was that because I could hear them clearly, they did not recognize the loss.
3. Should speech language pathologists be the ones to diagnose children with hearing loss for educational purposes? I spoke like Elmer Fudd for the first eleven years, and spent five years in therapy. The diagnosis occurred at 26 because an ENT recognized that my pronunciation had indicated intense therapy.
With regard to the educational establishment, none of their research discusses the impact of premature birth on education, nor do they associate premature birth with disability. For children who speak Standard Spoken English (SSE), this is less of an impediment, because they are surrounded by speakers who sound out and visually express the complete phonological system when they speak. For lower-class kids, many do not come from homes where SSE is spoken; this can mean that native speakers of the dialect do not include certain sounds, and substitute alternative sounds. In African American Vernacular English, the [th] as in thought is pronounced as a [t]; the [th] in "threw" is pronounced as "frew"; the [th] in "both" is pronounced as "bofe." Then there's the other [th], as in "the," which is pronounced as [d], and the word "brother," which is pronounced as "bruver." These are two sounds that mutate into several different phonemes that are mutually unrecognizable with SSE. There's a significant difference in grammar and vocabulary, so a five year old whose hearing is bad enough that they cannot understand TV, will not be able to understand their teachers. I give them 5 minutes until they act up in class. I am currently working on a memoir called Sensory Deprivation and Systemic Failure: Living at the crossroads of Sound, Sight, and Sanity, and falling through the cracks. If you're interested in discussing this material, I would be willing to share it with you.
Eli, again you hit the nail on the head. It is the state and local levels that also have to be changed. I began my career in education, left for 17 years and returned to find that old processes that definitely hadn't worked earlier had come back with a different name thinking they would work the second time. Of course, time couldn't heal a bad idea! There are districts that do a great job, why aren't they used as examples? For a long time doing something 'new' is the only answer. If the great minds of the early 20th century were capable of all of the developments we witnessed and yet many gained their educational knowledge from a one-room school, what are we missing? Thanks again Eli!
I agree we should not celebrate the elimination of the necessity for the elimination of a failed Federal Dept. of anything. Those responsible for its implementation had, I would hope, improvements to the failed state and local systems that instigated its inception. The objective was to improve and the result in my experience was worse than failure, it was a disaster that had to stop. For the same reason many many other Federal agencies should also be eliminated. When rot gets imbedded in any hierarchy the only way to ensure the patient survives is to cut it out. I’m not happy about what our politicians and bureaucrats have forced us as voters to fix what they had the power to do. The facts are obvious the cure was worse than the disease, throwing more borrowed money at failed institutions is evident in nearly every federal agency. I’m a very Liberal person but borrowing money has become an addiction and ignoring failure only makes it worse.
I went to public schools in what could be considered comparatively good and didn’t learn anything of value until I took it upon my self to learn before the internet. Teaching starts at home, responsibility starts at home and I had neither and my schooling suffered and would have suffered without a Dept of Education.
I agree whole heartedly and the story of this young man as a byproduct of an ideological wasteland is emblematic of the rot. I wish I understood the dept of education piece better. It’s clear DOE failed the kids through COVID and decades earlier. But could Trump have used the DOE to improve and rework the public education system? I don’t have the details and don’t know where to find them.
Social promotion has contributed to the rise of the nation’s illiteracy, of which the young man in Chicago is a prime example. Teachers’ unions are self-promoters. They claim “it’s for the children,” while their salaries rise and in direct proportion to the fall in student proficiency. Congress needs to shut down the Department of Education permanently and return the education of the nation’s children to the states. Sadly California will continue in the path established by CTA.
Did you get his name? Address or his mother's address? Dear God how wonderful it would be to reach out a hand to this young man and ask him if we could help. And of course we and this country can. Our country is rich! I pray one of his past teachers will find and befriend him. I used to be one of those teachers in the mid-west, near Chicago. A college teacher. I and so many others prized the first generation college students
Our education system, by and large, is a national disgrace. Thank god there are citizens like Pastor Brooks who are willing to put boots on the ground and effect real change. I wish that more churches would similarly invest in their communities as opposed to spending lavish amounts of money on themselves.
Dear Eli,
Thanks for pointing out the failures in our school system. As a professor at Cornell University, I noticed that our students are coming in dumber in that they do not have the breadth of knowledge, the depth of knowledge, or the character to seek the truth that previous students had. In part this is because the goal of education has changed to seeking (so-called) equity. To acheive equity the standards were dumbed down.
Moreover, seeking equity actually resulted in greater disparities, because those who were professors or those who could afford tutors gave their children the education that the public schools no longer provided.
I helped create the Franklin Standards, which were written to reverse the dumbing down of content that had been promoted by the Next Generation Standards (2013).
