It looks like we struck a nerve at one of the largest universities in the United States. Last week, the Free Enterprise Club published an article on Arizona State University’s (ASU) failure to uphold free speech. The article came in the aftermath of an event held by the T.W. Lewis Center for personal development—a center of the Barrett Honors College—that featured prominent conservative speakers like Robert Kiyosaki, Dennis Prager, and Charlie Kirk.
While the event was allowed to proceed, it faced a campaign from 39 of the 47 faculty from the honors college who tried to shut it down. Then, in the months following the event, the center was not only dissolved, but two staff members lost their jobs. Now, ASU has offered a “fact check” of our article in a desperate attempt to save face. And as you might expect, it’s another swing and miss…
Have you heard the outrageous story of what happened recently in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital? Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.), elected in 2022, had campaigned on school choice for tens of thousands of children, mostly minorities, who are forced to attend failing public schools in places like Philadelphia.
“It’s what I believe,” Shapiro, then state attorney general, assured voters as he ran for governor. Last month on a national Fox News broadcast, Shapiro was unequivocal in his support for school choice because “every child of God” deserves “a quality education.”
But there’s a force far more powerful in politics than Shapiro’s convictions, such as they are. And that force is the teachers unions. They put on a full-court press to stop the roughly 10,000 vouchers for the poorest kids in Pennsylvania’s worst school districts even though the state budget bill gave billions more for the public schools. It didn’t matter that this voucher program comprised less than 0.5% of state spending. The union brass commanded Democrats to vote no on even a single penny going to schools that work.
In the end, Shapiro did a full flip-flop. He vetoed his own promise. He might as well have declared that black lives don’t matter.
Shapiro has presidential ambitions — so he figures he needs the teachers unions behind him. But if he can’t face down Randi Weingarten, how is he ever going to stand up to bullies like China’s President Xi Jinping or Russia’s President Vladimir Putin?
This story isn’t just about Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. In North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency in the Tar Heel State because the legislature wanted to fund vouchers for kids to go to the best schools possible. Egads!
In Arizona, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs wants to defund a school choice program that is already serving tens of thousands of kids, most of whom are Hispanic, with proven results of better performance and higher test scores. Why would she kill a program that is working? The teachers unions want the money and the kids under their control.
In New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, charter schools are flourishing. They are alternatives to public schools but are still regulated by the state. They are oversubscribed because parents want to choose the best school for their kids. Now, the Democrats want to put a cap on the charter schools because the teachers unions want to warehouse the kids in public schools where a majority of the kids can’t read or do math at grade-level proficiency. In other words, many of the public schools are worse than mediocre. And it’s not for lack of money. New York spends more than $20,000 per child in public schools.
Did I mention that in nearly every one of these cases across the country, the Democrats blocking private and Catholic school options went to private schools themselves? Or they send their kids to private schools. But poor black kids aren’t allowed that same opportunity? These are hypocrites with a capital H.
There’s a cruel historic irony here. Sixty years ago this summer, Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood before the doors of schools to prevent black children from attending the schools with white children. He was trying to preserve the stain of segregation.
Today, Democrats are employing the same tactic to keep minority kids from attending excellent schools. Why? They say that school choice will hurt public schools or cause more segregation.
Wrong on both counts. Monopolies are always bad for consumers and competition improves service. Education choice requires public schools to compete. Would you get good and friendly service if there were only one restaurant in town?
Instead of draining public schools of money, studies show that per-pupil funding rises when some kids take advantage of vouchers to attend alternative schools. Charter and Catholic schools tend to be, in most cases, more racially diverse than inner-city public schools.
I’m a parent of five boys, so I know that each of my kids has different skills, interests, behavior issues and attention spans. To warehouse them all in the same schoolroom is madness. Schools should be tailored toward the kids and serve their interests — not those of the $1 trillion a year public-school-industrial complex.
More importantly, as an economist, my biggest worry about America’s future is what happens when kids are graduating without being able to read their diplomas and with no useful skills. There are hundreds of schools around the country where not a single child can pass a basic math or reading test.
That’s an economic, civil rights and national security tragedy. Shame on Democratic leaders, and some Republicans, too, for putting their own political ambitions ahead of our nation’s children.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. His latest book is “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy.”
Bad ideas never seem to go away. And in politics, they often get recycled every 10 years because consultants need to make money. That’s why it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that we’re seeing another push for jungle primaries in the state of Arizona.
