Free Republic

The left-leaning nonprofit ProPublica recently ran an article on home schooling that opened by relating an anecdote from 2003. It tells of a 19-year-old man in New Jersey who weighed just 45 pounds and was found rummaging through a neighbor’s garbage. The explanation for how such a thing could happen is delivered by a state politician who says, “I was told it was because he was homeschooled.” The story, co-published on the liberal Slate.com, then quotes Ellen Heinitz, who is the legislative director for a Democratic state representative from Detroit, about her experience with a national homeschooling lobbying group called...

Many public primary and secondary schools are dangerous places. The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics show that in 2012, there were about 749,200 violent assaults on students. In the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student. Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked, including being knocked out, each day of that school year. In Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted. Each year, roughly...

Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban says Hillary Clinton's plan to curb growing student-loan debt will actually make attending college more expensive. “[Hillary’s plan] stands a better chance of increasing the amount of money students owe than decreasing it,” Cuban said on his Cyber Dust app on Friday. “Just as easy money led to the real estate bubble a few years ago, the easier it is to borrow money for college the easier it is for colleges to raise tuition. Tuition keeps going up because no matter how high they raise it, students can still borrow more to pay for it,” Cuban...

K-12 schools in the United States are characterized by three outstanding traits. First of all, there's less academic activity and achievement. The general thrust of the Education Establishment is to simplify the curriculum, strip away the harder content, keep discussions airy and empty, and in general to make classrooms focused on feelings rather than facts. Second, even as facts are not taught, specific opinions are taught again and again. Global warming is the fault of human activity. Gay marriage is hugely important. Islam is a fine thing and schools should have a section on this religion and only this religion....

Claire Rembis was sick, and had to spend 3 days in the hospital. Her attack of pancreatitis paled in comparison to what happened next. The mom from Plano, Texas, came home to a nightmare that no parent should ever have to face. CPS came and took her children, all 11 of them, because a “well-meaning” couple, members of her oldest son’s former youth group, didn’t think that the 16 and 14 year olds could handle babysitting their siblings while their dad took the baby to the hospital to visit Claire. Has it really gotten to the point where a mother...

CANTON, Ga. – A Georgia elementary school launched a new program for upcoming school year that will rely on older students who just learned English to help teach younger students the language. Approximately 42 percent of our students are served in our program for English as a second language,” Canton Elementary School Principal Beth Long told WSBTV. That means about 336 of the school’s 800 students must learn how to speak, write and read English fluently, a process school officials contend takes five to seven years. ... The news story provided omitted all details on the school’s new program, including...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – More parents than ever before are choosing to homeschool their children, driving a movement that’s grown by 62 percent in the last decade. The National Catholic Register reports that recent data from the U.S. Department of Education shows explosive growth in homeschooling among American families, particularly in the last 10 years, when the number of students between the ages of 5 and 17 went from 1.09 million in 2003 to 1.77 million in 2012. Homeschooled students now represent about 3.4 percent of the school-age population, a percentage that’s increased significantly for a variety of reasons. “The first...

George Washington University will no longer require that students submit their ACT or SAT scores for most freshman admissions. Dean of Admissions Karen Stroud Felton said in a statement Monday that university administrators were concerned that below-average test scores were leading some otherwise strong students to not apply. […] School officials say testing will still be required for home-schooled applicants, students from high schools that provide only narrative evaluation of students, college athletes and those applying for a seven-year program that leads to a combined bachelor’s/medical degree. …

The National Education Association has launched an attack on the practice of homeschooling, and one leading education expert is not taking it lying down. “The National Education Association’s radical attacks on constitutionally protected liberties and homeschooling families in particular are outrageous and should be vehemently denounced by every real educator and every real American,” internationalist journalist and educator Alex Newman declared. The NEA’s 2014-2015 resolution on homeschooling begins like this: “The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience.” Freelance writer Patrice Lewis, who homeschools her children,...

Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed a person to lead the State Board of Education during his time in office. But he’s now being criticized for selecting someone whose own kids have never attended a public school. For the last two years Houston Republican Donna Bahorich served as a member of the State Board of Education. Before that she worked for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s previous state senate campaign, and she was one his top choices when asked who should succeed outgoing chair Barbara Cargil. “My research and my work and my desire and interests have all been in education, so...

