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Anti-Semitism is a troubling phenomenon in many Dutch schools and especially among Muslim students, a new government-commissioned report has found, JTA reports. The 55-page report, entitled "Two Worlds, Two Realities - How Do You Deal with It as a Teacher" was published last week by Dutch-Jewish journalist Margalith Kleijwegt at the Dutch Ministry of Education's request. [...] One female high-school teacher in Amsterdam recounted to Kleijwegt an incident in which a female student of Moroccan descent stood up and pronounced: "If I had a Kalashnikov [assault rifle], I'd gun down all the Jews." ...

The San Francisco Unified School District's board is poised to expand its Condom Availability Program for high school students into middle schools. The school district no longer offers Algebra I as an eighth-grade course -- Algebra I has been folded into a two-year, eighth-grade and ninth-grade class that is supposed to be more comprehensive. But the board is ready to bring a high school program to middle school by handing out condoms to sixth-graders. What could possibly go wrong? Superintendent Richard Carranza backs the proposal to distribute condoms to middle schoolers "in conjunction with a session with a school nurse...

OKAY — A rural school district in Wagoner County has taken up arms in an effort to deter school violence. Okay Public Schools erected four signs on campus this week, warning visitors bent on breaking the law that they might want to think otherwise. “Having a sign in your front yard saying ‘this is a gun-free zone’ just tells the idiots, “Come on in,” because we can’t defend ourselves,” Superintendent Charles McMahan said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “(Okay’s) sign might be enough to send somebody down the road looking for some other soft target. If that’s what it does,...

The parents of a Maryland teenager are suing their daughter's high school over a world history lesson they claim was little more than Islamic indoctrination. The Thomas More Law Center filed a lawsuit against La Plata High School on behalf of John and Melissa Wood, claiming the lesson favored a "sugar-coated version of Islam" over other religions and forced their 16-year-old child "to disparage her Christian faith," according to the law firm. The parents said the class spent one day on Christianity, followed by two weeks on Islam. And the 11th grader was "forced to profess and to write out...

The president of the Detroit Public School teachers union made what has now become a clichéd and erroneous claim when she said the state has been cutting money to state education. Ivy Bailey, the interim president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, wrote in a Jan. 15 column that appeared in The Center for Michigan’s Bridge magazine: "State lottery money for education just replaces (but doesn’t add to) state education funding. The state has been cutting school funding for years." ForTheRecord says: State funding for K-12 schools has increased every year under Gov. Rick Snyder. And the state lottery is...

Some Michigan officials are preparing to tell us how many more dollars ought to be poured into the state’s K-12 school system. They expect to have an official report in hand soon to make their case, but other recently released numbers raise some tough questions. On last week’s edition of “Off the Record,” Michigan Association of School Administrators Executive Director Chris Wigent confidently declared that his group is “very, very optimistic” about forthcoming results from the state’s adequacy study. Wigent prefaced his optimistic assertion by noting that Michigan’s “current funding system is just broken.” There may be flaws in the...

Education: As serious crimes in schools soar, teachers unions in New York and other cities are pushing back against new softer student conduct codes inspired by the president's national anti-discipline strategy. New York public schools are dealing with escalating classroom chaos after adopting minority-friendly discipline policies that the Education Department pushed to close so-called "racial disparities" in suspensions and expulsions. Educrats have been threatening school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds disparities. High-school kids are getting "warning cards" for offenses that normally would result in a criminal summons and suspension, such as drug possession and disorderly conduct.

A teacher in Minneola, Florida is under fire for a lesson in racism she gave to students returning from the Martin Luther King holiday. The teacher, who works at a charter school called Minneola Elementary, conducted a social experiment meant to show her children the dangers of discrimination. One problem: The kids are only in the first grade. Second problem: She didn't clear the lesson with administrators. Third problem: She didn't notify parents until after the lesson had taken place. This trio of problems has her in hot water with parents, to say nothing of Principal Sherry Watts. Watts said...

Under current law, direct-to-consumer sales of motor vehicles are prohibited in Michigan. According to the staff of the Federal Trade Commission, the law, dubbed the "anti-Tesla law" by some, is anti-competitive. Gov. Rick Snyder has said he would welcome a debate on the issue, and a new coalition has entered the fray. A group called the Freedom to Buy coalition is pressing for that debate. “We’re going to be having some conversations with folks,” said Jeff Timmer, the group's spokesman. “We’re going to be talking about this law and what’s going on. The governor has said that he’d like to...

This morning, I stood in front of hundreds of Brighton College pupils in assembly and spoke about the experience of being a trans woman. In the past few days, they've found their school suddenly the focus of press interest, after headteacher Richard Cairns scrapped traditional male and female uniforms to accommodate the needs of transgender children. He made the decision to offer all pupils the option of trousers or a skirt, so that children with gender dysphoria can dress as the gender they feel they really are, rather than the one they were born into. Mr Cairns explained to me...

