America is lost...

Oakland schools finally re-adopting phonics after years of crappy reading instruction. Link.

This story just says it all. To fit some pre-ordained social justice outcome, "educators" basically dropped phonics instruction. They're changing back to what had previously worked for generations, but what happens to the kids who is got roped into crappy instruction for several years? They're just screwed. This is part of why people homeschool. The system is willing to use children as guinea pigs in new, crummy reading instruction and risk them not learning to read properly if it fulfills the right agenda. Sad.

Also, I read in another article about this that the guy leading the charge to bring back phonics is a NAACP activist. You know you've fallen a long way when the NAACP has to be the voice of sanity.

It's not just Oakland schools that dumped phonics. Austin ISD dropped it over a decade ago. Then somebody said 'let's introduce phonics', and the admins acted like it's a brilliant idea. See Help AISD Teacher Win $10,000 for Blast Literacy Program
 
This is more WTF
"Parents of school-age children are right to be concerned about the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposed Title IX rule. Among other problems, the rule redefines “sex” to include “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” and “pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions.”

“Sex” in all federal education policies and regulations would no longer refer to the biological reality of being male or female. The DOE is attempting to redefine – and erase – God’s design of humans as male and female, with individuals either male or female."
Help Protect School Children From Department of Education’s Title IX Rule
 
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Yep. Bring lots of defamation cases against woke idiots who run their mouths. It's the only way to get them to think twice before falsely demonizing people.
This article by Turley hints that woke culture has no mechanism to reverse course, lest the person reversing will be cancelled as well. As far as I know, the wokists at Oberlin think they won.
 
This article by Turley hints that woke culture has no mechanism to reverse course, lest the person reversing will be cancelled as well. As far as I know, the wokists at Oberlin think they won.

When they write out that check, they'll get a reminder that they lost. Hard to think you won when you're paying out that much cash.
 
Forgot the link:


He's right. All Oberlin had to do was keep its mouth shut or at least admit that they had been misinformed of the facts once that became clear, and this likely would never have even turned into a lawsuit. But if they had, they would have been demonized as sellouts by all their woke allies.

And of course, I'm sure there was a mediation in this before we trial. I'll bet that bakery would have settled for a tenth of what they'll ultimately get - perhaps even less. But again, the college would have gotten ripped for "selling out" had they made a serious attempt to settle the case. It's a classic example of going woke and going broke.
 
Jackson is a mess and has had major infrastructural problems in the past. Think Flint, Michigan but with a bunch of government instead of an auto industry.
 
There's a push in America academia to remove grades. Yes, remove grades. For years, Leander ISD hasn't used grades for Kindergarten through 3rd grade. Instead, students who previously earned a 70 - 100 now get the label "Mastery." Kids who learn nothing have the label "Developing," and kids in the middle - learn something but still fail - get the label "Satisfactory". There's also "Needs Improvement," intended to be below Developing, but it effectively means the same thing. This is the first year Leander students in 4th and 5th grades will be under this grade-less program. A student in 5th grade now had letter grades assigned last year in 4th but will not this year in 5th. Source - go to section 'K-5 Only.' Do you honestly think Leander ISD will be the only school district in Texas to do this or that districts in other states haven't already begun implementing this?

You might ask why?

The answer is simple - this promotes equity as grades are racist. Rich families - generally Asian or white - can afford time to study, do homework, and hire tutors. Poor families cannot. Therefore, this explains in the minds of proponents why some students get As, others get Cs, and yet others fail. If schools remove this style of label, then all students are nearly promised the same outcome - a "Mastery" label.

You might ask how does this educate students?

It doesn't. That's not the goal. The goal is equity. Those of us with brains know students who want to do well will continue to study and answer many if not all questions correctly on exams. Those students will just have a harder time proving to others that their "Mastery" is greater mastery than that of their peers.

You might ask how do students handle getting grades starting in middle school?

Here's what you should have suspected. This grading style is intended to move to middle school in the coming years and then into high school. Administrators are not stopping with elementary schools. You'll see why a couple of questions later.

You might ask so how does a class rank or Valedictorian work?

Those concepts go away. To give a graduation speech, a person from the Mastery label is selected. What qualifications would you guess are needed to be picked?

You might ask how does one get admitted to college?

An excellent last question for now as it brings us full circle. College academic types were the original promoters of this method under the guise of 'holistic approach.' Why admit so many whites and Asians who have great test scores? By reviewing applicants' unique experiences, poorer test scores who meet other criteria can be admitted instead. This is what led to Fisher v. UT and SFFA v. Harvard. With so many high school graduates listed only as "Mastery," universities will have their way with undergraduate selection. From personal experience, UT's graduate programs have used the holistic approach for over a decade. No administrator could tell me what an ideal candidate looked like. Undergraduate studies have begun using it too. That's why SAT and ACT scores are no longer required to gain admittance to UT! Source. How absurd to admit someone too lazy to take a standardized test once, but you better have an ACT or SAT score if you're Asian or white. How much easier it will be to prove the constitutionality of the holistic approach in a court of law once every candidate has the "Mastery" label.

Private school or home school won't help. Sure you'll get a letter grade, but how much does the college admissions office care when the vast majority of your competition isn't comparable with their "Mastery" label? The only solution is for folks who care about grades to get elected to school boards and as state Representatives or Senators. How scary to rely on public officials to win this battle.

The big name universities will sacrifice brains for quotas. Hopefully the mid-name universities will use this to their advantage to gain brains.

America is lost.
 
This case has me perplexed. The FBI ran the entire organization and kept the group together by giving them money, drugs and sex.

There were 12 informants/agents and six defendants.

How in the hell is this not entrapment?

 
I forget. Did the FBI originate the plot and recruit people to carry it out
or did FBI become aware of the plot and the dudes and then drew them in?
 
How in the hell is this not entrapment?

To make an entrapment defense, you have to prove that you lacked the predisposition to engage in the criminal conduct (meaning the defendant was an unwary innocent rather than an unwary criminal who who readily availed himself of the opportunity to perpetrate the crime). If these guys were already plotting the crime, then they're going to lose on the entrapment defense. I don't know that they were, but this is where entrapment defenses usually fail.
 
To make an entrapment defense, you have to prove that you lacked the predisposition to engage in the criminal conduct (meaning the defendant was an unwary innocent rather than an unwary criminal who who readily availed himself of the opportunity to perpetrate the crime). If these guys were already plotting the crime, then they're going to lose on the entrapment defense. I don't know that they were, but this is where entrapment defenses usually fail.

It looked to be just tough guy talk that was going nowhere. The FBI got wind of it. Here's the kicker- the whole leadership doing the planning was the FBI. They kept the operation going with the defendants as tagalongs.

This went beyond simple infiltration. The FBI WAS the operation. Without the FBI this operation goes nowhere.

Maybe entrapment isn't the right word but no way this was on the up and up.
 
Garmel it is something like entrapment if it is the government planning and keeping the people motivated to do it? The question is would these guys have followed through with the plot without the FBI agents' influence? I think the answer was no.
 

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