The National Pulse – Congress Keeps Adding to the Education Swamp with Budget Increases

In this article, Dr. Effrem discusses the inability of congress to follow President Trump’s plan to downsize the Federal Department of Education and the statistics involved.

Although not surprising in an election year, congressional appropriators — who are generally not known for their political courage — are not doing anything to drain the putrid, unconstitutional swamp that is the U.S. Department of Education and its related programs. Both the full House and Senate Appropriations Committees have completed their Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bills for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 that will begin October 1^st.

Below is a detailed breakdown of the spending amounts for each of these programs, listed in millions of dollars.

You can find the full article on the National Pulse website here.

National Pulse – Should Trump Merge the Education and Labor Departments? Grassroots Say No.

In this article, Dr. Effrem discusses the proposal by the Trump administration to merge the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education.

While certainly not every student is meant to go to college, this plan appears to be a strong move away from academic education towards the philosophy that education is mere workforce preparation — and in which children are seen as “products” (as termed by former Secretary of State and Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson) or links in the labor supply chain. This philosophy and system has failed everywhere it has been tried.

One important American example is the Smaller Learning Community program, a Gates Foundation effort to track children into specific types of jobs-based education as early as 8th grade that was attempted before moving into the Race to the Top and Common Core effort. The Gates Foundation admitted in 2009 that this program, upon which the foundation spent at least $650 million, was a failure.​ And like Common Core, the teacher quality initiative, and many other Gates education efforts, it was a failure that had great taxpayer financial and human costs — though this has done little to deter the government’s latest attempt to resurrect the idea.

To see the full article click here.

Please sign and share the petition and contact your members of Congress when they are home on the July 4^th recess and at campaign events.

National Pulse – Bill Gates Education Experiment Fails Again, Taxpayers Foot $300 Million Bill

In this article, Dr. Effrem highlights a teacher evaluation program set up by the Gates foundation and its flaws.

A new report by the Rand Corporation evaluating yet another Bill Gates education debacle — this time for teacher evaluation — was discussed recently in both Forbes by Rick Hess and Bloombergby Cathy O’Neil. Shane Vander Hart at Truth in American Education also analyzed the Bloombergpiece. This Gates boondoggle spent $575 million (of which only $212 million came from the Gates Foundation) on three public school districts and four charter management organizations…

…The effort, starting in 2009 and going through 2015, was to develop a new formula for teacher evaluation. This formula was based on student test scores, principal observation, and parent surveys, the data from which was fed into a secret, big-data algorithm called the value added model. The intent was to reward good teachers and root out bad teachers, all in service of the overall goal of improving student achievement, especially for low income and minority (LIM) students. The results affected hiring decisions for teachers and offered small bonuses to effective teachers to move into districts with higher proportions of LIM students.

You can view the full article here.

The National Pulse: One Thing President Trump Can Do Now to Make Schools Safer

The President’s School Safety Commission held it’s first meeting and the focus was on the Obama-era lax discipline policies. Here is an excerpt from Dr. Effrem’s review of the meeting and the dangerous situation for students and teachers due to this ill-considered  and unconstitutional guidance:

Review of the guidance and grants have all shown that the Broward County Public Schools and Sheriff’s office have ignored a great deal of criminal behavior — including that of the Parkland shooter — in concert with receiving this guidance, the Promise program, and millions of dollars in School Climate grants.

Although Superintendent Robert Runcie has protested in a Sun-Sentinel op-ed that this cause of the shooting is “fake news,” an interview of Max Eden, a school violence expert from the Manhattan Institute, by Dr. Susan Berry strongly refuted that notion:

“Runcie’s careful formulation contains a falsehood, several omissions, and obfuscations,” Eden says. “It doesn’t cover middle school, where Cruz racked up about two dozen offenses and was transferred into an intensive behavior management school – without ever getting an arrest record.”

“Runcie claims that PROMISE only covered ‘non-violent’ offenses,” Eden observes. “That’s just straight false. The 2013 version covered assault and fighting; the 2016 version covered ‘affray,’ i.e., fighting. That means Cruz’s fights were only deemed non-PROMISE eligible based on administrator discretion, not policy.”

“Given that Cruz is alleged to have threatened students, it’s also worth noting that ‘threats’ are a PROMISE-eligible offense,” he continues. “Perhaps those incidents weren’t recorded as threats. Students have reported that Cruz brought bullets and knives to school. Perhaps those incidents weren’t recorded at all. Or perhaps they were and Runcie’s statement eludes them; the discipline matrix doesn’t highlight Class B Weapons as a PROMISE-eligible Incident.”

Ann Coulter quoted the threats that Cruz allegedly made to kill other students at school that were ignored by school officials:

At least three students showed school administrators Cruz’s near-constant messages threatening to kill them — e.g., “I am going to enjoy seeing you down on the grass,” “Im going to watch ypu bleed,” “iam going to shoot you dead” — including one that came with a photo of Cruz’s guns. They warned school authorities that he was bringing weapons to school. They filed written reports.

The excellent testimony of Eden to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on School Violence painted a stark picture of the dangerous atmosphere for students, especially vulnerable students and staff, created by the Obama guidance that threatened and started investigations in hundreds of school districts for “unlawful discrimination” if students of different races broke the rules at different rates — all without even a regulation:

At Lincoln High School in San Diego, a male student with cerebral palsy was raped in the bathroom. The teacher who caught the rapist in the act tried to raise the alarm. But the administration downgraded the event to an “obscene act.” They did not even attempt expulsion. For their part, the police did not even inform the mother that her son had been raped.

Eden also quoted teachers from around the country who have dramatic stories of the life threatening environments in which they are forced to work:

“Students are threatening teachers with violence and in many cases are physically attacking teachers without consequences.”

“School environment is unsafe. I do not feel safe. Teachers are afraid. Students have little or no consequences for behavior that is often outright violent toward students and staff. Please help us!”

…Given all of the damage this policy and these grants have done to student and teacher safety, local control, and school district costs, repealing this guidance is an incredibly wise idea. It is something that the Trump administration can do without pursuing the complicated legislative process and will have great benefits.

Read the full article HERE.