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California Proposes A Ban On Advanced Math Classes

In the name of equality, the California Department of Education seeks to dumb down the brightest kids.

A friend of mine emailed an article the likes of which always prompts me to say “really?”

Please consider the Reason article In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Who Are Gifted at Math.

Culturally Responsive Framework

I like to verify things myself and you can do so as well by reading the California Department of Education Mathematics Framework. 

In its framework, the Department of Education seeks “Culturally responsive mathematics education.”

Introduction Highlights 

  • Active efforts in mathematics teaching are required in order to counter the cultural forces that have led to and continue to perpetuate current inequities. Mathematics pathways must open mathematics to all students, eliminating option-limiting tracking. [i.e. no advance classes].
  • implementation of this framework and the standards, teachers must be mindful of other considerations that are a high priority for California’s education system including the Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs) which allow students to examine issues of environmental and social justice.

Teaching for Equity Highlights

  • The evolution of mathematics in educational settings has resulted in dramatic inequities for students of color, girls, and students from low income homes.
  • Teachers are encouraged to align instruction with the outcomes of the California ELD Standards, which state that linguistically and culturally diverse English learners receive instruction that values their home cultures. 

Need to Broaden Perceptions of Mathematics

I did not go through all the chapters. Reason uncovered these gems.

  • The inequity of mathematics tracking in California can be undone through a coordinated approach in grades 6–12. 
  • Middle-school students are best served in heterogeneous classes.
  • The push to calculus in grade twelve is itself misguided.
  • To encourage truly equitable and engaging mathematics classrooms we need to broaden perceptions of mathematics beyond methods and answers so that students come to view mathematics as a connected, multi-dimensional subject that is about sense making and reasoning, to which they can contribute and belong.

Sabotage the Best 

Reason concludes, and I agree “If California adopts this framework, which is currently under public review, the state will end up sabotaging its brightest students. The government should let kids opt out of math if it’s not for them. Don’t let the false idea that there’s no such thing as a gifted student herald the end of advanced math entirely.”

Instead, and in the name of “equity”, the proposed framework aims to keep everyone learning at the same dumbed down level for as long as possible.

The intention is clear. The California Board of Education intends to sabotage the best and brightest, hoping to make everyone equal.

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NIH Hit With Lawsuit for Failing to Produce Documents Related to Controversial Gain-of-Function Research

The National Institutes of Health’s refusal to make public documents related to research the agency is funding on pandemic viruses is “grossly irresponsible,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety which filed the lawsuit.

Last week, Center for Food Safety filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Center for Food Safety is suing the agency over its failure to release government documents related to the approval and issuance of NIH contracts and grants that fund research projects involving controversial gain of function/gain of threat studies with dangerous, so-called “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens.”

“The NIH’s refusal to make public the research it is funding to enhance the transmissibility, infectiousness and lethality of potential pandemic viruses is grossly irresponsible,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety. “We are litigating to get that information because transparency and public knowledge about these highly hazardous experiments could be an important step in avoiding the next pandemic.”

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Trump Renews Attacks on ‘Warmonger’ Cheney, ‘Gutless’ McConnell

Former President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on “warmonger” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and “gutless” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Wednesday for their words and actions surrounding the 2020 election.

Trump also took aim at former Vice President Mike Pence in a statement posted on the former president’s Save America website.

“Warmonger Liz Cheney, who has virtually no support left in the Great State of Wyoming, continues to unknowingly and foolishly say that there was no Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election when in fact, the evidence, including no Legislative approvals as demanded by the U.S. Constitution, show the exact opposite,” Trump said.

“Had Mike Pence referred the information on six states (only need two) back to State Legislatures, and had gutless and clueless MINORITY Leader Mitch McConnell (he blew two seats in Georgia that should have never been lost) fought to expose all of the corruption that was presented at the time, with more found since, we would have had a far different Presidential result, and our Country would not be turning into a socialist nightmare? Never give up!”

Cheney is facing calls for her removal as chair of the House Republican Conference after being one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, and for her continued criticism of the former president.

On Monday, Trump released a statement saying the 2020 election result forever will be known as “The Big Lie.”

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CDC: U.S. Birth Rate Sees Largest Drop in 50 Years

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the birth rate in the U.S. fell by four percent in 2020 — the largest yearly drop in five decades.

The rate dropped across every major racial group and in nearly all age groups, falling to the lowest point since the government started tracking the data more than a century ago.

The Guardian analyzed the data in the report:

The U.S. once was among only a few developed countries with a fertility rate above the 2.1 children per woman that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself.

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Netanyahu misses deadline to form new Israeli government, reign could come to end

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s time in power could be at an end after he failed to form a new governing coalition in the country’s parliament by a midnight deadline Tuesday.

The Israeli parliament, called the Knesset, is composed of 120 lawmakers from several different parties, none of which have enough seats to form a majority on their own. For the past two years, no political party in Israel has been successful in creating a coalition to form a governing majority, resulting in four consecutive elections that have each ended in deadlock.

After an election, the party leader with the most support from lawmakers is asked by the president, who holds ceremonial powers, to form a coalition with other minority parties that has enough votes to create a majority. The party leader that can build a majority coalition becomes prime minister. As leader of the Likud Party, Netanyahu has held the position of prime minister for a total of 15 years, including the last 12 years consecutively.

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‘Unprecedented’: Over 500 pro-life bills filed in 2021, more than 60 enacted nationwide

A new report from a pro-choice research organization found that in the first four months of 2021, more than 500 pro-life bills have been introduced at the state level and more than 60 have been enacted nationwide.

