Free Republic

Marion County, WV - Two students were involved in a fight Friday morning at North Marion High School, according to Gary Price, the superintendent of Marion County schools. One student was hit in the head and was flown from the scene to the hospital.

The Heritage Foundation published a special report with essays from several education experts, detailing the background and the effects of Common Core. Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and William Estrada, director of federal relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association, highlighted the problems with Common Core. Estrada wrote, "Common Core is good for homeschooling.” He pointed out in 2009, there were 850,000 homeschooled students in the U.S. By 2012, the Department of Education found that there were 1.8 million homeschooled students. As you can see, the growth in homeschooling tracks nicely with...

KANAWHA COUNTY, WV - An East Bank Middle School teacher is seen yelling at a student in a video secretly filmed by a different student. In the video the teacher says that the next time the student, opens their “big stinking mouth I will write you up and send you to the office.” Throughout the video the teacher references the student walking into his office without being invited, and the fact that the teacher is an adult and what he watches “is his choice.” The teacher also tells the class that the student threatened to blackmail him.

BECKLEY, W.Va. (AP) - A former teacher at a Beckley music school has been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for sexually abusing a young student. The Register-Herald (http://bit.ly/22prKvl) reports 52-year-old Keith Janney was sentenced Monday in Raleigh County Circuit Court for sexual abuse by a parent, custodian, guardian or person of trust. Judge John Hutchison said Janney must serve at least 10 years before he is eligible for parole.

CONCORD, N.H. —A school guidance counselor who helped a 15-year-old girl get judicial approval for an abortion without telling her parents shouldn't have lost her job, the state's highest court ruled Thursday. Demetria McKaig's contract at Farmington High School was not renewed in April 2013, four months after she blocked her principal from telling the girl's parents about the pregnancy. A majority of Supreme Court justices said McKaig should be reinstated, but in a dissent, Justice Robert Lynn accused his colleagues of ignoring legal principles because the case involved a hot-button issue. "Because I cannot join the bandwagon of political...

The mother of a Tampa, Florida, seventh-grader is speaking out after finding an assignment given to her 12-year-old daughter and other students in Spanish class at Monroe Junior High. The form asked, “How much privilege do you have? Circle the boxes that apply to you.” The categories on the form listed “Race,” “Skin Color,” “Religion,” “Sex,” “Gender,” “Sexual Orientation” and “Disability.” The options under gender included, “cisgendered,” “transgendered” or “genderqueer.”

If you’re glued to the trashy, monotonous 2016 horserace, just like the presidential candidates still insisting they will end Common Core you will have missed that the cornerstone of President Obama’s education policy has already become a tombstone. That’s right: Common Core is dead. The big postmortems will roll out in a year or two, but it’s already clear this education monstrosity is eking out its last gasps. Not that many normal people paid much attention to the biggest shift in U.S. education for decades, to hear Buzzfeed tell it in the recent video below. To recap, Common Core is...

Thirteen Detroit Public School employees were charged with felonies in an illegal bribery and kickback scheme, the U.S. attorney's office announced Tuesday. The individuals included 12 current or former DPS principals and an assistant superintendent. The U.S. attorney alleges that the DPS administrators submitted fake invoices to the school district for payments to a vendor for services that were never delivered. The vendor then used some of the money to pay the DPS employees involved in the scam, which went on from 2002 to 2015. The vendor received $2.7 million over that time, of which $908,518 was kicked back to...

JASPER, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee mother faces child neglect charges after deputies say she made her daughters walk to school. The Chattanooga Times Free-Press reports that 32-year-old Lisa Marie Palmer was charged after authorities found her driving ahead of her daughters as she made them walk to school. Marion County sheriff’s Deputy Chris Ladd, who spotted the two girls, says it appeared Palmer was driving ahead of her children and allowing them to catch up to her car until the kids reached the school.

WHITWELL, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee woman is facing child neglect charges after deputies found her driving ahead of her young daughters while making them walk to school. Marion County Sheriff Ronnie “Bo” Burnett said the mother told deputies her daughters were being punished for missing the bus, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports

The first schools, the first great universities, were focused on knowledge: figuring out what it is, collecting and verifying it, and passing it on from teachers to students. Our K-12 schools have drifted far away from this ideal. Knowledge itself is disparaged. The transmission of knowledge is sneered at. These shifts are huge and destructive, and they are by design. Consider what any real school looks like: judo schools, medical schools, language schools, flight schools, bartending schools, flower-arranging schools. All possess a body of knowledge they strive to give to the next generation. That's not what our public schools are...

