January 2021 – Sinoe Multilateral High School is the largest government school in Sinoe County. When we first visited in 2015 only one-third of the classrooms had desks. Trash was everywhere. Groups of boisterous students roamed the hallways and gathered in empty classrooms. Today every classroom was occupied with students seated in desks and teachers teaching. The grounds were clean and free of litter. 131 seniors took the WASSCE national exam in October and 100% passed! The principal gave credit to the SmartBox and our team’s efforts. It is gratifying to see what can happen over five years. Our program is making a difference!

2017 WAEC Results – IEL helped Sinoe County jump from #11 to #1 on the West African Examination Council exam. We started with eight Sinoe County schools in 2015 and within a year were engaged with the SmartBox in 11 of the 14 secondary schools in the county.  Hundreds of students learned how to use the computer and began improving in math and other subject areas.  The WAEC (now WASSCE) exam is given every year to 12th grade students. A passing mark is required to graduate from high school. In 2014 Sinoe County placed #11 out of the 15 counties with a passing rate of 23%. In 2017 Sinoe County placed #1 with an 88% passing rate!

• 2013 – 25,000 students took the University of Liberia entrance examination and none passed!
• 2016 – IEI tested over 600 high school students in 10 public & private schools and 85% scored below the 3rd grade level in mathematics.
• 2018 – 33,979 12th grade students from 600 schools took the WASSCE national examination and 65% did not pass any of the 9 subject areas.
• Only 17% of teachers in Liberia have a tertiary degree-level qualification.
  Percentage of children missing out on primary school:
  * Liberia – 62%
• South Sudan – 59%
• Eritrea – 59%
• Afghanistan – 46%
• Sudan – 45%

Changing Education Around the World

This is No Ordinary Box!

SmartBox® solves 6 challenges faced by schools in developing countries:

1. Lack of Internet - The SmartBox® provides students a vast collection of content sent wirelessly to the Chromebooks.
2. Limited Electricity - Runs on battery power for 12-16 hours; recharges in 5 hours with generator or solar system.
3. Textbook Shortage - Students have access to a myriad of books, videos and learning resources.
4. Teacher Shortage - Students can learn in the absence of a qualified teacher, and teachers can also learn!
5. Messy Wiring Runs - Gone are the days of the traditional computer lab with its tangle of cords.
6. Security - Can be securely locked and stored each evening.

• 20 Chromebook laptops
• 20 headsets - can be shared by 40 students
• Loaded with educational resources including Wikipedia, Khan Academy, textbooks, encyclopedias, beginning readers, and more!
• Click here to view the Menu including the NEW Biblical Resource Library
• Provide your own content and curriculum on a USB stick
• Can be configured in English, Spanish or French
• Portable waterproof, shockproof case with wheels
• Charges with either 110v or 230v
• Over $1 million invested in Research & Development
• Powered by Internet-in-a-Box technology

After 40 years of teaching a patently stupid, illogical, and scientifically unsound method of reading instruction that condemned millions of Americans to functional illiteracy, the "whole language" movement has given up the ghost as Columbia University shutters the " Teachers College Reading and Writing Project" and sends its founder, Lucy Calkins, off on "permanent sabbatical." //

Whole Language was based on the insane presumption that elementary-age children could learn to read by essentially guessing at the pronunciation and meaning of words.

Gregory Shafer, a professor of English at Mott Community College, has claimed that "the seeds" of the whole language movement were "firmly rooted" in the theories of linguist Noam Chomsky.[31] In 1967, Ken Goodman had an idea about reading that he considered similar to Chomsky's, and he wrote a widely cited article called "Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game".[32] Goodman set out to determine whether the views of Chomsky could serve as psychological models of the reading process.[33] He chided educators for attempting to apply what he saw as unnecessary orthographic order to a process that relied on holistic examination of words.[34] Whether Goodman was indeed inspired by Chomsky, neither Chomsky himself nor his followers have ever accepted Goodman's views.[35][36]

Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor (R-56th District) was elected in 2020 as a Democrat to represent a deep blue portion of Atlanta in the Georgia House of Representatives. However, in a stunning reversal, Mainor recently announced she has decided to change her political allegiance to the GOP primarily due to her former party’s stubborn resistance to school choice.

“I support school choice, parent rights and opportunities for children to thrive, especially those that are marginalized and tend to fail in school,” Mainor said at the time of her decision to become a member of the GOP. //

According to the American Federation for Children, 72 percent of registered voters support the concept of school choice, including 68 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Republicans, and 67 percent of Independents. Moreover, school choice is supported by 70 percent of blacks, 77 percent of Hispanics, 66 percent of Asians, and 72 percent of whites.

On top of this, mountains of data demonstrate that school choice legislation has far-reaching benefits throughout the community. For example, in states that have passed robust school choice bills: test scores have improved for both private and public schools, parent satisfaction has soared, civic values have progressed, racial and ethnic integration has been enhanced, school safety has advanced, and education spending has become more efficient. https://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/123s-of-School-Choice-WEB-07-10-23.pdf

So, why in the world would anybody, particularly Democrat lawmakers who represent the very people who most desperately want school choice, be opposed to such a popular idea?

