Commie in the Classroom

A few years ago, California teachers could not be communists.  Education code prohibited teachers from being members of the Communist Party and/or (and this will be a very close paraphrase of the original law) teaching communism with the intent of inculcating in the mind of students a preference for communism.  Our previous governor, Crazy Ole Uncle Jerry (Brown), and the legislature got rid of that prohibition.  Now we get this guy (video at the link) in a neighboring school district:

Project Veritas released shocking new video today of California AP Government teacher, Gabriel Gipe, boasting about politically indoctrinating his students at Inderkum High School. 

Gipe said that his intention is to radicalize students into supporting Marxist ideas by using the public school system as an avenue to incentivize them to participate in fringe extracurricular events.

“I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries…Scare the f*ck out of them,” Gipe said.

“I post a calendar every week…I’ve had students show up for protests, community events, tabling, food distribution, all sorts of things…When they go, they take pictures, write up a reflection -- that’s their extra credit,” he said.

Gipe said he keeps track of his students’ political inclinations. He is also perplexed when a student expresses discomfort with the decorations in his public-school classroom.

“So, they take an ideology quiz and I put [the results] on the [classroom] wall. Every year, they get further and further left…I'm like, ‘These ideologies are considered extreme, right? Extreme times breed extreme ideologies.’ Right? There is a reason why Generation Z, these kids, are becoming further and further left,” he said.

“I have an Antifa flag on my [classroom] wall and a student complained about that — he said it made him feel uncomfortable. Well, this [Antifa flag] is meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable, so if you feel uncomfortable, I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe you shouldn’t be aligning with the values that this [Antifa flag] is antithetical to.”

He does this with other people's children. 

Update, 9/1/21:  The teacher is being fired:

A teacher who made national headlines after he was seen on video praising Antifa and communism while lamenting his short window of opportunity to turn his high school students into left-wing revolutionaries will be fired, administrators in a Sacramento district said Wednesday.

In an online message seen by Newsweek and posted Wednesday dubbed "What We Know About Teacher in Video and Next Steps," The Natomas Unified School District said it investigated not only the video but other irregularities. The notice does not name the teacher, though he is identified in the video as Inderkum High School advanced-placement government teacher Gabriel Gipe.

District administrators said they will be "taking the legally required next steps to place the teacher on unpaid leave and fire the teacher."

Good job, Project Veritas, for releasing and publicizing the damning video.

Just as a reminder, Project Veritas had a table at Freedom Fest this summer, and I got to see/hear James O'Keefe speak--he's a dynamic speaker.

The Iron Pyrite State

California is heading towards a feudal state.  I'm ok, I work in the government class, I'll keep getting paid--until the money from the peons runs out.  How can that happen, you might ask?

California is in decline.  The Golden State lost population in 2020 for the first time in decades, and the exodus included celebrity entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan. A long list of businesses, some as well known as Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle, and Toyota, have either relocated or sent some jobs outside of the state in recent years.  

But just how bad have things really gotten in California? A new study from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University analyzes the anecdotes and finds a damning trend. 

Authors Joseph Vranich and Lee E. Ohanian examined available reports of companies relocating their headquarters outside of the Golden State. They find that 265 major companies have moved on to greener pastures since January 1, 2018.

The study also reports that the rate at which businesses are leaving the state is rapidly accelerating. For the first six months of 2021, the rate is nearly twice as high as it was last year. That means more businesses have already left California this year than in all of 2020.

Hard to maintain a strong economy if your business climate isn't good.

Boy

If you won't admit that a Republican would have to leave office for something like this, you're not being honest:

President Biden called a Black adviser "boy" during a Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) briefing on Monday.

The president used the term while introducing his senior adviser Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman. 

"I'm here with my senior adviser and boy who knows Louisiana very, very well and New Orleans, Cedric Richmond," Biden said at a press briefing with FEMA after Hurricane Ida rocked Louisiana.

"Boy" is considered to be a racially derogatory term toward Black men.

Data, Not Emotion

The complete study is here:

Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Database

 https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search

The Mushroom Dome

Quite interesting:

The world’s most popular Airbnb listing isn’t easy to find.

