Free Republic

In my book Stop the Islamization of America, I describe and warn of the islamization of the curriculum and the schoolroom. The book was a primer on how to fight the encroaching Islamic supremacism and sharia. I have many times published news stories (here and here) about parents protesting Islamic dawah in the classroom. Distraught parents have described to me the proselytizing for Islam in their children’s “Social Studies” or “World History” classes. They are not teaching the children “world history,” which would include the 1,400-year history of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations and enslavements, not to mention the...

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A Detroit brother and sister vanished more than two years before they were found dead in a freezer in their home, and an 11-year-old Florida girl disappeared more than a year before she, too, turned up in a family freezer. And a 7-year-old Kansas boy hadn't been seen for more than a month before authorities found the gruesome remains of a child in a pigsty inside his family's barn. All of them were home-schooled, but despite their disappearances going unnoticed for so long, opposition from the government-wary home-schooling community means it's unlikely these states will start...

Homeschoolers, you need to read this. Last week I posted the true story behind the media lies about the El Paso Independent School District’s attack on the McIntyre homeschool family. Now I realize why they were doing so, and the legal implications are actually quite frightening. What it boils down to is an attempt by the left to get courts to allow the school district officials to have immunity from lawsuits when they break the law harassing and persecuting homeschoolers. If this can be achieved in Texas, it could set a precedent for this type of harassment nationwide. The case...

A number of homeschool parents in Florida have been ordered by a public school district to register their children in classes within three days or face “criminal prosecution” under state law. A meeting within the next week likely will determine whether school officials will face a lawsuit in response to the threat. The issue is being addressed by the Home School Legal Defense Association, which said its members in the Santa Rosa County School District received letters demanding information that parents are not required to provide under state law. The information included Social Security number, race and grade level. The...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) pushed back against accusations that he and Sen. Mike Lee (R- Utah) have pushed for homeschool to be reclassified as private school “The Glenn Beck Program” Monday evening. “I’m not remotely pushing for homeschool to be reclassified in any way, shape or form,” the Texas lawmaker said. “I am a passionate supporter of homeschooling. In fact, many of the people who helped elect me to the Senate and who are among our most passionate supporters in the presidential race are homeschoolers.” Cruz went on to say he is a “passionate” supporter of school choice, an issue...

I just need general advice and links to resources on home schooling. I'm finding the topic a little daunting because I don't know where to begin. My kid is bright and being bullied relentlessly at school. Not by just the kids, but also staff. Admin do nothing because of nepotism, etc. He's 8th grade level, now. I'll leave this here and catch up later to replies. I know there are many FReepers here who home school and would appreciate feedback. I just don't know where to begin and I'm terribly disorganized. I'll make dinner and BBL. Thanks!

The state of New York looks to be the next state with plans to re-brand the Common Core by calling it something else but otherwise making virtually no substantive curriculum changes. New York Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch announced in a public radio interview on Tuesday that education bureaucrats are “toying with” the possibility of a new statewide name for the perpetually unpopular Common Core State Standards Initiative... There is so much politicization about those words — ‘Common Core,'” Tisch said in the interview. “So we can call them the Empire State Standards, or New York’s Higher Standards. The...

Nothing really changed after a New Jersey state social worker banged on Christopher and Nicole Zimmer’s front door, and yet everything was different. Over the next two hours, the social worker quizzed their 15-year-old son, Chris, including questions on whether his parents fought or did drugs. She wanted to see his homeschool curriculum. She wanted to inspect their firearms. She told the Zimmers to sign papers agreeing to turn over their son’s medical records. And then she left, and the Zimmers never saw her again. But they can’t let it go. They can’t erase the memory of what it felt...

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...