Teacher Suspended After ‘Morality Test’ Goes Awry With Incest, Puppy-Killing Questions

by Jack Davis


After an Ohio parent blew the whistle on a morality test given to a high school class, the Hilliard City School District sent the teacher who gave the test to time out.

Students were given a 36-question test about various ethical situations in which they were asked to choose what actions were OK and which were not.

But the questions, given to a 10th-grade language arts class at Hilliard Bradley High School, crossed a line as far as parent Todd Sandberg was concerned, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

Sandberg said the test was graded in a way that it would tell students their “moral foundation” and their political leanings.

“What does the teacher need to know that information for?” he asked. “The questions are so out of line for high school language arts.”

Some questions asked about typical conflicts and dilemmas, but some were more disturbing and involved sex and violence.

One question talked about a scenario in which “A man kills a baby rabbit with a knife” on a live TV show. As with all the questions, students had to grade the comment on a scale from “Not OK” to “OK.”

In another instance, according to Fox News, students were asked to respond to this statement: “Using both a condom and a pill, a brother and a sister decide that they want to sleep with each other — just once, to see what it would be like.”

“Sarah’s dog has four puppies,” another scenario read, according to Fox News. “She can only find a home for two of them, so she kills the other two with a stone to the head.”

Sandberg pointed out the questions on a Facebook site for parents.

“My job was to point it out,” Sandberg said. “It is clearly evident that it’s out there in the public. The public eye is aware of it. I knew it was going to cause a firestorm.”

The teacher was placed on administrative leave while the district sorts out what to do next, WTTE reported.

The school district then issued a public apology, according to WTTE.

“Last night, we were made aware of a classroom activity that should never have taken place,” the district stated. “We absolutely share the outrage of our parents and community.”

The statement called the test “an isolated incident, and an activity of this nature would never be considered acceptable.”

Sandberg said the underlying issue is that parents need to talk with their children about what’s going on in school.

“Hey, parents, be on the lookout,” he said. “I love the district. This is an isolated case.”

According to the Canton Repository, documents released by the district said the teacher who gave the test is named Sarah Gillam and she has taught at the school since 2007.


Kansas Voters Do Not Want Tax Hike to Satisfy Judge's Ruling for more School Money


{And so we will shortly enter 2019 or phase infinity of the worthless Kansas legislature still having no concept of the separation of powers, a band of Beau Brummels and thespian lawyers. The public education system is a complete failure, a white elephant but the ruling judicial junta has commanded more money.  Thus the courts dictate to the erstwhile state assembly how much of the people's money must be allocated for public schools. But why stop there? Shouldn't the courts handle the whole budget and legislative process themselves? After all, they have decades of experience legislating from the bench so just deep six the legislature, it's a pathetic joke anyway. - ED}

by  Kansas Policy Institute


Legislators heading to Topeka are going to have to find a way to address a 3 billion-dollar shortfall due to a massive school funding increase brought about by the Kansas Supreme Court. However, a newly released poll, conducted on behalf of Kansas Policy Institute by SurveyUSA, found that 51% of Kansas voters do not want their legislators to add another $365 million dollars to comply with the court’s demand; only 39 percent said funding should be further increased.

James Franko, vice president, and policy director of Kansas Policy Institute remarked, “Low-income kids are more than two years’ worth of learning behind their more affluent peers and overall achievement in Kansas is depressingly stagnant. These achievement trends are especially discouraging because the Department of Education says we’re on track to soon spend over $15,000 per pupil on education. Voters clearly want that level of investment to improve achievement with accountable and efficient schools.”


Kansas voters are growing increasingly concerned about high education administration costs at the local level. A survey last year found that 78 percent of voters believe spending on out-of-the-classroom costs (administration, building operations, transportation, etc.) should be provided more efficiently on a regionalized basis, with the savings put into the classroom.  In the poll released today, the number jumped to 89 percent of Kansas voters who would like to see more efficiency within their school system. 

