A Flunking Grade for the Department of Education

July 24, 2022 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Whether I’m debating the quality of government schools or the funding of government schools, I routinely share this chart from the late Andrew Coulson.

 

There are two obvious takeaways from this data.

1. Taxpayers have been shelling out ever-larger amounts of money.
2. All that money has produced no improvement in student test scores.

Those two takeaways should lead any rational person to conclude that dramatic changes are needed.

Probably the biggest change is school choice. And the good news is that more and more states are moving in the right direction on this issue.

But there’s another potential big change. As illustrated by this tweet (and this story), a former Secretary of the Department of Education thinks it is time to abolish her former bureaucracy.

Unfortunately, we are not seeing any progress on this goal. The bureaucracy’s budget grew dramatically under Trump. And it’s getting even more bloated under Biden.

But maybe there’s hope. Congressman Tom Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky, has legislation to get the federal government out of education. Here’s some of his office’s press release on the topic.

Representative Thomas Massie…has introduced H.R. 899, a bill to abolish the federal Department of Education. The bill, which is one sentence long, states, “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2022.” …said Massie. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable. Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational opportunity for their children, including home school, public school, or private school.” The Department of Education began operating in 1980. On September 24, 1981, in his Address to the Nation on the Program for Economic Recovery, President Ronald Reagan said, “…we propose to dismantle two Cabinet Departments, Energy and Education. …There’s only one way to shrink the size and cost of big government, and that is by eliminating agencies that are not needed and are getting in the way of a solution. …education is the principal responsibility of local school systems, teachers, parents, citizen boards, and State governments. By eliminating the Department of Education less than 2 years after it was created, we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”

In a column for the Foundation for Economic Education, Patrick Carroll applauds Congressman Massie, along with his cosponsors who have embraced genuine reform.

Though it may be tempting to think Massie and his supporters just don’t care about education, this is certainly not the case. If anything, they are pushing to end the federal Department of Education precisely because they care about educational outcomes. In their view, the Department is at best not helping and, at worst, may actually be part of the problem. …Massie is echoing sentiments expressed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, who advocated dismantling the Department of Education even though it had just begun operating in 1980. …Education needs vary from student to student, so educational decisions need to be made as close to the individual student as possible. Federal organizations simply can’t account for the diverse array of educational contexts, which means their one-size-fits-all findings and recommendations will be poorly suited for many classrooms.

Amen.

From the moment it was created by Jimmy Carter, the Department of Education has failed to generate  any positive outcome.

By that metric, it has something in common with the Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and almost every bureaucracy in Washington.

P.S. As one might expect, Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Common Core were both expensive failures.

The Zinns of Revised History

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh —— Bio and Archives--September 18, 2019

Paugh Elementary school students learn their first version of history from their College of Education licensed teachers. Some deliberately change historical facts to match their social engineering agenda or are too ignorant and lazy to research on their own and thus do not care what damage they inflict on their charges as long as nobody gets physically hurt while in their care and everybody has breakfast, preferably at the taxpayer expense. Once their minds are made up, nothing can change their reality - it becomes the solid rock chiseled by water over millennia..................

By high school students have been exposed to a barrage of misinformation from various teachers who may or may not have had a personal socialist agenda, but they were using Common Core textbooks which emphasized collectivism and Islam to the detriment of Christianity and American history facts...............To Read More....

K-12: What Happened to Bill Gates and Common Core?

April 8, 2019 By Bruce Deitrick Price

Bill Gates is among the richest, most successful people on the planet. He enjoyed a lot of victories until he ventured into a dangerous part of town called Education. He squandered a few billion dollars by becoming entangled with a shady character named Common Core.

Since 2010, Gates endured a long, slow defeat, as more people turned against Common Core, and he himself realized that it was not what he had dreamed of.


But Bill Gates should have felt some uneasiness.  Common Core was untested, unproven, and micromanaged by David Coleman, a man with limited credentials but reliably far to the left.  Nobody in the business world launches a big new product without years of research and refinement.  Instead, Common Core was wrapped in $1 billion's worth of propaganda and dumped on the country as a fait accompli................Read more

My Take - The Communist Takeover Of America - 45 Declared Goals - Goal 17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks. After you've dumbed down the students it's all the easier.

K–12: Fake, like Adulterated Milk

March 20, 2019 By Bruce Deitrick Price

In the 1800s, adulterated milk was common.  Milk produced by swill herds, as muckraking journalist Robert Hartley wrote in 1842, was "very thin, and of a pale bluish color," the kind nobody in his right mind would buy.  So distillers added flour, starch, chalk, plaster of Paris, or anything else they could get away with to make the milk look healthy.  This adulteration only increased the bacteria in milk that we today would consider undrinkable.

