Ep. 1733 - San Francisco BANNED "Racist" Algebra A Decade Ago. The Results Are Now In.
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 9 minutes
Words per Minute
162.26096
Summary
The public school system has descended into woke insanity. Students have predictably been getting dumber and dumber. But one state has apparently broken ranks from the woke brigade, and the results are being described as miraculous. Also, another trans mass shooter, this time in Canada, and a viral post by somebody in the AI industry warns that AI is about to destroy millions of jobs, and we re not taking it nearly seriously enough. Plus, the New York Times begins to walk back its endorsement of legalized marijuana. We ll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Warshaw Show.
Transcript
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Got PC Optimum points? Visit Shopper's Drug Mart for the bonus redemption event and get more for your points.
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Friday, February 13th to Wednesday, February 18th. Valid in store and online.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show is the public school system has descended into woke insanity.
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Students have predictably been getting dumber and dumber, but one state has apparently broken ranks from the woke brigade
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and the results are being described as miraculous. We'll talk about it.
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Also, another trans mass shooter, this time in Canada, and a viral post by somebody in the AI industry
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warns that AI is about to destroy millions of jobs and we're not taking it nearly seriously enough.
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Plus, the New York Times begins to walk back its endorsement of legalized marijuana.
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We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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When you read enough news about the declining quality of schools in this country, particularly public schools,
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it's easy for your eyes to sort of glaze over after a while.
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All the stories sound the same. We spend nearly a trillion dollars on our public school system every year.
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A trillion dollars. And the results are objectively terrible.
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Only around one third of 12th graders have English language proficiency, meaning they can barely speak English.
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Math numbers, as you might imagine, are even worse.
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Roughly one in 10 public school students experience sexual misconduct at the hands of a school employee.
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And that's a conservative estimate that's not been updated in two decades before the LGBT movement
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was spending millions of dollars, billions of dollars, rather, a year with the express goal of sexualizing children.
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Meanwhile, a quarter of students are chronically absent, meaning they miss at least 10% of the school year.
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Violent incidents in schools have increased by around 40% in the last couple of years.
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We could easily drone on for the next hour listing all the problems that you're probably already aware of.
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This is going to be a very different monologue because for the first time in memory,
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there's actually something to be hopeful about when it comes to the public school system.
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And if you know anything about this show or my career, you know that I do not say that lightly.
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There's genuinely a legitimate reason to believe that the education system in the U.S.
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may not be entirely doomed, at least to the extent that we thought it was.
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Thanks to a new finding that's somewhat controversial, as we'll discuss in a moment,
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there is maybe a new path forward for educating American students.
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And it is a really obvious path, one that we never should have abandoned in the first place.
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And if we continue in this vein, we could one day live in a at least moderately safer,
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We can reverse the trend of, you know, everything getting crappier all the time.
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But to understand the changes that may soon be coming, we need to start around a decade ago
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when the left made a deliberate decision to turn our already terrible public schools into
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indoctrination camps with no standards whatsoever.
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Amid the cultural revolution of Barack Obama's first term, school districts in the state of
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San Francisco eliminated the algebra requirement for eighth graders.
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They let students move on to the next grade level when they clearly were not qualified for it.
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And they turned every subject, even mathematics, into an exercise in racial equity.
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They taught students that everything, including algebra, was really a social justice issue.
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And these changes continued for many years afterward.
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Some of the state's largest school districts are coming up with a new approach towards grading.
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Those districts are getting rid of D's and F's, so students won't be able to get anything
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And if they do fail or miss an assignment, they're going to be given a do-over or an extension.
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So the idea is to encourage students to learn the material rather than lose their confidence
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A controversial math curriculum taking root in California, as reformers this month overcame
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strong opposition from math and science educators.
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It definitely will not help them learn math better.
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I've been teaching math for 43 years, and I can say with certainty that this will cause
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a great deal of confusion and set students back.
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The new framework urges teachers to focus on historically marginalized people and take
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a justice-oriented perspective by changing course material with less emphasis on problem solving.
