Biased Education

Marcella Sills, New York City`s Worst? Or the Norm? Government Subsidized Failure

Published by Papa Giorgio

Follow the Money

PS 106 was allotted $3.3 million in 2013-14, including more than $160,000 in federal Title I funds to serve kids from poor homes. Yet the “School of No” had a library in shambles, a nurse with no office, no Common Core math or reading books, first-grade special-ed students without a qualified teacher and no payroll secretary to keep the books. (NYP)

The New York Post reports the following, on the “Principle of the Year”

“Get rid of her before it’s too late,” a 2007 letter urged District 27 Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bey, who oversees Queens principals…

…Sills, 48, was a graduate of the DOE’s “Leadership Academy,” which trains principals, and had little teaching experience. Insiders said she lacked literacy skills, noting her invitation to a Nov. 23, 2005, holiday buffet “in honor of my gradutitude” to employees, including “security personel” and “custodially staff members.”

Sills ruled by threats and intimidation, ex-staffers complained. She “yells at a volume that resounds throughout the building, slams doors and uses foul language,” a 2006 letter to Condon claims.

That letter also accuses Sills of racism: “She has hired only black teachers and has targeted white teachers and a secretary.” Many left or were forced out.

One former teacher charged that Sills fabricated several observations, rated her “unsatisfactory” and then forged her signature on the documents…

Maggie’s Notebook fills in some craziness from the school:

"Belle of the Gall" New York Post (Sills in white in the middle in the strapless gown.

Marcella Sills is the principal at Queens Rockaway’s PS 106, a Title 1 School, 98% of the children are eligible for the free lunch program. The Free Lunch does not include learning. The New York Post has been busy skewering Sills. Parents say the school is rat-infested and children watch movies a good part of the day, quote “The kids have seen more movies than Siskel and Egert.” Substitutes are not called when a teacher doesn’t show. The school has not received Common Core math or reading books, and apparently have decided not to use whatever textbooks they’ve had in past years. Sills seldom occupies her school office, but she throws a heck of a party for the kids who can afford to rent the required clothing for a “wedding themed” event — bored children, learning nothing while risking rat-bite fever, leptospirosis, and maybe the bubonic plague.

…read more…

Could you imagine having her as the principle… teachers? Via Nicholas Stix:

….A Department of Education spokesman said Sills was required to report her absences and tardiness to District 27 Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bey but would not say whether Sills did so last week.

Lloyd-Bey did not return a call. Sills hung up on a reporter.

When she is out, an assistant principal is left in charge. Yet Sills, who gets a $128,207 salary, also pockets overtime pay — $2,900 for 83 hours in 2011, the latest available records show.

“This school is a complete s- -thole, but nobody in a position of power comes to investigate. No one cares,” a community member said.

PS 106 families hope their cries for attention bring newly installed Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña to the rescue, saying they can’t recall any prior DOE leader visiting the remote school.

She would find it sinking, they say.

The isolated building sits a block and a half from the beach, surrounded by vacant, weed-choked lots, the road behind it strewn with trash bags and broken TVs.

The floods of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 wrecked a hangar-like annex, called the Early Childhood Academy, which housed pre-K, kindergarten and first and second grades. It has not been repaired.

Two kindergarten classes moved into “temporary classroom units” in the yard. The other children moved into the main building, forcing some classes to squeeze into small offices and storage rooms. The pre-K class sits in the auditorium, but has to move to the cafeteria during the movies.

Kids in several grades said that last week they watched “Fat Albert,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Monsters, Inc.,” but did not relish the downtime.

“I like gym. I like to draw,” said Charm Russell, 10, who added her peers are too restless and bored to watch the screen. “They’re always making noise, and there’s nothing entertaining going on. No art, no gym, no music class.”

More alarming, the teachers have gotten no curricula since Sandy. Last February, the DOE announced several new options, including “Go Math” for grades K-5, and “ReadyGen” or the state Education Department’s “Core Knowledge” for English language arts. The books cover the Common Core standards, skills that kids should master at each level.

