Where All The Students Are Above Average

In the continued inflation of American education, it is now admitted that students are getting higher grades on their college entrance classes for less effort and knowledge.

Education Next: The Dumbing Down of Advanced Placement Tests

The College Board, the agency in charge of the AP program, admits its questions are easier and passing scores have been lowered on key tests like the English Language exam. They justify the easier tests as an adjustment to a less demanding curriculum in high school and lowered expectations by colleges and universities. In other words, AP is simply adapting to a broad decline in educational standards.

Or to simplify: Grade inflation comes to the AP college admission tests.

Meanwhile, education costs continue to outpace inflation with lesser results.

While prevailing wisdom is that throwing more money at a problem leads to better results, Mississippi now leads in reading scores with funding per pupil far below states with far higher per pupil spending. That is, of course, because the money spent per pupil wasn't actually reaching the pupils.

The increase in Mississippi were due not to more dollars thrown at the problem but to reforms that focused on real results.

It is more than past time to stop inflating grades and dumbing-down tests and instead focus on actual reforms in our public schools.  How about we stop just throwing money at administrators, bureaucrats, and teacher's unions and getting the same results and instead focus on reforms that work?

Maybe, as a modest suggestion, how about less DEI for kids and more learn to read for starters?

Dear Michigan UIA: Maybe You Could Stop Making Fraud So Damn Easy?

Yet another Stupid Criminal busted for stealing over $700,000 from Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency. Stupid because he was dumb enough to post about it on social media.

The Detroit News:  Farmington Hills man who flaunted wealth sentenced in fraud scheme

Too bad he didn't claim the fraud was just reparations payments, maybe he would have walked then.

He apparently also had inside help at the Post Office for stealing mail and debit cards and then decided to go direct to UIA to ply his fraud directly.

The problem is Michigan's UIA among many other insanely open security holes, pays out benefits on debit cards - cards which are ridiculously easy to use without needing to show any identification and sent by mail apparently to any damn address a fraudster may desire.

At least with  a check or payments direct to a bank account there's at least some paper trail to ascertain the identity of the recipient and match the payment to the name of the actual recipient.   Not so much with a debit card.

UIA just doesn't seem to care much if it as an agency is enabling fraud by passing out debit cards to just about any claimant created online without even verifying their address and comparing it to wage reports of the actual worker.

That's hundreds of millions lost to fraud from the Unemployment Insurance Agency in Michigan alone, and over $300 Billion nationally in fraudulent UI payments - enough to send every American citizen a whole other payment of $1,400 or more and instead it went to fraudsters like this idiot and to scammers in Russia, China and Africa.

Quit making it so easy for criminals to commit this type of fraud.

Why So Long To Deal With Sexual Assault At MSU? Because Progressives Do Love Their Five-Year Plans

One would think that it would take far less than five years, after a three-year period in development, to have some very clear sexual assault guidelines in place.

The Detroit News: MSU releases 5-year plan to address sexual assault, harassment after Nassar scandal

Again, it took them three years to come up with this 5-year plan after Dr. Nasser had gotten away with sexually assaulting underage and young women for years -- and it was covered up by MSU during that time.

This makes the powers that be at MSU feel that they are making a difference and really coming up with a cute name for the program after being in an inter-office and inter-disciplinary workshop for the past three years: The Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct initiative.  I'm sure it also cost the university -- read taxpayers, its a state-funded university after all -- thousands and thousands of dollars.

May I suggest an Anti-Sexual Assault Policy that can be made effective and rolled out by the University immediately and not have to wait five years and it didn't take me three years to develop?  

Here, they can have it for free, complete with a really simply name:

MSU's Anti-Sexual Assault Policy  (heck it can even be implemented ASAP and cutely called, if they must, The MSU ASAP):

1.  In cases of sexual assault, victims should call police immediately, not some university office that will sweep things under the rug or hold star chamber proceedings that impair actual criminal investigations. Also, anyone observing a sexual assault or with knowledge of one should similarly call police immediately and if an employee or student of the university is required to do so.

2.  Police will investigate and take such claims seriously.  Charges will be pursued if investigation shows such are appropriate.

3. Anyone covering up a sexual assault; or attempting to hamper an investigation into a sexual assault; or retaliating against someone for reporting a sexual assault; is fired or expelled immediately from the university and criminal charges, if appropriate and possible will be filed.  All golden parachutes and separation agreements and University retirement contributions are revoked for such actions.

4.  If a University student/officer/employee is found in possession of child pornography (As Nassar was) that is a an immediately terminable/expelling offense and is also immediately reported to police.

There, no need for a star-chamber procedure, yet another university committee, nor a new office and bureaucracy (note in the article all the many different offices involved here - it's a complete mess) nor five years and thousands more dollars to implement a plan that took three years to develop.

No need for a delay.  Just announce the above 4 steps and implement them ASAP.

From The Department Of US Bureaucratic Inertia And Bad Deals

Live, from the people who brought you such gaffes as approving Mohammed Atta's visa after he had already flown a jet into the World Trade Center comes the latest bit of revealed bureaucratic insanity:

Expelled Nazis paid millions in Social Security by U.S.

Yep, even after being deported for lying on their immigration applications for hiding their Nazi past, they continued to get social security. Total amounts paid out and the number of Nazis receiving this sweet deal is hard to discover, because the Social Security Administration has stated that there is

no exception in U.S. privacy law that "allows us to disclose information because the individual is a Nazi war criminal or an accused Nazi war criminal."

In other words, probably quite a number and think millions of taxpayer dollars funding nice retirements for Nazis.

Even Illinois Nazis have received Social Security after deportation:

Mueller immigrated to the U.S. in 1956 and settled in Skokie, Illinois. Then the Justice Department caught up with him. Mueller admitted he served as an SS guard in the Natzweiller concentration camp in France.

He voluntarily returned to Germany 1994. Mueller, 90, lives in a nursing home in Worms, Germany, according to family members.

And he continues to get Social Security payments to this day.

EU bureaucrats ban businesses from stating water is wet

Instapundit reports that the EU is banning claims that ingesting water can prevent dehydration.

Yes, really.

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

This is perhaps the ultimate bureaucratic realization of Ayn Rand's admonition:

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Making it a crime to impart the information that drinking water can prevent dehydration certainly fits the bill.

After all, once you have banned people from being able to state obvious truths like that, you've got no limit to your potential regulatory control.