The common theme in adulteration is that you pay for A, but they give you B.  It's not what you want.  Additionally, it's likely to be dangerous to your financial health, your physical health, and your mental health. Whole Word, a theory that children can learn to read by memorizing sight-words, is a lot like living with Chinese drywall.  You get headaches and respiratory problems.  Your health is shot from worry and failure.  After years of going to school, the victims still have nothing to show for all that work and expense.  Memorizing sight-words is difficult to do and counterproductive.  Once you have these designs in your brain, you can rarely be a fluent reader.  More than 40,000,000 people, known as functional illiterates, are victims of this peculiar adulteration.  Reading is promised but not delivered............

Progressive educators don't seem to care about wholesome.  They want their intellectual junk food if that can help their social engineering schemes.............Students may go to school for 12 years and not know how to find Alaska on a map.  They may waste months learning cumbersome Common Core methods but never use them.............To Read More....

New Evidence Reveals Full Extent of Common Core’s Historic Failure

Jane Robbins Nov 20, 2018

Most public schools are still afflicted with the Common Core national standards. Paid advocates such as the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation continue to push Common Core despite overwhelming evidence of the slow-motion train wreck that has resulted – reduced student achievement by almost every metric. Fordham refuses even to acknowledge the bad news, much less try to rationalize it.

That’s why it was refreshing to hear the blunt truth proclaimed at a Heritage Foundation event last week entitled “Rethinking Federal Intervention in K-12 Education.” At this program the authors of a new Pioneer Institute study, “Common Core, School Choice and Rethinking Standards-Based Reform,” explained how Common Core has not only damaged public education but also threatened the independence of private schools. How? By imposing government strings on the curricular autonomy of the schools that accept government funding via school-choice mechanisms such as vouchers. 

Study authors Ted Rebarber of AccountabilityWorks and Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute advocate restoring genuine diversity in education models by removing centralized government control over K-12 school standards. But the prelude to that argument came from Rebarber, who minced no words in describing the doleful effect of Common Core on education.

“In my view,” Rebarber observed, “[Common Core] is really the worst large-scale educational failure in 40 years.”............To Read More.....

Caruba's Corner: The Death Throes of Common Core

By Alan Caruba Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Editor's Note:  I felt this article was prescient as we see more information being made available showing how public education is an abject failure by any reasonable standard, unless you feel 2/3rd of the nation's 8th graders are not proficient in reading is a reasonable standard.

Americans are learning the hard way that the federal government should not be permitted to impose one-size-fits-all standards to education. It was never intended to play a role in education and the absence of any mention in the Constitution is proof enough that education was intended to be supervised by the states where the school districts, schools, and parents are closest to the process.

Common Core is going to play a large role in the 2016 elections and that is likely to impact former Governor Jeb Bush the most. At the heart of the unhappiness with Common Core has been its emphasis on testing.

A March 20th Wall Street Journal article, “Bush Faces Test of Exam Policy”, reported that “A Rasmussen Reports nationwide survey in February found that 52% of respondents thought there was too much emphasis on testing in schools and 69% believed there was too much ‘teaching to the test.’”

The transformation of the nation’s educational system began when the Department of Education was signed into law by Jimmy Carter in 1979 and began operating in 1980. It continued with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the name given to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It requires all public schools receiving Title 1 federal funding to annually administer a state-wide standardized test to all students. NCLB was coauthored by Representatives John Boehner (R-OH), George Miller (D-CA) and Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH).

President George W. Bush was a leading NCLB advocate and signed it into law on January 8, 2002. Each state was expected to develop its own standards because NCLB did not impose a national one. This year when its reauthorization came up for consideration, it was pulled from the House floor in February. The Heritage Foundation deems it “outdated, ineffective, and prioritizes government standards over the needs of individual students.”

According to Neal McCluskey, Associate Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, “There is no compelling evidence that No Child Left Behind, and federal intervention overall, has produced much good, while it is very clear it has cost substantial money and is unconstitutional.”

In Missouri, circuit court Judge Daniel R. Green, ruled in February that the state’s payment of more than $4 million in membership fees as part of a standardized testing consortium was illegal. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium “is an unlawful interstate compact to which the U.S. Congress has never consented, whose existence and operation violate” Article 1 and 10 of the federal Constitution. It dealt a blow to Common Core.

It’s not just Missouri. In January the Mississippi Board of Education voted to withdraw from the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers consortium which is one of the two tests aligned to Common Core. A full repeal of Common Core standards is under discussion.