While the federal government has come under the control of the Democratic Party, pro-life legislation has made much progress at the state level in 2021. 

According to Elizabeth Nash and Lauren Cross of the Guttmacher Institute, “2021 is on track to become the most devastating antiabortion state legislative session in decades.”

“Since January, there have been 536 abortion restrictions, including 146 abortion bans, introduced across 46 states,” the report, published Friday, explained. “A whopping 61 of those restrictions have been enacted across 13 states, including eight bans.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life grassroots lobbying group Susan B. Anthony List, praised the progress the pro-life movement has made at the state level this year. 

“The unprecedented surge of pro-life activity in state legislatures this year proves life is winning in America,” she said.

“Across the nation, state lawmakers acting on the will of the people are taking bold steps to humanize our laws and challenge the radical status quo imposed by Roe v. Wade,” Dannenfelser added. 

As Dannenfelser noted, the bills enacted include legislation “to stop late-term abortions after five months of pregnancy, end lethal discrimination against unborn children for reasons like a Down syndrome diagnosis, protect unborn babies from the moment their heartbeat can be detected, safeguard women from dangerous abortion drugs, and more.”

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Harry Potter event canceled over JK Rowling’s comments on gender: ‘Causing distress’

Organizers of a book festival in New Zealand have canceled an event featuring the popular children’s book series Harry Potter over past comments on the transgender debate made by author J.K. Rowling.

The news website Stuff reported that the upcoming Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival, an annual event scheduled to occur this weekend in New Zealand’s Wellington Region, decided to remove a Harry Potter-themed quiz because of the past comments on gender and women’s rights made by Rowling. 

This action comes as this year’s book festival is slated to focus on the phenomenon of “cancel culture.” 

The term “cancel culture” refers to the effort embraced by many in popular culture to silence people with unfashionable views on certain topics by boycotting their products or canceling their engagements with organizations or events.

According to Stuff, this year’s festival “will feature a panel discussion hosted by veteran broadcaster Ian Fraser examining the phenomenon of cancel culture and its impact on New Zealand art and literature.” 

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The Back Story of the CIA’s ‘Woke’ Recruiting Video

Can somebody ‘sneak into’ the CIA, or possibly ‘slip through the cracks?’

Commentary

“I am a woman of color, I am a mom, I am a cisgender millennial who’s been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder,” explains a 36-year-old woman in a recent CIA recruiting video. “I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise,” she says. Though suffering from “imposter syndrome,” viewers learn, “I did not sneak into the CIA.” Indeed, “My employment was not and is not of a fluke or a slip through the cracks … I am educated, qualified and competent.”

A reference to “my brilliance” confirms that the cisgender millennial is also humble and self-effacing. Like Eve Rand in Being There, she reveals herself to herself, and she is drenched and purged. The two-minute video was widely and mercilessly mocked, with the CIA compared to AOC. One viewer suspected the hand of Saturday Night Live, perhaps confirming that the CIA has now surpassed satire. On the other hand, the video deserves to be taken seriously on several fronts.

Being “cisgender,” whatever that might be, does not qualify any person for employment with the Central Intelligence Agency, tasked with keeping the nation safe in a dangerous world of hostile, nuclear-armed powers such as China, North Korea, Russia, and perhaps Iran in due time. Since the millennial’s education and background are not defined, the viewer could believe that the CIA hires people based on factors nobody can control, such as ancestry and skin color. Like being “cisgender,” these factors do not confer brilliance or competence, which must be acquired.

Epoch Times Photo
Members of the U.S. intelligence community, (L to R), FBI Director Christopher Wray, NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, CIA Director William Burns, and DIA Director Lt. General Scott Berrier, testify as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence holds its annual World-Wide Threat Hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on April 15, 2021. (Tasos Katopodis/Pool/Getty Images)

Keeping the United States safe is serious business, so “generalized anxiety disorder” and “imposter syndrome” should disqualify a person from employment with the CIA. The cisgender millennial raises the possibility that someone can “sneak in” and “slip through the cracks.” Viewers might not suspect that something along those lines has already taken place.

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Alyssa Milano labelled a ‘white supremacist’ in online viral video

‘Total Disgrace’: Trump Hits Back After Facebook Upholds Ban

President Donald J. Trump slams Facebook after its Oversight Board upholds his account suspension.

Facebook’s decision to ban President Donald Trump was upheld by Facebook’s Oversight Board on Wednesday, according to The Epoch Times.

“Trump’s posts during the Capitol riot severely violated Facebook’s rules and encouraged and legitimized violence,” the board said in a statement announcing its decision.

The Board was referring to the unrest which took place in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6th when the Capitol building was breached by protestors, before which President Trump had instructed the crowd to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”:

But President Trump did not only instruct the crowd to conduct themselves peacefully, he—after learning about the unrest—immediately also instructed the crowd to “go home now,” adding “We have to have peace. We have to have law and order”:

In response to Facebook’s decision, Trump called the move by the big tech giant a “total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country” on his new online communications platform “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump.”

What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country. Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before. The People of our Country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our Electoral Process,” Trump said.

Facebook’s decision raises questions of fairness and equal treatment of conservatives by big tech giants when so many Leftist politicians and influencers have literally called for violence but have not been deplatformed as was President Trump.

Watch this compilation of Leftists calling for violence:

Also see:

“28 Times Media And Democrats Excused Or Endorsed Violence Committed By Left-Wing Activists” (The Federalist)

“Watch Liberals Call for Violence Over and Over Again – Yet Left Blames Trump” (The Western Journal)

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