Berkeley Calculus: A Professor Is Teaching Middle School Fractions | Angela Morabito

[00:00:00] A professor at the University of Berkeley just published the numbers on her own calculus students. She gave them an eight-topic readiness test. The single most common score was zero. Not the average score, the most common one. And these are students California chose to admit. In 2020, California threw out the SAT and SAT for admissions. Before that, seven in ten Berkeley calculus students showed up ready. After it, fewer than half.

[00:00:28] And a professor is standing in the front of a calculus class teaching middle school fractions to that class. Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show.

[00:00:58] Here's the theme for the show today. When big government gets involved, the results are not good. When the so-called experts running an institution cannot meet normal standards, they wind up rigging the system, eliminating checks and balances,

[00:01:11] and changing the standards. And the ones who need assistance most are the ones harmed the most. Berkeley got rid of its entrance exam. The University of Michigan just decided to stop putting freshman grades on transcripts. Two teachers in Nashville say the district told them to change failing grades to passing ones. Every single one of these decisions makes the numbers look better and makes the child worse off. This is not a compassion. This is not helpful.

[00:01:40] It is a cover-up stamped with a diploma on it. And it is wrong. And it's the exact same instinct we are fighting at the ballot box. Right now, the Supreme Court is—the reason it's the same thing we're fighting at the ballot box is because big government is what the Democrat socialists want. It's what the Democrats want.

[00:02:03] They want more and more and more big government. And it is wrong, and we're going to be talking about it today. Before we get to all that, let me tell you just a few of the other items that are breaking news today. The Supreme Court is considering whether the federal government can verify that people receiving mail-in ballots are actually citizens. The administration's emergency application has been pending since July 27th.

[00:02:27] On August 11th, a district judge ruled against the Trump administration for a second time. And the next day, the United States Solicitor General went back to the Supreme Court justices, urging them to move because every single day of delay does irreparable harm to election integrity. Ballots are going to be out in just a matter of weeks. In fact, it is a month from now that Virginia will begin early voting.

[00:02:55] And New Jersey and Alaska have already shown us what happens when nobody checks the citizenship of those registering to vote. New Jersey's own Democratic governor admitted in July that a software error at the Motor Vehicle Commission put 6,600 non-citizens on the voter rolls and that about 400 of them cast ballots. And that's in a deep blue Democratic state.

[00:03:23] And the Alaska Division of Elections website acknowledges that non-citizens are on the rolls in that great state. In our latest polling, Tea Party Patriots Action with John McLaughlin, 82 percent agree only American citizens should vote in American elections. And 78 percent of Americans say voters should have to prove you are a citizen before registering to vote, including 93 percent of Republican and 68 percent of Democrats.

[00:03:53] Ninety five percent of voters already carry a photo ID that the Save America Act would require. I hope the Supreme Court takes up this case about the mail in ballots and citizen citizenship that the president is trying to to get adjusted with the United States Postal Service, because Americans should have confidence that only Americans are voting in our elections.

[00:04:17] Now, a few more quick things off the news before we get to the rest of the show, because tomorrow is a big day. Elections are happening in Florida, Alaska and Wyoming. And Florida has an open race for the governor's seat with Congressman Byron Donald's carrying President Trump's endorsement against Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, who was appointed by Governor DeSantis. And Paul Renner is also in the field.

[00:04:45] Then there is an open seat in Florida that is on the Florida ballot because of Marco Rubio being the secretary of state now. And then in Alaska, the top four candidates advance no matter what party they are. And in Wyoming, only the governor's in Wyoming, both the governor's race is on the ballot. And so is Senator Loomis seat. Both of those are open right now.

[00:05:13] The governor won't be up for reelection and Senator Loomis will not be as well either. And then on the other side of the primaries, you're going to see the national press keeps calling a surprise. Democrat Socialists of America candidates and endorsees winning nominations and moving into general elections. These are candidates who want to pack the Supreme Court. They want to abolish immigration and customs enforcement. They want to raise taxes.

[00:05:40] It's not a surprise when you consider what's happening in our public school system today. And we're going to come back to why they keep winning young voters, because the answer is sitting in a classroom. Also, over the weekend, Iran's army chief put a $30,000 bounty on the head of any American soldier killed or captured. And he doubled it if the person was a woman.

[00:06:04] He said that he said the weapon use would be brought, but at twice the value and put in a museum. This is a state adversary auctioning off our sons and daughters, and Tehran is still claiming it decides when the Strait of Hormuz opens. The president is right about this regime, and I am going with the president over the mullahs every single day of the week.

[00:06:27] Third, the Justice Department has filed 25 denaturalization complaints in about two weeks from July 20th to August 3rd. This is the greatest coordinated effort of its kind in the department's history, and it brings a total to 123 since President Trump took office in the second term. There are cases about citizenship.

[00:06:55] These are cases about citizenship attained by concealing serious crimes. Attorney General Todd Blanche says this is only just the beginning. Citizenship is the highest privilege this country hands out, and it has to be earned honestly. And at the end of the hour, I'm going to tell you about a police officer who arrested a man for endangering a child and then watched the system turn that man loose,

[00:07:22] only to see the man's face in the news six months later because he had murdered Lake and Riley. Stay with me for that one. The heart of today's show, though, is education. And my guest for the full hour has spent her career inside this fight. Angela Morabito, I said that completely wrong. Morabito is a spokeswoman. I'm so sorry.

[00:07:47] Spokeswoman for Defense of Freedom Institute and is also a visiting fellow for the Independent Women's Forum. She was press secretary at the Department of Defense. I'm sorry, the Department of Education. And she takes on teachers unions every single day. Angela, thank you so much for being on the show. It's the first time you're here, and I really appreciate your being on. Oh, thank you so much, Jenny Beth. I'm really happy to be here with you.

[00:08:14] And then for the whole hour, we have my co-host and friend, Robert McNeely. So, Robert, thanks for being on the show today. Oh, thanks, Jenny Beth. It's good to dive into education. We have a great guest today for that. We sure do. So let's get right into it. Angela, let's start with the University of Michigan. The largest college in the university system or in the university, the College of Literature and Science and Arts, will stop including first semester freshman grades on the official transcript.

