Free Republic

Women pilloried as 'KKK' for going public with lesson concerns A middle school in Chatham, New Jersey, is using a cartoon video to teach the Five Pillars of Islam to seventh-grade students, and now two parents have obtained legal services to fight the school district which has ignored their concerns. Seventh graders in this school are taught: “May God help us all find the true faith, Islam.” Also taught in the video is the Shahada, which is the Muslim prayer of conversion “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” {..snip..}

If you look at how reading is taught in the U.S., children are taught stupidly and then some. Every technique that will make reading difficult and unpleasant is employed. To start with, Sight-words are the worst way to start. Instead of learning letters and the sounds they represent, children memorize graphic designs. Rudolf Flesch said that eleven studies had been conducted; all found that phonics is superior. (So the Education Establishment has always known that if you want a society to have low literacy, you will promote Sight-words. And that is what they relentlessly do.) Children who rely entirely on...

The warning was clear: Christian parents should pull their children out of public schools, now, to protect them from spiritual damage, extreme indoctrination, and other serious problems. Pastors and churches should work to encourage that “exodus,” helping and encouraging families to put their kids in homeschools or private Christian schools as quickly as possible. The alternative will be the continued decline of the church in America and an acceleration of the nation's decline. That was the explosive message of an evangelical ministry leader speaking as a guest this week on one of America's top Christian radio programs.Dr. James Dobson, one...

FULL TITLE: Pennsylvania junior sues his school district because he felt ‘embarrassed’ after seeing a transgender teen change in the boys’ locker room A Pennsylvania high school student on Tuesday sued his school district, saying its transgender-friendly policy constitutes sexual harassment and a violation of privacy. The action, filed Tuesday with the Eastern District of Pennsylvania federal court, comes a few weeks after the Trump administration rescinded Obama-era regulations that had instructed schools to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms in line with their expressed gender identity as opposed to their sex assigned at birth. In October, the...

Children of immigrants, many in the United States illegally, make up the bulk of students in 700 of the biggest school areas, a huge and unexpected wave that is changing education and society in America, according to a groundbreaking new report. Using Census Bureau statistics and Google Maps, the Center for Immigration Studies found that in areas including northern Virginia, New York City and Houston, children of immigrants made up to 93 percent of all students. "The number of children from immigrant households in schools is now so high in some areas that it raises profound questions about assimilation," said...

WTF? 23 Percent of Students in Public Schools are Illegal! America Is A Welfare Country

<p>GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. - Four students at Grand Rapids Christian High School were suspended for two days after holding signs supporting President Donald Trump's immigration policies.</p> <p>The students who were disciplined made signs that read "Trump" and "Build the Wall". Video the 13 Watchdog team obtained shows the teenagers attempting to pose for pictures in front of a banner “Immigrants are a Blessing Not a Burden." The video shows a teacher rushing over to stop them after each pulled a piece of paper out of their pockets intending to be signs.</p>

LAUSD .. schools are under-enrolled. "There are places where we have schools that are basically four blocks away from each other — and at a time, that made sense," Rodriguez says. Now, he says, "Buildings built for 1,000 kids may have something like 400. "It's expensive." ... Today, LAUSD's enrollment is around 514,000, a number that the district estimates will fall below half a million by 2018. But L.A. Unified's costs have not gone down. They've gone up. This year's $7.59 billion budget is half a billion dollars more than last year's. The nation's second largest school district is facing...

Alexandria (United States) (AFP) - What does a day without women look like? The city of Alexandria, Virginia, just outside the US capital, found out on Wednesday as an avalanche of teacher requests for time off to mark International Women's Day forced it to close down its entire public school district. Alexandria's unprecedented decision -- announced two days ahead of time to give parents time to plan for the disruption -- appeared to be broadly well received in the progressive northern Virginia city.

A publication called Bridge Magazine, produced by The Center for Michigan, recently posted this headline: “Michigan shuts down bad schools. Leading states build them up.” Except, the state of Michigan has never shut down a conventional public school for poor academic progress. In contrast, while the media and school choice critics routinely accuse Michigan’s charter schools of being under-regulated and insufficiently accountable, when these schools failed to make the grade, some have been closed. Since the first charters opened here in the early 1990s, 106 have closed their doors. Poor academic performance was listed as a reason in 27 of...

