Tag Archives: #Education

Posted on by

Harvard University defends anti-Semitism and racial discrimination

Also see: William Teach, “Trump Admin Cancels $2.3 Billion In Funding To Harvard“

Hahvahd University is a private school, over which President Donald Trump, the hopefully soon-to-be-closed Department of Education, and the federal government in general have no direct authority. With an endowment of $50.7 billion as of the end of its 2023 fiscal year. Founded October 28, 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, as well as the wealthiest.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Harvard Says It Will Fight Trump Administration Demands

The government has threatened to withhold nearly $9 billion in grants and contracts

By Douglas Belkin and Sara Randazzo | Monday, April 14, 2025 | 5:02 PM EDT

Harvard University said Monday it will resist the Trump administration’s demands to change its governance structure over campus antisemitism concerns, saying the government is overstepping its authority.

The response is likely to set up a fight between the nation’s wealthiest university and the federal government, which has threatened to withhold nearly $9 billion in grants and contracts to the school and its affiliated hospitals.

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a letter to the school’s community.

Harvard’s response is the most significant pushback against the government since it began making demands on universities earlier this year.

The Trump administration task force on antisemitism wrote the school earlier this month asking it to take nine actions that “we regard as necessary for Harvard University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.”

Harvard came under fire following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and the subsequent pro-‘Palestinian’ and pro-Hamas demonstrations on campuses across the country. We previously noted the turd-in-the-punchbowl performances of then-Harvard University President Claudine Gay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth, and Liz Magill, then the President of the University of Pennsylvania, in testimony in Congress. The three university presidents, intelligent and highly educated woman all, managed to all flub the answer to an obvious question, all in the same manner, and all of which reeked of collusion. When put under pressure, they all proved to be as dumb as a box of rocks.

Most of the demands concern how the university operates. The government is asking for a comprehensive mask ban as well as changes to governance, leadership and admissions and an end to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs.

Notably the government also is seeking to reach into the classroom, demanding “necessary changes” be made “to address bias, improve viewpoint diversity, and end ideological capture,” which fuel antisemitic harassment, the task force’s letter said.

I admit to being somewhat less than impressed with how Harvard is educating its students these days. The Editorial Board of the Harvard Crimson seemed to think that Dylan Roof, the South Carolina mass murderer, was coddled due to his white privilege because the police brought him food after his arrest, when he said he was hungry. Not feeding Mr Roof, who told the police he hadn’t eaten for a couple of days, would have been a civil rights violation which could have tainted his arrest. It took me, with my baccalaureate degree from the not-so-selective University of Kentucky, about three seconds to find that information.

DEI? Havard has already lost when the Supreme Court declared Affirmative Action programs which discriminate against non-favored racial and ethnic — read: white and Asian — groups to be illegal in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, declaring what we all knew, that the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment prohibited Affirmative Action using racial preferences in collegiate admissions, so ‘DEI’ programs were always legally suspect.

Why, I have to ask, does Harvard want to defend racial discrimination and anti-Semitism? Harvard has a fairly large number of Jewish Americans among its alumni, and some of those wealthier alumni have been saying that they will simply not consider applicants from colleges which have tolerated and defended anti-Semitism on campus. It would seem that the elites’ hatred for President Donald Trump is leading them to defend the indefensible.

Hahvahd can, of course, afford defunding by the federal government, due to its huge endowment, and they have every right to refuse the President’s demands. But the University, in the end, is an institution by and of Western civilization, and not supporting Western civilization against the forces of barbarism — and supporting the ‘Palestinians’ and Hamas is most certainly supporting barbarism — is a prescription for suicide.

Posted on by

Why doesn’t The Philadelphia Inquirer report the whole truth about the city’s public schools.

Thanks to former city councilwoman Helen Gym Flaherty’s failed campaign for the 2023 Democratic nomination for Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, this site has reported several times on the Edward T Steel Elementary and Middle Schools, noting something that The Philadelphia Inquirer never bothered to tell readers as Mrs Flaherty, who campaigned on her educational record, used that school as a backdrop for her campaign, proudly telling the voters that she helped keep the school from “going charter.” What didn’t the newspaper tell its readership? That the school had an absolutely abysmal academic performance. That school is ranked 1193th out of 1591 in Pennsylvania Elementary Schools and ranked 656th out of 875 in Pennsylvania Middle Schools. Schools are ranked on their performance on state-required tests, graduation, and how well they prepare their students for high school. In the current rankings, 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and 2% of students who scored at or above the proficient level for math.

