Free Republic

Barbara Byrd-Bennett has resigned as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools amid a federal investigation into a $20.5 million no-bid contract. In a letter dated last week, Byrd-Bennett said she planned to step down Monday. She did not give any reasons for her decision. Byrd-Bennett has been on paid leave since mid-April, when school officials released wide-ranging subpoenas from the federal investigation. Her paid leave was scheduled to end next week and she had not been expected to return to her post. The investigation centers on a $20.5 million no-bid contract at CPS related to an elite nonprofit education...

A teacher aide who was found passed out in a bathroom by students at a northwest Denver school allegedly had a syringe sticking out of her arm. The paraprofessional, Cassandra Rein, 27, was found Thursday morning in the bathroom at Denver Center for International Studies at Ford Elementary School by four first grade girls...While Denver Public Schools has only gone as far as to say that Rein is a teacher’s aide, her Facebook page states she’s a preschool teacher. She was placed on administrative leave...Rein appeared in court for an advisement hearing Friday morning and bonded out of custody on...

Two years after California passed a law that permits transgender youth to use whatever bathroom they wish, school districts continue to grapple with compliance, though major strides have been made. “You can’t just build a restroom or retrofit one tomorrow,” said Kurt Dearie, a history teacher at Carlsbad High School who has been a co-advisor for the school’s Gender Sexuality Alliance since 2002. “The lack of money and all kinds of things make this more challenging today.”

<p>BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Educators and parents in southern Indiana are calling for more training and awareness of the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students after a high school’s failed attempt to establish a “Straight Pride” club.</p> <p>A group of students at Bloomington High School North had proposed starting the faith-based club in the 2015-16 school year. Principal Jeff Henderson said federal law required the school to allow the club, which students had said would offer “specific supports for heterosexual students.”</p>

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.”— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. One of the nation’s largest, sharpest, and wealthiest school systems, Fairfax County, has announced a bright, new idea (to take effect in 2016) that will directly influence district students in grades seven through twelve. It’s not a faster way to learn math, a more creative way to write stories, or a better...

Private school kids can read. Classical academy kids can read. Montessori school kids can read. Homeschooled kids can read. Spot the pattern? It’s only kids in public schools who can’t read. Why is that? You would think our education professors would figure out what the schools are doing wrong. In fact, they have not figured out very much in the last 80 years. Our professors seem mainly concerned with perpetuating the wrong ways to teach reading. And so the crisis continues. Truth is, reading is easy to teach and easy to learn. All the phonics experts agree: reading is no...

(Nov 27, 2013) Referred to as ‘Common Core lead standards authors’ by the Council of Chief State School Officers, David Coleman and Jason Zimba are just two in a long list of Common Core creators whose academic roots are with the education-for-a-revolution machine borne by Annenberg Institute, Carnegie Corporation, Bill Gates, et al. Today, Coleman and Zimba are head of Student Achievement Partners, an organization that played a leading role in developing the standards and actively supports districts and states in implementing them. Prior to Student Achiement Partners, Coleman and Zimba were co-founders of the Grow Network (now owned by...

What is the Wisconsin Legislature trying to do to public education in Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s state? State Superintendent Tony Evers has gone on record accusing lawmakers of moving toward new legislation “that erodes the basic foundation of Wisconsin’s public school system.” How? By legislature efforts that include refusing to spend more money on public education for the first time in more than 20 years while while giving millions of dollars more to expand a private voucher program, slashing higher education funding, and weakening licensing rules for teachers.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) recently proposed the Parental Choice in Education Act as a way to provide more opportunity for parents in choosing which schools would be the best fit for their children. The legislation would use $70 million in taxpayer money to create an education tax credit for families making $60,000 or less. Parents who qualify could receive up to $500 in a tax credit or refund for each student attending a private school. Among other benefits, it would also encourage more private school scholarships. "This is about fairness and this is about parents choosing the school that is...

One of every four retired workers from the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools is getting a pension of more than $60,000 a year. That’s 80,365 people in all. For 13,240 of them, those checks provide a yearly income of $100,000 or more, a Chicago Sun-Times/Better Government Association analysis of pension records has found. An additional 20,004 have pension incomes totaling between $80,000 and $100,000 a year. ... the root of the problem is that government officials kept promising lifetime benefits to workers — and, in many cases, to their surviving spouses should they...

Two students are recovering from injuries suffered in a shooting on their school bus in Jacksonville. Jacksonville Sheriff's Office officials say two males shot into the bus.... at least one [of the girls] was shot in the face. Police didn't release their names but said the girls are 14 and 15. No one else was injured. Police say the bus was stopped by two suspects when they apparently tried to fight with someone on board.

