Our failing education system is leading us down a dangerous road. America is in the midst of an education crisis, ranging from newborns to college students, and it is ubiquitous. In an under-reported story from August, a study by researchers at five universities found that babies born during the Covid pandemic show reduced verbal, motor,...
Irony alert: Governor Gavin Newsom canceled his flight to Glasgow’s climate meet-up and then appeared at the lavish San Francisco wedding of oil-heiress Ivy Getty — and then magically makes natural gas “carbon neutral.” Sean Penn finds himself in the crosshairs of the National Labor Relations Board. Surveying epiphenomena of this sort, the city of...
State school boards across the nation have ended their memberships with the National School Boards Association after the organization likened concerned parents to “domestic terrorists.” But there’s been no similar response to the execrable California School Boards Association. They sent their own letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a missive remarkably similar to the national association’s letter...
The recent election in Virginia has provided a trove of “teachable moments.” As a former educator, I know a teachable moment when I see one. And the political doings in Virginia this fall have been a goldmine. While the Democrats still maintain a small majority in the Old Dominion’s Senate in the recent election, Virginia...
The election of Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor of Virginia this week shocked Democrats and their media allies, but has put politicians and teacher unions nationwide on notice: parents, not bureaucrats, direct their children’s education. Tuesday’s historic upset of Democrat powerhouse Terry McAuliffe was decisive. Virginia saw its highest voter turnout in recent history and...
San Francisco finds new and interesting ways to kill people and opportunities. Xavier Becerra takes California’s most lethal drug policies national on the Joe Biden Medicine Show. Your hosts also compare the Newsom recall with Glenn Youngkin’s big win in Virginia and consider Inglewood High School’s 106-0 football victory over Morningside. Music by Metalachi. Listen...
Battle lines have been drawn, the war is on, and the great parent awakening of 2021 will have permanent consequences. Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, my parents could send me off to school and assume I would be taught by people who shared their values. Those days are long gone, however. To be...
Why didn’t California’s unemployment office heed past audits? Because real efficiency means fewer jobs. The report last week that the state Employment Development Department had paid $20 billion in bogus jobless benefit claims, including $810 million to convicts, added to the view that EDD is the government equivalent of a dumpster fire. It came days...
California’s public-school administrators took a test this year, and they failed miserably. No, we’re not talking about their refusal to reopen classrooms when data showed it was safe to do so. And no, we’re not talking about abysmal student reading and math scores. We’re talking about the way they’ve demonstrated that, even with unprecedented amounts of...
In California, environmental regulations have brought infrastructure investment to a standstill. Without expanding energy, water, and transportation infrastructure, it is nearly impossible to build housing, the cost-of-living is punitive, water is rationed and food is overpriced, the overall quality of life is reduced, and money that ought to be paying skilled workers to operate heavy...
In 1988, with the California economy churning out record revenue, state Democratic lawmakers and their progressive allies had interesting, constructive options. They could fund the water storage projects that experts said a fast-growing state badly needed. They could fix the frayed infrastructure cited in state audits covering dozens of agencies. They could even upgrade the...
On October 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to investigate parents of school-age kids who object to school closures, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, the teaching of critical race theory, and a new law that deprives parents of information about medical treatments recommended for school-age kids. Garland spied with his beady eyes a “disturbing...
The latest NAEP scores indicate a very troubled education system, and eliminating standardized tests certainly won’t solve the problem. On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or “nation’s report card,” test scores in both reading and math declined for 13-year-old students, the first drop registered in 50 years. The test showed that...
California’s largest union has two names it doesn’t want members to know about. The first is Alma Hernandez. The second is Mark Janus. Hernandez is the now-former top boss at California’s largest labor union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). In a truly let-them-eat-cake-moment, she’s been charged on multiple counts of embezzlement and tax fraud...