Free Republic

MADISON — Critics are blasting Wisconsin legislators after the state's budget committee passed a surprise motion last week that would allow private, home-schooled and online charter students to participate in public school district athletics and activities. The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee passed a motion early Wednesday morning that included the plan. The plan wasn't addressed in the meeting. "For that to be done in a sneaky, behind the scenes fashion and passed at 1:30 in the morning without any discussion ... that's a problem," said Larry Kaseman, executive director of the Wisconsin Parents Association. While nonpublic school students in some...

Parents of a sixth-grader at a public charter school in North Las Vegas want an apology after they say a teacher barred their daughter from using a Bible verse in an assignment. Nonprofit legal group Liberty Institute, representing Tim and Kate Frasier, sent a letter Wednesday containing their demand for the apology to the Somerset Academy's Losee campus. The Fraisers said their daughter Mackenzie was told she couldn't use the Bible verse John 3:16 for a technology class assignment called "All About Me" that involved creating a PowerPoint presentation and including an inspirational saying on a slide.

HARBOR BEACH ‒ Most elementary and middle schools fairly buzz with noise just before the school day starts, as a stampede of students put away coats, take seats and share boasts over video game exploits or exchange giggles about young romance. But one of the first things you notice at the Eccles School along rural stretch of Michigan’s Thumb is the quiet shuffle as students move from door to desk to computer station, creating a low-level hum until the Pledge of Allegiance. After which, there’s an exchange of news about soccer, a puppy and one student’s gig as bat boy...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is pushing back against a campaign criticizing First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules by showing one picture of a somewhat appetizing child’s lunch. “They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in the digital age we have ample opportunity to document and broadcast every moment, meeting and meal,” wrote Deborah Kane, the national director of the USDA Farm to School Program, in a blog post Thursday. “We have all seen those unappetizing photos of food served at school that quickly go viral,” she said. “A lonesome whole wheat bun atop a sad...

Peyton Robinson was told his US flag was offensive. York Comprehensive senior Peyton Robinson was recently told by school officials that he could no longer fly his American flag in his pickup truck. It was offensive.

Jacksonville FL---Duval County Public Schools confirmed that two female students were shot in a school bus at 118th Street and Ortega Farms Boulevard on Thursday afternoon.

Mouthing off in class or failing to follow a teacher’s instructions will no longer lead to suspension in Oakland schools, a ban that will be phased in and be fully in effect just over a year from now, the school board unanimously decided Wednesday night. Oakland Unified will become one of a handful of California school districts that restrict suspensions to more serious offenses and eliminate the punishment for willful defiance — a broad category of misbehavior that includes minor offenses such as refusing to take a hat off or ignoring teacher requests to stop texting and more severe incidents...

If parents can't rescue their children from the indoctrination of public schools, we're headed down a dead end road as the march of Marxism through Western society will never be interrupted Dick and Jane, who used to teach children to read from the 1930s through to the 1970s in the United States, are no more. Wiped out from life in education, they’ve been transcended in class by the transgendered and other members of the LGBT ranks, who now become societal firsts. It’s a fast moving world, one in which the ideal of sending children to learn ‘readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic’...

Contributors ‘Uncomfortable’ students call for ban on Bibles by The Christian Institute Franklin Graham speaks out on transgender restroom proposal by Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Students excel when they decide where to attend school by Jana Benscoter Homeschooling children can go at an unhurried pace by Durenda Wilson Common Core boosters trying to scare states into keeping national standards by The Independent Institute Planned Parenthood clinic builds concrete wall to block pro-life protesters by Life Dynamics White House logs show abortion leaders visit president, advisors often by Carole Novielli PHOTO: School serves burned burritos covered with melted plastic for ‘healthy’...

Social justice looms large for many, if not most, education journalists. We care about the often substandard education of low-income children and the gap between the haves and have-nots. Take a look at the winners of the Education Writers Association awards on April 20, 2015. Most were writers who told the stories of students in poverty. Beginning this school year and going forward, measuring and describing that poverty is about to get much muddier. That’s because the main statistic used to determine poverty in a school – the number of students who receive free or reduced-priced lunches – is starting...