If you’re not familiar with a jungle primary (or open primary), it is an election in which all candidates run in the same primary regardless of their political party. The top two candidates who receive the most votes then advance to the general election.
Several years ago, California adopted this “solution” under the guise that it would result in more moderate policies and candidates being elected there. Go ahead and read that again. When you think of California, do you think of a state with moderate policies and candidates? That should tell you all you need to know about jungle primaries. And yet, now we have groups like Save Democracy telling us that we need to act more like California to improve Arizona…
By cutting off oil and gas exploration as part of a global campaign to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, policymakers aligned with climate activists are “misdirecting scarce innovation resources,” according to an analysis of energy transition efforts.
While proponents of Environmental, Social, and Governance investing continue to seize upon the International Energy Agency’s (IEAs) “roadmap” for reaching net zero as a plug for their ambitions, the authors of a new study probing into the agency’s projections find that they are based on faulty assumptions.
The net zero initiatives that IEA foresees can only materialize if demand for coal, oil, and natural gas plummet while consumers gravitate toward so-called renewable energy in the form of wind and solar. But as the report from the RealClearFoundation and the Energy Policy Research Foundation makes clear, this is a dubious proposition.
“Rather than being a plausible description of the future, demand for hydrocarbons withering away is best thought of as an expression of a political or an ideological aspiration, as opposed to an objective assessment of the future,” the report says. “The failure to invest in increased supply is far more likely to result in upwardly spiraling prices as demand increasingly exceeds supply, as the Biden administration understood when it used the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the nonstrategic purpose of tamping down gasoline prices.”
The foundation is a nonprofit group founded to examine energy economics and policy with an emphasis on energy security. The geopolitical implications of net zero policies and ESG investing figures into its analysis of IEA’s roadmap. A big part of the problem lies with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, widely known as OPEC, and the leverage it could gain over western nations including the U.S.
If the demand for petroleum is higher than what is projected in IEA’s roadmap, which is highly likely, the foundation estimates that OPEC’s share of global oil market could rise to an astonishing 82 percent by 2050. OPEC includes Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
“Wittingly or otherwise, ESG investors are undermining the security interests of the West during a period of rising geopolitical tensions,” the foundation warns in its analysis. The upshot is that the west is well positioned to maintain a healthy level of independence from OPEC with the right mix of policies. The foundation points out that IEA was initially established in response to the “first oil price shock” in the early 1970s “to act as a buyers’ group of western nations in an attempt to counteract OPEC market power.” But given how politically fashionable “net zero” efforts have become, the agency has clearly strayed from its mission.
“The IEA could have chosen to remain faithful to its original mandate, but as the Energy Policy Research Foundation report shows, in seeking to become a cheerleader for net zero, the IEA has allowed itself to be used as a tool for climate extremism, has misled policymakers, and has endangered the world’s economy and Western security, all while forsaking the purpose for which it was created.”
A key part of the foundation’s report focuses on the negative consequences that would flow from halting investment in new oil and gas fields based on the idea that a seamless transition can be made to renewables. American energy consumers can expect to take it on the chin.
In the first decade under net zero emissions, the foundation estimates that global oil and gas fuel receipts will be between $12.2 trillion and $52.6 more than what IEA envisions under its policy scenarios. Put simply, consumers will have to pay more for less oil and gas along with all the costs associated with making the energy transition.
The foundation’s analysis also highlights the environmental degradation that could result from a headlong rush toward net zero that does account for financial and technological realities.
“Reducing oil and gas supply will contribute to various environmental and health effects around the world. First, it will likely lead to a resurgence of coal consumption, as many low- and middle-income countries may struggle to afford higher-priced natural gas for heating, cooking, and electricity generation,” the report warns. “As a result, coal-to-gas switching in many countries may regress, increasing local air pollution and exacerbating health crises in many urban areas.”
Self-described environmentalists might also want to take a hard look at the amount of land wind and solar could gobble up. The foundation calculates that solar and wind generation capacity needed to achieve net zero requires an area equivalent to the combined size of California and Texas while the bioenergy needed for electricity production would be about the size of France and Mexico combined.
Apparently, there’s more than just raw economics at stake. What environmental advocacy groups typically describe as clean, and green is neither.
The geopolitical, economic, and environmental costs of net zero call out for a political course correction.