By June 2014, two months before its implementation date, 19 states had either withdrawn from the tests or had paused implementation of the standards. Four of the 19, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Louisiana had completely exited the national standards. Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia never adopted it.

Gov. Bush is beginning to put some distance between himself and Common Core. His spokeswoman, Kristi Campbell, said “There is such a thing as too much testing.” Reportedly “he says the federal government shouldn’t impose particular tests or curricula on states.” Meanwhile, in one state after another, Common Core is being rejected.

On the political front, the Heartland Institute’s monthly newsletter, School Reform News, reported in March that “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a front runner in the contest for the Republican nomination for president, made bold reforms of elementary, secondary, and college education a prominent part of his proposed 2015-17 budget.”

“The budget, presented on February 3, would remove the cap on the state’s school choice program, eliminate state funding for Smarter Balanced tests tied to Common Core State Standards, and cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin over two years in exchange for greater autonomy for the system.”

On Capitol Hill, four Republican senators including Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Roberts of Kansas have introduced a bill that would prevent the federal government from strong-arming states into adopting education standards such as Common Core and, presumably, NCLB. The bill is called learning Opportunities Created at the Local Level Act. As reported in the Daily Caller.com, it “would limit the federal government’s ability to control state educational standards and curriculums through financial incentives, grants, mandates, and other forms of influence.”

There’s no way to know when Common Core will die or whether No Child Left Behind will suffer a similar fate but the trend nationwide is obvious. Parents, teachers, schools and districts want to determine the best curricula for the children in their systems. They want the federal government out and that is a very good thing.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Editor's Note: My friend Alan Caruba passed on June 15, 2015. Alan's work is insightful, logical, factual, and has a timeless about it. Alan had given me blanket permission to publish his work when he was alive. I had intended to archive many of his articles, but like most of us, I got caught up in life. Well, that effort is long overdue, so every week I intend to publish one or more of of his old articles from Warning Signs starting from the last one published as a tribute to my friend, Alan Caruba. Please enjoy Caruba's Corner!

Caruba's Corner: The Slow Death of Common Core

By Alan Caruba Wednesday, May 20, 2015 @ Warning Signs

Think about the major policy undertakings of the Obama administration over the past six and a half years. It began with a “stimulus” that wasted trillions in the quest of generating jobs, but did little to nothing in achieving that goal. That was followed by ObamaCare which most agree has been a disaster for the nation’s healthcare sector and, finally, Common Core, a one-size-fits-all testing program intended, we were told, to improve learning standards in the nation’s schools.  The only thing it has achieved is the opposition of parents, teachers unions, and entire states.
 

In the April edition of The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News, one could find headlines that included “Arizona House Votes to Repeal and Replace Common Core”, “Arizona House Votes to Repeal Common Core”, ”West Virginia  House Passes Common Core Repeal Bill”, and “Ohio Bill Would Protect Students Opting Out of Common Core Tests.”  In March, some 19 states had introduced legislation to either halt or replace Common Core. Do you see a trend here?
 

One trend of significance was noted in a commentary by Jason L. Riley in the May 6 edition of The Wall Street Journal. “The Soccer Mom Revolt Against Common Core” cited a national poll released by Fairleigh Dickinson University earlier this year that put “approval for the new standards at 17%, against 40% who disapproved and other 42% who were undecided. A breakdown by gender had Common Core support 22% for men and only 12% for women.”
 

Perhaps the greatest surprise among these numbers is that the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Educational Association, as Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation noted in February “is no longer a cheerleader for Common Core national education standards.”  In a letter to the union’s three million members, its president, Dennis Van Roekel, took Common Core to task for its failure to even provide information for implementing it in their classrooms.  The American Federation of Teachers had raised similar concerns nearly a year earlier! 
 

Writing on September 2014, Joy Pullman, a Heartland Institute research fellow whose expertise is education held forth on the “Top Ten Things Parents Hate About Common Core.” Among them was “The senseless, infuriating math.”  “If Common Core hadn’t deformed even the most elementary of our math abilities so that simple addition now takes dots, dashes, boxes, hashmarks, and foam cubes, plus an inordinate amount of time”, you are not going to get the right answer.

 

Parents in growing numbers have discovered, as Pullman notes, that “when they do go to their local school boards, often all they get are disgusted looks and a bored thumb-twiddling during their two-minute public comment allowance.”  Pullman says, “The bottom line is, parents have no choice whether their kids will learn Common Core, no matter what school they put them in.”  That, obviously, is changing as state after state pulls out of the Common Core program.

 

In a new book by Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman, “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children”, Blumenfeld points to “Growing levels of illiteracy, plunging international rankings, the decline of critical-thinking skills, mushrooming decadence, mass shootings, and companies that can’t find the skilled workers they need—these have become some of the atrocious hallmarks of U.S. public schools.”