But five months into the school year, PS 106 classes still don’t have the books or teacher’s guides.

“They have no reading program, no math program,” a source said, adding Sills blames outside administrators for not sending materials.

Teachers muddle through by printing out worksheets they find online, buying their own copy paper.

…read more…

`Think Like a Nazi` ~ Educations Decline

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via Gateway Pundit and Poor Richard’s News, and is yet another example of how government involvement deteriorates teaching students well:

Think like a Nazi, the assignment required students. Argue why Jews are evil.

Students in some Albany High School English classes were asked this week as part of a persuasive writing assignment to make an abhorrent argument: “You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!”

Students were asked to watch and read Nazi propaganda, then pretend their teacher was a Nazi government official who needed to be convinced of their loyalty. In five paragraphs, they were required to prove that Jews were the source of Germany’s problems.

The exercise was intended to challenge students to formulate a persuasive argument and was given to three classes, Albany Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard said. She said the assignment should have been worded differently.

“I would apologize to our families,” she said. “I don’t believe there was malice or intent to cause any insensitivities to our families of Jewish faith.”

One-third of the students refused to complete the assignment, she said.

Vanden Wyngaard said the exercise reflects the type of writing expected of students under the new Common Core curriculum, the tough new academic standards that require more sophisticated writing. Such assignments attempt to connect English with history and social studies.

 This is worse than the “I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure” assignment!

But this thinking is becoming more ingrained in society… that is, support for radical views against Israel, support for the Palestinians, and the painting of Jews as “less than” civilized society. Here is one such example from Columbia University:

Parents In Florida Upset About Embalance of Islam Represented in a World History high School Textbook

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via Creeping Sharia:

via Protest over Islam lovefest high school history textbook | The Daily Caller.

On Florida’s Atlantic Coast, some 200 or more local parents and activists have announced plans to show up at Tuesday’s Volusia County school board meeting to protest the public school use of a world history textbook that devotes a whole chapter to Islam but exactly zero chapters to any other religions.

The textbook, called simply “World History,” contains a 32-page chapter fondly devoted to “Muslim Civilizations.” Sections include descriptions of the Koran, the growth of the Muslim empire and the Five Pillars of Islam.

The planned protest will include a demand that students rip out the 32 pages of the Islam chapter unless the school district agrees to provide students with a similar amount of officially-sanctioned material concerning other religions, reports local ABC affiliate WFTV.

The seeds for the Wednesday protest were reportedly planted after an unidentified local mother started a Facebook page demanding that local, taxpayer-funded schools stop using the textbook.

The district indicated that it will continue to use the controversial book.

School district officials in Volusia County insist that there’s no problem because other religions come up as a matter of course in the book. Thus, the argument goes, there’s no need to have a single chapter dedicated to, say, the Gospels or the Pentateuch—or, for that matter, Hindu or Buddhist religious traditions.

“Christianity and Judaism is [sic] spread throughout the book,” a school district spokeswoman told WFTV.

The book’s supporters also argue that students know about Christianity but need to learn more about Islam because of its crucial importance in international affairs.

On Monday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement criticizing the protesters.

“This group is displaying an alarming level of intolerance and brazen disregard of minority religions here in the US. We find their actions Un-American and against every core principal that makes this country so great,” CAIR said.

Critics of the textbook include District 2 Deltona commissioner Webster Barnaby, who told WFTV that he is only seeking equal time for other religions, specifically Christianity.

“The problem is: there needs to be balance. In America today, Christianity is being relegated to the trash heap,” Barnaby told the station.

“Why relegate Christianity to a footnote in an entire history book, and you give an entire chapter on the teachings of Islam?” he added.

“To suggest that everybody knows about Christianity, that is total ignorance,” Barnaby also said.

The “World History” textbook is one of three textbooks covering similar material that meet Florida’s criteria for adoption by the state’s public schools.