This Philly principal struggled as a student. Now she inspires kids in Kensington.

Awilda Balbuena was one of several School District of Philadelphia principals recognized with the 2025 Lindback Award for Distinguished Principal Leadership.

by Kristen A Graham | Tuesday, April 8, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

Gloria Casarez Elementary School, via Google Maps.

Awilda Balbuena graduated from high school unable to read proficiently. She was rejected from every law school she applied to.

Now, she’s one of Philadelphia’s best school leaders, the recipient of a 2025 Lindback Award for Distinguished Principal Leadership.

Balbeuna’s rise is remarkable, but emblematic of what the Gloria Casarez Elementary principal tells the students and staff of the Kensington school: There is promise and power inside all of us, and with hard work, we can accomplish great things, even among difficult circumstances.

“I want to breathe hope into people who were discouraged like I was,” said Balbena. “This isn’t your most uplifting neighborhood; it’s not like you’re going to leave my school and go run into hope. You have to go looking for hope. You have to be connected to someone who has that hope.”

It’s a moderate-length article, in which the newspaper’s primary education reporter tells us about Principal Balbuena’s early struggles and how she eventually overcame them. But in all of the positives Miss Graham told readers about the Principal’s personal accomplishments, she omitted the same thing that the newspaper’s stories on Steel School omitted: basic indices on how well the school is educating its students.

Well, The First Street Journal doesn’t omit things like that. We actually look up the data!

At Gloria Casarez Elementary School, 3% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 12% scored at or above that level for reading.

Compared with the district, the school did worse in math and worse in reading, according to this metric. In Philadelphia City School District, 31% of students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 14% tested at or above that level for math.

Gloria Casarez Elementary School did worse in math and worse in reading in this metric compared with students across the state. In Pennsylvania, 53% of students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 37% tested at or above that level for math.

Flags mounted outside Casarez Elementary School.

Compared to other schools? Casarez Elementary ranked 1193rd out of 1591 Pennsylvania Elementary Schools overall, 1523rd in reading and 1563rd in math. The school was 102nd out of 136 city public elementary schools.

I suppose that’s better than the Edward T Steel schools, but that’s damning with faint praise!

The rankings weren’t difficult to find at all; Google is our friend, and we have no doubts at all concerning Miss Graham’s ability to do that research.

It has to be asked: why did Miss Balbeuna win a 2025 Lindback Award for Distinguished Principal Leadership when the school she runs is doing such a terrible job? Gloria Casarez Elementary School’s function is not to promote the personal achievements of its principal and staff but to actually educate children. In that, the school is failing, and that means the Principal has failed.

The image of Casarez Elementary gleaned from Google Maps included the school’s flagpole. It’s a bit difficult to see, but it’s there: an American flag, with an “LGBTQ+” flag immediately below it. What, exactly, is being taught at this Kindergarten through 5th grade school? It would seem rather obvious that reading and mathematics aren’t being taught well enough, certainly not well enough for the school to be wasting times on alternative sexual preferences and identifications.

But, whatever is being done in the Gloria Casarez Elementary School, it is being done wrong.

Posted on by

You in a heap o’ trouble, girl! Yet another teacher charged with molesting a minor

Elena Bardin and her husband, via the New York Post.

This story was in the Lexington Herald-Leader, but, adhering to the McClatchy mugshot policy, the Kentucky newspaper didn’t print the mugshot of the accused. Fortunately, the New York Post did.

Police: Kentucky teacher had sexual contact with minor, asked him to kill her husband

By Bill Estep | Updated April 4, 2025 | 11:31 AM EDT

Police have charged a Kentucky school teacher with giving sexually explicit material to a male juvenile and soliciting him to kill her husband.

Kentucky State Police arrested Elena Bardin, 27, of Columbia on Wednesday, according to a news release.

Police said workers at the Adair Regional Juvenile Detention Center did a routine search of juveniles’ living quarters on March 27 and found letters and explicit material in one teen’s belongings, allegedly sent by an Adair County teacher assigned to the center.