The Franklin Standards, which I think are great, can be seen here: https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/Reports/Franklin%20Standards/Franklin_Standards.pdf
Here I offer my observations that greater disparities in education occur when the goal is equity:
https://www.youtube.com/live/uC3eh8u5c08
Thanks,
randy
Thank you for sharing, Randy. Glad you are doing this.
Yep. I’m from Chicago, and it’s been this way for decades. More bureaucracy just means more politics, more red tape, and fewer real solutions. The Democrats have always run things this way—layering on regulations and committees that make meaningful change impossible. I’ve seen firsthand how every so-called “equitable” education reform ends up making things worse by lowering standards rather than creating something that truly uplifts the people they intended to serve.
Perhaps it is not a victory but after reading the story of the young man who asked for a job, people know it's that bad and are looking to take a big knife to slash it hoping some ideologues will be swept away. Yes, the States control education, but because federal money is their bread and butter, maybe the nasties will find another profession if their money dries up. PS - I wouldn't give Gavin Newsome my bright, young, innocent child for 5 minutes let alone 13 years.
Some of this just breaks my heart. It is a complex issue, but - and especially for children 13 and under - it’s also simply about teaching phonetic reading and literacy and basic numeracy. Every child is a unique soul and a disciplined, simple and straightforward classroom helps everyone. That’s what a “department of education” should make the bottom line. The people making the decisions as shown in this film in the state of Illinois should be ashamed of themselves and removed for failure to teach. It saddens me deeply to think that - aside from the useful idiots - the real people in charge want the result to be uneducated, illiterate fools. Now is a kind of dark ages.
an illiterate, sickened populace cannot make good choices (or recognized they HAVE choie) for their lives and remain forever impoverished and ignorant for generations.
Also, sorry, but this really gets me. I was an Illinois resident. I am well familiar with the rot there. You've said it's complex and I'm wondering if because many people feel that way they give up. Why is it complex? There are people all along the ideological and economic spectrum who want a good education. It used to be the key out of poverty. Move the unions out of the way, let the teachers keep order in the classroom (support good teachers who care about kids and learning not ideology) and then let them push the kids to learn and grow to be the best they can be. Bring music back. Bring clubs (chess, debate, etc.)back. Funding for things that went to those student interest and growth opportunities was taken by the union contracts. It will take time, but the solution is straightforward. Sorry... I'm done.
You are right. Educating a child is not complex. It is the bureaucratic and ideological forces going the other direction that make it so. And to our detriment.
And believing in children is even less so. We're drowning in how we take care of the adults and forgetting kids need champions in the classroom.
It may not be a victory, but it might be a precondition for victory, at least in some places. Not Illinois, I’m afraid, and certainly not Chicago, where the political party masquerading as the teachers union is running things. My kids managed to survive the Chicago public school system by getting into a magnet school, but their kids are going to suburban schools and a Chicago private school.
all this activist crap is meant to harvest and spend the only real currency a young person has which is their energy. they're then used to create a state sanctioned home grown internal army of crazy makers, their real job to destroy what their ancestors built, america. both spectrums of the generations perpetually divested of wealth. it's a criminal act to degrade children and waste their energy in this way and to use them (pornographically) until they are no longer needed, only to have their activism criminalized to the point of ending up in privatized prisons making shitty bras and belt buckles for their unseen masters. yuck. alchemical f*ckery: nigredo to albedo. i tell young black kids on the activism kick, you are being used. claim your life force energy IMMEDIATELY and make a life for yourself or the state will seduce it away from you and use it for their own purposes. autodidacta sono. self taught,i.
Eli,
There's a serious gap in understanding of the needs of lower-class and lower-middle-class Americans. I was born to a lower-middle-class family, two-months preterm; I was officially diagnosed as hard-of-hearing since birth at 26 years old and with statutory blindness at the age of 52. The school system I attended was hemorrhaging the wealthier students throughout my education; it started off as 20% Black, and was 70% Black by the time I was in high school.
With regard to birthrates and potential impact on education: I have several spreadsheets and articles that might answer some of these issues. 10% of American students are born premature, which is the highest rate of preterm birth in the western world. For Blacks, the rate is 14%, or 1 in 7. This rate has been steady since 1996. With regard to poverty, the CDC does not collect socioeconomic data, only the method used to pay for the birth. With regard to insurance, 49% of mothers giving birth to preemies are on Medicaid; 65% of Black women who give birth to preemies are on Medicaid. Of these 65%, 81% are single mothers.
