Free Republic

This is a story about successful kids (especially boys), common sense, and research. Most of us spend hours each day sitting at work. Science says it's killing us, and we have developed all kinds of fads to combat it—from standing desks to smartphone alerts to get us up and moving. Armed with that knowledge, however, what do we force our kids to do each day at school? Sit still, for six or eight hours. Now researchers say that mistake leads us into a three-pronged, perfect storm of problems: 1. We overprotect kids, trying to keep them safe from all physical...

Years after Common Core made its debut in many state education systems, the disastrous long-term results of the program are finally being seen. The students’ reading assessment paints a grim picture of educational readiness, with tested fourth and eighth graders failing to best the previous test’s results. This year’s results were only marginally better than those from 1992. The mathematics scores show the most damning results — an upward trend until the year 2015, when the momentum seemed to grind to a halt. Although there were double-digit gains since the ’90s, fourth graders only managed to score a single point...

Widespread illiteracy and the ignorance it produces represent an existential threat to the United States today. But it was not always this way. And it can be fixed. Fortunately, neither the cause of this crisis nor the solution to it is a mystery—at least to anyone who has studied the issue. To blame for this dangerous phenomenon are socialist “educators” going back to the mid-1800s. In particular, it was their quack methodologies ostensibly aimed at “teaching reading” to children. The answer to the illiteracy crisis is simple, though: America must go back to what worked for thousands of years and...

Democratic State Rep. Tamara Meyer Le has a message for New Hampshire’s private and religious schools: “F*** you.” Literally. In an October 20th Facebook post, the Seacoast progressive and member of the House Education Committee used the profanity in a diatribe on her public FB page regarding her 8th-grade daughter’s friends applying to private high schools. “And then it happened. The Sunday afternoon my 8th grade daughter who is getting A-/B+s in 8th grade had to learn – while her friends were applying to private high schools – we would not be,” Le wrote. “Private and religious schools do not...

In August, there was a serious Florida man story. No, sadly, it had nothing to do with insane drunken escapades of the residents of the Sunshine State. It had to do with a high school principal actually giving a platform to Holocaust denial. No nutty speakers of this sort were invited but he did take the approach of saying that he couldn’t declare that the Holocaust was a factual event (via The Palm Beach Post):  A mother pushed for a year to address what she described as a school leader’s failure to separate truth from myth.She sent off the email...

As the city grapples with how to better integrate its schools, one Brooklyn elementary school has a suggestion: Getting rid of its gifted and talented classes. "A test that kids sit for when they're three or four is not a measure necessarily of their academic capacity, but really a measure of the access to resources that they've had," said Kirsten Cole, co-chair of the school's Diversity and Inclusion Committee. P.S. 9's school leadership team voted to send the proposal, which would phase out the program starting in 2020, to the district superintendent for his consideration. The school, in Prospect Heights,...

A Florida teen has been arrested and accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill a staff member at his high school, authorities said Friday. “No joke, I need him eliminated as soon as possible,” I want to thank the Pasco Sheriff’s Office and Corporal Josh Peters for their intensive work and resources used to identify and arrest this student,” Fivay principal Jason Joens said on Facebook. “We know people sometimes struggle with the boundaries of social media, so it’s important to report any concerns you see. Thank you to staff and students that shared their concerns,” he added.

Schools across Russia are told to teach pupils how to strip and assemble an AK-47 to mark 100th birthday of Mikhail KalashnikovRussian education ministry calls for school lessons on assembling AK-47 guns Comes as Russia prepares for 100 year anniversary of Mikhail Kalashnikiv Ministry said lessons would teach students about country's history & culture Schools across Russia have been told to teach pupils how to strip and assemble an AK-47 to mark the 100th birthday of Mikhail Kalashnikov. The Russian Ministry of Education published the guidelines, that called for the nationwide school lessons, today. Russian general Kalashnikov was born on...

I appeared tonight on Tucker Carlson Tonight to provide an update on the Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College case. It was my first time doing an on-set interview, and it was fun. TUCKER: In late 2016, three students at Oberlin college, maybe the most liberal college in the country, tried to rob a small family business near the school called Gibson’s Bakery. Tried to steal a bottle of booze among other things. When they were caught, one of them assaulted the son of the bakery’s owner, physically. One response to that, Oberlin college amazingly attack the bakery as racist and...