[00:08:44] Students will still get a grade and they'll still get feedback. It just doesn't go on their record and it doesn't count toward the grade point average. Every incoming freshman is enrolled automatically. Angela, the university stated reason for this is a mental health crisis among college-age students. You know how these offices talk. Is that the real reason or is something else going on here? I think there is something else in play. If someone's not mentally healthy enough to do the work in college and then be graded

[00:09:13] on that work, they're just not mentally healthy enough to go to school. And that's okay, but that means college isn't the right path for them at this moment. I think this has more to do with a misguided equity agenda. Neetu Arnold, who broke the story, she's absolutely brilliant. She's done some looking into, you know, who was really doing well first semester freshman year. And it's because populations that are typically thought of as diverse, meaning minority, racial minority students, weren't doing as well as first semester freshmen.

[00:09:43] So instead of saying, hey, how do we help students who need an extra boost no matter what they look like, they said, we're just going to skip grades for everybody. We're just going to hide it. That is not the right answer. It does students a disservice. Yeah. And here's what really bothers me. The registrar is going to keep the grades. They're going to use them still for athletic eligibility, for financial aid, for academic honors. So they know how the freshmen did.

[00:10:10] They're just hiding the record from the freshmen and from anyone who might hire that freshman later, and I guess also from the parents. So what does it do to an 18-year-old to be told for four months that the scoreboard doesn't count? Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I've been calling this college with training wheels. It says, what you do here does not matter. That's the opposite of the message colleges need to be sending. They need to tell their students, what you do here matters a lot. It's really important.

[00:10:38] It's worth showing up for. It is worth giving your best effort. Hiding grades, I think, sends the opposite message, and it's going to cause a lot more problems than it pretends to solve. Yeah. When my kids were in high school, everything locked down for them, and grades really didn't matter in that last semester of their junior year of high school. And once they knew the grades didn't really matter, they weren't interested. They just were not interested.

[00:11:07] And I think it is a really bad problem. Those grades help serve as an incentive to do well. If you think it doesn't matter, you're not going to show up. So it's not even exactly training wheels because the training wheels come on when you actually have some consequences for it. There's no consequences at all. There's no chance you might even fall off the bike with this one.

[00:11:35] Robert, you talk to parents and people all over the country. What do you think their reaction is to learn that the school's first semester is not going on the transcript? Well, I think it's deeply disturbing because how are they going to track that at home as well? Then we saw everything that happened as a result of COVID. We'll be getting to that later into the show. But that's why I'm so grateful for Angela's work and her amazing organization because I

[00:12:00] was going through their amicus brief of Polk versus Montgomery County Public Schools and the free speech issue that lies in there with parental rights so they could see what's actually happening on the other end of it. Because as good as parents as involved as they can be in the daily lives of their children, when they're in that public or private setting outside of homeschooling, of course, you are allowing your child to go elsewhere during the day when you're at work or you have other

[00:12:29] things to do to run that household. So it's just been infuriating to watch over the last few years how that curtain has been pulled to see what's actually happening in America's education system. Yeah, it is alarming and we are going to see that it gets even more alarming throughout the show today. So now let's go to Nashville because it's kind of the same instinct going on. It's happening in K-12. And I don't think it's very gentle at all.

[00:12:57] There are two former Metro Nashville teachers who say district administrators directed them to change failing grades to passing grades. And they have internal emails about it. And one of them has even resigned. The one who resigned, her name is Samira Hardcastle. And she was a teacher of the year at her middle school.

[00:13:25] Yet she's now stepped away from it altogether because of what happened to her. And then the other teacher, Deanna Wills, is now suing the district over the suspension. And if you look at the screen, you can see Samira Hardcastle, the teacher of the year, said that a student would not complete or did not complete an art project and earned a failing grade. The parent objected.

[00:13:54] Three administrators met with a parent, decided the teacher's rubric was not enough, and asked her to change the grade. She refused. And according to her account, they changed the grade anyway. Then she has quit teaching altogether. Angela, when the best teacher in the building is the one who left, what does it tell you about what's happening in this system? And who are they actually protecting?

[00:14:21] Well, these are really serious accusations of academic malpractice, academic fraud. Let's call it what it is. These teachers were being directed, they say, to lie to parents and students about what a student has learned and what a student can do with that knowledge. If we're not telling the truth about that, what even is the point of school? Like, what are we doing? And look, I'm from Atlanta. I live close to Atlanta right now. When I was coming up through the school system inside Atlanta Public Schools,

[00:14:50] which was not where I went, but big local school districts, group of teachers got caught having eraser parties after students took a standardized test. They would erase the incorrect answers and fill in the right ones. People went to prison for that. That's how serious this is. So I really feel terrible for these teachers who got into education wanting to help students learn, wanting to have an honest conversation with those students and their families. And the administrators are saying, no, no, no, you don't get to do that.

[00:15:20] Also, if it was two teachers in this district, I would be shocked. If it was two, it could have been 20, could have been 200. We have not heard the last of this story. And I'm so grateful to y'all for covering this because I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg here. Yeah, I think that you're right. And in Atlanta, there were 178 administrators and teachers from 56 elementary and middle schools

[00:15:47] that were involved, I think. I'm just double checking it. Well, actually, hang on. Let me correct that. I'm completely wrong there. 11 of 12 people were convicted on charges, charges that included racketeering. So there were a dozen people who were charged. I don't know where the other number was coming from at first, but I was remembering the same thing because I'm from Atlanta as well.

[00:16:16] And that SAT or the standardized test scandal was such a big deal. And everyone around Atlanta felt like it was cheating the students. It was not helping the students because they weren't learning what they needed to learn. You were stealing the grade from them. You were stealing the self-worth that you get for actually accomplishing what you know to be your own work.