 

“Common Core schemers are engaged in what can only be described as consumer fraud with monumental implications for education and the future of America.”  The bottom line is that “the scheme was never field-tested before being foisted on America.”

 

There is no part of student’s education that Common Core does not impede or corrupt. In the area of science, Blumenfeld says “Instead of teaching children about science—real science—the standards will offer students a steady stream of controversial propaganda presented as unchallenged fact.” Regarding climate change “students will be required to learn that human activities are mostly to blame, even though this notion is disputed by countless scientists and a vast, growing body of actual scientific observational evidence.”

 

Closest to home are Common Core’s “National Sexuality Education Standards” aimed to begin the “sexualization of children in kindergarten” says Blumenfeld. “Is learning about ‘homosexual marriage’ before first grade in government schools really ‘age appropriate’ or necessary?” But it gets more radical “with graphic lessons promoting everything from masturbation and fornication to transgenderism and homosexuality.”

We shouldn’t be surprised at the backlash Common Core has received from both parents and teachers unions among others. Like the “stimulus” and ObamaCare, Common Core demonstrates a thorough lack of understanding of the values of individuality that have underwritten our nation’s free market economy, helped create a respected healthcare system, and which parents have expected the educational system to pass on to new generations. Instead Common Core teaches collectivism—socialism—and degrades various elements of education from math to English to science. It cannot be removed from our nation’s schools soon enough.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

 Editor's Note:  My friend Alan Caruba passed on June 15, 2015.   Alan's work is insightful, logical, factual, and has a timeless about them.   Alan had given me blanket permission to publish his work when he was alive.  I had intended to archive many of his articles, but like most of us, I got caught up in life.  Well, that effort is long overdue, so every week I intend to publish one or more of of his old articles from Warning Signs starting from the last one published as a tribute to my friend, Alan Caruba.

Please enjoy Caruba's Corner!

Common Core By a New Name and on Steroids, ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’

States must coordinate with eleven different federal statutes and submit their plans for approval by the feds. Statutes include “the Soviet-style Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act that’s designed to connect the K-12 education system to government-controlled workforce-development, the Head Start act that centralizes preschool standards, the Education Sciences Reform Act (which seeks to boost data-collection on students)….” Standards must focus on “minimal workforce-development rather than academic knowledge” – just like Common Core! States will comply or lose their federal money. The federal government will determine “college-and career-readiness,” thus continuing its power grab on campuses.

 Posted by Mary Grabar @ SFPPR News and Analysis December 15, 2015

 A bill over a thousand pages long is drafted behind closed doors and given a nice-sounding name. The chair of the Senate committee, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, announces on November 18 that the conference report, which is finished, will not be available for reading until November 30. The House vote will be two, at most three, days later.
The vote takes place two days later, on December 2. The 247 House Republicans are divided, but most (all but 64) side with 100 percent of the 188 Democrats who vote for it.
On December 8, the Senate votes to advance the bill and it is passed the following day. Again, zero opposition from Democrats. Only 12 of the 54 Senate Republicans oppose the measure.

This is the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), an arm of the War on Poverty that sends federal funds to low-income area schools.

ESSA is supported by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and 37 liberal and far-left civil rights and education groups. It is supported by “the owners of the Common Core Standards” (National Governors Association and the Council of Chief School Officers), as Donna Garner notes. Lamar Alexander, a Common Core booster, joins with Democrat Patty Murray, expressing hope for more such “bipartisan” legislation.

The over 200 grassroots groups and experts who sent a detailed, open letter on October 13 to Congress opposing the Act valiantly continued the battle in the two days between the release of the conference report and the vote in the House. Volunteers divvy up the bill in an attempt to digest it in 48 hours. They continued to rally the troops after it went before the Senate, to no effect. It passed on December 9. The next morning Obama signed it. According to one activist, the hurry was manufactured to prod members to “vote blindly.” ESSA had been on “ice” for six months.

The American Principles Project announces their “disappointment” over passage. Emmet McGroarty chastises Republicans for failing to listen to “the more than 200 pro-Constitution, anti-Common Core grassroots groups that laid out in detail their objections . . . and practically begged their ‘conservative’ elected officials to pay attention.”

Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch, calls ESSA “a huge lump of educational coal.” Effrem, a pediatrician, sees in ESSA a solidification of the harmful age-inappropriate methods of Common Core. She thanks presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for their “steadfast opposition.”

Left-wing sites claim, “Christmas miracle sees end of Common Core.”