Over the years some high schools have tried to ban things like soda. And yet they are going in another direction. That schools are having questionable sex education programs and on-campus clinics isn’t enough anymore. One high school in Seattle is now implanting intrauterine devices (IUD), as well as other forms of birth control. The IUD is known as a long acting reversible contraception, and may even act as an abortifacient. So, a young teen in Seattle can’t get a coke at her high school, but she can have a device implanted into her uterus, which can unknowingly kill her...

Millions of people who can read today owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Samuel L. Blumenfeld (shown), America’s foremost apostle of phonics over the past half century, who died on June 1, one day after his 89th birthday. I was privileged to know him, as a friend and colleague, for more than 30 years.I first became acquainted with Sam Blumenfeld’s writings in the early 1970s. I was a college student at the time and had switched my course of study from pre-veterinary medicine to psychology and education. The “reading controversy” that had been launched in 1955 with the...

. Florida Conservatives against Jeb Bush and Common Core ! U.S. Presidential candidate Ted Cruz has declared ”We Should Repeal Every Word of Common Core" ... Join us in protesting Common Core and Jeb Bush's aristocratic presidential ambitions on Friday, June 20 in Tampa ! The Ted Cruz Florida Grassroots Victory Team (www.TedCruzFloridaVictory.org) will be there. A sharp salute and thanks to Nancy G. Fogel for her excellent leadership in Florida's crusade against Common Core. Event Facebook RSVP at https://www.facebook.com/events/489170374570771/ .

The speed with which the transgender agenda is moving may end up making the same-sex marriage debate look slow and deliberative by comparison. And now Scholastic, the children's publisher that specializes in distributing and selling books through schools, is poised to bring the issue to a middle school classroom near you. The medium is George, the story of an eight year old boy named George who desperately wants to be considered a girl.

This ruling only concerns the first case involving the Meitivs. While they had pursued the appeal on the January ruling, police took their children into custody again last month for walking to the park on their own, holding them for more than five hours. The action raised eyebrows even among those who disapprove of the Meitiv’s parenting style, with many demanding to know how the police and CPS could argue that their actions were less harmful than allowing two children to walk alone to a nearby park. They still have not issued a conclusion on that incident, but it’s practically...

Agenda 21 A recent story in the media about 2 children aged 10 and 6 being taken into protective custody by over-zealous officials has introduced a phrase I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more of in coming years - Free Range Children. The children were allowed to play unsupervised in a nearby park, and busybodies called authorities who took the children into custody without notifying the parents. This was a “second offense” as the parents let the children walk home from their nearby school. Basically the kids were given a modicum of freedom to encourage responsibility and independence. I...

The Meitivs continued allowing their children some independence until Sunday, when the couple dropped the kids off at a park so they could play after a six-hour drive back from upstate New York, telling them to be home by 6 p.m. Danielle Meitiv said she and her husband began worrying when the kids weren't home by 6:30, but that Child Protective Services didn't call them until 8 p.m. to say the children were in their custody. Police had picked them up on the walk home after another concerned citizen called.

Two suburban Washington, D.C., parents are under scrutiny again for letting their 6- and 10-year-old children play in a park and walk home alone in a case that has stirred debate about "free-range" parenting and government powers. For the second time in four months, police picked up the children of Danielle and Alexander Meitiv on Sunday as they were walking home alone from a park that's nearly a mile from their house. This time, instead of bringing the children home, police took them directly to Child Protective Services. "It's beyond ridiculous," Danielle Meitiv said Monday. "The world is safer today,...

The Maryland parents who let their “free-range” kids walk home alone and were found responsible of unsubstantiated child neglect are under fire again for leaving the children unsupervised in a park. Child Protective Services is investigating Danielle and Alexander Meitiv after their children were found alone in a Silver Springs park Sunday, NBC Washington reported.

Government is out of control. This statement sadly seems to require no additional explanation or defense. Whether one is conservative or liberal, progressive or libertarian, Americans increasingly regard this proclamation as a self-evident truth. But perhaps some Rip Van, catatonic through previous decades, just now awakening, might seek further details and elucidation. For decades we’re been warned about the dangers of high and rising levels of national debt in the United States of America — now an accumulated $18.1 trillion dollars. Moreover, under just the last two presidents the Feds have added two-thirds of this massive debt — $4.9 trillion...