[00:16:44] And if you didn't accomplish it, the consequences that help motivate you to do better. I just think if this is going on, it is harming children the absolute most. Angela, what do you think of it when you're thinking about what it's doing to the students? So this problem is at the district and school level. It has to be solved at the district and school level. It tells students that there's no integrity in their education and that what they do at school doesn't matter.

[00:17:13] I really felt the same way about COVID school closures when we knew that it was safe to reopen. The Department of Ed had pushed out tons and tons. We're talking billions of dollars in resources to help schools reopen safely. And the teachers union said, no, no, we're not going to reopen until we get more vacation days or Medicare for all or defund the police. You see education being used as a political cudgel. I think lying to somebody about their grades is, well, it's dishonest on its face, but it

[00:17:42] ultimately robs them of the ability to learn and do better. It wastes their time. It wastes their childhood. So the idea that, oh, well, you know, we don't want to upset anyone. So we're just going to give everybody a passing grade that exchanges long-term learning for a short-term dopamine hit. I don't know. It's you're harming this child's future is what you're doing. And I think those teachers recognize that. And that's why they spoke out against it.

[00:18:09] And then who is benefiting from, from the, the changes in the grades, like what we're hearing is happening in Nashville. It's the administrators who all of a sudden they don't have to deal with a parent who's angry because their child failed. They don't have to deal with a parent who's saying, wait a second, can't we make up this work? When the teacher saying I gave your child four chances, take the failing grade, learn your lesson. I think we see this at the state level too, when governors love to brag about really high graduation rates and everybody thinks, oh, more people are graduating.

[00:18:38] That's fantastic. Well, there are tons and tons of schools with the graduation rates up here, the reading proficiency rates down here. So congratulations. You printed off a bunch of diplomas for people who can't read them. I don't think that deserves a pat on the back, but the powers that be, it benefits them. It doesn't help the students and it doesn't help the teachers. No, not at all. So Robert tie it to politics for me. Tea Party Patriots Action members have been fighting school boards for years now.

[00:19:07] Is this a Nashville problem or is Nashville just a district where two teachers have gone on the record saying what the problems are? Well, I think it's countrywide. I was in school during everything with no child left behind. How bad of a program that ended up being, of course, implemented by Republican president George W. Bush. And it was the liberal lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, who wanted to see that implemented. Really a big federal grab of the education system.

[00:19:35] And to Angela's point, who does it benefit? It's the unions. It's the administrators. It's the power brokers that be. Because when I went to school, the focus was character counts. And I watch it all divulge, Jenny Beth, as we have really laid out over the course of my tenure here on the Jenny Beth show. Why did Illinois, my home state, the Prairie State fail ultimately?

[00:20:00] It was the big property taxes leading to the pension scandals, the liabilities, because it was serving the public teachers unions. They ran wild with Ms. Weingartner over at the teachers union during COVID. And we saw how much was being paid into that and did not serve the students, did not serve the stakeholders being their parents. And I think this is really a countrywide travesty.

[00:20:28] And we need to really revamp looking at education in this country. Thank God that Linda McMahon sending it all back to the States. Yes. Amen to that. Angela, very quickly, because we're running up on a break. If a parent is watching right now and wants to know if this kind of thing is happening in their school system, what is it that they should be asking? So it all starts at home, right? I think every child is a homeschooled child because mom and dad should be your first and best teachers. That's true.

[00:20:55] Even if you go off to a public school, charter school, private, wherever you go, learning starts at home. So my encouragement to any parents out there is to read with your child. See if they can do it. See if they can put the words together. You know, be over their shoulder. You know, maybe take a peek. Ask them about what their science homework looks like. Just have that window in to see if real learning is happening. There's no substitute for that. It's really good advice, Angela. All right, Angela Roberts, stay right there.

[00:21:22] When we come back, we're going to go from hiding the greed to hiding the test. And we're going to see that happening at Berkeley. Real quick break.

[00:21:56] Welcome back to The Jenny Beth Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin. And still with me is Angela Morabito of the Defense of Freedom Institute and my colleague, Robert McNeely. Angela, before the break, we talked about a district changing a child's grades. And now we're going to talk about what happens when that child gets into college anyway. So now I've had trouble with names on this episode. We're going to see if I can get this one right. I can't. I can't. I can't do it.

[00:22:24] It's Russian or something like that. But it's the I can't do it. So I can't say her name. But. Okay. Her last name is Stankova, and she is a teaching professor of mathematics at Berkeley. She won a national award for teaching college math, and her bio indicates that she has a passion for helping students learn math.

[00:22:51] On Saturday, she published a piece stating that she teaches college calculus and that some of her students cannot do middle school math, meaning fractions. She brought the receipts and put her numbers out there for us. Angela, when Professor Stankova describes a calculus student who could not solve 7x minus

[00:23:17] 5 equals 9, what is, this is middle school math. What does it cost a young person to be admitted into a program they were never prepared to be in? It costs them a lot of time and a lot of money. And you and me and your viewers, we're all federal taxpayers. We're having to underwrite loans for kids who are just not ready for college. Now, I don't fault them for their own unpreparedness. The blame for that lies with the K-12 system that is not preparing them.

[00:23:45] But the UC system has done this to themselves. A similar issue bubbled up at UC San Diego a few months to a year earlier, where a professor said, wait a second, these students are not capable of the basics. We are becoming a remedial country because we're having to teach people the things they should have learned 5, 7, 10 years ago when they show up on a college campus. That's the kind of thing that can't be fixed in a semester. You can't cram years of learning into just a really short, compressed time frame.

[00:24:15] You can try. And I think these professors are trying. I give them credit for that. But they've been set up with an impossible task by a K-12 system that hasn't taught students what they need to know and an admissions office that has rubber-stamps people on the way through, even though they're not capable of doing this college-level work. Well, it's not fair to anyone in the entire classroom.