The Department of Education had prepared the groundwork for the hurried holiday-time vote with Obama’s own announcement in October, when he inveighed against “excessive testing”–as opt-outs spread like wildfire. He subtly blamed the unpopular testing on [George W. Bush’s] No Child Left Behind. New tests, we are told, will be “state driven and based on multiple measures.” Multiple measures include “non-cognitive skills,” attitudes and emotions.

The Department of Education announces that “The bipartisan bill to fix No Child Left Behind…incorporates many of the priorities the Obama administration put forward.”
It does. These are the same priorities undergirding Common Core. According to Jane Robbins, Senior Fellow at the American Principles Project, the rub is in the mandates, as she explained to Dr. Susan Berry at Breitbart. States must coordinate with eleven different federal statutes and submit their plans for approval by the feds.

Statutes include “the Soviet-style Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act that’s designed to connect the K-12 education system to government-controlled workforce-development, the Head Start act that centralizes preschool standards, the Education Sciences Reform Act (which seeks to boost data-collection on students)….” Standards must focus on “minimal workforce-development rather than academic knowledge” – just like Common Core! States will comply or lose their federal money.

The federal government will determine “college-and career-readiness,” thus continuing its power grab on campuses.

At the other end of the “cradle to career” spectrum is “mission creep” into preschool, as states participate in Race-to-the-Top-like competitive grants. The Act expands ESEA power by making Head Start pre-school a statute (instead of an appropriation), Dr. Susan Berry reports.

Promoters ignored the research that shows the ineffectiveness of Head Start. They ignored studies that indicate that pre-school programs often have a negative impact on students’ ability to concentrate in school.

Additional concerns listed at the Truth in American Education blog include the weakening of parental rights to opt children out of tests, removing checks on federal control, increasing overall federal spending through ESEA, and transferring federal dollars from the classroom to for-profit companies.

As consumers face skyrocketing health insurance premiums they realize that the “Affordable Care Act” is not what its name implies. Similarly, many supporters of the Every Student Succeeds Act will learn that rather than eliminating Common Core, ESSA implements Common Core on steroids.

---

Mary Grabar, Ph.D., taught college English for 20 years. She is now a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. She founded the Dissident Prof Education Project, Inc., a 501(c)(3) education reform initiative that offers information and resources for students, parents and citizens. The motto, “Resisting the Re-Education of America,” arose in part from her perspective as a very young immigrant from the former Communist Yugoslavia (Slovenia specifically). She writes extensively and is also a published poet and fiction writer. Ms. Grabar is a contributor to SFPPR News and; Analysis.

 

Observations From the Back Row For December 19, 2014.

Political Journalism Endangers Our Survival, By Ileana Johnson 

Journalism in this country, if it ever was completely honest and objective, has become in-your-face political journalism—to be more specific, Democrat Party agenda progressive journalism. Dr. Savage called it "narrative journalism." We often have to consult foreign news to find out what is going on in our own country. We are no longer watching the news when a talking head on location somewhere is trying to explain what happened, what we are seeing, and who is involved to the best of their knowledge. The actual news reporting is very rare. What passes for news is the cable news owners' progressive agenda or the newspapers' affiliation with the Democrat Party. "News" is sensational videotaping and coverage of one event ad nauseam, the glorification of criminals, and of Hollywood stars who pass away from drug overdoses or other unfortunate accidents.....

My Take - It's clear the media is totally corrupt, historically ignorant, and logically challenged. Has it ever been different? No! In days gone by the media, which consisted of newspapers only, lied, postured and supported the same kind of clowns that are in office now. 

 

The only real difference was they were open in their biases. The media managed to convince people by getting a degree in journalism it made them impartial distributors of "truth". That was a lie from the beginning! When I see them continuously spewing out all the leftist claptrap they espouse, in spite of all the historical evidence that shows these views are irrational, misanthropic and morally defective, I have to wonder if they aren't insane. I know they aren't rational, or truthful - but are they sane.

Ted Versus Jeb - 2016 Republican Smackdown?, By The Common Constitutionalist

Exploratory committee my a**. Jeb is in, and aren't we just better for it. I was wondering when a reasonable candidate was going to jump in, and although it does happen, it's pretty rare that a candidate commissions an exploratory committee and doesn't get in the race. As I see it today, there will be one real conservative - Ted Cruz- a few semi to faux-conservatives such as Rand Paul,Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio, and a slew of big government progressives: Jeb, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and probably many others……

Wisconsin State Superintendent of Schools Misrepresents Common Core, By Karen Schroeder

Wisconsin's State Superintendent of Schools, Tony Evers, misrepresents the effect of Common Core Standards through his recent press release, "Higher standards: The right direction for students." Evers promises parents that the implementation of Common Core State Standards will "ready [students] for on-the-job training, an apprenticeship, or coursework at a college or university." Numerous educational experts have identified specific weaknesses in CCSS which will render students unprepared for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM courses) at the college level. Preparation for on-the-job training or an apprenticeship requires students to be skilled in basic math. Because the Common Core Curriculum has returned to the futile discovery and inquiry methods of instruction used in "New Math" or "Modern Math" which failed our children in the 1960s and 1970s, the re-implementation of these methods is once again confusing and frustrating parents and students......