A government teacher is being hailed as a hero after tackling a 16-year-old student who fired two shots into the air Monday at a Washington state high school, police and students said. No one was injured after the teen shot toward the ceiling in the school commons before classes began at North Thurston High School in Lacey, about 60 miles southwest of Seattle, authorities said. The shooter is in custody. Brady Olson, who teaches Advanced Placement government and civics, stopped the shooter, according to school officials and students. “If anyone in the school were to do something like he did,...

TORONTO, April 24, 2015 -- A lesbian teacher ‘married’ to another woman revealed at a pro-gay teachers’ conference earlier this month how she teaches grade 4-5 students to accept homosexuality through what she called “social justice” math. Alicia Gunn, an elementary public school teacher in Mississauga, Ontario, told attendees at the April 10 conference in Toronto’s City Hall that injecting LGBTQ issues into the classroom, especially in math, helps students as young as nine “disrupt the single story that many of our kids have about LGBTQ families.” When asked by one of the workshop attendees if she first asks parents’...

This is a matter of real, palpable fear. Saying anything that goes against liberal orthodoxy is now grounds for a firin’. Even if you make a reasonable and respectful case, if you so much as cause your liberal students a second of complication or doubt you face the risk of demonstrations, public call-outs, and severe professional consequences. My friends and colleagues might well agree that the student-teacher relationship ban is misguided, but they’re not allowed to say as much in public. C-can you guys see the problem, here? Personally, liberal students scare the shit out of me. I know how...

Pennsylvania high schoolers wear matching flannel, hang hateful posters on ‘Anti-Gay Day' A band of Pennsylvania high schoolers in matching flannel shirts slapped hateful poster on gay students’ lockers and drafted a “lynch list” to mark their self-concocted “Anti-Gay Day,” students said.

KITTERY, Maine – Officials at Mitchell Primary School are apologizing after a book about a transgender child was read to most of the school’s K-3 students. “We have a practice of if a topic is considered sensitive, parents should be informed,” superintendent Allyn Hutton told SeaCoastOnline.com. “In this situation, that didn’t happen. The whole culture at Mitchell School is about teaching tolerance and respect. The people presenting the lesson thought (the book) was one more piece of teaching that lesson. “In retrospect, we understand that toleration is tolerating people of all opinions,” Hutton said. Criticism flooded the district after Fox...

Officials at Mitchell Primary School are apologizing after a book about a transgender child was read to most of the school’s K-3 students. Criticism flooded the district after Fox News host Sean Hannity posted about the lesson on his website, prompted by a Mitchell school mother who was angry she wasn’t given advanced warning that teachers were reading students the book “I am Jazz” by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, the news site reports. The book details the struggles of a child “with a boy’s body and a girl’s brain,” who eventually finds a doctor that tells the family the...

Educational choice in Detroit is worth the fight. That's the message from 11 Detroit-area families whose children attend charter schools and spoke to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy about a proposal to limit public charter schools in the city. The Mackinac Center met with the families at their homes and at schools so they could publicly share their views on school choice. “Let them flourish,” said Corey Hughes, who has had experience with charter schools first as a father and now as a grandfather. A coalition of foundations, public school officials and other interests has proposed centralizing control of...

A middle school teacher in Hempstead, New York, is recovering from a beating after a student's mother attacked her inside the classroom. Police say she put the teacher in a chokehold, then her 14-year-old niece punched the teacher in the face.

Sixth graders in a quiet Florida town saw a lot more vocabulary-lesson excitement than usual recently after a fill-in-the-blank question about porn magazines and the ethical considerations of sperm donation cropped up on an assignment. The kerfuffle occurred at Corkscrew Middle School, Fort Myers NBC affiliate WBBH reports. Here’s the question in full: