🇺🇸 Remote Learning Regression

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Good morning, and happy Monday! We hope you are enjoying some time off with friends and family here on Labor Day. This tired mom has a funny twist on one of the internet’s back-to-school trends…

Plus, bucking the trend seen elsewhere, this city’s downtown area now has more activity than it did before the pandemic…

Also, today’s Flag Find celebrates American freedom…

FLAG POLLS

📉 Biden Job Approval: Approve 45, Disapprove 53 (Rasmussen Reports)

🐘 2022 Generic Congress Vote: Republicans 47, Democrats 42 (Rasmussen Reports)

📉 Biden Job Approval: Approve 45, Disapprove 54 (Wall Street Journal)

🐎 2022 Generic Congress Vote: Republicans 44, Democrats 47 (Wall Street Journal)

TRENDING

Left: Bill Barr Blows Up Every Trumpy Defense of the Mar-a-Lago Docs in Brutal Fox News Interview (The Daily Beast)

Left: How election deniers could sway the 2024 election (Vox)

Left: Biden Asks Americans to Vote for Democracy—But Is Voting Enough? (Mother Jones)

Right: Biden says Trump supporters not a threat to country after speech blasting 'MAGA Republicans' (Fox News)

Right: Republicans Urge Voters To Answer Biden’s Angry Speech At Polls, Not On Streets (Daily Wire)

Right: Biden attacks American democratic values in service of a naked partisanship (Washington Examiner)

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QUICK CLICKS

Danger Democracy, Serena's Next Act, Graham Says Riots

US: Trump Hits Back At Biden In First Rally Since FBI Raid: ‘Danger To Our Democracy Comes From The Radical Left, Not The Right’ (Daily Wire)

Sports: Serena Williams has done it all in tennis, but there's so much more to come (CNN)

US: Lindsey Graham says he was stating the 'obvious' about 'riots in the streets' (NY Post)

US: Dark Brandon: Joe Biden Meme Gets Even More Hype After Philly Speech (CNET)

US: From Potus to half an Egot as Barack Obama wins Emmy (The Guardian)

US: Experts say COVID-19 won’t hit as hard this fall, but remain wary of the possible rise of a new variant (Boston Globe)

US: Bed Bath & Beyond CFO plunges to death at New York's Jenga tower (Reuters)

World: Canada stabbings leave 10 dead, over a dozen wounded: police (Fox News)

World: Energy problems in Ukraine and Europe take center stage (AP)

Business: From vegan meatballs to ice cream sundaes, airlines are revamping in-flight menus (CNBC)

EDUCATION

Remote Learning Regression

Data is beginning to show the devastating effects COVID-19 lockdowns and remote learning had on children’s education. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, was released last week. It showed the sharpest dip in math and reading scores in 30 years.

Reporting From the Right: Pandemic data shows 9-year-old math and reading scores plummeted, Twitter reacts: 'Absolutely devastating' (Fox News)

Reporting from the Left: ‘The results confirm our fears’: Federal school test scores dropped during pandemic (POLITICO)

From The Flag: The testing data shows a large number of kids in the third and fourth grades are struggling with adding fractions as well as reading comprehension. Some experts say the pandemic has widened education inequality as well. Here’s more from both sides.

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Don’t Just Focus on COVID: Stop School Shootings and Hire More Teachers

• The American education system fails to properly teach kids how to read, which makes test scores almost useless as literacy is the base of all knowledge.

• The constant threat of school shootings is weighing on young teachers and has a corresponding impact on teaching quality and test results.

• It’s an oversimplification to blame school shortcomings on remote learning, as an ongoing teacher shortage and the soaring cost of higher education are also factors.

“School Is for Learning to Read” Emily Hanford, New York Times Op-ed: “The most important thing schools can do is teach children how to read. If you can read, you can learn anything. If you can’t, almost everything in school is difficult. Word problems. Test directions. Biology homework. Everything comes back to reading. But a lot of schools aren’t teaching children how to read. …research shows that children need to be taught how their written language works. It doesn’t happen naturally through exposure to print. … This exacerbates inequality in an already unequal education system. And I think it’s one reason reading programs that aren’t providing adequate instruction have remained popular for so long. People point to good test scores in an affluent district that is using one of these programs, and they say: Look, it’s working. And they point to low test scores in a poor district using the same program and say: Oh, it’s poverty.”