As a school district spokeswoman noted, one reason school districts select this book is because it covers information required under Florida’s Next Generation Sunshine State Standards—the state’s version of the Common Core.

Why do media outlets continue to reach out for comments from the same terror-linked infiltrators who helped get Islam in and other religions out of U.S. textbooks?

PS: Muslims are not a minority.

Michigan State University Professor, William Penn, Caught Throwing Race-Card (Brainwashing)

Published by Papa Giorgio

For those that do not know what SIXHIRB means, it is this: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted. It is a way for the liberal to label and shut down freedom of thought, and deeper discussion on the issues.

Powerline has an excellent article to which I will add slightly to from a larger post of my own. First Powerline:

You may have seen the news of the professor who went off on a rant against Republicans [above] recently at Michigan State University, calling Republicans “dying white people who raped this country.” (…note that he threatens a student who apparently expressed some dissatisfaction with the instruction he was receiving.)  Ho hum, just another day at the university office, you might say.

But note that this instructor, the improbably named William Penn (that’s a suspiciously dead-white-guy-sounding name, isn’t it?), teaches creative writing, and not political science, history, sociology, or some other subject where political opinion might have a place.  According to updates from the Detroit Free Press, “professor” Penn has been suspended (with pay) for the rest of the semester, and his class reassigned to a new instructor.  Exactly why his political opinions were thought germane to a writing class is something I hope to have explained at some point.

It is worth pointing out two things: first, most of the time when you hear about these risible classroom outbursts, they occur in English, creative writing, or the subject areas that end in “studies,” and not in political science or history, which, while predominantly liberal in outlook, typically maintain some standards of rigor in the classroom.  But second, why is it you seldom or never hear of a similar classroom rant from the right?  When was the last time you saw a classroom videotape of a college professor going off on the Obama’s birth certificate and Muslim socialism?  Maybe such a tape exists and someone will show it to me, but the ratio will obviously be way out of balance.

…read more…

Here are some of my thoughts on the matter (of “greedy” Mitt Romney) from my post refuting an atheist mantra… but deals a hearty blow to the Michigan Professor:

But there are other parts of this article that interest me. It is this: “both liberalism and high levels of education correlate with atheism,” the far left site, Daily Kos, agrees as well. Higher education leads to a higher pay as well… this will become important in dismantling a popular myth. This fact disproves many mantras and myths that the political Left. So lets delve into my thoughts on this. And this begins the complexity of what “family values” are, and it is a myriad of positions. Okay, let us divide political positions firstly:

A Gallup Poll shows that 40% of Republicans say they attend church weekly. Twenty-one percent say they attend nearly weekly or monthly, and 38% say they seldom or rarely go to church.

Compare that to only 27% of Democrats who say they go to church every week, 20% who say they go monthly and 52% of Democrats who say they seldom or never go to church. These polls also show that Democrats are less religious than the average American, and Republicans are more religious. Consider this: Almost one in five Democrats identify with no religious faith compared to only one in 10 Republicans who feel that way. (CNN)

Keep in mind that when “Republicans” are mentioned below, they have a higher percentage serious Christians. Here we go. During the 2000 elections (I know these stats are old, but all of this holds true today) an interesting stat caught my attention:

Once in awhile stats are done to see which part of the country (which states in fact) give more to charity per-capita than other states. Do you know which of the top twenty states gives the most to charity? You got it, Bush country! Every single one of the red states in that top-twenty are the middle-income fly-over states. Guess how many red-states got the lower twenty of giving? Two. Eighteen States that were in the lowest giving ratio to charity were Gore states. This is even more interesting with a few recent poles. Just under 66-percent republicans go to church one-to-two times a week. Just fewer than 66-percent democrats do not even go to church once a week. DRAT those nasty religious / conservatives! (From a very old post from my BlogSpot days)

This is important for the conversation. According to the very left leaning Daily Kos, most atheists vote Democrat now, harkening back to the 2000 election stats above, what does this mean? They are selfish? Stingy? You decide.

