Commentary: The Four-Day School Weeks Are a Trend Across America Despite Questionable Results

School with students learning

Next month, the Huntsville School District in Arkansas will join the wave of public schools switching to a four-day week. 

The shorter school week, which first emerged in a few rural areas decades ago, is now expanding into suburbs and smaller cities. At least 2,100 schools in half the states have embraced the three-day weekend mostly as an incentive to hire and keep teachers, prompting cheers of support from instructors, unions, and many families.  

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Another Elite University Will Reinstate Standardized Testing for Admission

Brown University

Brown University will reinstate a policy requiring standardized testing as part of the admissions process, according to a Tuesday news release.

First year applicants for next year’s admissions cycle will be required to submit standardized test scores, like the SAT or ACT, in their applications, according to the university news release. Brown suspended its testing policy in the summer of 2020 citing “unprecedented obstacles to testing” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Brown University to Start Interrogating Ph.D. Applicants on How They Will Advance ‘Diversity’

An Ivy League university will now be requiring doctoral applicants to submit a 300-word diversity statement, according to the Brown Daily Herald.

Brown University administrators announced changes to Brown University’s Ph.D. admissions process Tuesday in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling banning race-based admissions, as well as changes to their Title IX policies, according to the Brown Daily Herald. Brown’s new Ph. D. admissions process will now include a diversity statement that questions ways in which applicants will “advance diversity.”

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New Documentary Exposes Ivy League Privilege and the Students it Shuts Out

“Exclusion U,” a feature documentary released this year, details how Ivy League universities accumulate billions of dollars as they restrict class sizes, turn away qualified students, and favor the children of the rich.

“Ivy League endowments are worth $193 billion dollars, but they only educate 0.3 percent of U.S. undergrads,” the film’s narrator stated. “That’s less than 63,000 students.”

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‘Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Paper to be Retracted for Bogus ‘Informed Consent’ Violation: Author

An academic paper based on a parental survey of suspected rapid-onset gender dysphoria in nearly 1,700 children, which drew criticism from transgender activists and allies, could soon be retracted by its publisher over a pretextual dispute about informed consent, according to its corresponding author.

Springer Nature is currently investigating “concerns” about the paper’s methodology following threats by academics to boycott the Archives of Sexual Behavior until its longtime editor, pioneering gender dysphoria researcher Kenneth Zucker, is replaced for accepting the ROGD paper among others questioning common LGBTQ narratives.

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Brown University Exempts its Official Functions from New Indefinite COVID Restrictions

On Monday, administrators at Brown University  informed students that the school had confirmed eighty-two “positive COVID-19 asymptomatic tests in the past seven days”  arising largely from asymptomatic undergraduate students.

Brown then introduced several temporary restrictions. But rather than providing a specific end date, the university told students that restrictions will be removed “after achieving a decrease in positive tests.”

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Brown University Students Overwhelmingly Vote in Favor of Reparations for Black Students

Brown University

On Monday, Students at the Ivy League school Brown University voted in favor of two resolutions approving reparations for black students, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

Both resolutions seek to identify any black students who are direct descendants of slaves, or “who were entangled with and/or afflicted by the University and Brown family and their associates,” in reference to the university’s founder Nicholas Brown Jr.

One resolution would give priority admission to any such black students, while the other would give direct monetary payments to said students. In the vote amongst all students on campus, the admissions resolution received 89 percent of the vote, while the financial payment resolution received 85 percent. The vote was held after the student government at Brown passed a resolution, introduced by the student government president Jason Carroll, “calling upon Brown to attempt to identify and reparate the descendants of slaves entangled with the university.”

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