Commentary: Eliminating Standardized Testing Had Shockingly Bad Results

Test Taking

For years, liberals have scoffed at the idea that standardized testing is the best predictor of academic success. The National Education Association, for instance, claims standardized tests are “both inequitable and ineffective at gauging what students know.” Activists’ campaign against standardized testing — and their assertions that such tests discriminate against “underrepresented minority students” — culminated in the decisions by more than 1,000 colleges to drop their standardized testing requirements.

This week, cold, hard data showed just how foolish those decisions were. The University of Texas at Austin released the academic performance data for students who submitted standardized scores versus those who did not submit such scores. The result is unambiguous: Students who did not submit standardized tests performed drastically worse than students who did submit their scores. The students who did not submit ACT or SAT scores finished the fall 2023 semester with a grade point average 0.86 grade points lower than students who did. This demonstrates an average difference of almost an entire letter grade. Had the University of Texas utilized all applicants’ standardized scores, it very well might have decided against admitting many of those who did not provide their scores. Students who did not provide scores had a median SAT of 1160, markedly lower than that of the students who did provide their scores: 1420. The University of Texas would have been correct in deciding against admitting those students with lower scores given how much better students with a higher average SAT performed academically.

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Commentary: Foreign Cash Could Be the Culprit Turning Our Kids into Terrorist Sympathizers

Texas A&M

Shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a Harvard CAPS-Harris X poll found that 48 percent of Americans ages 18-24 supported Hamas over Israel. This is in direct contrast to 95 percent of Americans 65 years of age and older who sided with Israel. This stark difference begs the question: why do half of young Americans support a group that has been designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since October 1997? Our ongoing fight for transparency suggests at least some of the answers lie in Qatar’s pocketbooks.

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Williamson County GOP Issues Medical Rights Resolution Against Any Potential COVID-19 Mandates

The Williamson County GOP has issued a medical rights resolution refusing to “blindly submit” to any effort by the federal government to reinstate COVID-19 mandates and urging state lawmakers to do more to protect Tennesseans’ medical freedoms.

“We, as the Republicans of Williamson County, as Americans, as God-fearing Conservatives, will refuse to blindly submit, and we thank our State Legislators for the protections they have already enacted and beg them to do far more to protect our Medical Freedom and to prevent such a horrific overreach from ever happening again; and we ask for Governor Lee to task our state’s Attorney General to investigate violations of the Tennessee Constitution and other Covid-19 crimes,” the resolution reads.

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U.S. Senate Democrats Block Vance’s Legislation to Ban Federal Mask Mandates

On Thursday, U.S. Senate Democrats blocked Senator JD Vance’s (R-OH) motion for unanimous consent on his legislation to prevent the re-imposition of federal mask mandates in the United States.

This follows Vance introducing The Freedom to Breathe Act on Tuesday which aims to prohibit any federal official, including the President, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools. The legislation would also prohibit air carriers, transit authorities, and educational institutions from refusing service to individuals who choose not to wear a mask.

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U.S. Senator JD Vance Introduces Legislation to Ban Federal Mask Mandates

 U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) introduced legislation on Tuesday to prevent the re-imposition of federal mask mandates in the United States.

The Freedom to Breathe Act, sponsored by Vance would prohibit any federal official, including the president, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools.

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State Senator Reminds Arizonans of Safeguards Enacted to Protect Against Mask Mandates

Arizona State senator and registered nurse Janae Shamp (R-Suprise) reminded Arizonans this week of safeguards put in place by Republicans at the legislature to protect against any effort by the federal government to reinstate COVID-19 mask mandates.

This follows movie studio Lionsgate in Santa Monica, Rutgers University in New Jersey, Georgetown University in Washington DC, and Morris Brown College in Atlanta announcing they are reinstating mask mandates due to reported COVID-19 cases.

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Ohio Republican Calls on State Colleges to Resist Any Potential COVID Mandates

Ohio Republican businessman and candidate for U.S. Senate Bernie Moreno called on Ohio colleges, universities, and businesses to resist any effort by the federal government to reinstate any COVID-19-related mandates.

This follows movie studio Lionsgate in Santa Monica, Rutgers University in New Jersey, Georgetown University in Washington DC, and Morris Brown College in Atlanta announcing they are reinstating mask mandates due to reported COVID-19 cases.
This follows movie studio Lionsgate in Santa Monica as well as Rutgers University in New Jersey, Georgetown University in Washington DC, and Morris Brown College in Atlanta announcing they are reinstating mask mandates due to reported COVID-19 cases.

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Justices Skeptical of States Keeping Full Proceeds of Seizures for Back Taxes

A Georgetown University law professor who wrote a book arguing for then-President Trump’s impeachment believes that states can legally confiscate a million-dollar home and keep the full sale proceeds to pay $5 in back taxes. Some members of the Supreme Court found that a stretch.

Justices across the ideological spectrum gave Neal Katyal, solicitor general in the Obama administration, a hard time in oral arguments Wednesday in a case with far-reaching consequences for property rights in America, perhaps as consequential as its 2005 Kelo decision that set off a wave of eminent-domain reform across the country.

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Campus Speech Police Update: One Professor Investigated for Tweet Reclaims Job as Another Loses His

After more than four months in limbo, constitutional law professor Ilya Shapiro has been cleared to take the reins of Georgetown Law’s Center for the Constitution.