As Mainor intimated, the number one reason lies with teacher unions, who remain adamantly opposed to the proliferation of school choice.

Truth remains true no matter the length of time that has transpired since it was initially spoken. There is no expiration date for it. What is true today was also true yesterday and will still be true tomorrow.

Despite this obvious fact, many in our society have begun to reject anything that predates our times. We view ourselves as better and more intelligent than every generation that came before us. There is an inherent danger in presupposing our “modern” values to be superior in every way to those held by previous generations.

C.S. Lewis calls this “chronological snobbery,” which he defines as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.”

His words still ring true today, though I hasten to add that those who subscribe to this philosophy would no doubt discount his words on the same grounds — they were, after all, penned in the mid-20th century. Antiquated indeed.

Most recently, I have seen this in action through the attempted rewriting of children’s classics like “The Secret Garden” to be less “problematic.” And don’t forget the great cancellation era of 2020 in which classic novels such as “Gone With the Wind” found themselves on the chopping block.

Removing classic literature from shelves only serves to harm us as a society. Readers can engage with such material and determine for themselves what is true and worth emulating and what is not. And, quite frankly, how demeaning is it to presume we are incapable of a feat that is hardly an exercise in cognitive gymnastics? No one in his right mind reading “Gone with the Wind” thinks that the way slaves are treated or discussed within the pages of the novel or in the film is acceptable. It makes you uncomfortable — and it should.

Growth stems from discomfort. If such books and ideas are removed from public consumption and discourse, then personal growth will stagnate, and we will have no concept of the thoughts and values of another era.

A New Mexico School Boards Association instructor sees no role for parents in guiding their children’s public school education.

On Tuesday, the parental rights group “Freedom Families United” published audio tape of a New Mexican school board administrator speaking to members of local school boards.

“Parents do not have a fundamental right to tell you how public school teaches their child,” New Mexico School Boards Association Trainer Andrew Sanchez said in December. “Parental rights end when you decide to send your kids to public school. What you teach this generation that will soon be voting are going to be instrumental to the future of us as a democracy and as society goes forward.” //

“If you [school boards] engage in a policy which you’re going to actually create parental rights where none should or don’t exist,” Sanchez said, “or you’re [school boards] going to create opt-out policies so that people [parents] can opt out of certain ideas in the curriculum, there will be nothing to teach the kids.”

Sanchez suggested parents uncomfortable with the level of leftist activism inside their students’ classrooms ought to enroll their students in online schools or charter schools if not home school.

“Public schools, the right to a public education is a state right,” Sanchez said. “It is not a fundamental right under the federal Constitution.”

Over the decades, Barefoot College has attracted international and local funding to expand. The college now has water programs around India, and the Indian government brings in women from Africa and elsewhere to study solar engineering at Barefoot College for six-month courses, and they then return home to bring electricity to their villages. Here, “empowerment” is not a buzzword but a way of life.

“The illiterates of the 21st century,” Roy said, “are not those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn and relearn.”

Charters enroll 59% of all public-school students in the district, and two-thirds of K-8 kids. Their advent has been crucial to boosting district-wide performance on state tests, narrowing the racial “achievement gap.”

And it’s led to higher per-pupil spending in the regular public schools and smaller class sizes. This, while the charters get by on roughly half the per-student funding.

Charters, in short, may save public education in urban communities.

Nor are the charters “cherry picking” the most promising students, as critics routinely charge. //

The only people who don’t gain from charters’ growth are the teachers unions and the politicians they fund.

Eric Adams: ‘When We Took Prayers Out of Schools, Guns Came Into Schools’
“Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body, church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.” //

New York City Mayor Eric Adams made a stunning admission at an interfaith breakfast:

At an interfaith breakfast Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams seemed to regret the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that banned school-sponsored prayer in 1962. //

GWB | March 1, 2023 at 2:24 pm
No, dingleberry, there were plenty of guns in school when we had prayer in them.
It was not that “guns came into schools” but that the moral restraints on the people with those guns were removed. One of Progressivism’s greatest wins. //

GWB | March 1, 2023 at 3:52 pm
State is the body, church is the heart.
No. The community – perhaps the nation – is the body. But not The State. This is the tell of his Progressivism.

Classics for Kids resources available at classicsforkids.com are provided FREE to all teachers, parents and caregivers. You have permission to use and share these resources for educational purposes.

Here you will find study guides organized by video release date. Each video has a study guide, quiz, and answer key included. Looking for a study guide for a specific video? Click on the search tool at PragerU.com to search videos by name. A study guide and quiz is linked below each video.

