Free Republic

From a macro perspective, the most distressing aspect of America’s education system is that taxpayers spend a lot of money (more than any other people in the world, on a per-student basis) and we get very mediocre results. And it’s getting worse over time. This famous chart, prepared by my colleague Andrew Coulson, shows how spending and bureaucracy have skyrocketed since 1970 while test scores have been stagnant. Blacks and other minorities are the biggest victims. They are trapped in the worst-performing schools, largely because leftist politicians would rather curry favor with union bosses then help the poor. But I...

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that can be anything from instruction manuals, Environmental Protection Agency announcements and Executive Orders to historical documents.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?...

new orleans — NEW ORLEANS — The second-graders paraded to the Dumpster in the rear parking lot, where they chucked boxes of old work sheets, notebooks and other detritus into the trash, emptying their school for good. Benjamin Banneker Elementary closed Wednesday as New Orleans’s Recovery School District permanently shuttered its last five traditional public schools this week. With the start of the next school year, the Recovery School District will be the first in the country made up completely of public charter schools, a milestone for New Orleans and a grand experiment in urban education for the nation.

RIALTO: Holocaust assignment prompts Museum of Tolerance visits Eighth-graders in Rialto Unified School District, who were assigned in February to argue whether the Holocaust really happened, now will take a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the school board decided Wednesday evening, May 7. Board President Joanne T. Gilbert read a joint statement for the board announcing the field trip after a closed-door session. Earlier, eight speakers protested the assignment that asked eighth-graders to write an essay about whether the Holocaust occurred or if it was “merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and...

RICHMOND — The arrest of a middle school teacher on suspicion of child sexual abuse this week has raised questions about the West Contra Costa Unified School District's hiring practices, because the teacher was hired while police were investigating him. Ron Guinto, 32, of Vallejo, was arrested about 7:45 a.m. Wednesday in the parking lot of Mira Vista Elementary School. The seventh-grade English and science teacher is expected to be charged with 11 counts of lewd acts on a child under 14 years old, two counts of forced oral copulation and one count of assault with intent to commit sodomy,...

The single most important aspect of education is reading.   If children are not reading, their entire education comes to a halt. That’s what has happened in millions of lives.  All the statistics for many decades reveal a curious surprise: our public schools don’t actually know how to teach reading or, more likely, they pretend not to know.  This is a bizarre scandal, especially given that children have been learning to read for thousands of years, and 100 years ago this country was thought to be moving toward universal literacy.   An odd thing happened circa 1931. The Education Establishment pushed look-say (or...

When people speak of a legacy, they usually mean something other than what the late economist Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, left behind, namely the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice (edchoice.org). The foundation has just released a small book entitled "The ABC's of School Choice: The comprehensive guide to every private school choice program in America." The Friedman philosophy can be summed up in two sentences, which are posted on their web page: "School choice gives parents the freedom to choose their children's education, while encouraging healthy competition among schools to better serve families' needs. School choice lets parents...

School students should be given a “European Union education” in the classroom to tackle “ignorance” and growing public Euro-skepticism, according to an election manifesto signed by Angela Merkel and eight other of Europe's leaders. The European People’s Party (EPP), the EU’s biggest political grouping, is convinced such a program would improve the public image of Brussels, which has never been lower. Its manifesto for May’s European elections calls for the introduction of “EU education in schools across Europe in order to prepare the next generation for future challenges and to nurture a European approach”. […] Rather than scaling back the...

Let’s put the Common Core to the test. Specifically, let’s look at a pilot standardized examination created by Smarter Balanced, one of the two testing consortia formed to create exams aligned to the Common Core, the educational regimen that prevails in forty-five states in the nation. We shall leave aside the questions of why everyone has been so quiet about what these tests will look like and whether states outsourcing testing to unaccountable agencies that will in turn dictate the curricula of the schools constitutes a gross violation of the principle of local control. For now we shall simply try...

School officials at a public elementary school in Chicago are ordering teachers to sign students up for “designated restroom times” when entire, overcrowded classes of little kids must use the bathroom each day. The rationale for the draconian pee policy is to improve the school’s dreadful results on Common Core-related standardized tests. An anonymous teacher at the unidentified pre-K-8 forwarded a memo concerning the policy to Anthony Cody of Education Week. The memo reportedly went out to all faculty members at the school last week. “Welcome back and Happy New Year!” the memo reads. “In order to maximize student learning...