“I'm a teacher educator, and my work has never felt so hopeless” Christina Wyman, Salon: “In recent months, I found myself wondering whether and how individual states have taken responsibility for helping teacher educators navigate these issues. State departments of education are, after all, the testing and licensing authorities. Admittedly, my own formal teacher preparation and pathway to licensure did not prepare me for the trauma that face teachers and students today. … In an effort to understand how states might be supporting teacher education programs in an effort to navigate these unprecedented stressors, I asked my former students whether, in their experience with state testing and licensure, they've ever encountered explicit attention to teachers' and students' trauma and emotional well-being. Predictably, the answer was a resounding ‘no.’ One student pointed out that even her psychology exam did not include attention to trauma or emotional well-being.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: Crises converge on American education Zachary B. Wolf, CNN Opinion

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

The Teacher's Union Gets an F, Students Get the Shaft

• The dishonest media is now blaming “the pandemic” on the damage done to students, ignoring the role teacher’s unions played by insisting schools remain closed.

• One teacher explains how the response to COVID was the final straw, forcing him to leave public education.

• Randi Weingarten ensured that schools were kept in the “non-essential” category during COVID, to the great detriment of students.

“Randi Weingarten Flunks the Pandemic” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal: “You’d think this would be cause for reflection by our education elites, but no such luck. Media headlines blamed ‘the pandemic,’ as if Covid-19 ran America’s school districts and decided to force students to sit at home in front of screens for more than a year. Educators—as they call themselves—did that. … American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, who pushed shutdowns as long as she possibly could before parents revolted, tried to forget this ever happened with her statement on Twitter: ‘Thankfully after two years of disruption … This is a year to accelerate learning by rebuilding relationships, focusing on the basics.’ But she and her union were the chief disrupters. America’s teachers unions demanded that schools be kept shut even as they remained open in Europe. … After the first months of Covid uncertainty, the school shutdowns had nothing to do with safety… and set back America’s children for years.”

“Why I left public education for a Christian school” Dan Buck, Spectator World: “From the outside, it doesn’t make much sense for me to have left. I had a good reputation in my district among staff, students, and administration. The pay at public schools is markedly better. … In many ways, my private school jobs have been far more difficult than my public school one. … Since then, I’ve moved to an urban private school in the most crime-ridden zip code in my state, a far more challenging position than anything I’d faced before. … I finally left because of Covid. My public school closed and had no intention of following the science to open. So I sought out a school that wanted to serve students and do the right thing even when it was controversial. … Public education is in shambles. Teachers are leaving, students are leaving, and the system is set to crumble — weighed down by its own broken policies, overspending, and calcified bureaucracy.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: Test scores show how teacher’s union head Randi Weingarten damaged an entire generation of kids Karol Markowicz, New York Post Opinion

FLAG THIS

More Americans Now Favor In-Person Instruction

Polling data suggests an increasing number of US adults now favor in-person school only. Over 60% of respondents who identify as conservative feel kids should be back in class full-time. The number is on the rise among liberals as well: over 40% now favor in-person only, up from less than 20% in April of last year (New York Times/Morning Consult).

FLAG FINDS

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WATERCOOLER

Crazy Horse, Chance Meetings, and Rattlesnakes

On September 5, 1877, Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse was fatally bayoneted by a US soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux leaders who defeated George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. Above is an alleged photograph of Crazy Horse.

CNBC: Parents who make these 3 mistakes are more likely to raise narcissistic kids, says parenting expert

Mental Floss: 10 Chance Meetings That Changed the World

Fatherly: The Ultimate Morning Stretch Routine

Today I Learned a rattlesnake's rattle doesn’t work like a maraca, with little bits shaking inside. The rattle is actually a bunch of loosely interlocking segments made out of keratin.