09:23 – Yesterday was three weeks since Barbara’s knee-replacement surgery. The physical therapist says she’s doing amazingly well. But sitting around the house reading and watching videos is getting to her, and she’s really looking forward to being able to get back to her regular routine. At least I can keep her busy labeling bottles for science kits until I run out of bottles.
The paper this morning reports that the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has released its ratings of individual North Carolina public schools. Only 59% of Winston-Salem schools received a C or better grade. As bad as that is, the reality is worse. Under the stricter grading that will come into use next year, only 34% would have received a C or better. And even those new standards aren’t rigorous enough. Our public schools, like nearly all public schools nationwide, are not just failing but failed. That’s one of the main reasons why so many millions of kids are now being home-schooled.
I was surprised that the paper pointed out the extremely high correlation between each school’s grade and the percentage of poor and minority students in that school. The higher the percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches, the lower that school’s grade. No surprise there for people who see things as they are instead of how they wish they were. In other words, only progressives are surprised. And, given the intellectual dishonesty of progressives, even they probably aren’t really surprised.
On a related note, several of my readers have recommended Matt Bracken’s work. After reading two of his non-fiction articles, here and here, it was clear to me that Bracken is a smart guy who’s read a lot of history. So I decided to give his fiction a try. Yesterday, I bought the Kindle version of the first book in his Enemies Trilogy, Enemies Foreign and Domestic. I got through the first couple hundred pages last night. The guy thinks clearly and writes reasonably well. Recommended.