Franko observed, “The more voters seem to understand the reality of our achievement crisis and the increasing costs of education in Kansas the more they seem to rethink how education decisions are made.”

Calculations by Kansas Legislative Research Department show $3.7 billion revenue shortfall exists over the next four years to pay for approved and proposed school funding increases. [emphasis mine] With many assurances being made throughout the campaign cycle about school funding being met without raising taxes, legislators will be forced to specifically identify how this massive shortfall will be met. According to the newly released data, only 37% of Kansas voters are willing to pay higher taxes to close the $3 billion shortfall caused by school funding.

The latest polling data revealed that a startling number of Kansans voters are in the dark about education spending trends in Kansas. According to the SurveyUSA data, only 10% of Kansas voters understand what our Kansas school districts currently receive from taxpayer sources per student, and that has a major impact on their opinions.  For example, 93 percent of those who oppose a constitutional amendment to prevent courts from setting funding levels either don’t know how much schools receive or they believe it’s less than $10,000 per-pupil; only 7 percent of the opposition comes from voters who think funding is over $10,000 per-pupil. Similar disparities exist within voters' willingness to pay higher taxes and whether additional funding should be provided. [Why is this a surprise to anyone? A majority of college students can't name one Supreme Court justice, can't formulate a simple sentence where subject does action through a verb to an object and have no knowledge of the Constitution or it's bill of rights. What passes for education in Kansas is nothing but a PAC that gives its votes to the candidate(s) delivering the most largess. - ED}

Franko concludes, “Just like last year, roughly 60% of Kansas voters say they want to revisit how education funding decisions are made in the state. The Kansas Constitution vests all political power in citizens and those citizens seemingly understand that they, and their elected representatives, are best-suited to decide state spending priorities.”

School District Under Fire From Parents After Banning Fast Food

By Cillian Zeal


Parents of children at a Missouri school are fighting back after the school district announced it was banning fast food from being eaten on campus during school hours.

A terse announcement on the Facebook page of Dear Elementary in the Richmond School District in Richmond, Missouri, stated that “(n)ew board policy states that no fast food is allowed at lunch or during school hours for students.”

One would assume that there isn’t a Carl’s Jr. anywhere inside Dear Elementary or any of the other schools in Richmond. However, this means that parents can’t even make choices regarding what their own children bring to school.

It didn’t take long after the Aug. 15 announcement for the district to start receiving significant backlash.

“At the end of the day, we want to be able to decide on our own,” Chris Swafford, who has five kids in the district and two at Dear Elementary, told WDAF-TV.

“I thought it was overstepping at its finest,” he said. “It’s up to parents what their children eat.”

Swafford also contended that fast food was being made a popular scapegoat, claiming that there wasn’t a whole lot of nutritional difference between some of the bagged lunches that parents give their children and the fast food lunches the school was banning.

“Just because I don’t personally bring fast food to my children at school doesn’t mean other parents shouldn’t be able to do,” Swafford said.

“Parents’ lives are busy. They sometimes have things going on, and sometimes, grabbing a 10-piece nugget from McDonald’s and taking it to their child shouldn’t be an issue.”

Richmond School District Superintendent Mike Aytes told WDAF that district personnel were too busy to comment on the issue. Parents on Facebook, however, weren’t. School lunches, as those who remember Michelle Obama’s tenure as first lady know, are a hot-button issue.

“I don’t agree with this. At all,” one parent wrote.

“I’m the parent. It is my job to parent my child and make those decisions. What she eats, how much she eats, what she wears, how she does her hair, if I keep her home because she is sick, those are MY decisions The schools sole responsibility is to provide a safe, positive learning environment for my children to get an education. They are not, and will not be making parenting decisions for my children.”

“They don’t get money from students that bring a lunch from home. Why can’t they have a burger with family on special occasions?!” another wrote. “This is stupid as can be!”

One of the more common arguments for the policy wasn’t health outcomes, however, but the fact that fast food represents privilege.