From San Francisco, the journey begins with an hourlong drive down Interstate 280 and a windy traverse of “Killer 17” — one of the most accident-prone highways in California.

In the small coastal town of Aptos, you ascend into the Santa Cruz mountains, past centuries-old redwood groves and herds of deer. A few miles in, you lose cell service and have to rely on paper instructions printed out in advance.

When you spot the cluster of weathered mailboxes, you cut right and climb up a steep single-lane driveway until you reach an old, mint green shed.

You park and walk up the driveway, past black cats, clucking chickens, and dense thickets of foliage.

Here lies the world-famous Mushroom Dome.

Over the years, this 100-square-foot geodesic structure has hosted more than 5.8k Airbnb guests from all over the world.

People have traveled here from more than 40 countries — Djibouti, Mongolia, China, India, Australia, Peru — on 6 different continents. It’s been the subject of news articles, Instagram shoots, and video tributes.

The Mushroom Dome is the most booked and most wish-listed property on Airbnb’s platform, besting 5.6m other listings, including a house shaped like an elephant, a cave in France, and a 12th-century Scottish castle.

What makes it so popular? Why do people flock here? And how has this tiny cabin’s fame impacted the owner’s life?

On a recent afternoon in August, I went there to find out.

Know The Law

California Education Code, Section 38117:

ARTICLE 1. Apparatus and Supplies [38110 - 38120]

  ( Article 1 added by Stats. 1996, Ch. 277, Sec. 5. )

  

38117.  

The governing board of each school district throughout the state shall provide for each schoolhouse under its control, a suitable Flag of the United States, which shall be hoisted above each schoolhouse during all school sessions and on school holidays, weather permitting.

The governing board of each school district shall provide smaller and suitable United States Flags to be displayed in each schoolroom at all times during the school sessions.

The governing board of each school district shall enforce this section.

(Added by Stats. 1996, Ch. 277, Sec. 5. Effective January 1, 1997. Operative January 1, 1998.)

If you're going to violate the law, you should be a little quieter about it--and not try to push your beliefs onto other people's children:

A California school district is investigating a teacher after she posted a video admitting that she encouraged her students to pledge allegiance to a gay pride flag after she removed the American flag from her classroom. 

"Okay, so during third period, we have announcements and they do the pledge of allegiance," the teacher, identified as Kristin Pitzen of Newport Mesa School District in Orange County, said in a video posted to social media. "I always tell my class, stand if you feel like it, don’t stand if you feel like it, say the words if you want, you don’t have to say the words."

She thinks she's being daring, but the US Supreme Court ruled in 1943 (during World War II) that students cannot be compelled to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school.  But let's continue:

"Except for the fact that my room does not have a flag," she said, explaining that she removed the flag during the pandemic and then whispered to the camera, "because it made me uncomfortable." 

She went on to say that one of her students asked where they should look during the pledge of allegiance since there is no American flag in the classroom. 

"In the meantime, I tell this kid, ‘We do have a flag in the class that you can pledge your allegiance to. And he like, looks around and goes, ‘Oh, that one?'" and points to the pride flag. 

At least the district is taking the correct approach:

"We are aware of this incident and are investigating. While we do not discuss employee related matters, we can tell you that showing respect and honor for our nation’s flag is a value that we instill in our students and an expectation of our employees. We take matters like this seriously and will be taking action to address it," public relations officer for the district, Annette Franco, told Fox News.

I cannot put my finger on the date when it became fashionable for Americans to say they hate the USA, but it wasn't so long ago.  I don't understand people like that.

I moved into my current classroom when I arrived at school in 2003.  There were no flags in the room.  I noticed that once (we absolutely do not say the pledge at my school) and shortly thereafter a student bought me classroom-sized US and California flags.  They still hang in the flag holders all during the school year; in June I furl them and put them in the locked closet so they'll be there waiting for me in August.  The student who brought me the flags graduated from ROTC and served in the Air Force.

Can't Argue With This

This is certainly how I see things:

Long before Donald Trump even had the chance to take office, we were constantly assured by Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media that the United States as we knew it was pretty much toast...