Even before I accessed Mrs Bardin’s picture online, I noticed that the report specified that the victim in this case is male. It’s when the reports decline to specify the victim’s sex that I wonder if the sexual abuse was homosexual in nature.

The reports do not tell us for what the student was incarcerated, but the Adair Learning Center, where Mrs Bardin was listed as a teacher, states, on its website:

The mission of Adair Youth Development Center is to provide treatment opportunities for boys and girls committed to the Department of Juvenile Justice, who are classified as a Level V Security-Risk (maximum security). Youth committed to the center will have an Individual Treatment Plan that outlines specific goals of rehabilitation and learning. Each youth will also have individualized academic instruction designed to earn credits toward receipt of their high school diploma or GED. The instruction and treatment provided at Adair Youth Development Center is designed to prepare the youth for reintroduction into a less secure placement and ultimate release to the community.

Yeah, not a good look.

This is part of the Adair County School District, which means that Mrs Bardin had to have at least a bachelor’s degree; she had to have gone to college, but apparently going to college doesn’t mean that you can’t be absolutely boneheadedly stupid. If she wanted to be rid of her husband she could have divorced him, and while that would have been uncomfortable, she wouldn’t be in jail right now, accused of trying to have him killed.

She was working in a juvenile prison; how could she not have known that the inmates’ quarters are occasionally searched?

Mrs Bardin is, of course, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Posted on by

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Another teacher caught raping a student.

Christyan Cabrera, mugshot via WCNC.

As soon as I heard about this, checked all of the available articles, and, as usual, they all left out one pertinent bit of information.

Former Rowan County teacher appears in court after being arrested for alleged sexual relationship with a student

Christyan Cabera, 25, was a world history teacher at West Rowan High School. The district said he is no longer employed at the school.

by Nathaniel Puente and Jesse Pierre | Thursday, March 27, 2025 | 6:31 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, March 28, 2025 | 7:20 PM EDT

ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. — A former West Rowan High School teacher was arrested for multiple sexual assault charges involving a 15-year-old student, authorities reported. Continue reading →

Posted on by

Edward T Steel Elementary and Middle Schools Our current education bureaucracy hasn't done very much good, has it?

The First Street Journal has mentioned the Edward T Steel Elementary and Middle School several times previously, primarily in connection with former Philadelphia city councilwoman Helen Gym Flaherty and her use of the school as a backdrop in her campaign for the Democratic mayoral nomination in the spring of 2023, a nomination she very fortunately lost. Mrs Flaherty proudly proclaimed that it was thanks to her efforts that the school didn’t “go charter”. We noted, at the time, that the school at the time ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, in which 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math.

Well, that was then, and this is now, 1¾ years later, and the ranks have been updated Continue reading →

Posted on by

Has the federal Department of Education actually improved educational outcomes?

The left are totally aghast that President Trump’s plans to shut down the federal Department of Education are beginning to be put into action. “Students will suffer harm,” CNN told us, after department’s civil rights office was ‘gutted.’ Education professionals in Charlotte are “sounding the alarm,” “Ten percent of the district’s funding comes from the feds, used to pay for basic educational needs, staffing and professional development,” and “‘We really don’t know who, which department, what positions, who’s controlling what really, it’s up in the air right now,’ said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board Vice Chair Dee Rankin.” readers were told, which raises the obvious questions: why are local schools being partially funded by the feds, and why should the feds be controlling anything? NBC News told us that “Experts say this week’s mass layoffs could lead to less research and support for children with special needs.”

But perhaps, just perhaps, it should be asked whether the Department of Education was actually improving education. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Lower Merion led racial equity efforts in the ′90s. But its achievement gap has only widened.

Continue reading →

Posted on by

A win for normality and common sense at Radnor High School

Radnor is a suburb of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, straddling Delaware and Montgomery Counties, about 13 miles west of the city and part of the “Main Line” suburbs. Both were carried by then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, by slightly over 60% of the vote, but slightly lower margins than the Democrats won in 2020. I expect the opinion columnists at The Philadelphia Inquirer to be outraged by this:

Radnor bans three books in response to a parent’s challenge, including ‘Gender Queer’

An ad hoc committee convened by Radnor’s superintendent reviewed three books, and determined by a 5-1 vote that the challenged books “are not age-appropriate for students.”

