Free Republic

The University of California (UC) system regents unanimously voted Thursday to waive their standardized test requirement for their incoming freshman until 2024, meaning that high school students will no longer need to take the ACT or SAT to gain admission to one of the expansive system's universities. “Today’s decision by the Board marks a significant change for the University’s undergraduate admissions,” Janet Napolitano, president of the UC system and former Homeland Security secretary, said in a statement. “We are removing the ACT/SAT requirement for California students and developing a new test that more closely aligns with what we expect incoming...

Admissions tests, allegedly biased against minority students, will be phased out over five years The University of California board of regents voted Thursday to stop using the SAT and ACT college admissions exams, reshaping college admissions in one of the largest and most prestigious university systems in the country and dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission testing industry. The unanimous 23-to-0 vote ratified a proposal put forward last month by UC President Janet Napolitano to phase out the exams over the next five years until the sprawling UC system can develop its own test. The battle against...

As higher education braces for the impact of coronavirus, the nation’s largest university system is poised to undermine the value of its own degrees by dropping admissions testing for political reasons. Last week University of California President Janet Napolitano released a plan to stop using the SAT and ACT in admissions. The tests would be optional for freshmen applying to enter in 2022 and excluded except in certain circumstances for 2023 and 2024. Ms. Napolitano hopes the university can create its own test for 2025, but even if that’s not possible she wants the tests scrapped entirely from then on....

... [A] task force of the faculty senate at the University of California, of all places, is resisting the movement to ban test scores in admissions. The 227-page report, completed in late January, recommends that the UC system keep standardized tests like the ACT and SAT as admissions requirements, and it demolishes the logic of the politically motivated anti-testing movement. The report dispatches the myth that standardized math and reading tests are useless for predicting college performance. Based on data from tens of thousands of students in the UC system, the report concludes that “test scores are currently better predictors...

The “test optional” movement has won its most high-profile convert in the University of Chicago, which announced last month that applicants to the school would no longer need to submit ACT or SAT scores. The University of Chicago has become known in recent years for its commitment to academic rigor and resistance to coddling and group think. But in this decision it has increased the momentum of a fashionable but damaging ideology overtaking elite education: That standardized metrics of any kind are discriminatory and elitist, and that each student is so special that he or she can only be evaluated...

While congresscritters expressed outrage at Facebook's intrusive data grabs during Capitol Hill hearings with Mark Zuckerberg this week, not a peep was heard about the Silicon Valley-Beltway theft ring purloining the personal information and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren. It doesn't take undercover investigative journalists to unmask the massive privacy invasion enabled by educational technology and federal mandates. The kiddie data heist is happening out in the open -- with Washington politicians and bureaucrats as brazen co-conspirators. Facebook is just one of the tech giants partnering with the U.S. Department of Education and schools nationwide in pursuit of...

Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef commented on reports of the chemical weapons attack in Syria. "I have said before and I repeat, in Syria there is a brutal genocide of both women and children with weapons of mass destruction.” Rabbi Yosef said that “There is a moral obligation not to remain silent and to try to stop the massacre.”

The seeds of the relationships between Donald Trump and key figures in the Russian business and political worlds — now the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation — were planted at least five months before Trump’s now famous 2013 trip to Moscow, during a previously unreported visit to a raunchy Las Vegas nightclub with the son of a prominent oligarch and Putin ally, according to a new book about Trump and his Russian ties. The excerpt being published today explores the events surrounding Trump’s November 2013 visit to Moscow to oversee the Miss Universe pageant, and to vigorously pursue...

A San Bernardino rally against Islamic law being implemented in the United States drew hundreds of protesters and counter-protesters Saturday near the site of the Dec. 2, 2015, terrorist attack – but also sparked violence and acts of vandalism, police say. Sponsored by the nonprofit group ACT for America, the Inland March Against Sharia was one of numerous rallies held nationwide.

My son got his SAT pre-test results back and he has a little bit of work ahead of him. Did ok on English but needs to brush up on his math. Overall score was a 960, so I am looking for recommendations as to a course of study for the summer. He is going to be a senior next year, and currently is a 2.9 / 3.0 student. He will be taking his SAT in spring of 2018.

NGO's, Behold Your God. George Soros was born in Budapest in 1930 but, today, spends most of his time in New York City. Not much is known about his early years. He is the only eminent "holocaust survivor" who has been accused of collaboration with the Nazis. In 1947, he managed to sneak through the Iron Curtain, and, the official story goes, "he landed penniless in London, but by hard work and sheer genius, he rose to become one of the planet's most successful investors and richest men." Mr. Soros' peculiar moral values, political views, and ideological preferences would be...

President Obama set his Vice Presidential attack dog on the forty-seven GOP senators who dared send their March 9th letter to Iran’s leadership warning them any deal signed with Team Obama may be short-lived when a new president comes to office. But Biden, like his boss, fails to do his homework before making outlandish statements or else chooses conveniently to overlook the facts. Livid over the GOP letter, Biden proclaimed: “In thirty-six years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which Senators wrote directly to advise another country.” Directing his venom at the Senate’s Republican majority,...

A recent report alleged that the College Board, the architects of the college entrance exams known today as the SAT, is becoming a profit-driven (yet taxpayer-funded) machine, instead of a business focused on the greater good. The National Center for Policy Analysis's latest report, "The Big Business Profitability of the Nonprofit College Board," highlights how profits are driving the nonprofit College Board. The report gave a background on the two tests, which may not be well-known by the general populace. For example, the SAT was originally used after World War One to screen for scholarships while testing applicants’ innate intelligence....

Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 under President Obama. That was five years of selling out US Interests to foreign governments in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. According to the Government’s own Website: “As the lead U.S. foreign affairs agency, the U.S. Department of State represents the United States at more than 270 diplomatic locations around the world, including embassies, consulates, and missions to international organizations. The Secretary of State, the ranking member of the Cabinet and fourth in line of presidential succession, is the President’s principal advisor on foreign policy and...

J. Christian Adams tweeted out tonight that not a single constitution conservative should support Ben Carson anymore because of his support for the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act:

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is shining a massive spotlight on President Barack Obama’s amnesty agenda.

George Washington University will no longer require that students submit their ACT or SAT scores for most freshman admissions. Dean of Admissions Karen Stroud Felton said in a statement Monday that university administrators were concerned that below-average test scores were leading some otherwise strong students to not apply. […] School officials say testing will still be required for home-schooled applicants, students from high schools that provide only narrative evaluation of students, college athletes and those applying for a seven-year program that leads to a combined bachelor’s/medical degree. …

Seattle City Council president Tim Burgess is proposing a new tax on guns. The proposal would tax gun sales $25 per gun and add a five cent-tax on each round of ammunition. Five cents per round adds up to a roughly $2.50 increase for a box off handgun ammunition. The legislation would also impose a $500 fine on gun owners who do not report guns lost or stolen.

Government Work: Enrollment in Covered California was flat this year, and consumers hate it. But the director still got a huge raise and a fat bonus. So much for ObamaCare rooting out health care waste.

"Valerie Jarrett is one of the more mysterious figures in Washington. She’s a Senior Advisor to the Obama Administration and seems to be one of the more powerful people in D.C. We discussed the “Healthy Family Act” that the White House is urging Congress to pass. "