Objectively, the first three years of the Trump era were damned good ones for the republic. Unfortunately, American Democrats all live on a subjective moon that orbits a navel-gazing planet. Rather than just sit back and enjoy all of the peace and prosperity that President Trump helped bring about, all they could do was rend their garments over the fact that he had dared to defeat the least likable presidential candidate in history fairly and squarely.

Were you, however, to have been a regular consumer of the mainstream media in the United States of America, all you read or heard was that this great land had been ruined forever by ORANGE MAN BAD...

The only real chaos during the Trump years happened in 2020, obviously, and it wasn’t his doing. The pandemic threw everything into a tizzy, including election integrity. Now we’re seven months into a nightmare brought on by Democrat opportunists who ran over dead bodies just so they could point back and use them as excuses to obliterate any semblance of transparency in an American presidential election...

Again, we are just seven months and a handful of days into Biden’s tenure, and here’s a sampling of the havoc he has wrought:

• Inflation is exploding
• The peace Trump brokered in the Middle East has been destabilized
• Our allies don’t trust us
• Our enemies are mocking us
• Our border with Mexico has become a porous COVID superspreader event
• Afghanistan
• Afghanistan
• Afghanistan

The title of the above piece?  

America Is Now Actually the Mess Dems Pretended It Was Under Trump

The Impact of the Janus Ruling On the NEA's Income

Some thought unions would come to an end after the Janus ruling.  Some thought it would invigorate the union movement out of fear.  Neither came true:

When it came to money, at least, all that sound and fury signified nothing.

The combined annual incomes of the National Education Association and its state affiliates as of Aug. 31, 2019, was $1,663,883,934. That was an increase of $45,727 from the previous year, or 0.003 percent.

That’s not to say there was no effect whatsoever. Thirty-one state affiliates lost members that year, and 24 saw a reduction in revenues. But there is no consistent correlation between membership levels or revenues and states where there were either #RedforEd protests or agency fee laws.

All the financial information comes from the unions’ annual disclosure reports for the Internal Revenue Service detailing their income and expenditures. These are public records, but the pandemic created a long delay before the IRS made many of them available.

Now that I'm not required to give them a cent of my money, it doesn't matter to me if they grow, shrink, or stay steady.  I just want them to leave me alone.

Venezuelan Currency

So many times on this blog I've talked about inflationary and hyperinflationary currency; how, if you have too many zeroes on your money, that's a sign that something is terribly wrong.

In 2018 Venezuela lopped 5 zeroes off its currency, yet today that currency is still valued at 4.17 million bolivars to the US dollar:

I received my latest eBay order today.  For being worth less than the paper they're printed on, those notes sure are pretty, aren't they?

Things are bad in Venezuela, and lopping off more zeroes isn't going to fix their problem:

Venezuela says it will make a million-to-1 change in its currency soon, eliminating six zeros from prices in the local currency as hyperinflation continues to plague the troubled South American nation.

Venezuela’s central bank on Thursday announced the change to the bolivar will go into effect Oct. 1.

The new 100 bolivar bill will be the highest denomination. It is equivalent to 100,000,000 of the current bolivar.

This is the third adjustment since socialist leaders began governing Venezuela. The bolivar lost three zeros in 2008 under now-deceased President Hugo Chávez, while his successor, Nicolás Maduro, eliminated five zeros in 2018.

Venezuela is in its sixth year of recession. Millions live in poverty, with high food prices that are commonly set in U.S. dollars and low wages.

The 1 million bolivar bill is currently the highest denomination, but it is scarce. More than seven of those bills are needed to buy a 1.3-gallon (5-liter) bottle of water,which cost 7.4 million bolivars or $1.84 dollars on Thursday.

This isn't the first time in recent history they've lopped off zeroes:

The government announced on 7 March 2007 that the bolívar would be revalued at a ratio of 1,000 to 1 on 1 January 2008 and renamed the bolívar fuerte in an effort to facilitate the ease of transaction and accounting...

The revaluation was rescheduled to 20 August 2018, and the rate changed to 100,000 to 1, with prices being required to be expressed at the new rate starting 1 August 2018.

And now they're excising 6 more zeroes.  3+5+6=14.  14 zeroes.  What could be the cause of this?  Hint:  it starts with "s" and rhymes with "motialism".