“My kids take their lunch,” parent Karen Williams said. While she opposed the policy, she said she understood fast food might make other kids feel bad. “Kids have been getting their birthday lunch brought to them since they were in kindergarten. I think it’s kind of silly, but I could see how other kids would feel sad if they didn’t have anything ever.”

“Oddly I support this,” another Facebook commenter wrote, according to Fox News. “I would hope they are doing this for the right reasons though. That being it’s simply not right for kids who do not ever get these things to watch the other classmates eat it in front of them. Some parents can’t afford to bring child fast food.”

“So what about all of the other kids that are going to be complaining that your kid got a happy meal and they didn’t? What about the kids who parents can’t afford to bring their children lunch or something like that? Are you really gonna let your kid eat their happy meal in front of all these other kids? They’re avoiding those issues all together with this policy,” another person defending the plan wrote.

Head, meet hand.

I can marginally understand the concept behind banning fast food in schools for health reasons, although I’d point out that school-provided or home-cooked lunches aren’t necessarily any healthier. However, since when did fast food become a status symbol? Maybe it’s just me, but I was under the impression it was the other way around.

Here’s a novel idea: Let’s go further in eliminating outward vestiges of privileges. Why stop at burgers and fries?

Let’s put all these kids in school uniforms so nobody has to worry about being clothes-conscious. Students can’t be bused to school, since those buses might stop in front of their houses and other students would see how rich their families are. All kids will be henceforth driven to class in school-issued 2003 Kia Rios so that nobody will seem any richer than anyone else. Trained dogs will be stationed at all entrances, sniffing out any students that may try to smuggle in a Whopper or a Frosty.

Busybody educators of the world, unite and take over!

Yes, this is wholly ridiculous — just as ridiculous as banning fast food from schools that happily serve pigswill, all in the name of health consciousness and privilege-checking.

AGW Believers Replace Scientific Method With Dogma Pt. 2: Suppressing Dissent

by H. Sterling Burnett

 

People caught in the grips of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the idea that human activities, primarily fossil fuel use, are causing catastrophic change in the world’s climate, seem to live with blinders on, unable to admit evidence to the contrary. 

I don’t begrudge the opinion of scientists who believe their own research shows, or who believe the dominant number of peer-reviewed papers indicates, humans are causing dangerous climate change. But I do disagree with many of the assumptions made by proponents of AGW. So far, evidence shows most of their projections concerning temperatures, ice, hurricanes, species extinction, etc. have failed. As a result, their projections of future climate conditions are not nearly trustworthy enough to make the kind of fundamental, wrenching, and costly changes to our economy and systems of government AGW proponents have proposed to fight climate change. I don’t think climate scientists can foretell the future any better than the average palm reader.

Making matters worse, AGW proponents discount, or ignore entirely, powerful studies that seem to undermine many of their assumptions and refute most of their conclusions.

Admittedly, I start with a position of skepticism, and indeed suspicion, when well-known researchers release a new study purporting to reinforce or provide further evidence AGW is true. This isn’t because I don’t want to hear what those who disagree with my assessment have to say. Rather, it’s based on my understanding of the lengths to which AGW true believers have gone to manipulate temperature data and try to shoehorn or force this and other data to match their dire projections.  It is reasonable, and even expected, for educated people to disagree with one another on this issue. This back-and-forth exchange of points and counterpoints shows the scientific method functioning as it should.

Many AGW believers, however, have seemingly abandoned the scientific method.

Progress is made in science by proposing a hypothesis, and developing a theory, to explain or understand certain phenomena, and then testing the hypothesis against reality. A particular hypothesis is considered superior to others when, through testing, it is shown to have more explanatory power than competing theories or hypotheses and when other scientists running the same testing regime can reproduce the results of the original test. Every theory or hypothesis must be disconfirmable in principle, such that if the theory predicts ‘A’ will occur under certain conditions, but instead sometimes ‘B’ or ‘C’ results, then the theory has problems. The more a hypothesis’ predictions prove inconsistent with results that occur during testing or real-world data, the less likely the hypothesis is to be correct.