[00:24:37] It's not fair to the students who shouldn't be in there because they're not prepared for college-level calculus. And it's not fair to the students who are in there and are ready for calculus because it's going to slow them down. They're not going to be able to learn at the rate at which they should. So they're not going to be able to advance to the next levels of math the way that they should. And this professor said in her letter or her op-ed, which I read yesterday,

[00:25:06] that she's talking about classes with several hundred students in them and then trying to segregate the class into two different sections and teach two different actually kinds of math to the two different sections. That's crazy to me. It's just not right. It's unfair to every single person involved. And it isn't just this one professor with a grudge.

[00:25:33] More than 1,000 University of California faculty members have signed a system-wide petition to bring standardized testing back for science and engineering admissions. More than two-thirds of the University of California's mathematic faculty signed the letter demanding it. One of the professors involved called the level of agreement unprecedented. Angela, when the math faculty at the University of California system tells the administration

[00:26:00] the students cannot do math and that they really need to have an entrance exam, why in the world is the administration still arguing over this? Because the administration's priorities are different. Their priorities are political. We've seen this in college administrations all over the country. It is by no means limited to California. Where the folks in the admissions department want to let people in who look a certain way

[00:26:24] or believe certain things, whether or not those people are actually capable of handling college-level work. I think it is no surprise that the math faculty have stood up and said, hey, wait a second, this is hampering our ability to do our jobs. It's also unfair to kids who don't get into those schools because maybe they didn't check the right diversity boxes. But maybe their test scores would have been better. The UC system just didn't have anything to compare it to. So look, standardized tests are not perfect, but they are standardized.

[00:26:53] You can't deny that. So having an ability to compare apples to apples is really important when grade inflation is an epidemic and you have people getting A's and B's who have sat there all semester or maybe not shown up all semester and learned nothing. So I think it's mismatched priorities are to blame here. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And it's really disturbing. But this professor, I looked at her credentials.

[00:27:23] She has won awards. She started the math Olympiad or science Olympiad in San Francisco in the local community. She started what was called a math circle, I think, for public school students so that they could get more help with math before going to college while they're still in K-12. I'm not sure exactly what it does. But my point here is this. This is a woman who has a passion.

[00:27:52] She has an excellency in math and a passion for teaching it to students. And she's trying her best to do that and has a history, an academic history of doing so. And then we have on the other side of the equation, all of these admission officers who really are just they're focused on politics and those politics are harming the students. The professor is right in this case.

[00:28:18] Okay, let me ask the audience of a quick favor, and then we're going to get right back into this. If what Angela is telling you about the things in American schools today that you're not hearing anywhere else, hit like and subscribe right now. It's free. It only takes about two seconds. And it's how we get around the mainstream media spin and put this in front of more constitutional conservatives who need to hear it.

[00:28:39] And just so you know, almost every topic we're covering today I found from Angela's X feed, and I was so intrigued by it that I wanted to make sure that you got to know more about it. So I really is learning from Angela today. All right, Angela, let's go back. Now, the left has an answer for all of this, and I want to confront the problem, and let's just talk about what they've said.

[00:29:03] The Department of Education has launched a K-12 initiatives to protect students. Well, this is a little bit different than that. So we're going to come back to what the left says. This is slightly different. But you brought to our attention today that the Department of Education has announced this initiative to protect students from adult sexual predators. Now, why is it that the Department of Education needs to do this?

[00:29:32] And what is it that they are doing to help protect children from exploitation, which I'm very glad they are doing? Same. The Department needs to do this because students are at risk. There is an epidemic called passing the trash that happens in school districts large and small where there will be credible complaints of sexual misconduct and abuse against a school employee.

[00:29:55] But instead of digging into this, potentially firing that person, causing an uproar, the school will just kind of cover it up. And maybe that person gets shuffled to another classroom, another school building, another school district. Well, that gives that abusive teacher another opportunity to victimize more kids. The Defense of Freedom Institute authored a report on this called Catching the Trash.

[00:30:17] And that informs a lot of the new recommendations that have come from the Department of Ed about how to uphold the legal rights of students to an education that is safe and free from sex-based discrimination. So I am relieved to see the department taking action. These 20 directed investigations are all over the country. They were open against school districts where their responses on something called the Civil Rights Data Collection about complaints against teachers versus teachers being held accountable.

[00:30:44] If the numbers didn't line up, that was a red flag for the Office for Civil Rights. And they chose 20 districts to look into further. Those results are still pending. But if there's anything worth doing, it's protecting kids. I can't think of a more worthwhile thing to do. So while it's a hard topic and it's something no one wants to think about happening, it's a really necessary one to tackle. And I'm grateful for Secretary McMahon's leadership. Yeah, it's very, very good that she's doing this.

[00:31:13] And I'm glad that you brought that to our attention as well. As we go back over to the University of California, we hear from the professors who want to have the SAT or ACT put back in a place. And then there are people who are standing up and saying, no, they don't want that. One of them is the outgoing president of the University of California Student Association,

[00:31:41] whose last name is Hariharan. And here's part of what she said. The freshman applications rose 19 percent in one year and graduation rates did not fall. And she says that the SAT measures wealth.

[00:32:08] It doesn't measure whether a 17-year-old learned material or not. Angela, what do you think of that, especially as we're talking about these arguments against the SAT? There's a lot of nuance there. Do wealthier students tend to do better on standardized tests? Yes. Do wealthier students also tend to do better in college? Also, yes. There is no one perfect measure of a student's skills and abilities.

[00:32:36] But that doesn't mean we should throw out anything standardized. Back when I was coming up through school, about half of states had a graduation test. Most of those states said, you have to hit a certain bar for us to give you a high school diploma. Now only five or six states have that. So relying on a student's GPA to tell you what they're capable of isn't really trustworthy. There are also other advantages that students from wealthy families have in college admissions.

[00:33:01] And standardized testing tends to be the easier one for really capable kids from underprivileged backgrounds to overcome. A really brilliant kid, no matter where he or she grew up, can score well on the SAT or ACT. That same kid might not have a wonderful tearjerker essay to read about a mission trip to Africa, or like starting a company in a foreign country, or, you know, being a superstar on such and such very expensive travel sports team. But that kid can still rock a standardized test.