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More than 1,000 university professors pushed back, calling it a, quote, insult, immoral,
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and foolish to replace arithmetic with what they say is an endless river of fads that inserts
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equity, social justice, and environmental care into math class.
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Mathematics should be about numbers and calculating and not about politics, not about political
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indoctrination, not about turning children into activists.
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As the nation's largest textbook market, publishers tend to follow the California framework.
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Now, ostensibly the idea behind all these changes and many more changes like these was
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to help students who were supposedly disadvantaged, particularly racial minorities.
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Somehow we were told it was a good thing that students would graduate without the ability
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In reality, of course, the goal of these policies was to hide two very inconvenient facts.
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The first inconvenient fact was that the public schools clearly were not doing their jobs.
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They were taking enormous sums of taxpayer money, and students in turn were getting dumber
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So to prevent people from noticing this, the objective metrics were simply eliminated.
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And the second inconvenient fact, which the left also wanted to hide, is that the allegedly
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disadvantaged students have not been underperforming because of white supremacy.
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Often they're underperforming because they lack discipline.
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They were not raised in stable households, and as a result, their behavior is incompatible
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They routinely engage in criminal behavior that disrupts the entire campus.
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This is difficult to measure with precise statistics because for the most part, public schools don't
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report many fights and other acts of violence to law enforcement.
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And that's because if the schools did file those reports, then they'd run the risk of being
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designated as a persistently dangerous school, which would mean that they would lose their
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So there's a significant incentive for schools to bury the evidence of violence that students
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There's basically no incentive for them to tell the truth, and there's a lot of incentive to
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And, of course, by the same token, the media doesn't want to cover the violence either because
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it would look racist to do so since the perpetrators are almost always black, and very often they're
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attacking white students in large numbers, which is a common theme, by the way.
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You have to keep this in mind whenever you see crime statistics.
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They're much, much worse than the official numbers show, always.
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You know, black-on-white violence in many cases is not recorded at all.
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Like, for example, remember the case we talked about yesterday with the black judge who
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reduced the sentence of a black rapist by 50%, even though he demonstrated no remorse whatsoever.
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In fact, he demonstrated the opposite of remorse.
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He said he was glad about what he did, and, you know, he'd happily do it again.
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Well, it was one of the most extraordinary cases we've ever talked about.
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She cut his sentence by more than 30 years because he, quote, fell through the cracks.
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Meanwhile, the rapist mocked the victim repeatedly, mocked her family, said he would do it again.
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The judge said that she felt sorry for the rapist because he grew up in our
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So she gave him a pass because of, you know, white supremacy or whatever.
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Not just her identity, but any identifying information about her at all has been withheld.
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You won't find the victim's race listed in any media reports.
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Now, if you look around, there are some indications that the victim may have been white.
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The attack took place in an overwhelmingly white area, for example.
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Now, is it possible that the judge went easy on the rapist because his victim was white?
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Is it possible that she saw the attack as a way to strike back against white people like the OJ jury did?
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Who she considers members of a different tribe?
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Certainly seems possible based on what the judge said in court.
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But whatever the case, we can be sure of one thing.
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The crime, if it was black on white, will never be recorded as black on white crime in any statistical database at all.
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That's true in the criminal justice system, and it's true in public schools as well.
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Now, for the most part, it requires a mass shooting in order for the media to cover violence that takes place in public schools.
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And in that case, whatever the shooter's motivation was, and regardless of whether the shooter identified as transgender or not,
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the media will immediately start talking about gun control and suspending the Second Amendment.
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But the truth is, you don't really need news reports or police reports to understand what's happening in American public schools,
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especially the schools that are located in major cities.
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I mean, you can go to the WorldStar website and look up the massive database of documentary evidence
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that public schools are basically fight clubs for these disadvantaged minorities that we hear about so often.
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And we'll put a couple of those videos up on the screen to the extent that we possibly can.
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You know, it's just one video after another with titles like,
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Messed Up, Teacher Gets Jumped by Students at High School in Georgia.