AGW theory does not work this way. No matter what the climate phenomenon, if it can in some way be presented as being unusual by AGW proponents, it is argued to be “further evidence of global warming,” even if it contradicts earlier phenomena pointed to by the same people as evidence of global warming. {The same technique evolutionists use to defend their theory. A Theory so inaccurate the courts rule ex cathedra in favor of it - ED}  

What effects AGW will have seem to depend on which scientist one consults and which model they use. In realm of climate change research, different models looking at the same phenomenon applying the same laws of physics with the same inputs produce dramatically varied results.

Another indication AGW advocates have thrown over the scientific method is how they revert to various logical fallacies to manipulate peoples’ emotions in order to have the public dismiss climate realists’ arguments and research. AGW advocates commit the fallacy of ad hominem when they call researchers who disagree with their assessment of the strength of the case for AGW “deniers”—an obvious attempt to link them in the public’s mind with despicable Holocaust deniers. That is not science, it’s rhetoric. I know of no one who denies the fact climate changes, but there are significant uncertainties and legitimate disagreements regarding the extent of humanity’s role in recent climate changes and whether these will be disastrous. Those who refuse to acknowledge highly regarded scientists disagree with AGW are the real “deniers,” and they should suffer the opprobrium rightfully attached to that label.

AGW proponents commit the fallacy of appeal to numbers when they say the case for dangerous human-caused climate change is settled because some high percentage of a subset of scholars agrees humans are causing dangerous climate change. Consensus is a political, not a scientific, term. People once thought Earth was flat. Galileo disagreed, saying he believed it was round—and he was persecuted for saying so. And you know what? Galileo was right, and the consensus of the time was wrong. At one time, people, including the intellectual elite, believed Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun revolved around it. Copernicus said just the opposite. He was right, and everyone else was wrong.

Knowledge acquisition succeeds not through bowing to some purported consensus in thought and opinion, but through questioning previously received wisdom and continuously testing scientific theories against data. “Because the vast majority of us said so,” is not a legitimate scientific response to research raising questions about all or some part of AGW.

AGW researchers commit the fallacy of appeal to motive when they say a particular study or the work of a particular scientist or group of scientists should not be taken seriously because of who funded them. Both sides commit this fallacy, with climate skeptics often arguing AGW research is biased based on the fact it was funded by government, which history shows is predisposed toward finding reasons grow and exert ever more control over people.

Research should be judged based on the validity of its assumptions, whether its premises are true, and whether its conclusions follow from its premises, not on who funded the research. Data, evidence, and logic are the hallmarks of science, not motives.

Beyond the routine data manipulation and logical fallacies, AGW advocates’ own e-mails show they have tried to suppress the publication of research skeptical toward AGW. And they have routinely attempted to interfere with the career advancement of scholars who refuse to completely toe the AGW line, even stooping on occasion to try to get scholars fired for producing research undermining AGW.

AGW fanatics also try to suppress the teaching of a balanced, accurate understanding of the current state of climate science, with all its uncertainties, in the nation’s schools. This is the tool of the propagandist, not the scientist seeking the truth.

All these reflections came to a head in recent years, as AGW true believers have fought in court to prevent the release of the data underpinning their own research, attempted to suppress free speech by accusing those with whom they disagree of committing libel, and even on occasion called for the prosecution and incarceration of climate skeptics for daring to question AGW orthodoxy. Some AGW proponents have openly admired various authoritarian regimes for their ability to “get things done” without the interference of democratic institutions. Real scientists know truths do not bloom under authoritarianism.

When a theory does not comport with the facts, data, and evidence, it is the theory that should be questioned, not the data or the motives of those bringing such evidence to the world’s attention. Consider this my plea for AGW true believers to embrace, once again, the scientific method, to follow the evidence in the field of climate research where it leads even if it proves inconvenient or inconsistent with their earlier beliefs. To the extent I myself have failed to live up to this ideal, I will try and do the same, approaching AGW arguments with an open mind.