Free Republic

SARASOTA, Fla. – The uproar over Common Core has created misinformation and serious concerns as to its efficacy. To clear up the confusion, once and for all, we must look at the birth of Common Core to see the vision guiding its mission. However noble Common Core may sound, it is but a host carrier for a radical disease that must be exposed. commoncoreappleCommon Core’s roots date to 2007 when David Coleman and Jason Zimba wrote: Math and Science Standards That Are Fewer, Clearer, Higher to Raise Achievement at All Levels. The paper outlined a proposal to solve the math...

Recent events on University of California campuses reveal a growing need for education about students’ constitutionally-guaranteed rights. Disgregard for Constitutional Rights On UC Campuses In one instance, University of California, Santa Barbara students allowed feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young (whose 2013 salary was $77,100) to steal and destroy an anti-abortion poster that constituted speech protected by the First Amendment and displayed in the Campus’ designated “free speech zone,” and to assault the young woman holding the poster.

School’s back — and so is the liberal agenda! Across the country, parents and lawmakers are up in arms about an honors curriculum that gives new meaning to the phrase “history in the making.” The 95-page outline is so agenda-driven, educators complain, that basic U.S. facts are either distorted — or worse, omitted altogether. The College Board’s proposal is a study in liberal indoctrination — so much so that the Republican National Committee (RNC) formally opposed the idea in August. In a vote, the RNC concluded that the Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum is a “radical revisionist view” of America’s greatest...

An online fundraising project to publish new LGBTQ2S picture books for children aged 4-8, with the hope of having the books picked up by schools, has recently met its fundraising target.  693 backers pledged a combined $56,793 to the project, called the “Flamingo Rampant Book Club.”  The fundraising goal was $49,000. The books will “celebrate a great and wide variety of LGBTQ2S kids, families, and communities,” according to the description of the project.  The books will also “celebrate gender-independent kids and adults.” The individual behind the project is S. Bear Bergman.  Given that his same-sex spouse, who goes by the...

A simple addition problem seems to become a little more complicated under Common Core. That is made very clear in a new “Homework Helper” segment that recently aired on WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, New York. In the new educational segments, local teachers attempt to help confused parents better understand their children’s Common Core homework. In the introductory segment, a math teacher takes nearly an entire minute explaining why 9 plus 6 equals 15. “Our young learners might not be all together comfortable thinking about what 9 plus 6 is. They are quite comfortable thinking about their friend 10,” the teacher says...

Please read the document below to fully grasp the nature and magnitude of the "problems" in the GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS and "education" in America today! They're REWRITING OUR HISTORY -- AGAIN!!!! This is ESPECIALLY for you parents who, after scrimping and saving for years to send your offspring to "prestigious" colleges and universities, are dismayed that they come back to you filled with ideas so foreign to you that you suspect that they had instead gone to Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University! (Hint: They might have been better off if they had.) The good folks in Charleston are trying to halt this...

DALLAS, Texas -- It is like a Texas sampler platter of the 2014-15 Common Core offerings served up around the state -- Sadlier "Common Core Enriched Edition" Vocabulary, Springboard and Carnegie Math. There is even a kindergarten handout that defines the importance of the term "Common Core." Parents are up in arms. More so, they are worried. They have heard endlessly that there is no Common Core in Texas. It is the law. Yet, this is what is coming home in the backpacks. To her surprise, a Boerne Independent School District (ISD) parent pulled out the "6 Math Terms to Know...

California history textbooks will now be asked to cover "the significance of President Barack Obama's election," under a law signed this week by Gov. Jerry Brown. requires California's Instructional Quality Commission "to consider including, and recommending for adoption by the state board, instruction on the election of President Barack Obama and the significance of the United States electing its first African American President, as appropriate." The author, Democratic Assemblyman Chris Holden, said in a statement: "We want to make sure that future generations understand that the election of our nation's first African American president was a historic step in the...

Led by state representative Bob McDermott, outraged parents in Hawaii continue to fight valiantly to get an explicit sex instruction program coauthored by Planned Parenthood out of their middle schools. Rep. McDermott has just released his second meticulously researched report detailing the impropriety of the curriculum and violations of state and federal law regarding the testing and implementation of the program. At the same time, television ads have begun airing that feature a Hawaiian grandmother extolling the virtues of Pono Choices—dubbed Porno Choices by those who are familiar with the content. It is the first instance of which we are...

Parents sending their three- and four-year olds to preschool are facing increasing pressure to use government schools, as secular, elitist educators use government funding as a back door to remove parental choice from pre-school options. Alabama’s First Class program is growing quickly, using federal funds from the popular Head Start program to extend restrictive government regulations to preschools who agree to accept public money.  Hiding under the blanket of “ensuring quality”, these regulations cover every aspect of pre-school education. First Class funding casts a net over preschool programs, supporting those that agree to restrictive government regulations. An extensive list of...

