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Commentary

Obama aims to destroy math, physics and computer science

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Story by Christina Hoff Sommers in the Washington Post, or here on AEI. (H/T The American Enterprise Institute)

I bet you thought that Obama was pro-science, didn’t you? Nope. Not only is he directing funds towards unproven ESCR and away from useful ASCR, but he also means to destroy university education in the fields of math and science. Leftist politics is more important than science for Obama.

Here’s what he plans to do:

In an October letter to women’s advocacy groups, he declared that Title IX, the law that requires universities to give equal funding to men’s and women’s athletics, had made “an enormous impact on women’s opportunities and participation in sports.” If pursued with “necessary attention and enforcement,” the same law could make “similar, striking advances” for women in science and engineering.

That campaign pledge is hardening into policy, which ought to give people pause. In February, the Congressional Diversity and Innovation Caucus met with academic deans and women’s groups to plan for the new Title IX deployment. Nearly everyone present agreed that closing the gender gap in the laboratory is an urgent “national imperative.” What they failed to consider, however, is how enforced parity might affect American science.

To start with, consider the effects of Title IX:

Consider the situation at Washington’s Howard University. In 2007, the Women’s Sports Foundation, a powerful Title IX advocacy group, gave Howard an “F” grade because of its 24-percentage-point “proportionality gap”: Howard’s student body was 67 percent female, but women constituted only 43 percent of its athletic program. In 2002, Howard cut men’s wrestling and baseball and added women’s bowling, but that did little to narrow the gap. Unless it sends almost half of its remaining male athletes to the locker room, Howard will remain blacklisted and legally vulnerable. Former Howard wrestling coach Wade Hughes sums up the problem this way: “The impact of Title IX’s proportionality standard has been disastrous because . . . far more males than females are seeking to take part in athletics.”

Allison Kasic over at the Independent Women’s Forum writes about recent cuts at Kutztown University.

She writes:

The latest victims of gender equity appear to be men’s soccer and swimming at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.  The school announced at the end of March that it would be cutting both sports effective at the end of this season.

…The “gender equity” law guides school’s program decisions through its rigid proportionality requirements (aka gender quotas).  For background on Title IX’s demands, read this as a starting point.  And, lo and behold, after students, parents, and coaches started asking questions about Title IX, the school admitted that many factors, including Title IX were taken into consideration.

IWF writes about Title IX quite a bit, and they have some of their pieces linked here.

UPDATE: Alison K. at the IWF sent me a couple of links on Title IX.

  • A thorough overview of Title IX’s impact on athletics is available here.
  • If you are looking for something shorter, this is basically the Cliff Notes version.
Commentary

Should it be legal to publicly support traditional marriage?

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The Washington Post reports: (H/T The Heritage Foundation)

Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing. They point to what they say are ominous recent examples:

– A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney’s costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.

– A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.

– Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.

– A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.

The Heritage Foundation adds a couple more examples:

The post left out a Los Angeles City College student whose professor called him a “fascist bastard” and refused to let him finish his speech against same-sex marriage and Methodist ministry in New Jersey forced to end performing wedding ceremonies because they did not allow a same-sex union to be performed on their campground.

How does government endorsement same-sex marriage hurt those who believe in traditional marriage?

According to Heritage fellow Thomas Messner, it hurts us in 3 ways:

Excerpt:

Specifically, in a society that redefines marriage to include same–sex unions, those who continue to believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman can expect to face three types of bur­dens. First, institutions that support the traditional understanding of marriage may be denied access to several types of government benefits, and individ­uals who work in the public sector may face cen­sorship, disciplinary action, and even loss of employment. Second, those who support the tradi­tional understanding of marriage will be subject to even greater civil liability under nondiscrimination laws that prohibit private discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status, and gender. Third, the existence of nondiscrimination laws, combined with state administrative policies, can invite private forms of discrimination against reli­gious individuals who believe that marriage involves a man and a woman and foster a climate of contempt for the public expression of their views.

Don’t believe that it could happen here? Take a look at what is happening in the UK schools according to this Telegraph article, or what is happening in Canadian schools.

News

Secretary of Education rescinds previously awarded D.C. vouchers

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Fox News reports on it here: (H/T The Cato Institute)

The Heritage Foundation has a lot more.

Let’s start with a personal experience from one of the 200 low-income households affected.

Put yourself in the shoes of LaTasha Bennett. A single mother living in Washington, D.C., Ms. Bennett is able to send her child to a private school thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Hoping to enroll her daughter in the same private school, Ms. Bennett applied for and recently received a voucher from the Washington Scholarship Fund.

But last week, Ms. Bennett and hundreds of other D.C. parents received a form letter from the U.S. Department of Education informing them that their children wouldn’t be receiving a scholarship.

And more:

Secretary Duncan’s decision to take scholarship money away from low-income families came just days after the Department of Education released a study showing that students participating in the Opportunity Scholarship program had statistically significant better reading scores than students who applied to the program but were not offered a scholarship. The students that were in the program the longest showed notable improvement reading at levels approximately 1.5 to 2 full school years ahead of the sample group.

The data is in. School choice works. And it significantly lower costs. Opportunity Scholarships offered through the program are worth $7,500. Since the participating private schools cannot charge scholarship students more than the amount of their scholarships, that amount is still less than half of the $15,315 that D.C. taxpayers spent per pupil in the 2004–05 school year.

And what about the educations of Barack Obama and Arne Duncan?

Growing up in Hawaii, President Obama attended a private school. Growing up first in Chicago, and now in Washington, Obama’s two daughters attended and still attend a private school. Growing up in Chicago, Secretary Duncan attended a private school. And when he moved to D.C. Secretary Duncan chose to live in Arlington, where good schools for his children are assumed.

But maybe they were just pretty typical progressives, living in an emotional fantasy-land, with no access to facts?

The Wall Street Journal reports: (H/T The Heritage Foundation)

Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.
…
Mr. Duncan’s office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You’d think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program.

And the Denver Post’s David Harsanyi reports: (H/T The Heritage Foundation)

When I had the chance to ask Duncan — at a meeting of the Denver Post editorial board on Tuesday — whether he was alerted to this study before Congress eradicated the D.C. program, he offered an unequivocal “no.” He then called the WSJ editorial “fundamentally dishonest” and maintained that no one had even tried to contact him, despite the newspaper’s contention that it did, repeatedly.

When I called the Wall Street Journal, I discovered a different — that is, meticulously sourced and exceedingly convincing — story, including documented e-mail conversations between the author and higher-ups in Duncan’s office. The voucher study — which showed progress compounding yearly — had been around since November and its existence is mandated by law. So at best, Duncan was willfully ignorant.

And why are we surprised? Teacher’s unions funded Obama’s election campaign, not children and parents. The purpose of schools, according to socialists, is to indoctrinate the youth with socialism, moral relativism, secularism, and the religion of global warming. The purpose of schools is not to provide them with an education, so that they can get a job and avoid dependence on the government!

Further study

The Heartland Institute’s series of podcasts on vouchers and school choice.