Watch: MarcMorano and Walt Cunningham in contentious debate on UN Climate TV at Lima Summit, By Marc Morano

Apollo 7's Walt Cunningham: 'My background in space science. My doctoral thesis that I was working on was fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field. I have no political inhibitions at all, I just think we ought to be honest about this and not be trying to use it to our own ends to try to get money from the government.'

Also see: Apollo Astronaut Slams UN for perpetrating the ‘one of the biggest frauds in the field of science’.

Marc Morano: 'The UN is first and foremost political and they have bastardized science to achieve a political end...The UN claims that they can alter global temperature and storminess and weather events many decades to 100 years into the future. And the United Nations does not have that power -- that is reserved for medieval witchcraft.'…..

Policy-based evidence making, By Matt Ridley

Science is being corrupted by political bias. As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples. Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods”in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.  This month has seen three egregious examples of poor scientific practice. The most recent was the revelation in The Times last week that scientists appeared to scheme to get neonicotinoid pesticides banned, rather than open-mindedly assessing all the evidence. These were supposedly“independent” scientists, yet they were hand in glove with environmental activists who were receiving huge grants from the European Union to lobby it via supposedly independent reports, and they apparently had their conclusions in mind before they gathered the evidence. Documents that have recently come to light show them blatantly setting out to make policy-based evidence, rather than evidence-based policy…......

Mrs. Obama’s Tall Tales of Racialized Victimhood, by Michelle Malkin

Oh, woe is she. In an “exclusive” interview with People magazine this week, first lady Michelle Obama lamented the “sting” of “racist experiences” that she and her husband allegedly still suffer. My message for America’s Marie Antoinette? Cry me a river.  To show how she’s down with The Struggle of post-Ferguson agitators, Mrs. Obama cited a supposedly horrifying incident at a Target store where she was treated, in her paranoid mind, as a subservient. “Even as the first lady,” she bemoaned,“not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf.” A lowly peon asked her for an innocent favor? It’s Jim Crow all over again! ABC News reports that Mrs. Obama said such“incidents are ‘the regular course of life’ for African-Americans and a‘challenge’ for the country to overcome.” Newsflash: Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe that it is part of the“regular course of life” of tall people of all colors (Mrs. Obama is 5-foot-11) to be prevailed upon to reach high on behalf of those of us who are vertically challenged. These are not odious “incidents” of racism between slaves and masters. They’re matters of common courtesy between equals…..

Has the West Lost the Will to Live? by Mark Tapson

When it became too obvious to deny that the hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia was an act of Islamic terrorism, Prime Minister Tony Abbott asked Aussie citizens for calm, saying, “The whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society – nothing should ever change that. And that’s why I would urge all Australians today to go about their business as usual.” That’s what a politician is expected to say. But what he should have said is that the time for business-as-usual is over……The West is in decline for a number of reasons, one of which is its cultural capitulation in the face of an ascendant Islamic fundamentalism. It is as if we, or at least our leaders and elites, have lost the cultural will to live. We need to get in touch with a sort of cultural rage, a fierce determination to crush threats to our culture, our values, and our liberty. We need to demonstrate that our tolerance has reached an end, that there will be no more coexistence with an ideology openly dedicated to our destruction. “Never mind normal,” as Jack Engelhard put it. To paraphrase his wish for Israel, for once let our blood “be exceptional and cause for nausea and trembling” among our enemies. Show the jihadists that there will be no more business-as-usual capitulation, and that they can expect us to unleash hell in retaliation for a single drop of Western blood......

Obama’s Bailout for Communist Dictators, byDaniel Greenfield

The Soviet Union did not have to fall. If Carter had won a second term and Mondale had succeeded him, the Communist dictatorship might have received the outside help it needed to survive. And we would still be living under the shadow of the Cold War. Carter couldn’t save the Soviet Union, but he did his best to save Castro, visiting Fidel and Raul in Cuba where the second worst president in American history described his meeting with Castro as a greeting among “old friends”. Raul Castro called Carter “the best of all U.S. presidents.” Obama’s dirty deal with Raul will make the worst president in American history, Castro’s new best friend. Carter couldn’t save Castro, but Obama did. This was not a prisoner exchange. This was a Communist bailout…..