The Daily Caller’s Official Rundown Of America’s Worst, Most Leftist Professors American colleges and universities provide a cushy salary for countless academic hacks, so they can spew progressive ideologies at undergrads. These professors, though, are the cream of the egregious crop. Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes co-penned a book about global warming and how the earth will one day be a wasteland unless drastic, draconian action is taken. However, the hypocritical Ivy League professor doesn’t heed her own advice because she frequently tours across the world in pollution-emitting jumbo jets. (RELATED: Globetrotting Harvard Prof Takes Break From Jet-Setting To Gripe About...

It's back-to-school season across the country. But in an increasing number of districts, "back to school" doesn't mean back to learning. Under the reign of social justice indoctrinators, academics are secondary to political agitation. Activism trumps achievement. In Massachusetts, the John J. Duggan Middle School will open on August 25 with a new name and mission. It is now a "social justice magnet school." As a hiring advertisement for teachers explained earlier this year, the emphasis will be on "helping students develop the necessary skills to analyze and synthesize information and to generate empathy by looking at multiple sides of...

When Ideology Trumps Science: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos on Global Warming Jay W. Richards August 6, 2014 1:15 PM | Permalink I finally had a chance to watch the twelfth, penultimate episode of Cosmos, "The World Set Free." I was out of the country in June when it originally aired, but since there's no doubt the series is headed into the schools and remains relevant, I'll take this opportunity to comment. The episode stands out from most previous installments. Just when we've grown accustomed to circuitous narrative threads with obscure segues from one topic to the next, we get...

Black community leaders in Fresno, Calif., are urging the Fresno Unified School District to re-evaluate the hiring of a white guy to teach three cultural studies courses at a brand-new middle school that will overwhelmingly serve minority students. Rutherford B. Gaston Middle School — named after the city’s first black principal — will open in a few short weeks. It’s the first middle school in the immediate, poverty-ridden vicinity since 1979. The protesters are unhappy because the school has chosen to hire Peter Beck, a person with white skin, over other, unidentified candidates, The Fresno Bee reports. Beck will teach...

“…the American revolution was violent and it was illegal.” - Bill Ayers, Co-Founder of Weather Underground. Radicals compare themselves to America’s Founding Fathers. However, it’s hard to envision George Washington cowering behind a bush while pressing a detonator. In battle, Washington rode on horseback, completely exposed, leading his army of citizen soldiers into leaden clouds of heavy musket balls fired from sneering, massed English troops bent on dealing death and mayhem. But, Washington was no stranger to valor. Prior to the War for Independence, Washington displayed the heroism which was to become his hallmark when, during the Battle of Monongahela,...

Durham, N.C. — A former teacher for Durham Public Schools was arrested Wednesday on accusations that she had an inappropriate relationship with a student, authorities said Monday. Michelle Smith White, 37, of Penrith Drive, Durham, faces charges of taking indecent liberties with a student and engaging in a sex offense with a student. Deputy Paul Sherwin, a spokesman for the Durham County Sheriff's Office, said White, who worked at Charles E. Jordan High School, started a friendship with the female student in 2012, when the girl was 15. "Sometime between 2012 and most recently, that evolved into a sexual relationship,"...

Teacher isn’t fired after giving teen gifts, sending ‘love’ texts By Susan Edelman A Queens middle-school teacher let a 14-year-old student drive his car, gave him cash and expensive gifts, and exchanged hundreds of texts behind his parent’s back. But, over the objections of the outraged parents and principal, the teacher can keep his job, an arbitrator has ruled. James Rampulla Jr., 44, who taught at Irwin Altman MS 172 in Floral Park, sent some of the 513 texts to the boy after 11 p.m. and included the words “I love you,” according to evidence presented at the teacher’s administrative...

We are suddenly seeing more and more "transgender" children in schools across America. How is that happening? How do kids get these ideas, and why do they embrace them? It doesn't happen by accident. The homosexual-transgender movement is working hard to indoctrinate schoolchildren that "transgenderism" and cross-dressing are normal and just another way of becoming "who you really are." This is the third part in our series on this year's annual GLSEN Conference in Boston which brought together LGBT teachers, activists, and supportive administrators to outline their latest tactics for the schools. Part II revealed their plans to push "gay...

It is no secret that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English will change dramatically what and how students are taught. There will be less emphasis on reading books that are fiction (the classics) and more emphasis on reading informational texts. In early grades, even elementary grades, 50 percent of reading material will now be informational text that can be anything from instruction manuals, Environmental Protection Agency announcements and Executive Orders to historical documents. In the junior and senior year of high school, that figure increases to 70 percent. How can reading instruction manuals promote a love of reading?...

All along Young America’s Foundation has said that college campuses nationwide seem to be less and less objective—well now even Michael Bloomberg agrees. At a commencement ceremony at Harvard yesterday, Bloomberg stated that colleges are supposed to be a place where students learn how to think, not where they are told what to think. Just last week, Young America’s Foundation released its 22nd annual “Commencement Speakers Survey” which reveals that 43 liberal speakers and only 9 conservatives are scheduled to speak or have already spoken at this year’s commencement ceremonies at America’s top 100 colleges. Campuses are using commencement addresses...