Free Republic

The Michigan Department of Education’s refusal to incorporate students’ economic backgrounds into how it ranks school districts plays a role in a controversial discussion about a rise in the percentage of minority students in a western Michigan school district. The Holland Sentinel recently did a story that said that giving parents the freedom to choose where to send their children has “fragmented” Holland Public Schools in terms of the racial makeup of its students. The story quotes Superintendent Brian Davis as saying his district is like an urban district in a suburban community. The article cites population data that shows...

DePaul junior Samantha Rivera’s likeness was used by a fake Twitter account which tweeted about an affair with Ted Cruz. Samantha Rivera never expected to wake up to this. Wednesday morning, the DePaul junior’s phone was flooded with Twitter notifications and emails from strangers pointing to a fake account that had co-opted her Instagram profile picture. The account, @LATimesJennCarr, featured a fake sports journalist that tweeted about an affair with Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. “I had an affair with @tedcruz when I worked in his office back in 2012-20013 (sic) @realDonaldTrump I was told to...

...Reflections on the downgrading of Chicago’s bond rating and the mind of a Chicago politician… If you have ever attended a good old-fashioned museum, you may have seen this popular type of exhibit: the “reconstructed rooms” of the past: The Thorne Miniature Rooms of the Art Institute of Chicago… the Streets of Old Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry (down the hall from the ice cream parlor!)… and best of all, the old Milwaukee street scene in the Milwaukee County Museum. As museum-goers walk past each room – we can’t go in, we can only peer through the...

Whether or not a student can read in the early grades is a clear indicator of future success. Schools should not keep sending kids onto the next grade if they lack basic reading skills. This “social promotion” often does more harm than good. As the state Legislature debates House Bill 4822 and strategies to advance early literacy, the Battle Creek Enquirer’s editors have laid down a strong claim. Their March 10 editorial argued against any use of the strategy of third-grade retention (holding back students) — presumably out of a desire to protect kids. To follow their recommended course, though,...

Legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate made this past Tuesday “a bad day” for school choice in the city of Detroit, according to one education insider. By a 21-16 vote, the body passed Senate Bill 710, part of a Detroit schools bailout and governance package that among other things gave the insolvent district a $300 million line of credit with the state. That was not controversial, but provisions establishing the nature of public education in Detroit are, especially their consequences for future school choice efforts in the city. “This was a bad day for parents and students, as we...

Michigan Education Association President Steve Cook recently chimed in with the union’s views on what to do with the insolvent and academically failing Detroit Public Schools. Detroit teachers are actually represented by a different union, but the MEA is still the state’s largest and most influential teachers union. Some of Cook’s claims deserve a closer look: The state is to blame for all of the DPS debt Cook wrote: “A state House plan seeks to pay the DPS debt incurred under state control.” In November 2005, voters elected a new Detroit school board to replace a committee the Legislature had...

We institute government, the Declaration says, to secure our unalienable rights; among them is the pursuit of happiness. Elaborating upon this straightforward idea, the Preamble to the Constitution informs us that our government is to “establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty” So government has a role, a duty to ‘promote the general welfare.’ While there is certainly an element of ambiguity to the term, it cannot be far from the duty of our lawmakers to seek the betterment, the continual improvement of the civil society upon...

•Erich Reimer abstained from voting on a measure that would make "DREAMers on Grounds" an official student group. •Students at the school are now petitioning for the removal of Reimer from his position on the student council. Students at the University of Virginia (UVA) are petitioning for the immediate removal of a conservative student representative who refused to vote in favor a university-funded group for illegal immigrants. After a split vote Tuesday, the group was denied Contracted Independent Organization (CIO) status, which would allow it to book spaces on campus and apply for university funds. Although the group, known as...

Citing in part his support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, students at the University of Alabama in Huntsville are protesting U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions as the keynote speaker at spring graduation. A petition on Change.org points to an array of reasons Sessions should not be welcome as the graduation speaker but primarily focuses on his growing ties with Trump, the GOP front runner. Sessions is chair of the Trump campaign's National Security Advisory Committee and has been a strong influence on Trump's immigration policies. Sessions, who arranged a meeting between Trump and GOP leaders earlier this month in Washington,...

Scripps College’s student president says she alerted campus police after “#trump2016” was found scrawled on a dorm room door, calling it “racist … violence,” according to an email she sent to the campus community, a copy of which was circulated Saturday on social media. “This morning, a Mexican-American Scripps student woke up to find her whiteboard vandalized with the phrase ‘#Trump 2016,'” Minjoo Kim, student body president, said in her March 26 email. “This racist act is completely unacceptable,” Kim continued. “Regardless of your political party, this intentional violence committed directly to a student of color proves to be another...