Rasmussen Report

1. Voters See A Sinking America - U.S. voters are less bullish on America's role in the world and see a diminished United States in the decades to come. Read More

2. Homeowners Worry A Bit More About Their Mortgage Payments - The number of homeowners who think they are likely to miss or be late on a mortgage payment in the next few months is at its highest level in over a year. Read More

3. Voters to Obama, Congress: Work Together! - Voters are closely divided over whether the upcoming Congress will be better than the one that is now leaving town, but they believe overwhelmingly that President Obama and the new Congress should work together rather than stand on principle. Read More

4. Voters Want Feds to Cut Spending to Boost Economy

5. Daily Presidential Tracking Poll: 47% Approve of Obama's Performance

My Take - The voters - 47% of whom have brains filled with mush - want the Executive branch and Congress to work together but they never say how that’s to be done when the philosophical divide between them is so enormous. There are those who want to spend far more than we have - all the way until oblivion. A second side merely wants to slow oblivion down, a third group wants to hold expenditures to current levels and a fourth group that wants to reverse to the whole process by cutting expenditures dramatically and dismantling huge sections of an overbearing, intrusive, incompetent, corrupt government that interprets the Constitution in such a way that makes society the servant and they the masters instead of the reverse.

So my question to those who took this poll as part of this idiotic report is this: Who should back down? These voters think the nation is going to hell in a hand basket and 47% like Obama - a number Rasmussen puts out daily which hardly varies - a man who is openly being called the stupidest President in history - saving Jimmy Carter from that distinction. Is it any wonder why I think polls and poll takers are full of it? Is it any wonder I think Jonathan Gruber was right?

Before There Was Common Core! By Rich Kozlovich

Before there was Common Core there was this 1912 8th grade test for Bullett County Schools in Kentucky. I want all Common Core supporters to take this 1912 8th grade test, and then tell me how many 8th graders could pass this test. Remember, this was before the leftists took control of education in the nation and the creation of the Department of Education. Two questions. Were schools more effective before all that interference with local parental control or did they become more effective now with centralized control. This appeared here. And for all those Common Core supporters that take this test and fail it. Gohere for a list of answers.You might also wish to review this 8th grade test from Salina Kansas in 1895.

Local Reporter Explains Why San Francisco Must Endure Free Speech & the Truth about Islamic Jihad, By Pam Geller

Every time my AFDI ads run in San Francisco, city officials and the enemedia get into an uproar. They can’t stand for the truth about Islam and jihad to be told — and apparently, the little totalitarians don’t understand why it is even allowed to be told. So here, Liza Veale of KALW explains to San Francisco leftists that unfortunately, there is this thing called free speech:

Junk study by Harvard School of Public Health tries to link pollution and autism: fails miserably, American Council on Science and Health

Regular readers of our Dispatch know that our scientists have little respect for the typically-junk reports published in Environmental Health Perspective, and the same goes for authors based at the Harvard School of Public Health. The journal and the academic center often seem to have the same goal: ignore or flout or distort the rules of science and sound statistics whenever needed to promote their anti-chemical, anti-technology agendas. They have struck again with a remarkable pseudo-analysis of air pollution’s alleged link to autism…….“Over and over again, we see this type of phony, pseudo-quantitative junk being passed off as a putative link or association between factors that is simply not grounded in science, the study’s own data, or even common sense. But this author, Weisskopf, went beyond the fringe when he said this: ‘One of the unique aspects of the study we did is that it provides an even stronger piece of evidence for there being a causal effect…It’s really the pollution doing it.’ He gives away his clear bias and abandonment of any semblance of science: no observational/retrospective study can allow a ‘cause-and-effect’ inference, even a strong, solid study. And this is the antithesis of a strong study: it’s based on sand and smoke and mirrors, fully committed to its agenda.”

Only 45% of UN Member-States Back Iran Human Rights Measure; Cuba Leads the Opposition, By Patrick Goodenough

The U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Thursday passed an annual resolution condemning human rights abuses in Iran, but fewer than half the world’s nations supported the measure, marking the third consecutive year in which the number of countries voting in favor fell.....The resolution was introduced earlier this year by Canada on behalf of a group of mostly Western democracies.  The 35 countries which opposed the resolution fell into three broad categories – Islamic states; communist, leftist or other authoritarian regimes; and two Asian democracies with “non-aligned” tendencies (India and Indonesia).....Leading the opposition.... was Cuba, whose delegate charged that the “toxic practices and double standards and selectivity” contained in the measures “violate human rights.”.....“These resolutions are intended to harm developing countries, and they are politically motivated and have absolutely nothing to do with the defense of human rights and contribute nothing to that cause,”..... The same UNGA session.....dealt with a resolution on “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination” – which contains language criticizing Israel over the security barrier it built between areas under its control and those administered by the Palestinian Authority in a bid to deter suicide bombings. The measure passed by a huge vote: 180-7.....Before the end of December, the UNGA will also pass another nine resolutions critical of Israel. During a committee stage last month all nine were adopted by overwhelming margins......Israel was criticized in at least 32 resolutions between 2009 and mid-2014.....