One 4-year-old girl was pulled out of her Colorado preschool classroom last month when her parents pressed the administration on why their daughter was reading books about same-sex couples and worms unsure of their gender identity. R.B. Sinclair, the little girl’s mother, saw the books as a form of sex education and wanted the option to keep her daughter from having those discussions at such an early age, according to the Denver Post. Sinclair informed the school that her daughter, who is part of a biracial family and has been raised with both Muslim and Western cultures, is too young...

Who needs algebra? That question muttered by many a frustrated student over the years has become a vigorous debate among American educators, sparked by a provocative new book that argues required algebra has become an unnecessary stumbling block that forces millions to drop out of high school or college. “One out of 5 young Americans does not graduate from high school. This is one of the worst records in the developed world. Why? The chief academic reason is they failed ninth-grade algebra,” said political scientist Andrew Hacker, author of “The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions.” Hacker, a professor emeritus...

Editor's note: You can watch the documentary at the bottom of this article. GILBERT, Arizona, March 23, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- If you’re a parent who’s been told that your child’s sex-ed program at school is comprehensive, evidenced-based, age-appropriate, and that it promotes healthy relationships, then you, and every other parent who’s been sold the same message, have essentially been lied to. That is, according to a powerful new documentary that’s exposing what producers say is a “deceptive agenda” behind sex-ed programs being pushed not only in schools across the globe, but also by multiple United Nations entities and government bodies. ...

A Manhattan judge known for pro-teacher rulings may overturn the firing of a middle-school teacher accused of bedding her 12-year-old student because she says the city did not play fair. Supreme Court Judge Alice Schlesinger blasted the city Department of Education, saying it apparently used evidence sealed after teacher Claudia Tillery was acquitted in a criminal trial. “I do agree that a teacher having a relationship with a 12-year-old boy, or a girl, is way, way, way beyond acceptable,” Schlesinger said in a hearing ​last ​week. “But they had no authority to unseal a sealed record.” Tillery, who taught at...

Obama's nominee to finish fundamentally transforming "education" in America has been approved by the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate, despite the pleas of Americans from across the political spectrum. Apparently the establishment wing of the Republican Party just cannot help itself when it comes to surrendering to Obama -- even on so-called "education" and the minds of America's future generations. In what is being touted by the establishment press as a bipartisan move, seven GOP senators, all elected to stop Obama, joined forces with Democrats on Monday to confirm the deeply unpopular pro-Common Core nominee for U.S. education secretary, extremist John...

BOSTON, March 14, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - A bill that would allow adult biological males to shower or change alongside young girls has earned the endorsement of two prominent teachers unions in Massachusetts. State legislators are considering a bill that would specifically open all public restrooms, shower facilities, and locker rooms to transgender people. "An Act Relative to Gender Identity and Non-Discrimination" (H.B. 1577) would add "gender identity" to the state's protected classes able to access all public facilities, such as private changing areas. Lawmakers specifically exempted "lawfully sex-segregated facilities" when it passed a 2011 ordinance granting transgender people protected legal...

The biggest funder of Common Core is the government...the QATARI Islamic government. Now you know why there is so much Islam-related studies in the public schools in America now.

Establishment Republicans are always mystified when they embrace Democratic Party policies and get hammered for it, particularly, as is frequently the case, when those programs don't work particularly well. "It was everyday moms who shamed the Republicans into abandoning Common Core," syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin averred at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "There are three reasons why Jeb Bush failed: his last name; his support for amnesty; and his cheerleading and cashing in on Common Core." The National Governors Association devised Common Core with Clinton era appointees, Malkin explained. In 2009, 25 people in the room devised Common Core including...

The FBI have launched a new program forcing high schools across America to report students that display “anti-government” or rebellious behavior to authorities. The program is an attempt to prevent future terrorists from manifesting, in the governments ongoing “war on terror”. The FBI are urging school teachers to report any “suspicious behavior” to authorities in their new guidelines entitled “Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools“. Sputniknews.com reports: “High school students are ideal targets for recruitment by violent extremists seeking support for their radical ideologies, foreign fighter networks, or conducting acts of violence within our borders,” the FBI guidelines read. Labeled “Preventing...