WV Senate OKs intelligent design bill; Florida's assault on education continues. //

Two recent bills introduced at the state level could spell trouble for science education. One of them is in West Virginia, where the state Senate has approved a bill that would allow teachers to tell students that the Universe is the result of intelligent design, an idea that was developed to avoid prohibitions on teaching creationism. While a court held that teaching intelligent design was an unconstitutional imposition of religion, a recent Supreme Court decision weakened the legal foundations of that ruling.

Meanwhile, Florida's thinking much bigger, with the State House considering a bill that would say the legislature disapproves of college courses that cover "theoretical or exploratory" topics being used to fulfill general education requirements. That would seemingly rule out most science classes.

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Typing might be faster, but longhand stays with you better. //

One of the most important parts of learning new information is the ability to retain it and recall it later when it is relevant. Writing by hand on paper creates a tactile, personalized experience each time a person takes notes. The complex experience of hand writing on paper contains a multitude of variable elements: the creativity of an individual’s written representation of language, the texture of the paper itself, the fine motor skills needed to translate thoughts into written language, the engagement of the physical senses, and even the reading comprehension strength that we learned of earlier. All of these complexities create a stronger memory of the information that is taken in during the note taking.

There have been a few scientific studies done on the subject of information processing through digital note taking and notes taken by hand. A recent study led by neuroscientist Professor Kuniyoshi Sakai at the University of Tokyo published in March 2021 showed that subjects who recorded calendar event information on paper showed more brain activity than subjects who recorded the same information onto a smartphone when they attempted to recall details about that calendar information later. And they recalled/entered the information 25% faster when writing it by hand.

But interestingly enough, the former CIA director thinks America has bigger things to worry about than China’s tyrants. “I get asked all the time: who poses the most risk? Is it Xi Jinping? I spent a lot of time with Chairman Kim in North Korea. It’s neither of them. It’s not Vladimir Putin, [even though he’s] a bad guy,” he told the crowd. “The greatest threat to the United States is Randi Weingarten, the head of the teachers’ unions. What they are trying to do to the next generation of children,” he shook his head, “to walk away from the greatness of America, to teach our kids that there are more than two genders, to teach our kids that we are racist nation. If we lose a generation that doesn’t understand our founding, our Judeo-Christian heritage, the 74th Secretary of State or the 75th Secretary of State won’t stand a chance.”

The following is invited public testimony to South Dakota’s Board of Education Standards on September 19, 2022, as written in advance of the hearing. Monday’s was the first of multiple hearings that will occur around the state as part of a curriculum process that began after massive public outcry against a 2021 history curriculum plan that pushed far-left politics.

Gov. Kristi Noem’s chief of staff, Mark Miller, chaired a new commission that started with curriculum guidelines proposed by Hillsdale College and refined them with in-state teachers, tribal leaders, and historians. //

I have read many K-12 standards, and the first standout in these was their clarity. Most curriculum mandates are laden with jargon. Clear language allows everyone to understand what children are expected to learn. This creates unity and accountability for parents, children, teachers, taxpayers, school boards, and state lawmakers.

These requirements are rich in key information and beautifully represent what every American citizen should know (excluding the South Dakota-specific standards, of course). They reflect what research and experience find ensures a high-quality education for all children: core knowledge, carefully arranged and frequently reinforced.

Excellent instruction in the story of humankind helps us all understand human nature, benefit from others’ experiences, and understand our rights and duties. Distributing such core human knowledge broadly, as University of Virginia researchers E.D. Hirsch and Daniel Willingham, and other academics, have shown, reduces social inequality.

Their work also shows what’s wrong with the “critical thinking” canard that pretends filling one’s brain with knowledge is somehow at odds with thinking soundly. It is not, and anyone who says so is poorly informed about cognitive science. Indeed, as Ethics and Public Policy researcher Stanley Kurtz has written of South Dakota’s struggle to update its social studies curricula, “critical thinking” jargon is usually used as a cover for political indoctrination.

In fact, instruction rich in factual knowledge, such as these proposed standards require, is exactly what’s required for critical thinking — because knowledge is the basis of all critical thinking. And it’s clear from almost any data you look at that American children are not being given such core knowledge in most publicly funded schools. //

South Dakota’s constitution rightly observes, “The stability of a republican form of government depend[s] on the morality and intelligence of the people.” Therefore, the lack of strong history and civics instruction is an existential crisis. //

https://doe.sd.gov/contentstandards/ss-review.aspx

Education is a top priority to millions of American families, and parents should be empowered to choose a safe and effective education for their children. To serve that goal, The Heritage Foundation has published the Education Freedom Report Card, to serve as a guide for assessing education freedom in each state.

Our report card measures four broad categories (School Choice, Transparency, Regulatory Freedom, and Spending) that encompass more than two dozen discrete factors. //

Public school teachers make up just half of all education jobs. //

Since 1950, public school enrollment is up 100%, teacher jobs are up 243%, and administration jobs are up 709%. //

K-12 spending is up 3X since 1970, with no meaningful academic gains.