The Michigan Education Association is going to arbitration to try to force the West Branch-Rose City school district to pay a former teacher who was convicted of molesting a student a $10,000 severance buyout. The father of the victim is outraged, calling the union’s efforts on behalf of the sex criminal “ludicrous” and saying any school money due to the teacher should go to his son, who is “out there trying to make it in this world all messed up.” Neal Erickson, a former math teacher at Rose City Middle School, was convicted this summer of raping a young student...

Johnny Jones who attends school in Fawn Grove, Pa., was suspended from school for a day after he made an imaginary bow out of his pencil, pulled back an imaginary string and shot his imaginary arrow. That was back in October and now his parents are deciding on whether or not to bring legal action. Ten-year-old Johnny Jones was disciplined under the school's zero-tolerance weapons policies. Apparently he asked the teacher for a pencil and while he was walking back to his seat, a classmate held his folder up like an imaginary gun and "shot" at Johnny. Johnny played along...

On Wednesday, the Rutherford Institute announced it has come to the defense of a 10-year-old boy who was suspended under a school zero tolerance policy for shooting an imaginary "arrow" at a fellow classmate, using nothing more than his hands and his imagination. Additionally, Rutherford Institute says the student has been threatened with expulsion for his make-believe actions, which were a response to another student "shooting" an imaginary gun at him: "Johnny Jones, a fifth grader at South Eastern Middle School, was suspended for a day and threatened with expulsion under the school's weapons policy after playfully using his hands...

A new book, “The Art of Rube Goldberg,” has just been published. Even though Goldberg died four decades ago, his name and fame are as great as ever. His comic genius was to show simple things made immensely complicated. This image of a nuclear bomb to kill a fly, as it were, perfectly captures a lot of the evils in our modern world. Things are over-designed, over-legislated, over-regulated, over-dictated, over-everything. Except successful. Which brings us by perfect segue to our public schools. People are always saying we don’t spend enough money. Probably we’re spending twice as much as we need...

A Tennessee father of two found himself under arrest after attempting a school pickup on foot last week. The school policy is to wait in the car. “It’s ridiculous,” Jim Howe, a professional drag racer, tells Yahoo Shine, adding that he is “absolutely considering” legal action against the school.

<p>A Pennsylvania high school industrial arts teacher allegedly raped a 16-year-old student in a back room at the school and authorities have not ruled out the possibility of additional victims and charges in the case.</p> <p>Todd McCullough, a 28-year-old teacher at Saltsburg High School, was arraigned Thursday on rape and related charges in connection to the April 2012 incident that state police say occurred in a back room near the shop where McCullough taught. But police only learned of the alleged assault last week after another student told school officials she was hearing rumors that she was “next on the list” of McCullough’s potential targets, Trooper John Matchik said.</p>

D.C. High School Will Consider Banning Redskins Clothing The principal of Wilson High School in Washington, D.C. will discuss with the school's students a potential ban on Redskins clothing. “I do plan on having a discussion with my student council officers and representative to get their take on this idea,” Wilson High School principal Pete Cahall said, according to WJLA.com.

Every day our staff at EAGnews wrestles with the following questions: “What are our children being taught in school?” and “How is the information they’re learning going to change America?” Those are important questions to ask, particularly since government schools in more than 40 states will soon be teaching students a curriculum that’s aligned to the new Common Core national standards. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about Common Core. One of the biggest is, “What kind of ideas are leftists going to try and slip into your child’s classroom through the Common Core experiment?” There’s no...

Well, America: if you thought the people behind the Common Core couldn’t possibly be any more moronic or tone deaf, you were wrong. A Common Core worksheet handed out this year in a sixth-grade history class in Bryant, Ark. required students to ditch two amendments from the Bill of Rights, reports EAGnews.org. Students were also told to plug their rights eliminations by creating “a visual aid that could act as a clear representation of your proposal.” EAGnews says the assignment is part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, an attempt by educrats to standardize various K-12 curricula across the...

The weapons-at-school hysteria generally peaks with a suspension. Not so for a high school student in Georgia who is facing felony charges because the contents of a tackle box in his car. 17-year-old Cody Chitwood was busted during a random sweep of the Lassiter High School parking lot by police and this student who has never been in trouble before now faces prosecution, large fines, prison time, and the loss of his plans to join the Air Force in the future due to a hysterical overreaction that has resulted in his arrest. Cody Chitwood, 17, is a senior at Lassiter...