[00:33:30] Kids deserve that opportunity. So we can't look at standardized tests as the end-all be-all, but it's wrong to reject it as a measure of some level of academic merit. Absolutely. It is just, it doesn't, it should not happen. When I was researching for this show today, they're now, the University of California is looking at reinstating the SAT and the ACT,

[00:33:57] so a college admission or entrance exam. And they're trying to get this finished by the end of this school year, the 2026-2027 school year. They're speeding up the process just a little bit. So I was looking at that, and then I said, well, how long did it take them to decide to get rid of it to begin with? And they started researching it in July of 2018, and they continued researching it in 2019.

[00:34:26] They finally researched, finished researching it, and they recommended keeping in 2020, in February of 2020, they recommended keeping the SAT or ACT requirement for another five years while a new test was developed. But in May of 2020, despite the recommendation from the academic Senate for the University of California,

[00:34:52] they just ignored the recommendation and voted five to zero to just, or unanimously, I'm not sure if it's five to zero, but unanimously to get rid of the entrance exam and they cited pandemic concerns. So they researched it and researched it, and the research said, don't get rid of it. And then they said, oh, no, we need to just go ahead and get rid of it anyway.

[00:35:17] And now it's taking all of this time to reinstate it, and we're seeing the problems from it. And it's not—this is not fair. What you said at the very beginning of this segment, Angela, really just bothers me, because you said we as taxpayers are underwriting their college loans, and that's true. We are because their loans are backed by the federal government.

[00:35:42] What's even more disturbing or disturbing in addition to that is the fact that taxpayers have already paid for their K-12 education. So taxpayers have paid for the system that completely failed them. Now we're putting them into another system where they're having to take out massive, massive loans in California to pay for education, and that system is going to fail them as well.

[00:36:07] I'm just—I'm so proud of these professors for stepping up and saying enough is enough, and I hope that people listen to it. That's just sort of my thoughts on it. Let me end this segment by asking each of you to give your final thoughts on it. Robert, I'll go with you, and then Angela can respond to both of us. Well, I think there has to be a whole overhaul of education in this country because we've advanced with our technology as well.

[00:36:35] I think during my tenure in school, I really felt that was towards the end of you're actually turning in a paper, not to date myself, but really did not need the computer on a daily basis until my college studies. So that, first and foremost, you look at something like that, and how can we streamline the size of scope of any institution in order to make it affordable for everyone? Because Angela's point earlier, it should not matter the zip code or the area code you come from in this country.

[00:37:04] The true equalizer in America to get ahead is that high-quality access to education. And so sadly now, we have the Democrats that my friend Lawrence Jones earlier today on Fox & Friends said, we've got to stop saying there's no difference between the Democrats and the DSA. It's the Democrat Socialists of America, period. And through their defunding of police, wanting a unicameral system of government,

[00:37:31] getting rid of the presidency, to dumbing down these institutions because they want to serve their overlords in the teachers' unions. We have to look at all of this once again because you have a party that's really attacking the very foundation of equal opportunity right here in America. And it starts with the education system, and it's time for Republicans to get aggressive on this issue

[00:37:57] and take it back as not a talking point, but something that really affects the lives of countless millions of Americans. Angela, your final thoughts on this topic? Well, Robert and Jenny Beth, I'm so grateful to you both for having me on today and for your very kind words about what the Defense of Freedom Institute works on. We believe in an education system that puts students and families first. And the path to an education system like that, to Robert's point, runs right through the teacher unions.

[00:38:26] When those unions still have power, merit is going to continue to disappear. Costs are going to continue climbing while quality goes down. So school choice is a big deal. And coming in 2027, the Education Freedom K-12 Federal Scholarship Tax Credit will be a reality. I am so excited for this. We are about to see school choice just grow exponentially across the country. And that's going to open up so many opportunities for students and families who can make the most of them.

[00:38:55] So I think we're on the cusp of an education revolution in this country, and I can't wait to see it happen. I can't wait to see it happen either. Okay, we're going to take another short break, so stay with us.

[00:39:26] Welcome back. Angela, we've spent the last half hour or so talking about schools, hiding grades, stopping tests, manipulating the system for their own benefit at the expense of students. I want to talk about now what comes out of the education system and into society and the consequences of these kind of disastrous educational policies. The first thing is an alarming new poll.

[00:39:53] CBS News and YouGov surveyed 2,287 adults between August 12th and 14th, so just the last couple of days. Among Democrats, 58% have a positive view of socialism, 32% have a positive view of capitalism, and 50% view capitalism negatively. That is a 26-point gap in favor of socialism inside one of the major parties.

[00:40:21] And here's the number that really just jumped out at me while I was preparing for the episode today. Among Democrats with a college degree, 71% view socialism positively. So I think we've got those numbers on the screen. Angela, here's what I want to know from you and what you think of this.

[00:40:45] College and what we're seeing from college leading people to this kind of positive view of socialism, especially among Democrats? I think that's true. There is an incredible lack of ideological diversity on many college campuses. And colleges are supposed to be the free marketplace of ideas.

[00:41:07] My college experience was wonderful because I got to hear from people from all different backgrounds, from all different disciplines, who have all different ways of viewing the world. On a lot of campuses, that is not what happens. And students are worse off for it. If you go through four years and all you're taught is capitalism is evil and socialism is great, we can't really fault people for absorbing that, even though they should have the critical thinking skills to get around it.

[00:41:32] My concern is that the indoctrination starts even sooner, both with what's in K-12 classrooms and what's missing. Our civics proficiency rates for high schoolers, I believe, are less than one in four. We're talking about people who don't understand the U.S. Constitution and why it was written. We're talking about people who don't understand how our government works and why it was set up that way. And these are people in the voting booth. They've been robbed of a meaningful education.

[00:41:57] So without those educational fundamentals, of course, you're going to be more susceptible to lies about the world around you. I think if colleges really want to teach students about socialism, they ought to talk to them from the voice of people who have lived it. Talk to anybody who's lived under socialism. There's a reason people are not fleeing Florida to go back to Cuba. If you talk to people who've really been through it, they know it's terrible. But those voices and the voices of classical liberals and conservatives are all too often missing on campus.