Modified Quarantine

True story, heard it from the parent.  I'll use quote marks, but it's really a paraphrase:

"Your child has been exposed to the 'rona at school.  He/she is supposed to quarantine at home and get tested twice within the next week.  However, no one is really tracking this, so it's more like a 'modified quarantine'.  Don't worry about it."

Half the Population Is Living In Irrational Fear

It's not just college students:

Government restrictions on daily life during the pandemic have fueled a youth mental health crisis . Yet, even with many of these restrictions now lifted, young people are still living in a hysterical state of fear.

New polling proves as much. Axios/TheGenerationLab just surveyed college students about their comfort level with various forms of social activity. The poll finds that students, many of whom are vaccinated, are essentially scared of their own shadow — in a way utterly untethered from actual risk levels and scientific reality.

A knowledge of probability is so valuable, yet so rare.

CRT Is BS

When the facts contradict your expectations, believe the facts:

Over the past several months, critical race theory (CRT) has become one of the most divisive topics in higher education and in America’s political dialogue. Mainstream liberals have framed the issue as simply a matter of teaching accurate history. In their eyes, teaching CRT in the classroom is equivalent to teaching that slavery existed, Black Americans were historically discriminated against, and there are still some residual consequences from that historical legacy. To oppose CRT, in their eyes, is to teach a white-washed version of history in which America can do no wrong.

But according to actual critical race theorists, this is not the case. Its founders were explicitly concerned with deconstructing liberal democracy. As CRT founder Richard Delgado writes, “critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” Their desire for deconstruction rests upon the claim that America is fundamentally based upon white supremacy. As Harvard professor Derrick Bell (another founder of CRT) explained via his concept of interest convergence, Black interests are only advanced in this country when they are aligned with white interests. Because America is fundamentally racist, it is impossible for non-whites to get ahead.

But is this claim true? Is the United States fundamentally broken, unable to escape from its legacy of racism? Or are the traditional American principles of equal opportunity, hard work, and meritocracy the key to overcoming our current brokenness, even though we have historically fallen short of those ideals?

Asian Americans offer a compelling answer to that question. Along nearly every measurable life outcome, Asian Americans outperform whites. Asian Americans have the highest per capita income, lowest per capita crime rates, and highest rates of postsecondary achievement. Despite making up only 6 percent of the U.S. population, Asian Americans account for a whopping 60 percent of top scores on the SAT. Whites, despite making up more than half of the country’s population, only account for 33 percent. America is infected by a peculiar strain of white supremacy indeed if it allows for Asian Americans to beat whites on so many different metrics.

The veracity of critical race theory depends upon whites being dominant. At the very least, it requires minority success to be contingent upon white interests. But Asian Americans buck that trend, too. Asian American interests are oftentimes in direct opposition to white interests. As I argue in my book, An Inconvenient Minority, white resentment drives much of the anti-Asian discrimination performed by Ivy League admissions departments. Asian American achievement threatens the ability of rich, white applicants to get into their preferred universities. In fact, an internal Harvard report found that Asians would make up 43 percent of the student body if students were admitted solely on academic merit. It is only due to legacy admissions and racial profiling that Asians were capped at 19 percent of Harvard’s student body for close to 25 years.

Neither can historical privilege explain why Asians outperform whites to such an extreme degree. The Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese immigrants from coming to America, and over one hundred thousand Japanese Americans were forced into government-run internment camps in the 1940s. Those events (amongst many others) led to widespread discrimination against Asians in America; many states banned Asians from owning land even into the 1960s. And still today, many Asian Americans are first or second generation immigrants who suffer from a lack of English proficiency. Only one-third of Vietnamese immigrants are proficient in English, and yet Vietnamese immigrant households still have higher incomes than U.S.-born households.

So what explains the disparity? It’s not historical privilege, systemic bias in favor of Asians, or white assistance. It’s meritocracy.

A Loss Of Trust

It's not hard to believe that this wasn't an accident:

Personal information from California State University, Chico, students who requested a religious exemption from the COVID vaccine has been posted online after an apparent data breach.

The requests from about 130 students were dumped on an anonymous Internet message board, documenting approved and denied requests from CSU Chico students between June 7 and Aug. 10.

