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A lesson on the value of a dollar may have gone too far in southern Washington. A school district is investigating claims a teacher caused a student to wet their pants at school. At Mill Plain Elementary in Vancouver, third grade students earn play money to buy treats. Some students said they have to use that money to get bathroom breaks, too. In the last week, there were two cases in which children chose to spend the money on the treat instead of a trip to the bathroom.

CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) - Charleston County deputies say eight students have been arrested after they were caught on surveillance video throwing rocks and food at passing cars while on their school bus. According to an incident report, Durham Bus Services notified Septima Clark Academy that several students on bus 529 threw items at a passing vehicles on May 8, causing damage to a truck. Officers arrived on the scene to find a dent on victim's passenger side roof/window area and "food splashed across the grill, hood, and windshield." Deputies say none of the students on the bus admitted to throwing...

A third-grade teacher at Mill Plain Elementary School is in hot water after she was accused of going too far by asking students to pay to potty. Students in the class earn Monopoly play money through good behavior and performance that they can then spend on toys, treats and using the restroom. Last week, two parents complained that their children wet themselves at school because they couldn’t “afford” to go to the bathroom. Officials in the Evergreen School District are investigating the claim. “My daughter finally told me, ‘We have to pay to use the bathroom,’” said parent Merchon Ortega....

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired back Wednesday at Republican-led efforts to weaken nutrition guidelines in the federal school lunch program that were championed by first lady Michelle Obama and enacted in 2010 when Democrats ruled the House. Headlining the Organic Trade Association’s annual conference in Washington, Vilsack labeled as “outrageous” the GOP policy rider in the agriculture appropriations bill, and he urged the organic industry to fight back. The rider would let schools facing financial hardships in the lunch program opt out of the rules. School lunch administrators and some big food manufacturers oppose the nutrition requirements as too rigid...

Academia is hell. In the latest higher-education fad, students want "trigger warnings," according to The New York Times. It appears that some students are so fragile that they want university staff to protect them from big bad ideas. Students around the country say they want "explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans." An Oberlin College draft -- now "under revision" -- for trigger warnings suggested faculty "be aware of racism,...

On Saturday last, the attorney general of the United States spoke at a segregated school. He spoke, without a trace of irony, as the nation celebrated the 60th anniversary of Brown v. The Board of Education, which, to quote the Washington Post, “ended — legally at least — racial segregation in public education.”

What ever happened to letting "boys be boys?" Take these two cases: In one, a seven-year-old boy was sent home for nibbling a Pop Tart into a gun. In another, a teacher was so alarmed by a picture drawn by a student (of a sword fight), that the boy's parents were summoned in for a conference. In short, boys in America's schools are routinely punished for being active, competitive, and restless. In other words, boys can no longer be boys. Christina Hoff Sommers, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains how we can change this.

Updating our previous story about a fifth grader told by his teacher he could not read his Bible during free time, school lawyers for Broward County Public Schools have now gotten involved and changed their story. They now say that the time in question is not free reading time, but instead Accelerated Reader Program time. During this period, students can only read certain approved books, and the Bible is not among them. Hence, Broward County Public Schools will continue banning the Bible.

Progressives Today sent undercover reporters to expose the White Privilege Conference 2014 in Madison, Wisconsin. In today’s segment the speakers at the White Privilege Conference 2014 claim racism was invented in the American colonies. The WPC14 speakers also insist that America is inherently evil because of its racist roots. This is the message they are spewing to the thousands of teachers and students who attended this radical far left conference. Coming soon to a classroom near you…. Highlights from today’s video include: White people were invented in 1681. Racism was invented in Colonial America by White Capitalists as a tool...

George Mason economics professor Bryan Caplan, at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said that college is not worth it for both taxpayers and for low-performing students coming out of high school. He examined it with two important questions: Is college worthwhile for the student and is it a good investment? Is college a good investment for taxpayers? Caplan said, “Education is a wasteful arms race, the more you get, the more you need to avoid looking like a loser.” For example, “in 1945, only about 25% of Americans over the age of 25 finished high school.” One used to...

