The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results for 2024 were released on Wednesday and the results are nothing short of disastrous for Maine’s public schools.
The NAEP, which measures the reading and mathematics proficiency of 4th grade and 8th grade students in American public schools, is one of the few nationwide standardized tests policy makers can use to evaluate the efficacy of public education systems.
By any standard, Maine is failing relative to its peers, though almost no state in the Union can boast a meaningful return on the higher-than-ever rates of per pupil spending.
Per the NAEP results for Maine, one-third of 4th graders and less than a quarter of 8th graders are proficient or advanced in math. In reading, just 26 percent of students in grades 4 and 8 are proficient or advanced. Relative to other states, Maine now ranks 43rd in 4th grade math, 27th in 8th grade math, 43rd in 4th grade reading, and 35th 8th grade reading.
If those results weren’t shocking enough, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy has compared NAEP performance in every state with the state’s growth in per pupil spending. According to the University’s Edunomics Lab report, Maine students’ test schools have dropped even as per pupil spending has skyrocketed.
I am focusing a bit on Maine because I am reasonably familiar with the state and dismayed at how savagely it is being ‘Californicated’. Much of the Maine tax money spent is graft going to friends and family or spent on housing illegals brought from afar at taxpayer expense. Under Biden, the more illegals Maine imported the more the federal government paid out. Maine is experiencing the same rapid downfall that happened in Oregon, which followed California quickly into one-party leftist dystopian rule. It is very difficult in USA to prevent dishonest cliques of whatever makeup from worming their way into power and then exploiting their positions. They can be called parasites because they do so much harm, which can be seen in the chart above though the harm is even worse than that. It’s a spiritual harm, an arrogant ideological immorality couched as progressive. ABN
This is wonderful and I hope and believe we will see much more of this all across USA. Those fucking lefty bitches in government who were paying (graft) for this are parasites spreading their mind-virus parasite disease with taxpayer money. I love seeing this garbage shut down. When our own government undermines our country in this way, they massively damage the free exercise of honest speech, honest behavior, honest policy. They are destroying all the good things we used to have in this country to replace them with corruption. ABN
Donald Trump quickly made good on his pledge to sever diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in the federal government as he is set to lay off all DEI hires within 24 hours.
The new Trump administration sent a letter to all heads and acting heads of government agencies on Tuesday, informing them all federal employees in DEI roles must be placed on paid leave by 5pm Wednesday.
In a letter first obtained by CBS News, the agencies were ordered to ‘take prompt actions’ against all departments ‘focusing exclusively on DEI initiatives and programs.’
The letter also demands all public DEI focused webpages be taken offline, and orders employees within the departments to report ‘any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.’
Any employees that are aware of ‘coded or imprecise language’ intended to keep DEI programs alive but do not report them within 10 days are warned of ‘adverse consequences.’
Trump’s executive order, titled ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions’, directly reverses a DEI executive order enacted by President Biden on his first day in office four years ago.
Tuesday’s order concludes: ‘These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.’
The Gaîté Lyrique theatre in Paris staged the conference, entitled Reinventing the welcome for refugees in France, on December 10.
It involved talks hosted by academics from top universities and Red Cross officials, and saw activists welcome in the migrants.
But when the conference was finished, the migrants refused to leave the venue.
Still occupied, the leftist theatre now faces going out of business after weeks without revenue from ticket sales, and has had to cancel all performances until at least January 24.
Its management said in a statement last week that the number of people taking shelter in the theatre is ‘continuing to increase’ and has swelled to around 300 people.
‘The sanitary conditions are deteriorating day after day and the teams are facing this situation alone,’ it said as it called for the local authorities to find a housing solution for the occupiers.
‘Although this occupation is forced, it is unthinkable for the Gaîté Lyrique to throw these people out onto the street in the middle of winter,’ the statement added.
