Free Republic

September 24, 2014 Associated Press ARVADA, Colo. – Hundreds of students walked out of classrooms around suburban Denver on Tuesday in protest over a conservative-led school board proposal to focus history education on topics that promote citizenship, patriotism and respect for authority, in a show of civil disobedience that the new standards would aim to downplay. The youth protest in the state's second-largest school district follows a sick-out from teachers that shut down two high schools in the politically and economically diverse area that has become a key political battleground. Student participants said their demonstration was organized by word of...

Well, the wild and crazy 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is at it again, this time ruling that in a conflict between bullies and the First Amendment, bullies win. The court let stand a previous ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that school officials of Live Oak High School can prohibit American students from wearing to school clothing featuring the American flag because of threats made against the American students. You read that right: not threats made by the American students but threats directed at them by others. Admittedly, it's hard to surprise sane people anymore with...

The courts and their pontificating judges have gone crazy. We shouldn’t be surprised if judges who don’t know the difference between male and female anatomy don’t know the difference between America and Mexico and the American flag and a foreign flag: “The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let stand its February ruling in favor of Live Oak High School administrators, who argued that a history of problems on the Mexican holiday [Cinco de Mayo] justified the decision to act against the American flag-wearing students. Officials at the Morgan Hill school ordered the students to either cover up the shirts...

Dr. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, reported that the government has been “real tight-lipped” about the mysterious respiratory illness that has struck children in the United States, expressed concern that the illegal immigrant minors from Central America could be the source, and argued that the government should devote more resources to border security to combat the spread of disease on Wednesday’s “Laura Ingraham Show.”

Twenty-three public school districts that signed their union contracts after right-to-work became law kept language in that told employees they had to financially support a union as a condition of employment, according to a study done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Those 23 districts employed about 2,160 teachers. “There are thousands of teachers in these districts who may be misled into believing they don’t have a choice when it comes to financially supporting a union in order to keep their job,” said Audrey Spalding, director of education policy and author of the study, in a press release. Capitol...

All four Harlem Success Academy charters serve primarily minority student populations (all are 93.5 to 97.1% black and Hispanic) and low-income households (75 to 80% of students at these schools qualify for free or discounted lunch), and yet all are ranked academically higher than about 97% of all schools in New York state based on 2013-2014 standardized test assessments in math and reading. What a truly amazing academic success story! Harlem Success Academy 3, an elementary school where 95.2% of the students are black or Hispanic and 80% are from poor households who qualify for free or discounted lunch, performed...

Feathers have been ruffled at California’s Ventura High School, where the principal this week banned the football booster club from selling Chick-fil-A sandwiches over fears that people might be offended. What, pray tell, could people find offensive about a plump juicy chicken breast tucked between two buttered buns? Were English teachers put off by the restaurant chain’s grammatically challenged bovine pitchmen?

A D.C. public school gave a sixth grade class a homework assignment that required students to draw comparisons between former President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler.

A D.C. sixth-grade teacher will apologize for an assignment that asked students to draw comparisons between former President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler. The McKinley Middle School teacher sent students home with a Venn diagram and asked them to compare and contrast Bush and Hitler. At least one parent found it troubling on a number of levels. He told News4 he sees a certain lack of respect for the office of the president. And the instructions read "both men who abused their powers," which the parent said presents opinion as fact. D.C. Public Schools released a statement late Wednesday...

My question may sound socialistic to some of my fellow conservatives; nonetheless it is a question that must be addressed. American high school graduation rates are at an all-time high, but the education gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Noble and expensive attempts to close this gap—including subsidized preschool and the controversial implementation of the Common Core State Standards—have largely failed. In the case of Common Core, where wealthy and middle class parents are hiring tutors to compensate for its weaknesses, the “reform” aimed at equalizing the playing field may actually be making the problem worse.Why is it...

City schools police have obtained their own military-grade Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle through a federal grant. Known as an MRAP, the armored vehicle will be converted into a victim rescue vehicle that will be stocked with thousands of dollars in advanced medical supplies and be able to take heavy fire in case of an attack on campus, the San Diego Unified School District Police Department said Tuesday. The MRAP, valued at more than $700,000, was acquired at no cost to the district. The vehicle is expected to be operational in October.

Some Democratic politicians and other proponents of more funding for K-12 schools held a rally in Ann Arbor. State Rep. Jeff Irwin was quoted in MLive. "The crisis is real. You see the increased class sizes. You have teachers asking parents for reams of paper." For the Record says: The crisis is real. But it’s not the cost of paper or the amount taxpayers are spending on K-12 education. Like every other district in the state, the real budget killer for Ann Arbor Public Schools is its employee retirement benefits. In just two years, Ann Arbor’s costs for retiree pension...

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...

If the Michigan Department of Education were to take the socioeconomic status of students into consideration when ranking school performance, it would find that charter public schools outperform conventional public schools on the state's Top-to-Bottom list, according to an analysis done by Audrey Spalding, education policy director for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Spalding’s analysis found that if there are two schools of the same grade levels where both have the same percentage of students eligible for a free lunch — one a charter public school and the other a conventional public school — the charter would, on average,...

What was a crisis on America's southern border is now turning into a major challenge for school administrators across the country. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors have crossed into the U.S. in recent months, and those not being held in health department-run facilities have in many cases been sent to live with sponsors, who are typically extended family members. As the new school year begins, the children, who in many cases don't speak English and have limited reading skills, are showing up for class. This has raised questions in local districts about the strain it could put on teachers....

With “free” education offered in every town in the United States, a plethora of teachers who seem to be more than willing to take a role of authority in place of parents, and the convenience of sending our children to someone else to educate them, many parents have relinquished their role as the primary director of their children’s education. Our kids spend more awake time in schoolrooms during their formative years than just about any other place. But it seems that most parents ­don’t have a clue what their children are being taught. Even the most expensive private school can...

.... Rick Scott said he will "review every legal option available to us" if the federal government doesn’t bow on education standards he contends ‘punish’ diverse schools in his state. Scott is asking the U.S. Department of Education not to hold Florida schools and teachers accountable for English-language learner student achievement until after two years of instruction. He made the request alongside Miami-Dade Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

Nearly four out of five students in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the Michigan Department of Education’s Top-To-Bottom Ratings for 2013-14 were eligible for the federal governments free or reduced-price lunch program. Only about 11 percent of the students in the top 5 percent of schools in those rankings were eligible for the free lunch program. Right now, the rankings rely 50 percent on overall achievement scores and 25 percent on the gap between the highest and lowest performing students. The other 25 percent is academic improvement. That raises concerns that the state education department is simply measuring...

Troy Schmidt’s jaw dropped. A few minutes before, he had been preparing to start his seventh year as chaplain for the Olympia High School football team in Florida. But now, those plans had been changed – radically changed. “I received a call from the coach,” Schmidt told me. “He said Orange County Public Schools is no longer allowed to have chaplains as a part of the football program.” Schmidt, who is a campus pastor of the First Baptist Church of Windermere, Florida, listened as the football coach explained the district’s decision to cleanse Christianity from its ranks. “I could no...

While the state of Michigan has questioned the accountability of charter public schools, some conventional public schools appear to get a free pass. This week, the Michigan Department of Education released its list of “Priority” schools, or those in the bottom 5 percent of academic achievement in the state. Lansing Eastern High School and Pontiac High School made the “Priority” list again for the 2013-14 school year, meaning the schools have been on the MDE’s academic watch list for five consecutive years. Gary Naeyaert, executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, said no charter school could have stayed on...