by Maddie Hanna | Tuesday, March 4, 2025 | 2:01 PM EST

Radnor High School has removed three books from its library, including Gender Queer and another LGBTQ-themed book, after a parent alleged they contained child pornography. Continue reading →

Posted on by

When the Jew haters tell you who they are, believe them! "Students for Justice in Palestine" could have protested at Israeli consulate, but chose to protest at Jewish center

This poor site, along with literally hundreds of others, has covered the pro-‘Palestinian, really pro-Hamas ‘demonstrations’ on our college campuses last spring. I did note, with some pleasure, that at least at my alma mater, the University of Kentucky, the protests were carried out the way the First Amendment, which guarantees to all of us both the freedom of speech and the right of peaceable assembly, contemplated, peaceably.

Sadly, many of the pro-savages demonstrations at other schools were not entirely peaceable. But I did gloat report on those demonstrations fading away when school was out for the summer.

Well, it’s a new school year — though October seems like this article is a bit late — and the Usual Suspects have been up to their old tricks. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Temple suspends pro-Palestinian student group; Muslim advocates call to investigate police over alleged hijab removal during campus protest

CAIR is calling for an investigation after Temple University’s handling of a protest, where they say a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab.

by Max Marin and Robert Moran | Wednesday, October 2, 2024 | 2:02 PM EDT | Updated: 6:37 PM EDT

Temple University has temporarily banned Students for Justice in Palestine from operating on campus, the latest in a wave of suspensions against pro-Palestinian student groups amid sustained protests against the war in Gaza.

The move comes after police detained four SJP members, including a Temple student, during a demonstration that interrupted an on-campus career fair last week.

So, the “Students for Justice in Palestine” demonstration was not peaceable in nature, but interrupted a meeting to help more sensible students at Temple who were looking to begin their professional careers after graduation. You know, the sensible thing to do after spending a boatload of money for a university education.

Muslim community leaders are calling for an investigation into the university’s handling of that protest after a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab and detained the woman without access to her religious head covering.

If that happened, and I will never believe claims by “Muslim community leaders” without outside corroboration, it would have been because the woman was resisting arrest.

While Temple did not cite that specific incident, a university spokesperson said in a statement that the interim suspension stemmed from “recent conduct,” and the student activist group is now forbidden from holding on-campus activities, including “meetings, social and philanthropic events.” The suspension was first reported by the Temple News.

The spokesperson pointed to the university’s on-campus demonstration guidelines that are “in place to ensure the safety and well-being of community members while also encouraging and preserving freedom of expression.” . . . .

This is not the group’s first brush with university leaders. Temple president Richard Englert denounced an SJP-led demonstration in August after protesters chanted outside a Jewish student center on campus.

In a statement, Englert threatened disciplinary action against students who participated in the rally, which he described as a form of “intimidation and harassment.” The pro-Palestinian student group pushed back against Englert’s comments, arguing in a post on social media that the president “distorted our message to serve the false narrative that Temple SJP is a threat to Temple.”

No, I suppose that the pro-barbarian students wouldn’t see accosting Jewish students outside of a known Jewish student gathering place as “intimidation and harassment,” but the Jews on campus certainly would have, and did:

Temple University says it is investigating a student pro-Palestinian demonstration held outside a Jewish center on campus

“Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated,” Temple’s president said.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, August 29, 2024 | 10:40 PM EDT

Temple University said it is investigating for possible disciplinary action a pro-Palestinian march by students and nonstudents who demonstrated outside a Jewish center on campus Thursday.

The protest march began at the Charles Library, said Temple University president Richard Englert in a statement, then some demonstrators went to the Rosen Center, which is the home at Temple of Hillel, an international organization for Jewish students.

“While there, the demonstrators used megaphones to chant directly at the occupants within the building,” Englert said.

Emphasis mine. Using megaphones to chant directly at the people in the Hillel Center, the majority of who could be assumed to be Jewish, would constitute targeted ethnic and religious harassment.

“We are deeply saddened and concerned by these events,” Englert said. “Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated.”

This was clearly a protest against Jews in general, not just Israeli policy, as the “Students for Justice in Palestine” have conflated the two. Not all Jews are Israelis, and at an American college 5,774 miles away from Israel, it’s virtually certain that most of the Jews on campus at Temple are not from Israel.