The opposite side of the country from California and twenty years ‘behind’, yet Maine is racing down the same slippery slope of bogus morality coupled with graft and corruption as California. Politicians who believe they are ‘leaders’ rather than representatives are mesmerized by their own delusions (and personal greed). ABN
More Maine govt gang abuse. Bellows is actually Secretary of State of Maine. The only people who want rigged elections are cheaters. Mills claimed she was elected to ‘make Maine less white’. She did win her election but it was a questionable victory, if only because of what people like her and Bellows say about elections. Mills did not get that mandate from a majority of real Maine residents, who are now forced to pay for it. And Bellows’ asinine ‘reasoning’ is absurd on the face of it. There is strong credible evidence illegals have been voting in Maine elections, as in many other blue states. And the real reasons they are flown in at taxpayers expense is to replace traditional residents and ‘win’ elections by voting illegally. ABN
UPDATE: $118 million may not sound like much but Maine has a population of only 1.3 million. On a per capita basis, Mills and Bellows are right up there with the worst of the worst. ABN
As fires raged across Los Angeles on Tuesday, some firefighters battling the Palisades fire reported on internal radio systems that hydrants in Pacific Palisades were coming up dry.
“The hydrants are down,” said one firefighter.
“Water supply just dropped,” said another.
L.A. developer Rick Caruso, who owns Palisades Village in the heart of the Westside neighborhood, told The Times he was receiving similar reports from his staff at the shopping center.
“There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” Caruso said. “The firefighters are there [in the neighborhood], and there’s nothing they can do — we’ve got neighborhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses burning. … It should never happen.”
DEI at the firehouse should include ample water. And in the woods it should include controlled burns. Controlled burns prevent big fires and water puts fires out. DEI should also include top people with brains and proper training, but apparently that was not obvious. I do not enjoy writing stuff like this but I also hate watching California burn. All organizations, including government, decline rapidly when there are so many bad employees they push out the good ones. When the bad employees are at the top, this happens very quickly and you end up with high crime, craziness, and preventable fires like this. ABN
You’ve probably never heard the story of Kriss Donald, a 15-year-old Scottish boy tortured and murdered by 5 Pakistanis because he was White.
One of the Pakistanis, a gang member Imran Shahid, got in an unrelated bar fight the weekend before and decided to take collective revenge on Whites.
With four of his Pakistani friends, they stole a car and roamed the streets of Glasgow with a bag of torture instruments looking for White boys to target.
They targeted 19-year-old Jamie Wallace, who managed to escape, and his friend Kriss, who had the day off school because he wasn’t feeling well.
The Pakistanis proceeded to take Kriss, who they called a “white bastard”, to a remote location and torture him for hours — gouging his eyes out, castrating him, burning him with cigarettes, stabbing him repeatedly, dousing him in gasoline and setting him alight before he crawled to his death.
One of the killers may be back on the streets of Scotland this year.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), China’s powerful military arm under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is reportedly embroiled in political turmoil amid growing discontent over President Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power.
Tensions surfaced earlier this month when the PLA’s Central Theater Command (CTC) released a politically charged article on social media, advocating for collective leadership, democratic centralism, and decision-making through group discussions. The post notably omitted references to Xi or terms reinforcing his centralized authority, such as the “Two Establishes” and the “Two Upholds.”
The post included a photo from a study session held by the 83rd Group Army, showcasing a political slogan advocating shared decision-making over power concentration. This slogan directly challenges Xi’s tight grip on power, established since he took charge of the CCP in 2012.
The study session reportedly reviewed themes discussed during the June Political Work Conference of the Central Military Commission (CMC), chaired by Xi himself. While Xi emphasized centralized leadership, the announcement from that conference omitted phrases reinforcing his power, hinting at underlying dissent.
The article gained widespread attention, sparking debates about whether collective leadership and democratic centralism were quietly championed within the military. The PLA Daily, the official publication of the CMC, added to the discourse with commentaries endorsing collective leadership and intraparty democracy, even quoting Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong to criticize the excessive concentration of power.
American Buddhist Net 