The university had placed the libertarian legal scholar on paid leave in January for his clumsily worded “lesser black woman” tweet about President Biden’s pledge to consider only black women in his search for a successor to retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

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Brown University Students Overwhelmingly Vote in Favor of Reparations for Black Students

Brown University

On Monday, Students at the Ivy League school Brown University voted in favor of two resolutions approving reparations for black students, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

Both resolutions seek to identify any black students who are direct descendants of slaves, or “who were entangled with and/or afflicted by the University and Brown family and their associates,” in reference to the university’s founder Nicholas Brown Jr.

One resolution would give priority admission to any such black students, while the other would give direct monetary payments to said students. In the vote amongst all students on campus, the admissions resolution received 89 percent of the vote, while the financial payment resolution received 85 percent. The vote was held after the student government at Brown passed a resolution, introduced by the student government president Jason Carroll, “calling upon Brown to attempt to identify and reparate the descendants of slaves entangled with the university.”

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Columbia University to Offer Graduation Ceremonies Based on Race, Ethnicity, Income

Next month, Columbia University will hold six additional graduation ceremonies for undergraduate students according to their race and other aspects of how they identify.

The six virtual ceremonies were announced by Columbia’s Multicultural Affairs department.

Native, Asian, “Latinx” and Black special events are listed as options where students can register, as well as a Lavender graduation for the LGBTQ community, and a ceremony for first-generation and low-income students, USA Today reports.

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Department of Education Going After Elite Colleges for Allegedly Taking and Hiding Foreign Cash

by Luke Rosiak   The Department of Education is going after U.S universities over supposed ties to foreign governments, after some allegedly took huge quantities of foreign cash and hid it from regulators. At the top of the list are Georgetown University and Texas A&M, which have taken hundreds of millions of dollars from the government of Qatar, a middle eastern nation with suspected links to international terrorism. Both schools received letters from the Department of Education Thursday saying they should have disclosed that funding but their filings “may not fully capture” the activity, the Associated Press reported. The letter warned that they could be referred to the attorney general to “compel compliance.” Georgetown was also asked about possible ties to Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, as well as Saudi Arabian money. Both schools were ordered to disclose funding from Huawei and ZTE, Chinese firms suspected of spying. Top Foreign Funders of U.S. Universities, 2011-2016 (Source: Department of Education) Country Amount Qatar $1,024,065,043 England $761,586,394 Saudi Arabia $613,608,797 China $426,526,085 Canada $402,535,603 Hong Kong $394,446,859 China In February, a Senate investigative subcommittee released a bipartisan, 100-page report that found that not only had China been pouring money into the U.S. for a…

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Georgetown Students Vote to Pay for Slavery Reparations

by Neetu Chandak   Georgetown University students voted in favor of increasing their tuition to pay for descendants of slaves sold by university affiliates nearly 200 years ago. More than 2,500 votes were cast in favor of the semester fee Thursday, according to a Georgetown University Student Association tweet. The results of the referendum are as follows: 66.08% for yes (2541 votes), 33.92% for no (1304 votes). This means that the referendum passes. — GUSA Election Commission (@GUSAElections) April 12, 2019 The fee, if passed by the school’s board of directors, would benefit the descendants of the 272 enslaved people sold by a Jesuit society affiliated with Georgetown in 1838, known as GU272. “Our students are contributing to an important national conversation and we share their commitment to addressing Georgetown’s history with slavery,” Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson said in a statement Friday. The fee would be $27.20 for each student per semester. Funding could possibly support projects like K-12 education and college scholarships, according to the school’s newspaper The Hoya. The fund would also be the first to focus on slavery reparations by a notable American institution, The New York Times reported. “The school wouldn’t be here…

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Taxpayers Spend $700,000 on University of Tennessee Knoxville Program with No History of Success

Knoxville

The feds are handing out more than $700,000 of taxpayer money to the University of Tennessee Knoxville so school officials can find more ways to get women involved with STEM. There’s just one problem, said Toni Airaksinen, in a column this week for PJ Media. Previous attempts have had “zero record of success,” Airaksinen said. According to Live Science, STEM incorporates the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics all into one curriculum. Officials at UT-Knoxville did not respond to The Tennessee Star’s questions about this matter before close of business Friday. Writing for Campusreform.org one year ago, Airaksinen profiled a Georgetown University economics professor, Adriana Kugler, who found STEM recruitment efforts that target women backfire. The problem, the article went on to say, is how the media portrays the situation. “The trouble begins when the media and recruitment efforts capitalize on that preponderance of men, since it sends an additional message to women that they don’t fit into those fields, and that they don’t belong there,” Kugler told Campus Reform. “With the media, women are getting multiple signals that they don’t belong in the STEM field, that they won’t fit into the field. That’s what we find. It’s very…

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Christian Student Group Called ‘Hate Group’ by LGBT Students, Forced to Defend Itself in Hearing

A traditional marriage student group defended its right to exist at a Catholic university Thursday after LGBT students claimed it was a hate group. The student members of Love Saxa, a Georgetown University group that promotes healthy relationships through traditional marriage and premarital abstinence, defended themselves in a mandatory hearing against the complaints of two students,…

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