Free Republic

When President Barack Obama announced an agreement to double fuel-economy requirements Friday, standing with him were industry executives and environmental, public health and labor leaders, all of whom, remarkably, had signed off on the deal. But the real credit for this historic achievement, which is expected to cut oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels per day and eliminate half of all carbon pollution nationwide, doesn't go to the White House. Instead, thank California. For decades the state has set the nation's clean-energy agenda; it's been the tip of the spear in the fight for higher fuel standards. Its huge automobile...

Judging by the record, our Education Establishment believes in teaching as little as possible. Indeed, the prevailing attitude seems to be one of pious horror. Teach X, Y, or Z?? Heaven forbid. Presumably, these elite educators want students to know their own names. Once you reach that achievement, our Education Establishment seems bereft of any good reason why you, a student, might wish to know anything else. My impression is that the education commissars don't want teachers to teach much, and they don't want students to learn much. The broader goal seems to be a world where people know next...

A Department of Education study indicating that 82% of the nation’s public schools could be labeled “failing” under standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act has sparked a discussion of the need for “change.” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan characterized the Act’s approach as “fundamentally flawed.” “What other government service demands such strict standards of accountability?” Duncan asked. “Do we penalize public transit because it can’t deliver cost-effective transportation? No, we invest more resources to keep it going. We ought to do the same thing for our public schools.” Duncan also maintained that the goal of having all...

The "Top 10 Worst Ideas In Education," according to new article on Improve-Education.org:::: -------------------------------------- Bill Gates said public schools are so bad they are a threat to the national economy and the society’s long-term survival. Why does he think this? What is it that most needs fixing? Herewith the 10 worst ideas in public education: 1) BOGUS READING INSTRUCTION --- Whole Word, Sight Words, and Dolch Words (there are many aliases) have created 50 million functional illiterates, for the simple reason that this method does not work. (No one learns to read fluently with Sight-Words. Some people learn to read,...

WASHINGTON – Federal health regulators have decided not to approve an experimental diet pill called Qnexa, which had been touted by many experts as the most promising weight-loss drug in more than a decade. The drug's maker, Vivus Inc., said in a statement Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration declined to approve the drug in its present form. The agency asked for more study results and additional information on its possible health risks, including major cardiovascular events and risks for women of childbearing potential.

Welcome to America where there's an incessant whine about testing... Okay, this piece is not deep, but some may find it amusing. One of those easy-tests that kids should know all the answers to. But we fear that many won't. Because lots of public schools would rather be struck by a tornado than teach a fact.

Unless we measure success by how children perform, we'll have higher standards for pop stars than public schools. Over the past few years, I have often complained about a hidebound culture that prevents many newspapers from responding to the challenges of new technology. There is, however, another hidebound American institution that is also finding it difficult to respond to new challenges: our big-city schools. Today, for example, the United States is home to more than 2,000 dysfunctional high schools. They represent less than 15% of American high schools yet account for about half of our dropouts. When you break this...

A Press-Register examination of the process used to reopen state waters around the Gulf to commercial fishing suggests that the Food and Drug Administration used an imprecise testing method, less protective standards than after past oil spills, and seafood consumption estimates that may not account for the dietary habits of Gulf Coast residents. (Snip) For the Gulf spill, the FDA assumed an adult eats about 3 pounds of fish per month, and about 1.6 pounds total of shrimp, crabs and oysters. Such consumption rates offer a built in-safety net, the FDA says, because the agency believes only 10 percent

TRENTON — The U.S. Department of Education today awarded a total of $330 million to two coalitions of states — both of which include New Jersey — to create a new generation of standardized tests that will assess national standards for what students should learn in school. The U.S. DOE is awarding funding for the new assessments through its $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition. The federal government awarded nearly all of its Race to the Top funding through an education reform competition that New Jersey narrowly lost last week. But $425 million was left over to create better...

Unsurpisingly, the Associated Press has advised its staff NOT to call the Ground Zero mosque … the Ground Zero mosque (via): Colleagues, Here is some guidance on covering the NYC mosque story, with assists from Chad Roedemeier in the NYC bureau and Terry Hunt in Washington: 1. We should continue to avoid the phrase “ground zero mosque” or “mosque at ground zero” on all platforms. (We’ve very rarely used this wording, except in slugs, though we sometimes see other news sources using the term.) The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at ground zero, but two...

it is this devout style of belief and attachment to the black church that is keeping black women single and lonely. Cooper made claims that predominantly black protestant churches are the main reason black women are single. Cooper argues that rigid beliefs constructed by the black church are blinding black women in their search for love. In raising the issue, Cooper ignited a public conversation about a topic that is increasingly getting attention in the black community and beyond. Oprah Winfrey, among others, recently hosted a show about single black women and relationships after a Yale University study found that...