There is an Israeli consulate in Philadelphia, at 1880 John F. Kennedy Blvd, which is just 2.6 miles away from the Hillel Center, at 1441 West Norris Street, pretty much of a straight march down Broad Street, though, admittedly, marching that way takes you partly into the Philadelphia Badlands. If the SJP wanted to protest Israeli government policies specifically, they could have been protesting outside the consulate; instead they were harassing people they knew to be Jooooos.

Temple’s actions won’t stop the SJP from existing; all it does is ban them as a student organization and deny them use of Temple’s facilities.

Our First Amendment was written by civilized men, with civilized behavior in mind; they cited “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. It does not protect some right to harass others, or gather in mobs, or riot.

But the pro-‘Palestinian’ people in this country, and around the world, are not truly civilized men. They might think that they are, but they are supporting the barbarism of Hamas, they are supporting the antithesis of the Western civilization, the benefits of which they enjoy.  The “Students for Justice in Palestine” have a right to exist, and to protest peacefully; it’s only when the break the code of civilization that they become subject to arrest.

The one thing they do not have is any right to the respect of decent people, and for them, I have none. When the anti-Semites tell you who they really are, you should believe them!

Posted on by

More public school officials fail to meet their responsibilities

People can get angry, sometimes over stupid things. People can respond to their anger by doing stupid things. Yes, we all do it, and I will admit to having done so in the past. But the people around them, if they have any authority, ought to be held responsible for letting things get out of hand. That’s the case in this situation:

Kansas school employee locked teen with Down syndrome in closet, storage cage, lawsuit says

August 17, 2024 / 3:48 PM EDT / CBS/AP

A paraeducator of a rural Kansas school district repeatedly shoved a teenager with Down syndrome into a utility closet, hit the boy and once photographed him locked in a cage used to store athletic equipment, a lawsuit claims.

The suit filed Friday in federal court said the paraprofessional assigned to the 15-year-old sent the photo to staff in the Kaw Valley district, comparing the teen to an animal and “making light of his serious, demeaning and discriminatory conduct.”

While the CBS article does not name the “paraprofessional,” the story in the Daily Mail, which admittedly goes for the sensational, said he was Albert Bahret. The image to the right comes from the Daily Mail, and was not in the CBS story. The Kansas City Star’s story is hidden behind a McClatchy paywall, but is available without a subscription via Yahoo! News.

Let’s be clear here: these things have been alleged in a lawsuit, and allegations in a lawsuit do not constitute proof.

The teen’s parents alleged in the suit that the paraprofessional did not have a key to the cage where sports equipment was kept and had to enlist help from other district staff to open the door and release their son, who is identified in the complaint only by his initials. The suit, which includes the photo, said it was not clear how long the teen was locked in the cage.

The lawsuit names Mr Bahret, other special education staff and the district, which enrolls around 1,100 and is based in St. Marys, about 30 miles northwest of Topeka.

Let’s assume that Mr bahret lost his temper, but any, and I stress any competent school administration would have immediately taken serious action against him. If he had to get others to help him release the handicapped boy, then other people in the school knew what had been done, and any of them had to have known that Mr Bahret needed to be immediately suspended pending investigation.

The suit said some staff expressed concerns to the special education teacher who oversaw the paraprofessional, as well as the district’s special education director. But the suit said neither of them intervened, even though there had been other complaints about the paraprofessional’s treatment of disabled students in the past.

If this is true, it has to be asked: how were the school’s “special education teacher” and the “district’s special education director” so poorly trained in their jobs that they did not recognize that Mr Bahret’s behavior was wholly improper and a huge liability to the school and the district? These people are all college graduates, supposedly educated on things like this, and had to understand that the “paraprofessional” needed to be removed from the school and reported to law enforcement, as soon as they became aware of the first complaint against him.

The suit said the director instructed subordinates not to report their concerns to the state child welfare agency. However, when the parents raised concerns, a district employee reported them to the agency, citing abuse and neglect concerns, the suit said.

There seems to be some major ass-covering going on, but such would not be necessary if the responsible school authorities had properly exercised their authority, at the proper time. Yes, the ‘mainstreaming’ of handicapped students is a tough policy, and one with which I do not agree, but the policy exists, and the school officials, who are dramatically overpaid based on the median family incomes in their communities, need to meet their responsibilities, or be fired.