Officially, 25% of all preemies born are diagnosed with hearing loss since birth; as the greatest number of survivors are born closer to full-term, the rate of diagnosis of disability shrinks. The irony is that the medical establishment has stuck to a definition of hearing loss that only reflects hearing loss in one ear, not two; the official paper detecting this issue appeared in 1982 and was confirmed in 1984. There are too many issues that arise from this research:
1. At what point should people be diagnosed with hearing loss when it is binaural?
2. They only function in the office, whether in a tiny doctor's office, or in a soundproof booth; my experience was that because I could hear them clearly, they did not recognize the loss.
3. Should speech language pathologists be the ones to diagnose children with hearing loss for educational purposes? I spoke like Elmer Fudd for the first eleven years, and spent five years in therapy. The diagnosis occurred at 26 because an ENT recognized that my pronunciation had indicated intense therapy.
With regard to the educational establishment, none of their research discusses the impact of premature birth on education, nor do they associate premature birth with disability. For children who speak Standard Spoken English (SSE), this is less of an impediment, because they are surrounded by speakers who sound out and visually express the complete phonological system when they speak. For lower-class kids, many do not come from homes where SSE is spoken; this can mean that native speakers of the dialect do not include certain sounds, and substitute alternative sounds. In African American Vernacular English, the [th] as in thought is pronounced as a [t]; the [th] in "threw" is pronounced as "frew"; the [th] in "both" is pronounced as "bofe." Then there's the other [th], as in "the," which is pronounced as [d], and the word "brother," which is pronounced as "bruver." These are two sounds that mutate into several different phonemes that are mutually unrecognizable with SSE. There's a significant difference in grammar and vocabulary, so a five year old whose hearing is bad enough that they cannot understand TV, will not be able to understand their teachers. I give them 5 minutes until they act up in class. I am currently working on a memoir called Sensory Deprivation and Systemic Failure: Living at the crossroads of Sound, Sight, and Sanity, and falling through the cracks. If you're interested in discussing this material, I would be willing to share it with you.
Eli, again you hit the nail on the head. It is the state and local levels that also have to be changed. I began my career in education, left for 17 years and returned to find that old processes that definitely hadn't worked earlier had come back with a different name thinking they would work the second time. Of course, time couldn't heal a bad idea! There are districts that do a great job, why aren't they used as examples? For a long time doing something 'new' is the only answer. If the great minds of the early 20th century were capable of all of the developments we witnessed and yet many gained their educational knowledge from a one-room school, what are we missing? Thanks again Eli!
That is the pain there -- there are districts that do a great job and yet we punish their success or refuse to model after it.
Wow
Makes me want to be a teacher and buck this terrible system!
I agree we should not celebrate the elimination of the necessity for the elimination of a failed Federal Dept. of anything. Those responsible for its implementation had, I would hope, improvements to the failed state and local systems that instigated its inception. The objective was to improve and the result in my experience was worse than failure, it was a disaster that had to stop. For the same reason many many other Federal agencies should also be eliminated. When rot gets imbedded in any hierarchy the only way to ensure the patient survives is to cut it out. I’m not happy about what our politicians and bureaucrats have forced us as voters to fix what they had the power to do. The facts are obvious the cure was worse than the disease, throwing more borrowed money at failed institutions is evident in nearly every federal agency. I’m a very Liberal person but borrowing money has become an addiction and ignoring failure only makes it worse.
I went to public schools in what could be considered comparatively good and didn’t learn anything of value until I took it upon my self to learn before the internet. Teaching starts at home, responsibility starts at home and I had neither and my schooling suffered and would have suffered without a Dept of Education.
I agree whole heartedly and the story of this young man as a byproduct of an ideological wasteland is emblematic of the rot. I wish I understood the dept of education piece better. It’s clear DOE failed the kids through COVID and decades earlier. But could Trump have used the DOE to improve and rework the public education system? I don’t have the details and don’t know where to find them.
Social promotion has contributed to the rise of the nation’s illiteracy, of which the young man in Chicago is a prime example. Teachers’ unions are self-promoters. They claim “it’s for the children,” while their salaries rise and in direct proportion to the fall in student proficiency. Congress needs to shut down the Department of Education permanently and return the education of the nation’s children to the states. Sadly California will continue in the path established by CTA.
Eli,
Did you get his name? Address or his mother's address? Dear God how wonderful it would be to reach out a hand to this young man and ask him if we could help. And of course we and this country can. Our country is rich! I pray one of his past teachers will find and befriend him. I used to be one of those teachers in the mid-west, near Chicago. A college teacher. I and so many others prized the first generation college students
Alas we moved far away.
No, I didn't. When I originally published this piece on Fox that was the number one question. Sadly, I didn't think to ask.
Our education system, by and large, is a national disgrace. Thank god there are citizens like Pastor Brooks who are willing to put boots on the ground and effect real change. I wish that more churches would similarly invest in their communities as opposed to spending lavish amounts of money on themselves.
Your readers should follow this article with one by Matt Tiabbi on the university endowments.