In their frustration with education reform, conservative theorists often fall prey to the same inclination of their putative opponents—nationalization. In their rush to nationalize tough standards for schools, these scholars often find the standard elusive: Only the national part remains. Think No Child Left Behind. That dance is about to begin anew. “The K-12 academic standards in English language arts (ELA) and math produced last month by the Common Core State Standards Initiative are clearer and more rigorous than today’s ELA standards in 37 states and today’s math standards in 39 states,” the Fordham Institute found. Yet even two Fordham...

Gov. Rick Perry, reiterating his concerns about a federal takeover of education, gave the final word today that Texas will not apply for the second round of a federal grant worth up to $700 million for local schools. Perry refused to compete for the first round of the Race to the Top grant in January, but had not definitively said the state would sit out round two. The Republican governor repeatedly has criticized President Barack Obama's education grant because it favors states that adopt common curriculum standards. “This administration's attempt to bait states into adopting national standards is an effort...

WASHINGTON, March 22, 2010 – The Tricare military health plan meets the standards set by the health care reform bill the House of Representatives passed last night, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in a statement issued yesterday. Calling their health and well-being his highest priority, Gates reassured servicemembers and their families that the legislation won’t have a negative effect on Tricare, which “already meets the bill's quality and minimum benefit standards.” “This was clarified by a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives [March 20], and is expected to be re-affirmed by the Senate,” Gates said in the statement....

Microsoft's XML-based office document format, OOXML, does not meet the requirements for governmental use, according to a new report published by the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI). The agency wants to start a debate over the report as part of its work on standards in the Norwegian government. For the Norwegian government, PDF is the recommended file format for publishing noneditable files, while Open Document Format (ODF), the native file format of productivity suites including the open-source OpenOffice.org, is the recommended format for publishing editable files. Versions of PDF, ODF and OOXML have all been adopted as...

An Easy Way For Parents To Monitor How Well Their Children Are Doing In School Here’s the problem: public schools are sometimes mediocre; children learn little; but parents don’t find out until it’s too late. “What parents need,” according to Bruce Price, the founder of Improve-Education.org, “is simple benchmarks suggesting the subjects that children would typically study in each grade. I’m talking about really simple rules of thumb, comparable to ‘children usually walk by two and talk by three.’ We need the same sort of guidelines for each grade..” Improve-Education.org has just added “43: American Basic Curriculum,” which is intended...

High-school kids in France are fighting for their right to wear revealing clothing to school. Apparently some schools have new dress codes that ban things like short skirts, piercings, and low-slung pants. At one school last week, a chick managed to convince 300 of 2,100 students to come to school dressed in violation of the new code. This meant revealing shorts or minis for girls and board shorts for guys. Their new headmaster was trying to ban skirts above the knee and clothes with holes in them. The protest organizer got in trouble, obviously. Her actions led to a three-day...

Here's a poser: Suppose a public official is accused of recommending his girlfriend for a promotion, though he was the one who first flagged the potential conflict of interest and officials had refused to let him recuse himself from decisions about the woman. Should he lose his job? That's precisely what happened in 2007 to Paul Wolfowitz, who was run out of the World Bank on the pretext that he had given his girlfriend a raise. In fact, Mr. Wolfowitz had made bank officials aware that his girlfriend already worked at the bank before he accepted the job as president,...

Now, schools like Boston College, DePaul University and Tufts University also want to measure prospective students' personalities. Using recently developed evaluation systems, these schools and others are aiming to quantify so-called noncognitive traits such as leadership, resilience and creativity. Colleges say such assessments are boosting the admissions chances for some students who might not have qualified based solely on grades and traditional test scores. The noncognitive assessments also are being used to screen out students believed to be at a higher risk of dropping out, and to identify newly admitted students who might need extra tutoring. Big nonprofits that administer...

Media Blackout "Equal and exact justice to all men..." --Thomas Jefferson Editor's Note: PG suggested -- this essay contains graphic descriptions of a brutal crime. In 1775, John Adams wrote, "There is in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong, a love of truth and a veneration of virtue ... if the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice..." Adams understood that a shared penchant for justice and virtue is essential to liberty, and depends upon the ability of people to discern between right...