Free Republic

Finding solutions to help Detroit students not only requires recognizing the problem. It also requires a clear picture of the facts and understanding how the current system works. In a recent MLive column, Ann Arbor attorney Eli Savit offers a well-intentioned but misdiagnosed policy proposal to address the genuinely disturbing images of mold and vermin found in some Detroit Public Schools buildings. He calls on Lansing leaders to fix the state’s “regressive school-finance system and earmark state funds for school building projects in poorer districts.” One can make a case that funds designated for building construction and major maintenance projects...

PITTSBURGH — Police reponded to reports of a large fight at University Prep High School in Pittsburgh’s Hill District Monday morning. Officers were dispatched to the school at about 9:45 a.m. Ebony Pugh, a spokesperson for the Pittsburgh Public Schools, said 30 female students were involved in the brawl that began with an argument over a boy. Pugh said they were sent home and will face charges from a magistrate.

Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing announced the launch of Salaam Reads, the first imprint at a major publisher focused on Muslim characters and stories. The imprint, which takes its name from the Arabic word for "peace," plans to publish books for readers of all ages, including picture books, as well as middle grade and YA titles. Salaam Reads will reside within the larger Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers imprint, led by publisher Justin Chanda and executive editor Zareen Jaffery, and aims to publish a minimum of nine titles per year for all ages.

KISD Suspends Student For Leaving Class To Carry Asthmatic Student To Nurse's Office Posted: Jan 20, 2016 9:26 PM PST Updated: Feb 19, 2016 9:40 PM PST By Rissa ShawCONNECT Suspended KISD Student Receives Praises, Congressional Internship KILLEEN -- A Killeen mother is defending her son who was suspended after helping a fellow student having an asthma attack. Anthony Ruelas, 15, said his eighth grade classmate was wheezing and gagging for three minutes Tuesday morning while no one did anything. But when Ruelas did do something, he apparently broke the rules. “He may not follow instructions all the time, but...

Last fall, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley took the helm of a group to recommend reforms to Michigan’s special education system. For affected Michigan families looking for something better, one particular solution, unfortunately, lies out of immediate reach. The special education task force, primarily comprised of educators and policymakers, is working to address problems Calley identified after a 2015 town hall listening tour throughout the state. The desire to improve services reflects in part the scale of the challenge. More than one in eight students served in Michigan public schools received special education services during the 2014-15 school year, according to...

Washington, D.C., public schools consistently underperform relative to the rest of the country, while having the highest per-pupil revenue in the nation. D.C. revenue exceeds $29,000 per pupil every year, while graduation rates hover at about 64 percent and only one-third of its fourth-graders read at a proficient level. Clearly the "spend more" model has not been working for the families of Washington, D.C.

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...