Helen Moore of Detroit leads a group of protesters outside the federal courthouse in Cincinnati last Thursday. "Every school in the country would be affected," one expert said. "There could be a lot of litigation." After two years of struggling to pass any of his community college classes, Jamarria Hall, 19, knows this for certain: His high school did not prepare him. The four years he spent at Detroit’s Osborn High School were “a big waste of time,” he said, recalling 11th and 12th grade English classes where students were taught from materials labeled for third or fourth graders, and...

A Muslim family whose protest outside a Leeds school went viral on social media have pledged to continue their campaign. Zarinullah Khwajeh and Samaira Kauser allege bullying, abuse and Islamophobia have taken place against their children at the Co-op Academy Oakwood, allegations the primary school strongly denies. 5Pillars obtained a copy of the couple’s formal complaint, sent to the school by Mr Khwajeh on 24th October, listing various extremely serious accusations. The complaint alleges that the school failed to address the accusations, saying: “In the last few years, we have seen quite a few serious incidents occurring to our children,...

An Instagram influencer, 22, claims that learning about World War Two will hit millennials' mental health after Apprentice stars revealed that they didn't know the dates of a conflict that claimed 80 million lives. Reality TV star Freddie Bentley told Good Morning Britain today that he thinks schools should trim back what they teach on the topic. 'It was a hard situation, World War Two, I don't want anyone to think I'm being disrespectful,' he said, but added: 'I remember learning it as a child thinking "Oh my God it's so intense".'

The downward spiral of learning in American K-12 public schools continues. Does anybody care? Where’s the outrage, headlines, or breaking news? Congress and Big Media are too preoccupied with the impeachment scam in Washington D.C., to notice a real crisis in America. Our fourth and eighth-grade kids can’t read, and they are struggling to subtract a two-digit number from a three-digit number to come up with the correct answer. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, fourth-graders are the only ones to make a statistical gain and by only 1 point in...

Children in Austin as young as 8 years old will now be taught to promote high-risk sexual behavior, thanks to a unanimous decision by the Austin Independent School District. Just after midnight Tuesday, the AISD board approved a controversial sex education curriculum amid a crowd of concerned parents and citizens. The district’s new curriculum includes role-playing scenarios for children that involve anal and oral sex and features a situation where an underage girl has a sexual relationship with a 17-year old that she hides from her parents. The curriculum also teaches about numerous sexual orientations; children are told that their...

The sex and gender revolutionaries have officially taken over the Austin Independent School District without firing a single shot.

This is the opposite of what we were told would happen with trillions of taxpayer dollars and an entire generation of children who deserve not to have been guinea pigs in a failed national experiment. For the third time in a row since Common Core was fully phased in nationwide, U.S. student test scores on the nation’s broadest and most respected test have dropped, a reversal of an upward trend between 1990 and 2015. Further, the class of 2019, the first to experience all four high school years under Common Core, is the worst-prepared for college in 15 years, according...

Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, October 30, 2019 California Businessman Sentenced in College Admissions Case Defendant paid $250,000 to have his son admitted to USC with falsified athletic profile depicting him as a nationally ranked volleyball player, despite having never played competitively BOSTON – A California businessman became the 12th parent to be sentenced in the college admissions case.  Jeffrey Bizzack, 59, of Solana Beach, Calif., was sentenced by U.S. Senior District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock to two months in prison, three years of supervised release, 300 hours per year of...

The whole point of American education was preparing people to pursue their interests, and their version of the American Dream. This blueprint has faded. Many kids today don't learn enough to have vivid, inspiring dreams, nor do they master abilities needed to fulfill dreams if they had any. Jimmy Kimmel sent a crew to the street with a map of the world and the challenge, "Point to a country and name it." Many people could not name even one country, even though the USA was in the middle of this map. At Notre Dame, Professor Patrick Deneen concluded that many...

To many youngsters, Halloween is one of the best times of the year. Who wants to worry about going to school the next day when you could be staying home eating candy? That seems to be the sentiment of many students in Round Rock ISD. According to Change.org, a petition to get their district to cancel the day after Halloween has gained nearly 14,000 signature, as of Wednesday morning. Students are almost at their goal of 15,000 signatures.

On Tuesday morning, the Austin Independent School District (ISD) school board approved a radical new sex-education curriculum for grades 3-8 that encourages all kinds of sex at young ages, urges kids to join LGBT "pride" parades, and aims to redefine biological sex and erase the words "mom" and "dad" from children's vocabulary. More than 100 people testified against the new curriculum on Monday night, and testimony lasted until after midnight. Yet the school board unanimously approved the new curriculum. "This vote by the Austin ISD Board sends a clear message: people of faith and traditional moral values are not welcome...