[00:42:27] Robert, you and I have watched this coming for years. The Democrat Socialists of America, they're no longer fringe, as we've been saying throughout the episode today. These are the nominees. They're winning the primaries. And they are the mainstream now of the Democrat Party. Is the classroom where that pipeline is starting? 100 percent, Jenny Beth. Character matters and character counts.

[00:42:52] And one of my favorite things during my tenure with Turning Point USA was the free speech ball. Having it out there tabling and talking to the students about what Angela was commenting on. Civics education. Having robust ideas and topics and debates on what really matters for society and for the country. It was great to see them write whatever they wanted to on that ball.

[00:43:18] And they'd be so shocked and surprised if they wrote a proverbial bad word on that big beach ball. But it was all about celebrating the Bill of Rights, our constitutional foundation of this republic, and that very first amendment of free speech. These free speech zones you might have heard about where you go onto these college campuses, private or public, and they will actually have a square saying you can say what you want right here, but not on the entirety of the campus.

[00:43:47] But last time I checked in my pocket constitution, it does not give free and fair spaces to do what you will. It's all citizens being equal under that law and protecting one another with unalienable rights. And that's what we're celebrating 250 years of this great country. And it's about time that our higher education system does the same thing.

[00:44:10] Angela, the second thing that I saw that I think is a consequence is that roughly one in three American men over the age of 15 are now neither working nor looking for work. Among men age 20 and older, labor force participation is down to 66 percent from 73 percent in 2006. Some of it's retirement, but a lot of it is young men.

[00:44:35] And the researchers are saying that young men who watch men around them struggle simply form lower expectations of themselves. And Angela, you said on X recently, the workforce is abandoning young men. 77 percent of teachers are women. 71 percent of HR are women. The gatekeepers to knowledge, skills, and employment are leaving young men behind.

[00:45:02] How does what we've been talking about today lead to these kind of issues with men, especially young men in the workplace? These men are coming up through woke schools and they graduated to a woke economy that isn't always governed by the free market principles we want. The most qualified person gets the job. The most qualified person rises through the ranks. If you talk to anybody who's been on the job hunt lately, we know that is not always the case,

[00:45:27] that companies have hired for made-up diversity metrics instead of hiring people who are the best for the job. That is demoralizing to anyone. So it's terribly sad, but not terribly surprising to see so many men just quit and say, this workforce, this country doesn't really have a place for me. Of course, that's not true. This country has a place for anybody who's willing to work hard.

[00:45:51] But when the pathways they've been taught of go to a four-year college, study this, that, or the other, go get a job like this. When that pathway doesn't work for them, they mistakenly think no pathway is going to work for them. We need to invest more in the trades and understanding that junior colleges are not less than. They are just a different pathway. They are not second place. That there are a lot of different ways to succeed in this country. And just because the one that the cultural narrative has pushed on you wasn't a good fit,

[00:46:20] does not mean you are broken. It does not mean you are defective. You should be given a fair shot. And it's on all of us who are adults in the workforce now to make sure those young men get that fair shot, that they're not discriminated against unfairly. Yeah, you're exactly right about that. And Angela, I know for certain because I had a, I have a son and a daughter who are twins. So they're the same age. They pretty much had the same teachers throughout their education system.

[00:46:48] And when they were in high school, they had, I think they had some different teachers, but they weren't in the same, they were not in the same class. And I saw a difference in what was happening with my son versus what was happening with my daughter. And the kind of attitude that the men and the boys, the young boys and young, young teenage guys were being taught about what their chances and opportunities were versus what,

[00:47:17] what women were being taught and what the young, young girls were being taught. And it just, it's not, it is not healthy in a high school environment or a middle school environment to say, well, you're a guy. So you need to make sure that you allow women to do better than you because you're, you're a guy. And it's not fair because women haven't had whatever it is that is the thing of the day that they want to whine about. That isn't fair.

[00:47:46] Life isn't fair. And it just, I can understand how if, if that is happening in school all day long, and then you don't have a good support system at home to counter it. And in, in, in the parents, maybe the parents don't even realize everything that's going on inside that classroom, how you wind up with men who are underachieving rather than overachieving once they get out of school.

[00:48:12] What is the school system say that, what does it do when it says never, it never lets a boy fail. Like what we're seeing in, in Nashville, you know, they, they're not allowed to fail, but they also can't actually succeed either when you're hiding grades. So, so you're not allowed to have failing grades, but we're not going to show you the actual grades.

[00:48:36] How, how does, I think all of that combined winds up creating this system where men and young adults in general are, are going to be unincentivized to do well in life. What, what do you think, Angela? Well, the woke era has ripped competition out of schools. It was all of a sudden, we're not going to publish your class rank. We're not going to have a valedictorian. We're not going to say anybody is achieving more than anybody else. Well, kids are smart. They know that's a lie.

[00:49:05] And they start to see that their school is lying to them as a policy. So I don't blame them for saying, well, you know, school maybe just isn't for me. Yeah, that's true. That school isn't built for them. That school is, it's operating on policies designed to make adults feel good. Instead of policies that are designed to help kids succeed. So there are some really cool linguistic studies on that about how boys tend to learn through competition and girls tend to learn through collaboration.

[00:49:33] So when you take competition out of schools, it hurts everybody. But it hurts young men the most. It looks like Angela may have froze. Oh, no, she's OK there. All right. She OK. She was done. I thought she froze and still had something else to say. All right. Robert, for you. And let's make this one kind of quick.

[00:49:57] If a young man cannot read well, cannot do math and was never told the truth about either, is he more likely or less likely to believe someone who tells him the system is rigged and the government should just take care of it? He's just more susceptible to that messaging. And that's why I'm really calling upon my fellow men out there, single, married or otherwise. Get involved in your communities. Get off the bench and get in the game. Become a mentor.