At least one thousand students skipped New Trier High School's mandatory day of "racial identity" classes on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The suburban Chicago high school, which ranks among the top public high schools in the country, held class on the public holiday, and scheduled seminars on "systemic racism" that sought to increase students' awareness "of their own racial identities and the identities of others." But students stayed away in droves.

A series of sickouts orchestrated by Detroit Public School teachers that has closed 83 schools since Dec. 10 is jeopardizing the chances of a bailout being approved by the Legislature, according to some Republican lawmakers. The sickouts, which have impacted more than 34,000 students, come as the Legislature is being asked to approve Gov. Rick Snyder’s plan for a $715 million bailout of Detroit Public Schools. Snyder’s proposal needs legislative approval. “The timeliness of it (sickouts) is rather unfortunate, because we are right in the middle of addressing the governor’s proposal,” said Sen. Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake. “It is going to...

While more than 6,000 children in Detroit Public Schools have recently been shut out of their classrooms because teachers are staging sickout strikes, charter school students can still attend their classes. “It’s a shame that children in Detroit are being used as political pawns by the adults,” said Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, the state's association of public charter schools. “Thousands of students are being kept out of class because of these selfish actions, and parents should be furious. This isn’t happening at charter schools, and it’s no surprise that charter schools are as...

Muhammad Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish Islamist, writer and preacher with a secret plan for bringing Shariah law to America. Arguably Turkey's most influential spiritual leader of the past 50 years, Gulen left that country in the late 1990s and now directs his cult-like Islamic movement from a guarded compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Part of his empire consists of a thriving network of more than 140 charter schools in 26 states that sell themselves to parents as a secular and more academically rigorous alternative to public schools. As the second largest chain of charter schools in the...

In the aftermath of last year's Dylann Roof massacre, Houston once again confronted its Confederate past. There were calls to remove certain statues from city parks, to rechristen certain streets, and to rename several schools dubbed after Confederate leaders. As of late last year, that list of educational institutions was comprised of high schools bearing the names of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, postmaster general John Reagan, and top commander of the Confederate Army Robert E. Lee. Also on the list were middle schools named after rebel generals Stonewall Jackson, Texan Albert Sidney Johnston, and Dick Dowling, the Irish-born Houstonian whose...

The Miami-Dade County School Board is asking for federal support to educate the thousands of Cuban refugee students expected to arrive in South Florida. About 8,000 Cuban refugees have made it to Costa Rica and are on their way to the U.S., and many of their kids will end up in Miami-Dade public schools. "the time is now for the federal government to take action," Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Albert Carvalho said Wednesday. Already this school year, more than 13,000 immigrant children have enrolled and Carvalho is expecting up to 20,000 before the school year is over. Each one of those...

As Detroit’s public school system spirals toward insolvency and Michigan political leaders talk of bailouts and whether the district should remain under state receivership, one key group remains largely voiceless: parents of the Detroit children whose futures depend on having access to quality schools, regardless of what political entity operates them. Parents’ voices do occasionally break through, however, with priorities that clash with those of the status quo system’s vested interests. Exhibit one is an October poll released by the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, which found that seven in 10 Detroit parents want more school choice. Eliminating the...

Sort of a New Year's resolution... For many years I've focused on education reform; that work will continue. I have more than 400 articles on the Internet and over 3,000,000 views/visits on YouTube and various sites [e.g. FreeRepublic]. To find education articles and videos, simply enter your interest in Google with the name Bruce Deitrick Price. It's an easy way to find a lot of material quickly. You can assume this material is intelligent, practical, lucid, conservative, and intended to help every student advance as far as possible. During 2015, I was constantly struck by two main trends we need...

Critics consider Blaine amendments anti-Catholic relics of the past HELENA, Mont. (ChurchMilitant.com) - Three women are suing the state of Montana over an anti-Catholic provision in the state constitution. Called a Blaine amendment, the provision is being used to deny tax credits to any religiously affiliated schools. A state initiative implemented in May provides a $150-tax credit to people or groups that donate money toward student scholarships. But according to the Montana Department of Revenue, tax credits may not be applied to people who donate scholarship money that goes towards private religious schools because of a constitutional provision prohibiting it....

A school cafeteria worker in Idaho says she was fired after giving a hungry middle school student a free lunch. Dalene Bowden, a server at Irving Middle School in Pocatello, told NBC affiliate KPVI in Idaho that she gave the hot meal to a 12-year-old girl with no lunch money whom said she was hungry on Dec. 15.