Kevin Mooney is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and the Senior Investigative Journalist at the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank. He writes for several national publications. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC
Universities are supposed to be the “marketplace of ideas.” With a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), you would think that Arizona State University (ASU) would understand this. But apparently, the school would rather be just another woke university that shuts down free speech. Now, the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development—a center of the Barrett Honors College—and its executive director Ann Atkinson have found out the hard way.
Back in February, Atkinson organized an event on “Health, Wealth, and Happiness” as part of a series from the Lewis Center focused on connecting students with professionals who can offer career and life advice. Speakers for the event included Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki, radio talk show host and founder of Prager U Dennis Prager, founder and president of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk, and heart-transplant cardiologist Radha Gopalan. For a university that offers classes on subjects like witchcraft and critical theories of sexuality, this event felt pretty tame by comparison. But the mere mention of these conservative speakers caused more than 75 percent of the Barrett Honors College faculty to have a meltdown…
Some remember the live broadcast of Apollo 8 orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve 1968. Over 1/4 of the world’s population listened in, as the crew read from the Book of Genesis. The United States of America led in space exploration, and we were another step closer to man stepping onto the moon’s surface: an achievement requiring education, dedication, courage, and perseverance of thousands of men and women.
And yet it was a simple analog device called a slide rule that helped us achieve this goal. With over 5 million parts in the Apollo Saturn V spacecraft, astronauts, engineers, scientists, and students routinely used slide rules to make the Apollo program a reality while also allowing users to develop and enhance mental skills when calculating an answer.
We certainly don’t advocate revitalizing this nostalgic masterpiece of technology with the advances of graphing calculators and computers, but there’s something remarkable and important about continuously exercising our mental capacities as we become seemingly more dependent upon our newfangled digital world. Today, we need to simply ask Google, Alexis, or Siri to answer a question as waves of artificial intelligence increasingly sweep into our culture and educational system. But can we still aspire to achieve these national aspirations of new frontiers when our country is failing to educate the upcoming generation of students desiring to become medical professionals, scientists, or engineers? How can our nation excel in these fields if our students no longer understand the math and science behind the tools?
In Arizona the results are sounding the warning bells. Of all students statewide, 60% are failing English and 67% are failing math according to the 2022 assessment. And yet all we hear from a system incapable of teaching our children basic academics are demands for more money. The Arizona state budget for 2023-24 is $17.8 billion of which $9.3 billion is allocated to K-12 education. When do we stop giving money to a system that can’t do what it is paid to do?
Results are also discouraging when it comes to statewide science assessments. In 2018 and 2019, 50% of students statewide were not successful at passing the AIMs science assessment, and the 2021 and 2022 results from the new assessment AzSCI are yet to be made public.
And what about the educational rigor and curricula developed for K-12? Are we truly preparing students to become not only critical thinkers but also future scientists and engineers? While every student may not aspire to be a doctor, scientist, or engineer, is it unreasonable to expect that a graduate leave with at least a high school level understanding of these subjects in order to be an informed member of our society? Have Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (S.T.E.M.) initiatives provided the needed reforms? Are our general educational and STEM dollars being directed to impactful programs or only those that merely mirror the political agenda? Comparing the two philosophies is like comparing the difference between environmental conservationists such as President Theodore Roosevelt versus environmental activists like Greta Thunberg.
We offer considerations that need to be coupled to reforms that don’t just nibble around the edges but take significant bites at improving our state’s educational system.
The following steps, we believe, offer a starting point.
Focus on fundamentals of reading, math, and science. Just as phonics is the gateway to a good reader, a solid foundation in arithmetic is quintessential. Students need to know multiplication tables, how to divide without using a calculator, percentages, and the difference between fractions and decimals. In 2018, 79 countries administered the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to more than 600,000 students in public and private schools measuring 15-year-olds’ ability to use reading, mathematics, and science knowledge and skills to prepare them for workforce and educational challenges. The U.S. students ranked 8th in reading, 30th in math, and 11th in science. These scores have remained stagnant for decades with no foreseeable improvements. This concern is perhaps best summarized by the words of the Apollo 13 Commander James A. Lovell, “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem here” when the spacecraft service module’s oxygen tank ruptured.