[00:50:20] If you're in the trades, especially perhaps pick up an apprentice, not only to help your business, but to teach the next generation. It's so important for men to be aware of that and to be that almost counterculture in something that used to be celebrated, manhood and also being a good father. So, again, men, let's step up and let's help out who we can to make this country even better than it already is.

[00:50:45] OK, now, I don't want to leave everyone in despair because there is a state that has done a good job, and I think we can all look at it. And that state is Mississippi. In 2013, Mississippi fourth graders ranked 49th in the country in reading and 50th in math. So they were at the bottom of the rankings for reading and math. Today, they rank ninth in reading and 16th in math.

[00:51:13] And Mississippi is number one in the nation for fourth grade gains since 2013. Now, there also, as I was researching for this, I saw that in New Jersey, there was a piece that was up where they were showing the cost of education in New Jersey versus in Mississippi.

[00:51:31] In Mississippi, it's about $12,324 versus New Jersey, which is around $27,234 for the current spending per pupil. So they are making all of these improvements without increasing massively the amount of money they are spending per child.

[00:51:57] Angela, what did Mississippi do that helped create all of these amazing improvements in their system? And it obviously isn't that they are just throwing more and more money at the problem. Yeah, throwing money at the problem doesn't work. What does work is exactly what Mississippi did. They invested in literacy, beginning with how teachers are trained in the state, beginning with also putting literacy coaches in public schools and saying,

[00:52:24] if a teacher is having a hard time conveying this information, we're going to have somebody to help that person out and help those students learn. They also evaluate. They screen their students all the time, I believe three times a year. So when a student shows up on that screener as a little bit behind, there may be three months behind. They're not an entire grade behind. They also have a read by three law. They're one of a handful of states that says if you cannot read by the end of third grade, you're going to repeat third grade again.

[00:52:52] And while that sounds harsh, it can be a great thing for students because if you can't read by the end of third grade, putting a textbook in your hand as a freshman in high school isn't going to accomplish anything. You're not going to be able to read it. So Mississippi has got the secret sauce, except it's not a secret. I think every state should look into following their lead.

[00:53:11] Well, it's a lot easier to redo third grade and make sure you're able to read than to get into calculus in college and have that massive tuition added to your plate and not be able to handle what's before you. Yes. Robert, this is the last question for you.

[00:53:31] If someone is watching right now and wants a Mississippi model for their state, what do you think that they should be doing and how should they go about trying to help make these kind of changes in their own state? Well, it's at the local level. Get involved in your school board. Run for that. Support a great candidate. Most of these races are nonpartisan, but then those candidates really have to explain where they stand on this.

[00:53:57] Or are they simply propped it up by the bureaucrats, the administrators and those special interests within the teachers union? Again, that warning where I came from. One of the reasons I came down here to the great peach state of Georgia is that we saw a once great prairie state of Illinois fall apart because of the pension liabilities and the skyrocketing taxes. And once great public education systems all fall apart, especially since COVID. Now, what's the watch over that?

[00:54:27] It's usually your nonpaid volunteers on that school board. You can be a literal superhero. Get off the bench, get in the game, run for office or support a great person who wants to make your community strong. And that's a huge part of the backbone of strong communities. It's the quality of our education. Thank you, Robert. Angela Morabito, spokeswoman for the Defense of Freedom Institute and visiting fellow at the Independent Women's Forum. Thank you so much for being with us.

[00:54:54] I know it was your first time on the show today, and I hope it won't be your last. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I will come back anytime. All right, everyone. Make sure that you follow her work at the Defense of Freedom Institute. And it's Angela L. Moribito on X. And, Robert, it looks like he's off. But as always, thank you, my friend, for being on. Now, audience, please stay with me. I'm going to do one more really quick break.

[00:55:17] And when we come back, I'm going to give you an update on the Save America Act, your call to action for today, and a story I want to tell you about before we go.

[00:55:46] Welcome back to The Jenny Beth Show. Now, I owe you an update on the Save America Act, and I'm going to give it to you straight, including things that I don't like. And you may think, gosh, it's a little bit late. Why didn't she do this last week? Well, as you may have noticed last week, almost all of our episodes were prerecorded. We had episodes with doctors who were talking about Dr. Fauci and lessons learned from COVID. And then Robert handled the live show for me one day.

[00:56:12] And I wound up being in New York for part of the time doing some media on Newsmax and then also working with our team as we prepare for getting out the vote this fall. So the Senate left town for a five-week recess without passing the Save America Act. Senator Mike Lee asked repeatedly for a recorded vote on whether to adjourn so that every senator would have to own their decision to leave town.

[00:56:40] Leadership in the Senate would not give a recorded vote, but ultimately did give him a voice vote. And Mike Lee took it as he should have, and he made them at least say out loud whether they were going to adjourn or not. And this is a big deal. This hasn't been done in years and years where people are objecting to being able to go on the recess like this.

[00:57:07] Eleven senators filed statements in the congressional records saying they would have voted against going home. So we need to remember those 11. We also need to remember the ones, I think we had up to 20, who said they wouldn't go on recess and wanted to keep working on the Save America Act. So it sounds like there might be nine who fell off and didn't hold their ground. And we need to remember who they were as well.

[00:57:32] Before the Senate left, we did get a street voter identification bill voted on, and it got 52 votes. Now, it needed 60 votes under the cloture rule to be able to bring the bill to the floor. And it did not get 60, so it didn't get to final passage or even to be brought to the floor for debate. Fifty-two Republican senators voted for it, and not a single Democrat voted for it.

[00:58:00] So that at least is a good thing that we took that vote, but we still didn't even get what we wanted with that. So here's where the Save America Act stands right now. The Budget Committee is still working on the budget resolution over this break, and there are still plans to include the Save America Act in the budget resolution in what is known as Reconciliation 3.0.

[00:58:26] There is also the stock trading bill that the House has already passed, which includes voter identification, and the Senate can still come back to that particular bill. We're going to be pushing hard on that one later this month as we get closer to the Senate coming back into session in September. And we'll also be watching what happens with the budget resolution and pushing for them to keep working on that. Now, I understand.