Trust is an extremely valuable commodity, and we’re seeing what happens when it’s casually tossed aside in pursuit of ideological goals.

I'm Told Election Fraud Is A Conservative Myth

Nothing to see here, please move along:

First, this public service announcement: There is no voter fraud in U.S. elections. Thank you for your attention.

A California man was discovered asleep in his car in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven store in Torrance with drugs, cash, and several drivers’ licenses, according to ABC7...

Oh… I nearly forgot. There were about 300 unopened recall election ballots in the car.

Taken together, it’s an interesting picture, don’t you think?

I'm just gonna say it--I don't think he was going to cast those votes for Larry Elder.

A Kilt

One of our younger teachers is a graduate of our school, and during his time as a student there was a student club called the Highlander Club.  It wasn't much, but the members wore kilts to school each Friday.  This teacher wants to revive the club.

To do so, he's drafted several teachers and convinced them to buy kilts and to start wearing them on Fridays.  I can't decide on a kilt, though.

If I wanted to have the most amazing kilt ever, I'd jump through the hoops that are required in order to get the official West Point tartan, and I'd have a kilt made from that.  It would take approximately forever and be very expensive.  And I don't want a traditional kilt, to be honest; I want a modern "utility kilt"--perhaps even a hybrid kilt with the West Point tartan sewn into the pleats, but again, getting that tartan would take forever.

I've pretty much narrowed my choices down to three: a solid black utility kilt, a hybrid kilt with the US Army tartan sewn into the pleats, and a woodland camouflage utility kilt.  I'm waiting for answers to emails from a couple of the companies before I make my final decision.

Update, 8/29/21:  My clan tartan is a bit "loud", and the West Point tartan and kilts with the "Old Grad Plaid" tartan are hard to come by.  I kind of like the Pride of Scotland tartan, but didn't find one in a kilt I liked.  For those who know me it'll no doubt be difficult to believe (snicker snicker) that I ordered two utility kilts, one in solid black and the other in woodland camouflage.  The solid black one arrives tomorrow!

I'm Done With The Emotions

This year my district bribed us with $3000 to implement a "flex" period in our daily schedule.  It's a 30-minute time that we can use to help students catch up/make up assignments, to help fill in the gaps of "learning loss", or to help work with students on social-emotional things.

I've tried a week of the social-emotional, and in a couple classes I can keep it up, but as I wrote here and here, my top university-bound students are in a world of mathematical hurt.  Too many of them are not adequately prepared for the course they're enrolled in.

I can keep with the social-emotional stuff, or I can try to fill in the gaps.  I made the decision today in those top classes, and today we "reviewed" factoring polynomials.  We'll spend several "flex" periods doing so.

Then, perhaps we'll move on to logarithms--unless I find a more immediate need.

Update, 9/6/21:  I'm told that perhaps within a week, one of my Financial Math classes will be moved to another teacher as part of a big shuffle and I'll get a brand new statistics class.

We've already completed Chapter 1 in statistics and are well into Chapter 2.  We only complete five chapters in the first semester.

I guess this new statistics class will have to get caught up somehow, and "flex" is the time to do that.

This Is The American Left

From Instapundit today:

ADHERING TO OUR ENEMIES: Democrats trust the Taliban more than their fellow Americans. “Leftists’ inability to distinguish between the barbaric violence of the Taliban on display this week and Americans who disagree with them politically makes for a truly disturbing statement about their judgment in all matters.”

Analysis:  TRUE.

Success In High School Math

At about the same time as San Francisco, my own school district switched from allowing students to accelerate in math as fast as they could to requiring almost every 8th grader to take "8th grade math" and every 9th grader to take "Integrated Math 1".  Here are the San Francisco results:

SFUSD does not provide grade distribution over time for higher level courses, and offers just numbers about course-takers, without breaking out the course grades, so we cannot make any definitive statement on those. Yet some hints are available from what SFUSD does provide.