More 'Tolerance' From Stalinist Universities, By David Limbaugh
Honestly, sometimes leftist thought police surprise even me, not so much with their unreasonableness, extremism and tyrannical tactics but with their brazenness in openly showing who they are. Each new day's headlines trump yesterday's. A few weeks ago, Fox News' Todd Starnes reported on a Marquette University student's encounter with his ethics instructor. The professor, Cheryl Abbate, was leading her "Theory of Ethics" class in a discussion about the application of philosophical theories to controversial political issues. Among the issues listed on the blackboard were gay rights, gun rights and the death penalty. Professor Abbate removed gay rights from the list before the discussion began, with the summary explanation, "We all agree on this." This puzzled the student, as he certainly did not agree with his instructor's view on the issue and believed it should have been open for discussion along with the other issues. He approached Abbate after class and expressed his opinion that the class should have been allowed to discuss gay rights...... His complaint with university officials went nowhere.....Marquette professor John McAdams learned about the incident and expressed his strong disapproval on his blog, Marquette Warrior. McAdams wrote: "Like the rest of academia, Marquette is less and less a real university. And when gay marriage cannot be discussed, certainly not a Catholic university."....McAdams received a letter from the dean relieving him of his teaching duties, saying he was under investigation and banned from campus.....The enemies of liberty and tolerance continue their scorched-earth oppression of their political opponents under the fraudulent banners of tolerance and liberty — and it is truly sickening and highly disturbing.

How Congress Snuck Changes to U.S. Environmental Policy into the New Budget Bill, By Joshua A. Krisch and Josh Fischman

It took 1,603 pages of legalese to keep the U.S. government running for another year. That is the length of the 2015 Fiscal Year Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which was approved by the Senate on Saturday to appropriate $1.01 trillion dollars for most federal agencies and departments through September 2015. The bill is on Pres. Obama’s desk waiting for his signature. It is not all about dollars. Congress also loaded the bill with special instructions, called policy riders, which dictate how government funds must be spent. Because the bill was rushed through just before the government ran out of money, and Congressional leaders did not want another government shutdown if the bill did not pass, lawmakers seized the opportunity to tack on controversial riders that might otherwise have been debated. A lot of those 11th-hour mandates will affect science and environmental policy. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, got $8.1 billion. That’s $60 million less than last year and the agency now has to operate at its smallest budget since 1989. But even that money comes with conditions. Although agriculture is a major source of atmospheric methane, Congress forbade the EPA from using its funds to require farmers to report greenhouse gas emissions from “manure management systems.” And the agency is no longer permitted to regulate farm ponds and irrigation ditches under the Clean Water Act.

Dr. Ozvorkian gets busted again. You are better off flipping a coin.  Posted by the American Council on Science and Health

When Dr. Oz eventually goes to the magic fat burner in the sky, he may reflect upon the past few months and conclude that there may have been better times in his professional life. The former golden boy of TV medicine has not really contributed all that much to public health, but he has inadvertently revived a previously-defunct science: alchemy. Defying all rules of chemistry, he seems to have stumbled upon a way to actually transform elements! Except in this case, the transformation hasn’t been lead to gold. It is more like gold to tin.  And, as anyone with a passable knowledge of chemistry will tell you, gold does not tarnish. But tin certainly does, although maybe not as quickly as Oz’s reputation. And it is all self-inflicted. His “slump” began in earnest back in June, when he was turned into cat food by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) during a hearing at which he was tricked into believing that he was testifying about making dietary supplements safer. It didn’t exactly turn out that way, as ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom noted in his Science 2.0 piece entitled “The Lizard of Oz Takes His Own Medicine.”.......

 And Finally: This is a joke that’s been floating around but worth repeating.

 A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, a slide-rule and a calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney General Eric Holder said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.  'Al-Gebra is a problem for us', the Attorney General said. 'They derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values.' They use secret code names like "X" and "Y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns" but we have determined that they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Obama said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes." White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President.   It is believed that another Nobel Prize will follow.

Have a good weekend all!

Rich