BIDEN (Politico):

When the Obama campaign released past tax returns for Biden in 2008, it was revealed that the Bidens donated just $3,690 to charity over 10 years — an average of $369 a year.

OBAMA (WaPo):

♦ 2005: $77,315 to charity out of income of $1.66 million (4.6 percent)

♦ 2004: $2,500 out of $207,647 (1.2 percent)

♦ 2003: $3,400 out of $238,327 (1.4 percent)

♦ 2002: $1,050 out of $259,394 (0.4 percent)

Charity a Sign of Character

From Gateway Pundit:

Obama charitable contributions

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent, according to tax returns for those years released today by his campaign.

The Obamas increased the amount they gave to charity when their income rose in 2005 and 2006 after the Illinois senator published a bestselling book. The $137,622 they gave over those two years amounted to more than 5 percent of their $2.6 million income.

Romney charitable contributions

Tax year Taxable income Charitable donations Donations as % of income

  • 2010 $21.7 million $2.98 million 13.73%
  • 2011 (est) $20.9 million $4 million 19.14%

Liberal Professor Says Insulating Liberal Students To Opposing Views Hurts Them

A liberal professor interviewed in Indoctrinate U explains that protecting and teaching from one ideological viewpoint insulates students who are liberal to properly defend and coherently explain their views in the real world — outside the classroom. This excerpt is taken from two parts, Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.

Stephen Meyer and Michael Medved Discuss Censorship In Science

Published by Papa Giorgio

On the Michael Medved’s “Science & Culture Update,” he and Stephen C. Meyer talk about censorship in science, and calls are taken challenging I.D. — much of which are straw-men positions. In other words, intelligent design is miss-defined and then this position [miss-defined] is attacked.

For more clear thinking like this from Michael Medved… I invite you to visit: http://www.michaelmedved.com/

Heather Mac Donald Writes an Exploratory Surgery on California`s UC System (Excerpt)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Multiculti U

by Heather Mac Donald

@The City Journal

….The first University of California campus opened in Berkeley in 1873, fulfilling a mandate of California’s 1849 constitution that the state establish a public university for the “promotion of literature, the arts and sciences.” Expectations for this new endeavor were high; Governor Henry Haight had predicted that the campus would “soon become a great light-house of education and learning on this Coast, and a pride and glory” of the state.

He was right. Over the next 140 years, as nine more campuses were added, the university would prove an engine for economic growth and a source of human progress. UC owns more research patents than any other university system in the country. Its engineers helped achieve California’s midcentury dominance in aerospace and electronics; its agronomists aided the state’s fecund farms and vineyards. The nuclear technology developed by UC scientists and their students secured America’s Cold War preeminence (while provoking one of the country’s most cataclysmic student protest movements). UC’s physical infrastructure is a precious asset in its own right. Anyone can wander its trellised gardens and groves of native and exotic trees, or browse its library stacks and superb research collections.

But by the early 1960s, UC was already exhibiting many of the problems that afflict it today. The bureaucracy had mushroomed, both at the flagship Berkeley campus and at the Office of the President, the central administrative unit that oversees the entire UC system. Nathan Glazer, who taught sociology at Berkeley at the time, wrote in Commentary in 1965: “Everyone—arriving faculty members, arriving deans, visiting authorities—is astonished by the size” of the two administrations. Glazer noted the emergence of a new professional class: full-time college administrators who specialized in student affairs, had never taught, and had little contact with the faculty. The result of this bureaucratic explosion reminded Glazer of the federal government: “Organization piled upon organization, reaching to a mysterious empyrean height.”

At Berkeley, as federal research money flooded into the campus, the faculty were losing interest in undergraduate teaching, observed Clark Kerr, UC’s president and a former Berkeley chancellor. (Kerr once famously quipped that a chancellor’s job was to provide “parking for the faculty, sex for the students, and athletics for the alumni.”) Back in the 1930s, responsibility for introductory freshman courses had been the highest honor that a Berkeley professor could receive, Kerr wrote in his memoirs; 30 years later, the faculty shunted off such obligations whenever possible to teaching assistants, who, by 1964, made up nearly half the Berkeley teaching corps.