Advanced Placement (AP) math course enrollment in SFUSD has stayed mostly constant, at 1,600–1,700 tests taken every year. Yet prior to the new program AP Calculus made about 70% of the tests taken with the other ~30% being AP Statistics, but under the new program the AP Calculus enrollment dropped to less than 60% while AP Statistics rose to over 40%. SFUSD administrators will tell you that “statistics today is more important than calculus” yet that is not what professors at leading colleges and STEM faculties are saying. AP Calculus is more demanding, as can be clearly seen from SFUSD’s own math “pathways” that allow taking AP Statistics under its regular pathway, but doesn’t allow for AP Calculus unless one takes a compressed (accelerated) pathway.

In other words, since the program change more students take the easier statistics and fewer take the more demanding calculus as their culminating high school math course. SFUSD does not provide a breakdown of student score on the AP exams so it is impossible to judge whether the scores on them have improved or deteriorated since the program change.

Finally, the only objective measure we have of the SFUSD new math program boils down to the state-wide Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) testing. Grade 3–8 SBAC tests do not include any significant algebra, so the only real way to assess SFUSD success is the 11th grade math test (which is not very demanding to begin with). Here the story is telling.

Read the whole thing.

Why do so many people who are responsible for the education of children do so much to inhibit the education of children?

The Problems Are Legion

Why are so many CSU students failing?

California State University students are failing or withdrawing at high rates from many courses — including chemistry, calculus, English and U.S. history — prompting renewed efforts for systemwide reform.

New attention is being placed on classes that for years have shown failure or withdrawal rates of 20% or more — sometimes reaching as high as half the students. Efforts to overhaul the courses and improve teaching are now seen as a crucial way to help more students pass and graduate.

For example, more than a third of Sacramento State students in some physics, economics, computer science and anthropology classes failed or left those courses. At Fresno State, the same was true in some math, chemistry, criminology and music courses.

When more than 20% of students in a class receive a D, F or withdraw, that course is considered to have a high “DFW rate,” in university parlance. Generally, course rates are averaged over three years. Cal State Los Angeles, for example, reports that about 11% of all of its undergraduate classes have high fail rates. Statistics are close to that for the Fresno and Sacramento campuses.

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Officials said the problem exists across all 23 campuses.

CSU reported 686 high failure courses systemwide last fall with enrollments of at least 100. Campus administrators, however, are looking at smaller classes too, signaling that the problem is likely to be more widespread. Just three campuses, Fresno, Los Angeles and Sacramento reported a total of 453 high failure courses.

Challenging course material, ineffective teaching and unprepared or overwhelmed students contribute to the rise in high failure/withdrawal rates, experts say. Failures in these courses and repeated attempts to pass them can add semesters to students’ time on campus because many of the courses are required for their majors. Worse, failing a class can send students into a tailspin that leads to abandoning majors or dropping out altogether.

Look at the reasons the LA Times gives!  The first two blame the professors, the third blames the students.  What about the universities themselves? 

It's time for our politicians--and I include CSU administrators among them--to admit that they're letting too many unqualified students into our universities.  For example, how long has it been since Sacramento State dropped it's Entry Level Math test for incoming freshman?  What possible reason could there be for dropping the SAT/ACT that to let in students who wouldn't otherwise have met the cutoff?  Campuses swarm with students who are there because they're told that going to college is the way to get ahead in the world--and they're not given any alternatives.  A few years later they've dropped out and wonder how they're going to pay the student loans they've racked up.

"Challenging course material"?  Isn't that kind of the idea behind college?  And I have no doubt that there is some "ineffective teaching" occurring, but can that truly be the reason so many students are failing so many classes?  And if that truly is a major issue, why doesn't CSU address it?

I'm inclined to believe that the lion's share of the problem rests with the students themselves--and we in K-12 aren't free of blame here.  Some of us resist the pressure to water down our courses, to pass students who shouldn't pass, to "round up" grades so students look like they've performed better than they did--but too many teachers don't resist that pressure.  Even I am forced to admit, however, that the river must have smoothed my rock over time, as the pre-calculus course I teach now does not have the rigor that the pre-calculus course I taught in 2003-2004 had.  Part of the reason for that is a change in standards, but I'm sure a non-zero proportion of the change is just that I've been worn down.

But I wasn't worn down because I wanted to be.  No, students and parents want easier classes.  They want easier classes and higher grades.  I wrote about this earlier this month.  

And the LA Times writes a hand-wringing article about what's to be done.