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Now, it's content that we can't show on YouTube in its entirety.
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Videos depicting acts of violence, particularly acts of violence involving children,
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are banned from most social media and video sharing platforms.
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And while you can understand why those policies are in place,
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you also have to acknowledge that as a side effect,
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the fact remains that it's not easy to see the videos that give you a realistic picture of everyday life
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This is an aspect of American life, a very important aspect,
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because it's where a lot of our 50 million children are spending their time there,
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public schools decided not to report most crimes to law enforcement,
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not to fail anyone, not to hold back, not to hold anyone back a grade,
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And there was a media blackout on the violence that was occurring in these schools.
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If the schools were failing, and everyone knew they were,
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then at least we wouldn't have to think about it very much.
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We wouldn't have to deal with any uncomfortable statistics.
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And indeed, this line of thinking quickly spread.
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Colleges and law schools dropped standardized test scores.
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They started demanding DEI statements to weed out conservatives,
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Schools at every level became expensive, government-funded daycares.
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Students who actually wanted to learn, in the end, paid the big price.
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And our country as a whole suffered as a result.
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We started falling behind countries like China, which actually take education seriously.
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And every few months, our education deficit grew larger and larger by design.
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Just last year, San Francisco Public Schools proposed yet another equity policy,
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which allowed students to pass with a grade of 40%.
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and retake tests indefinitely until they pass them.
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And even if they don't pass them, they still get moved on anyway.
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Other blue states and cities followed with similar policies,
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and soon enough, their test scores began plummeting.
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where they used the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System,
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Massachusetts typically performs very well on standardized tests,
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but lately, things have not been going so well.
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As the Commonwealth Beacon reported late last year,
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New MCAS results reveal that the performance of Massachusetts public school students
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remains far below pre-pandemic levels and shows few signs of improvement.
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The data follow a national assessment of educational progress scores released earlier this year
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in which the Commonwealth student scored at a 20-year low.
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In 2010, Massachusetts jettisoned the nation's best English language arts and math standards,
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replacing them with national academic standards known as Common Core
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that dramatically cut the amount of literature students read
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and slowed their progression to higher mathematics study.
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that students pass the English, math, and science test to graduate from high school.
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The overall portion of students' meeting expectations fell from half
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The portion of students who failed rose from 11% to 18%.
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Only 39% met or exceeded expectations on the just-unveiled 8th-grade civics test.
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And you'll find similar stories from Maine to New York to California.
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They dropped the standards, and shortly afterward,
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All the numbers everywhere were dropping year after year.
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Conservatives would complain about the numbers, but nothing would ever change.
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Politicians would throw more and more money at the problem
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and reward the unions and the non-profits with massive new contracts,
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It seemed like a death spiral that we couldn't possibly pull out of.
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But then something very strange happened in the state of Mississippi.
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The state's 4th-grade reading scores went from 49th place in the country
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all the way to 9th place in the span of 10 years.
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And their 4th-grade math scores, meanwhile, went from 50th, dead last, to 16th.
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And when you adjust for demographics like poverty and race,
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Yes, from 2013 to 2024, regardless of how you measure the data,
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Mississippi pretty much leapfrogged, like, the entire country.
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The state's schools, once ridiculed over its test scores,
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Mississippi's 4th-graders are ranked first for reading,
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second for math when adjusted for demographics.
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This after the state was ranked 49th a decade ago.
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Former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant was involved in this turnaround
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This comeback in students' reading scores was no accident.
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I mean, what or who do you credit this success to?
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And we're going to start reading because we've got a benchmark now that we have to meet
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Only 33% of Mississippi's children are reading on the 3rd-grade proficiency in 2012.
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Now, one of Mississippi's main innovations was that at the end of 3rd-grade,
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they started administering a reading fluency test.
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And this was a genuine test with actual consequences.
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If students failed it, they'd be held back and forced to repeat the grade.
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In a typical year, something like 10% of students failed the test in 2018.