Most presciently, Kerr noted that Berkeley had split into two parts: Berkeley One, an important academic institution with a continuous lineage back to the nineteenth century; and Berkeley Two, a recent political upstart centered on the antiwar, antiauthority Free Speech Movement that had occupied Sproul Plaza in 1964. Berkeley Two was as connected to the city’s left-wing political class and to its growing colony of “street people” as it was to the traditional academic life of the campus. In fact, the two Berkeleys had few points of overlap.

Today, echoing Kerr, we can say that there are two Universities of California: UC One, a serious university system centered on the sciences (though with representatives throughout the disciplines) and still characterized by rigorous meritocratic standards; and UC Two, a profoundly unserious institution dedicated to the all-consuming crusade against phantom racism and sexism that goes by the name of “diversity.” Unlike Berkeley Two in Kerr’s Day, UC Two reaches to the topmost echelon of the university, where it poses a real threat to the integrity of its high-achieving counterpart….

[….]

….Yet when UC Two’s administrators and professors look around their domains, they see a landscape riven by the discrimination that it is their duty to extirpate.

Thus it was that UC San Diego’s electrical and computer engineering department found itself facing a mandate from campus administrators to hire a fourth female professor in early 2012. The possibility of a new hire had opened up—a rare opportunity in the current budget climate—and after winnowing down hundreds of applicants, the department put forward its top candidates for on-campus interviews. Scandalously, all were male. Word came down from on high that a female applicant who hadn’t even been close to making the initial cut must be interviewed. She was duly brought to campus for an interview, but she got mediocre reviews. The powers-that-be then spoke again: her candidacy must be brought to a departmental vote. In an unprecedented assertion of secrecy, the department chair refused to disclose the vote’s outcome and insisted on a second ballot. After that second vote, the authorities finally gave up and dropped her candidacy. Both vote counts remain secret.

An electrical and computer engineering professor explains what was at stake. “We pride ourselves on being the best,” he says. “The faculty know that absolute ranking is critical. No one had ever considered this woman a star.” You would think that UC’s administrators would value this fierce desire for excellence, especially in a time of limited resources. Thanks to its commitment to hiring only “the best,” San Diego’s electrical and computer engineering department has made leading contributions to circuit design, digital coding, and information theory.

Maria Sobek, UC Santa Barbara’s associate vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and academic policy and a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies, provides a window into how UC Two thinks about its mission. If a faculty hiring committee selects only white male finalists for an opening, the dean will suggest “bringing in some women to look them over,” Sobek says. These female candidates, she says, “may be borderline, but they are all qualified.” And voilà! “It turns out [the hiring committees] really like the candidates and hire them, even if they may not have looked so good on paper.” This process has “energized” the faculty to hire a woman, says Sobek. She adds that diversity interventions get “more positive responses” from humanities and social-sciences professors than from scientists.

Leave aside Sobek’s amusing suggestion that the faculty just happen to discover that they “really like” the diversity candidate whom the administration has forced on them. More disturbing is the subversion of the usual hiring standard from “most qualified” to “qualified enough.” UC Two sets the hiring bar low enough to scoop in some female or minority candidates, and then declares that anyone above that bar is “qualified enough” to trump the most qualified candidate, if that candidate is a white or an Asian male. This is a formula for mediocrity.

Sometimes, UC Two can’t manage to lower hiring standards enough to scoop in a “diverse” candidate. In that case, it simply creates a special hiring category outside the normal channels. In September 2012, after the meritocratic revolt in UC San Diego’s electrical and computer engineering department, the engineering school announced that it would hire an “excellence” candidate, the school’s Orwellian term for faculty who, it claims, will contribute to diversity and who, by some odd coincidence, always happen to be female or an underrepresented minority. UC San Diego’s Division of Physical Sciences followed suit the next month, listing two tenure-track positions for professors who could “shape and expand the University’s diversity initiatives.” If the division had any specific scientific expertise in mind, the job listing made no mention of it….