Over a year ago, I posted a column here titled “Why Equal Opportunity Is Immoral And Wrong.” http://clashdaily.com/2014/02/equal-opportunity-immoral-wrong/ As I expected, my message sailed over some readers’ heads. Multiple commenters weighed in with the typical, programmed response: “Well, it’s bad to try to force equal outcomes — but guaranteeing equal opportunity is good and right, and what our system is about,” etc. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I had tried to explain that if the doctrine of equal opportunity is really applied in principle, some third-party entity (government, of course) would by necessity always have to step in to...

(CNSNews.com) – Attorney General Loretta Lynch vowed on Tuesday to continue the Obama administration’s push for public schools to abandon their “zero tolerance” discipline policy, because critics claim it is aimed disproportionately at minority students and other “at risk” youth, including migrants and LGBT students. “We are working with our partners in the private sector, and of course, the federal government, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, to end the school to prison pipeline that sends too many children on the well-worn path from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse,” Lynch said at the National...

On a panel promoting pre-Kindergarten programs at a conference recently in Austin, Texas, a pair of government officials–one local, one federal–made their case. Representing the City of New York, Richard Buery suggested that employing universal preschool is the number-one issue for Mayor Bill de Blasio. To critics of increasingly centralized learning schemes, Buery had something to say. “There are people who do not want us to succeed for a variety of reasons,” he acknowledged. “People speak ill of government so often.” But apparently there is nothing about which to worry because “[g]overnment is doing big things for people.” Far-left Democrats...

When Gov. Rick Snyder recently proposed creating a new school district organization to serve Detroit schoolchildren, he cited a “lack of educational success” and “failing academics” and pointed out that Detroit is the “nation’s lowest performing urban school area.” However, the Detroit Public School district's most recent evaluations of its own teachers paint a picture of success in 2013-14. The district gave 8 out of 10 teachers the highest evaluation possible — “highly effective.” Full email response from DPS Spokeswoman Jennifer Mrozowski. Starting with the 2011-12 academic year, school districts have been required by state law to report on their...

HOOKSETT, N.H. – The New Hampshire Union Leader published a guest op/ed from a teacher who identifies herself as a liberal.  Diane Sekula is a teacher in Hooksett, NH and she was responding to a published article that said Common Core is a conservative flashpoint. Sekula writes:I come from a staunch Democrat family. By most people’s standards, I would be considered liberal. I am also, however, very much against Common Core. Public dissatisfaction with Common Core is not a partisan issue. It is a matter of importance for anyone interested in doing what’s best for the children of New Hampshire.She points...

When 8th grade student Jared Marcum got dressed for school this morning, he says he had no idea that his pro-Second Amendment shirt would initiate what he calls a fight over his First Amendment rights. … It was the image of a gun printed on Jared’s t-shirt that sparked a dispute between a Logan Middle School teacher and Jared, that ended with Jared suspended, arrested and facing two charges, obstruction and disturbing the education process, on his otherwise spotless record. Jared’s father Allen Lardieri says he’s angry he had to rush from work to pick his son up from jail...

FALLS CHURCH, VA, May 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Hundreds of parents accused Fairfax County School Board (FCSB) members of endangering their children and caving to the Obama administration as the school board voted to allow transgender teens to use the locker rooms and bathrooms of the opposite sex.The new policy may also allow transgender teachers to show their gender dysphoria openly in the classroom.The motion to add "gender identity" as a protected class– which passed 10-1, with one abstentation – was sparked by the Obama administration's threat to deny the district $42 million in federal funding.According to FoxNews.com and The...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday proposed the idea of public boarding schools, saying there are “just certain kids we should have 24/7.” “One idea that I threw out … is the idea of public boarding schools,” Duncan said at the National Summit on Youth Violence Prevention in Crystal City, Va. “That’s a little bit of a different idea—a controversial idea—but the question is do we have some children where there’s not a mom, there’s not a dad, there’s not a grandma, there’s just nobody at home? There’s just certain kids we should have 24/7 to really create a safe...

Likely GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush says he will try to convince grassroots groups of parents who oppose the Common Core standards to flip-flop and embrace the education initiative. When Megyn Kelly of Fox News Channel’s The Kelly File observed how unpopular the Common Core initiative is with grassroots conservatives in particular, Bush responded: “Common Core means a lot of things to different people, so they could be right, based on what’s in front of them…but the simple fact is we need higher standards; they need to be state-driven. The federal government should play no role in this – either...