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And if students failed this reading fluency test and were held back,
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then they wouldn't take the national test that's used to measure Mississippi's progress
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So Mississippi began holding back far more students than most other states.
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decided that children should actually learn to read before becoming 4th-graders.
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Under Mississippi law, students could be held back for a maximum of two years.
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And along the way, Mississippi enacted other reforms.
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In particular, Mississippi started teaching students to read using phonics
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So to give you an example of how this might work,
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you might show them a photo of a barn and say something like,
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And what word with a letter B would make sense?
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teachers would challenge the student with a series of riddles
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and basically push them to guess the right word.
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Teachers would also offer suggestions like these
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Quote, look at pictures and skip the word and re-read
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Guessing words and skipping words and looking for clues elsewhere
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You might get the right result, but you're getting it for the wrong reason.
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you need to be able to understand the relationship
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without relying on some hint that you're able to
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They don't need to skip the word and try to circle back later.
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They learn a much more generalized, useful method of reading.
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and bomb the test, then they get to try again the next year
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Now, this is a system that is clearly superior.
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based on these latest numbers from Mississippi,
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that the so-called Mississippi miracle is actually real.
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In particular, there's a paper from a statistics professor
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who says that the numbers are highly misleading.
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and took the NAEP fourth grade reading test in Mississippi.
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After 2013, only those students who did well enough
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in reading moved on to the fourth grade and took the test.
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always increases if you delete some of the lowest scores.
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that Mississippi's fourth grade test scores only went up
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because the state prevented the low scoring students
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And you find this analysis pretty much everywhere on the left.
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They have a vested interest in making this claim, of course.
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All of the justification for their racial equity programs
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Instead, the state is delaying the administration
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the number of students taking the test in fourth grade
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It's not like they're only letting five kids take the exam.
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quote, the response rate for both fourth and eighth graders
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does not conveniently vanish off the face of the earth.
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Additionally, Mississippi has been gaining ground steadily
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for two decades, so any explanation for the results
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needs to explain steady gains, not a one-off jump.
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is almost certainly contributing to Mississippi scores,
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it cannot explain Mississippi's gains since 2003,
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or even much of Mississippi's gains since 2013.
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So the big drive by debunking of Mississippi's achievement
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But the other argument you'll hear from leftists
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So they're saying that the gains are mostly concentrated
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We'll put it back up on the screen so you can see it.
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but the state is no longer dead last in the eighth grade,
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when you consider the demographics that are involved.
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behind the national average for all races is not bad.
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By eighth grade, Mississippi's black students' reading score
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and most rural black population in the country.
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So we still have significant across-the-board improvements
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which leftists have long dismissed as hopeless,
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and they're seeing significant improvements as well.
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Since 2019, Louisiana went from 50th in the nation
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So this is a clear improvement in public schooling
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of the public school system in at least a decade.
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whether they pass or fail or learn or don't learn,
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On the other hand, if you attach real consequences
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are capable of reading at a higher level much earlier.
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the very first thing that a lot of leftists attempt to do
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Mississippi has struck one of the biggest blows
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designed to layer without overheating your bed.
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All right, finally, we have another American athlete,
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First of all, I'd like to say I'm proud to be here
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to represent Team USA and to represent our country.
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But we'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention
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what's going on in Minnesota and what a tough time
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This stuff is happening right around where we live.
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we have a constitution and it allows us to freedom of the press
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and freedom of speech, protects us from unreasonable searches
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and seizures, and makes it that we have to, you know,
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And I really love what's been happening there now
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with people coming out, showing the love, the compassion,
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integrity, and respect for others that they don't know
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Okay, so articulate as always, these people are so articulate.
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who are not legally authorized to be in the country,
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even if he had legitimate complaints, which he doesn't,
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Okay, you don't go to a foreign country on a global stage
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And you especially don't do that if your sport,
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like how this Olympic athlete is a pudgy 50-year-old man,
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I don't mean to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
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But this is not, like, this is not a sport, guys.
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that this is not the least entertaining of the bunch.
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Don't claim that that person's doing something.