Michigan’s current superintendent of public instruction claimed in a news article that first-year teachers in the state earn $28,000 a year. Superintendent Brian Whiston made his comment in an article in the Feb. 10 edition of MIRS News. If any full-time Michigan public school teacher is paid that amount, it would be an extremely rare instance. There were 540 Michigan public school districts in 2015-16, not counting charter schools. Michigan Capitol Confidential has reviewed hundreds of those districts’ union contracts and has not yet seen a starting salary under $30,000. The Michigan Department of Education didn’t return an email that...

Parents in Chatham, New Jersey are demanding answers from the local board of education as it pertains to what their children are being taught in their 7th grade social studies class. According to Nancy Gayer and Libby Hilsenrath, their children are being given lessons about Islam that would never be acceptable if they were about Christianity. In fact, Gayer said at a board meeting on Monday, her son was specifically chastised a few years ago when he gave a PowerPoint presentation that briefly mentioned his religious views. Gayer said he was told to stop “proselytizing” when he included a Bible...

The impact of ever-higher pension costs on California’s local governments, particularly cities, has been evident for years. Pension burdens contributed to the recent bankruptcies of three cities and more are feeling the pinch.

Schools around the country have decided to take a stand against President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The Chicago Public School District have told principals in the state to stop immigration agents from entering schools without a criminal warrant, the Daily Mail reported. Chicago Public Schools, the third-largest school district in the nation, took one of the boldest stances against Trump’s immigration policies out of the school districts in the country that have announced measures to protect students who are living in the United States illegally.

Two parents raised questions about the way seventh-graders are taught about Islam during the school board meeting Thursday, Feb. 6. Borough residents Nancy Geyer and Libby Hilsenrath said the social studies curriculum includes two videos and other materials that go in-depth about Islamic practices, prayer and holidays and display the statement, “There is no God except Allah.” {..snip..}

In some circles, the myth persists that more money automatically translates into better education results. At a recent legislative hearing to explore changes to the state’s failing-schools law, one education official made a claim that collapses under a brief examination. According to MIRS News, Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, D-Taylor, posed a question to a panel of witnesses about the relationship between funding and performance. But if the implication of his question was failing schools need more money before they can be fixed, the evidence is against him. The recently released final evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education’s $7 billion School...

Student demands for censorship get a lot of coverage. Spiked Online’s Free Speech University Rankings, now in its third annual edition, argues that there is a “crisis of free speech on campus”. By analysing the censorious policies and actions that have taken place on British campuses, Spiked concluded that 63.5 per cent of universities actively censor speech and 30.5 per cent stifle speech through excessive regulation. You can barely go a few days without encountering a new op-ed covering censorship on campus. Maajid Nawaz describes the students demanding censorship as members of the “regressive left”. Milo Yiannopoulos calls them “snowflakes”....

Oakland schools partnered with the environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) to fight global warming by making student lunches climate-friendly. FOE gave kids a lunch menu designed to eliminate foods it says are “unsustainable for our planet.” The new menu features far less meat and more plant-based food. Any meat or cheese the school did use came from “pastured, organic dairy cows.” The student’s lunch menu went from beef hot dogs and pepperoni pizza to vegan stir fry tofu and vegan tostadas. The new FOE-approved menu served meat and cheese-less frequently and reduced the portion sizes. “This is a...

COLUMBUS (WCMH) – A Columbus-area state representative has introduced legislation that could make cursive writing a requirement in Ohio schools. Rep. Andrew Brenner, R-Powell and Rep. Marilyn Slaby, R-Akron introduced HB 58 on Monday. The bill adds the following to the state’s educational requirements:

BANGOR, MICH. - A video showing a group of Bangor teachers and staff making inappropriate comments about students prompted a school secretary to resign. The commentary, heard in a six-minute video posted Monday, Feb. 13, to YouTube, shows a group of adults sitting around a table at the Bangor Tavern Bar and Grill. Such comments from seven involved Bangor Public Schools faculty include ratings of who they'd have sex with, marry, or kill.