[….]

….The UC undergraduates whom I met in 2012 were serious, self-directed, and mature. But they are ill-served by a system that devotes so many resources to political trivia. UC Two’s diversity obsessions have no place in an institution dedicated to the development of knowledge. No one today asks whether the Berkeley physics laboratory that developed the cyclotron had a sufficient quota of women and underrepresented minorities; the beneficiaries of nuclear medicine are simply happy to be treated.

The retirement of President Yudof in summer 2013 provides an opportunity for an overdue course correction. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that anyone will seize it. Every potential countervailing force to UC Two has already been captured by UC Two’s own ideology. The California legislature is as strong an advocate for specious social-justice crusades as any vice chancellor for equity and inclusion. The regents have been unanimous cheerleaders for “diversity” and will run all presidential candidates through a predictable gauntlet of diversity interrogation. For more than a decade, the federal government has used its grant-making power to demand color- and gender-driven hiring in the sciences. UC One’s passion for discovery and learning will fuel it for a long time yet, but it will continue to be weakened severely by UC Two.

…READ IT ALL…

 

 

Social Sciences Skewed by `Lifestyle Liberalism` ~ Dennis Prager Discusses George Will`s Column on Same-Sex Marriage

Published by Papa Giorgio

From George Will’s column which Prager cites in the audio above:

…A brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the California case by conservative professors Leon Kass and Harvey Mansfield and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy warns that “the social and behavioral sciences have a long history of being shaped and driven by politics and ideology.” And research about, for example, the stability of same-sex marriages or child rearing by same-sex couples is “radically inconclusive” because these are recent phenomena and they provide a small sample from which to conclude that these innovations will be benign.

Unlike the physical sciences, the social sciences can rarely settle questions using “controlled and replicable experiments.” Today “there neither are nor could possibly be any scientifically valid studies from which to predict the effects of a family structure that is so new and so rare.”

Hence there can be no “scientific basis for constitutionalizing same-sex marriage.”

The brief does not argue against same-sex marriage as social policy, other than by counseling caution about altering foundational social institutions when guidance from social science is as yet impossible. The brief is a pre-emptive refutation of inappropriate invocations of spurious social science by supporters of same-sex marriage. For example, a district court cited Dr. Michael Lamb, a specialist in child development, asserting that the “gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in a child’s adjustment” and that “having both a male and female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted.”

The conservatives’ brief notes that, testifying in the trial court, Lamb “had conceded that his own published research concluded that growing up without fathers had significant negative effects on boys” and that considerable research indicates “that traditional opposite-sex biological parents appear in general to produce better outcomes for their children than other family structures do.”

The brief is replete with examples of misleading argumentation using data not drawn from studies satisfying “the scientific standard of comparing large random samples with appropriate control samples.” The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a distinguished social scientist, said the “pronounced” liberal orientation of the social sciences is “well established” and explainable: “Social scientists are frequently caught up in the politics which their work necessarily involves” because social science “attracts persons whose interests are in shaping the future.”

This helps explain why “Brandeis briefs” have shaped American law. Before joining the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis defended constitutional challenges to progressive legislation by using briefs stressing social science data, or what purported to be such, rather than legal arguments. He advanced his political agenda by bald assertions inexcusable even given the limited scientific knowledge of the time. For example, in his 1908 defense of an Oregon law restricting the number of hours women could work, he said “there is more water” in women’s than in men’s blood and women’s knees are constructed differently.

Since Moynihan wrote the above in 1979, the politicization of the social sciences has become even more pronounced, particularly in matters of “lifestyle liberalism.”

Hence the need for judicial wariness about social science that purports to prove propositions — e.g., that same-sex marriage is, or is not, harmful to children or society — for which there cannot yet be decisive evidence.

…read more…