[Video] Texas Elementary School Student Suspended for Gun Gestures With Fingers May 3 2014 by Dan Cannon Share This Post Here we go again, and in Texas of all places. More anti-gun hysteria in our public schools. In this case, two elementary school students were given 1.5 days of in school suspension for pointing their fingers like guns during recess. The school claims the incident was “more serious than horseplay,” whatever that means. The mother of one of the children spoke out against the suspension to a local Fox affiliate, She said, “I asked them if they were serious and...

FLOYD COUNTY, TX (KCBD) - A Floyd County Grand Jury has indicted a former Floydada High School Teacher's Aide on a charge of having an improper relationship between an educator and a student. Police say 50-year-old Hope Warren is accused of engaging in sexual acts with a 16-year-old student. Warren resigned from her position with Floydada ISD on Friday, when the district first learned about the allegations. The Floyd County Sheriff's Office tells us that Warren has not yet been arrested.

This week near Dover, Delaware, a viral video appears to show another instance of black-on-white violence among high school students. The shaky cell phone video shows a group of black teenage boys punching, knocking down, and kicking a white teenage boy, leaving him dazed and confused on the school bus floor.

School accused of trying to 'demonize' student in 'pastry gun' suspension Published April 30, 2014 FoxNews.com The attorney for a Maryland boy who was suspended after shaping a pastry into a gun says school administrators are trying to "demonize" him in their bid to fight an appeal to have the punishment erased from his school record. Joshua Welch, 9, was suspended from Park Elementary School in Baltimore for two days in March 2013 after his second-grade teacher accused him of chewing his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun. The case received national media attention and led to legislative...

An open letter of encouragement from one homeschooler to another! Have you ever been told you weren't normal? That you didn't fit in? Well, twenty five years ago, that's exactly what was said to a wide eyed ADHD bundle of rambunctiousness named Jon. Even though I was making A's and B's, for the sake of everyone else's sanity, I was told I had to do kindergarten AGAIN because I was a "disturbance to the class". Faced with this situation, my mom made a very brave decision and decided to home school my brother and me. This was no easy task....

Kindergarten show canceled so kids can keep studying to become ‘college and career ready.’ Really. By Valerie Strauss April 26 at 11:59 am An annual year-end kindergarten show has been canceled at a New York school because the kids have to keep working so they will be “college and career” ready. Really. That’s what it says in a letter (see below) sent to parents by Ellen Best-Laimit, the interim principal of Harley Avenue Primary School in Elwood, N.Y., and four kindergarten teachers. The play was to be staged over two days, May 14 and 15, according to the school’s calendar....

All too often we are reminded of the ever-encroaching police state by reading about incidents happening all over the country. It hits you a little differently when you hear about a child being abused and detained by your own local police department. This was the reality for me today when I heard that local 17-year old, Joseph Turner was aggressively detained by the Boise Police Department in his own school, Frank Church High School. What's even more astounding is that as the incident was happening, school officials took it upon themselves to confiscate the phones of students who were recording...

The Obama administration plans to use tens of millions in federal financial aid as leverage to reward teacher training programs that produce teachers who routinely raise student test scores — and to drive the rest out of business. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will announce the revival of a push to regulate hundreds of teacher preparation programs Friday at a town hall meeting with White House policy director Cecilia Muñoz. He plans to release a draft regulation by summer and aims to enact it within a year.

Chicago students vying for hard-to-get spots in the city's most competitive public high schools will get a new selective enrollment high school named after President Barack Obama. For parents frustrated with a gut-wrenching process that some have compared to getting their child into an Ivy League school, 300 additional freshmen seats come as welcome news.

Michelle Obama has rescheduled a high school graduation speech after the students complained that her appearance would prevent many of their friends and relatives from attending the ceremony. The First Lady was scheduled to speak at a combined graduation ceremony for five high schools in Topeka, Kansas, on May 17 but will now be speaking at a different 'senior recognition day' ceremony the day before. 'Once we learned about the concerns of some students, we were eager to find a solution that enabled all of the students and their families to celebrate the special day,' said the First Lady's communications...