Our big math problem with K-12. Competency in basic mathematics is not just the domain of students motivated to be scientists and engineers. Our society and individual freedoms function best and are protected when its members are educated. How many times have we visited a deli counter, and the worker does not know that 1/4 of a pound fractionally represents 0.25 on their digital scale. We fear the fundamentals of math are not being adequately practiced in too many of Arizona’s classrooms. Practicing and drilling mathematical concepts and calculations builds and strengthens the connections in our brains. Student athletes continuously practice skills of the game, pianists translate brain connections and movements into music. And while practicing math skills may seem boring and redundant it is nonetheless imperative for long-term learning. Perhaps a solution is to stop cramming in new curricula that may be interesting, but do not fortify long-term learning. Too often, incoming high school freshman lack the basic arithmetic skills to be successful in algebra. Like all endeavors requiring skills, math must be practiced over and over to ensure the necessary competencies.
STEM education MUST be more than STEM entertainment. Most people are intrigued by science and exploration. Early on in primary education (K-4), it is important to capture interest in young minds. But as students progress in their interest in science careers, there is a necessity in STEM programs to introduce the rigors of math and science into the program’s curriculum. It may be a load of fun to fly a drone or launch a model rocket, but it should be accompanied with the key scientific principles and the underlying math that is age appropriate.
Curriculums should NOT be reimagined from proven methods for science education. For example, as pointed out in a recent publication, “Science education needs to overcome its habitual biting reflex against ‘the’ Scientific Method and realize its potentials as well as its limitations….” The author continues, “Vetoing ‘the’ Scientific Method even from introductory science at the primary level might actually do harm…” (Science & Education (2021) 30:1037–1073). The article goes on to explain why scientific inquiry should not supplant the scientific method which provides a clear and easy to understand approach to scientific discovery in the natural world.
Qualified S.T.EM. Teachers. We believe an effective teacher needs three things – a passion for the subject they teach, good communication skills, and knowledge of the subject they teach “inside-out.” But too often many of our teachers, while possessing the first two criteria, are deemed “Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)” in areas that were not their college major. We believe this is the most troublesome for high school science courses but also affects seventh and eighth graders. Moreover, we assert non-SME teaching results in omissions of fundamental scientific concepts, and in our opinion, leads students into adopting an “emotional science” curriculum that is often ideologically driven. Shouldn’t students be well-versed in the carbon cycle and its stages before adapting scenarios that our planet faces imminent catastrophic consequences in five years? Students need critical information to intelligently support or reject such hypotheses. We understand the problem of teacher shortages in Arizona — particularly in math and the natural sciences — but asking a teacher to teach without the academic background results in poorer learning outcomes as demonstrated by state assessment scores.
Reinforce objective truth of science and emphasize academic excellence in Arizona K-12 classrooms. Our K-12 classroom curriculum needs to refocus on objective truths of scientific principles unfettered by personal beliefs or emotional activism. We are concerned that students are too often asked how they feel about a subject before teaching them the facts about the subject. If our students don’t understand basic underlying principles that are always true about the natural world, how can they engage in meaningful debate or constructive controversy on any topic when venturing into a complex world filled with YouTube experts. Let’s avoid spending our valuable educational dollars by putting the subjective activism cart before the horsepower of true knowledge. We need to better train teachers with the ability to deliver curriculum focused on the broader understanding of scientific principles and processes.
It is our hope that policymakers and those responsible for curriculum development will examine these considerations. It is sad to witness a college freshman with aspirations to become a medical doctor that doesn’t possess the basic skills to pass general chemistry. A student retorts, “I don’t understand why I’m failing; I got an A in all my high school science classes.” Such gaping disconnects between the knowledge and skills needed to succeed and the curricula being taught must be resolved.
The data is clear that our education system is not delivering for our students, and we should no longer abandon the scientific method of observing, hypothesizing, experimenting, and analyzing when it comes to our students. The predominate hypothesis has been that better education is achieved with accelerated funding and recently removing results-based metrics. The scholar Thomas Henry Huxley pointedly captures our concern, “The great tragedy of Science,” he wrote, is “the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Will our educational system allow us to reach the next adventure and witness new planetary horizons? It is interesting that when James Lovell was an astronaut for both the Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 missions, being part of the triumph and first to leave Earth’s orbit and then confronting the challenges that Apollo 13 faced, he used a slide rule.
Diane Douglas is the former Arizona superintendent of public instruction; Peter Pingerelli is an associate adjunct in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology at Grand Canyon University. Ms. Douglas served on the Peoria U.S.D. governing board 2005-2012; president 2008 and 2009; Dr. Pingerelli serves on the West-MEC governing board 2017-present and is the current board chairman. Both are also on the Board of Directors for the Earth and Space Expedition Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