Posters with the words “Better Dead Than Ted” and “Ted’s a Mess” flooded various parts of the University this past week as part of a campaign by Princeton Against Cruz, a newly formed student group calling for the University community’s opposition to the presidential candidacy of Texas Senator Ted Cruz ’92. Walker Davis ’17, a member of Princeton Against Cruz and a self-described Democrat, said that the seven-member group believes Cruz does not embody the values of the University, namely that of “serving the nation.” Hence, the group is taking an anti-Cruz stance, Davis added. Davis said that, at its...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina is celebrating a decision by a U.N. commission expanding its maritime territory in the South Atlantic Ocean by 35 percent to include the disputed Falkland islands and beyond. The Argentine foreign ministry said Monday that its waters had increased by 0.66 million square miles (1.7 million square kilometers) and the decision will be key in its dispute with Britain over the Islands.

Let me explain something in all of you should follow this link and actually read the Republican Rule Book as it is online and available. There has been some intrigue taking place behind the scenes in the GOPliters, and you have witnessed reports of John Kasich and Ted Cruz bribery of delegates in states to steal the from Donald Trump. That is what is taking place, along with the stunning news of Rule 40b no longer applies to this convention in a delegate must win 8 states to be in the nomination process, and this after it was sworn to...

PHOENIX — Insisting it's good from everything from civics to brain development, state lawmakers want to require students to know how to read and write in cursive. Legislation on the desk of Gov. Doug Ducey would mandate that schools include cursive reading and writing in their curriculum. Specifically, students would have to show by the end of fifth grade they are "able to create readable documents through legible cursive handwriting.'' But, unlike a requirement that students know how to read by the end of the third grade, there is nothing in the law that says students who can't display that...

The billionaire candidate couldn't have created more perfect foils for a candidacy built on resentment. Had Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for the White House somehow infiltrated the ranks of Emory's student activists and blackmailed the university's President James W. Wagner, it could scarcely have orchestrated a spectacle more helpful to Trump's prospects, or damaging to the values that protect vulnerable groups, than what they accomplished on their own this week. After someone wrote "Trump 2016" in colored chalk around campus, several dozen student demonstrators objected that the banal campaign message scared, upset, or offended them, and administrators responded by going...

Bishar Hassan spends his days navigating the halls and classrooms of Talahi Elementary School, working to embrace and empower the dozens of Somali students who have arrived since the start of the year. Across town, his brother, Ahmed Hassan, fills a similar role at Discovery Community School, another campus that has experienced a recent surge in enrollment of Somali students. The Hassan brothers are part of a growing community of Somali residents in this central Minnesota city of 65,000. The recent influx of immigrant students is nothing new in the St. Cloud school district, where English-language-learner enrollment has spiked by...

Blessed Good Friday & Easter weekend Everyone; With this being one of the holiest weekends of the year, it got me thinking. We have been discussing a total grid down situation/s where basically everything would have gone to heck in a hand basket. We know that we're not going to live forever. So after the world has totally fallen apart, what are going to do with those who has "passed on before us". There are a lot of different ideas & methods available to us. Everything from building very elaborate concrete & rock tombs, to being cremated, to just leaving...

In the 1980 t.v. mini-series Shogun, Dutch navigator Richard Chamberlain shipwrecked in 17th century Japan, hangs a piece of meat on a tree to rot. An elderly servant gladly accepts the penalty of execution to give the poor carcass a decent burial. The original goodness of the game animal, that made it desirable to eat, rotten or not, was that it had once been alive, vital and desirable, useful even in death because of its latent vitality. Trailer youtube.com/watch?v=CoTGQffgifoThe same principle, the vitality of a once-alive thing, applies to the fact that our "terrible" American civilization, which Obama must punish in...

Link to video UW Platteville Student David Kalenga-Kasongo, on Monday, 14 March, the week before spring break, pulled a fire alarm and made allegations that he heard noises and saw the barrel of a firearm inside a stall of a bathroom on campus. Under questioning by reporters, he says that the barrel was a "long barrel", like "an AK 47". From uwpexponent.com: University of Wisconsin-Platteville Chancellor Dennis Shields closed all public campus buildings at 1:30 p.m. on March 14 due to a security threat in the men’s restroom on the first floor of Ullsvik Hall. UW-Platteville student David Kalenga-Kasongo...

After the GOP frontrunner's name was written in chalk on a campus wall, students said they 'feared for their lives.' The school vowed to identify the taggers. But professors at the school are now pushing back. Support for Donald Trump in the form of chalk markings on campus at Emory College sent the university into a tailspin this week, with the administration scrambling to appease students who felt threatened by the sudden scourge of pro-Trump scribblings on school grounds. Early Monday, students say, they were "attacked" by Trump's name in large, pastel letters on campus walkways and buildings. "Vote for...