[00:58:55] It makes you angry, and it makes me angry. Proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID are not going to be the law for this fall's election. I get it. You're angry. I've seen the comments on social media, and I understand your anger. We did not win this legislative battle yet.

[00:59:15] And I say yet because it's not over unless everyone who's been working on it acts like the lackluster so-called Senate leadership and quit standing up for it. And I know you are better than that. Senator Schumer kept the Senate in Washington in August when Democrats ran that chamber. Senator Thune should have done the same thing. He did not. We cannot change that. But what we can do is keep fighting.

[00:59:43] And I want to say something to you about that because I know some of you are tired. You're angry. You are just sick to death of the Senate. You really aren't very happy with most Republicans in the Senate. I get it. And I really have given this a lot of thought over the last week. Our founders lost battles. They lost more than one. But if they'd quit, we wouldn't be celebrating 250 years of America and the Declaration of Independence today.

[01:00:12] We lost battles in the First World War. America and our allies lost battles in the Second World War. On this day, August the 17th, in 1943, General Patton drove the Seventh Army across Sicily and reached Messina first. And the newspapers turned it into a celebrated race. But for the men actually walking it, every single mile toward that finish line carried danger and exhaustion and sacrifice.

[01:00:43] And the line in history is the accomplishment. It's the race. But the rest of the story is the miles and the endurance it took to make it there. Look at President Trump, who never gives up. President Trump was not sworn in in 2020, even though we know he should have been. There have been multiple attempts on his life.

[01:01:08] After the one in Butler, Pennsylvania, he stood up with blood on his face and he said, fight, fight, fight. The opposition tried to bankrupt him, tried to throw him in jail. Adversaries and enemies still have their sights set on him. Yet he gets up day after day after day after day. And he keeps fighting for America.

[01:01:33] So I'm not going to sit here and feel sorry for myself because we did not win this legislative battle yet. And I'm not going to be angry just for the sake of being angry. I'm going to keep fighting. We have a country to save. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy and nobody ever said the battles would be fair. Life is not easy and life is not fair. But we keep going anyway. And that's what I'm asking you to do. Keep going.

[01:02:03] Keep standing up for what is right. Keep fighting for liberty. Keep championing our Constitution. Everything you heard in this hour is a preview of what we're up against. What happened to math at Berkeley is what happens to everything the big government socialists get their hands on. They set a standard. People fall short of it. And instead of raising the people, they lower the standard. Then they hide the measurements so you can't tell. And then they call the result equity.

[01:02:31] And what we actually get is a system that is built with a race to the bottom. We're only where everybody comes out equal. But it's where everyone is equally allowed not to excel. Do it to a school and you get a 19 year old who cannot do middle school math. Do it to medicine, to energy, to housing, to your paycheck. And you get the same thing every time.

[01:02:58] So here is your job for today. Election Day is 78 days from now. Today, go to one candidate's website and sign up to be part of that campaign. Volunteer to make calls. Go door to door. Or donate. Then leave a comment and let us know that you signed up and who you volunteered to help. I really want to read those and know how you're getting involved. Because we have to defeat the radical left.

[01:03:27] They have told us what they are going to do if they gain control. Abolish ICE. Abolish the Senate. Pack the Supreme Court. Get rid of the Electoral College. Take over health care for everybody. Replace free markets. Raise your taxes. Increase government spending, which means more fraud and more of your hard earned money being stolen. And more government control over your life and more regulation on your work. They'll impeach President Trump.

[01:03:55] They'll start endless hearings and investigations to prevent President Trump from accomplishing anything in the last two years of his presidency. And let's look at what these last two years, the first two years of this term, have been. We've secured the border. Crime is down across this country. Manufacturing is coming back. The economy has steadied. And I understand things in the economy are not where everyone wants them to be. I get it.

[01:04:24] They're not where I want it to be. But I also know that socialist policies will not work. And it'll make everything worse for everybody, not better. And also, I know that it takes time to build things up. It does not take long at all to destroy something. And we watched as President Biden and his administration destroyed the economy that President Trump built once before. We don't need to let that happen again.

[01:04:52] So I want to leave you with something because this is what the stakes look like. And here's a way to put a face on it. The name is Laken Riley. And if you've tuned into this podcast in the past, you've heard me talk about her. She was from this community in the northern metro suburbs of Atlanta. She went to the same elementary school as my twins.

[01:05:16] She was brutally murdered when she was 22 years old, when she was out for a morning run in Athens, Georgia. A former New York City police officer named Ethan Carriere. I don't think I'm getting that name right. I've messed every name up on this entire episode. He's a man who killed her.

[01:05:43] He arrested him for endangering the welfare of a child. And the system turned him loose. And the officer says that sanctuary city policies in New York are why the chances to detain that man or deport him were missed. Then he saw the face again on the news when he heard about what happened to Laken Riley. He's now a police officer in Palm Beach, Florida. He's speaking up. And the last two paragraphs of what he wrote this weekend really got to me.

[01:06:14] Americans have a responsibility to ensure that the systems meant to protect our communities are pulling in the same direction. Law enforcement cannot stand alone at the edge of justice while inefficient courts, negligent prosecutors, and radical policymakers neglect their constitutional duty. Laken Riley paid for every failure of that system with her life. Her all-too-short life will never be forgotten.

[01:06:42] And it is now our responsibility to make sure her death was not in vain. Laken Riley deserved better. Thankfully, our border is closed now and crime is down. But none of this is permanent. It will only stick if we vote to make it stick. We have a responsibility to make sure her death was not in vain. And that is why we cannot give up during the next 78 days.

[01:07:13] Before you go, do two things for me. Subscribe to this channel so that the mainstream media does not get the last word on any of this. And click on the episode coming up on your screen where we dig in to why Gen Z is swinging socialists. After the hour we just spent, you will understand exactly why that happened. And make sure you go and sign up for a candidate's website and start volunteering today. That is our show today. I'm Jenny Beth Martin.

[01:07:42] Thank you so much for joining me. This has been The Jenny Beth Show. If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin.

[01:08:09] The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.