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The scores are in from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, which, every three years, tests 15-year-olds from the world's most advanced countries. For the United States, the report card is dismal. The U.S. ranking has fallen to 17th in reading, 21st in science, and 26th in math. Florida, one of America's diverse mega-states, competed separately in the PISA exam, and scored below the U.S. average. In the academic Olympics, the American superpower is a mediocrity. Ranked one through seven in test scores in reading, science and math were Shanghai-China, Singapore, Hong Kong-China, Taiwan, South Korea, Macau-China, Japan. Also...

Tuesday, December 03, 2013 Illinois high school requires parents to self-identify as liberal or conservative An assignment sent home from an Oak Forest, IL high school government class is raising eyebrows among parents who are shocked by the questionnaire they and their children are required to fill out. The questionnaire (below) has the parents identify their positions on a number of highly-charged issues, and then places them on a "political spectrum." The survey is part of Oak Forest High School's Common Core curriculum, which according to the school district's website is to ..."provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students...

There was a time in America when a physician had just two or three young adult patients with sexually transmitted diseases. In 2013 that number has become two or three dozen and is increasing as “hooking up” turns out to be a deadly sexual game.

Yesterday afternoon, nine American Nobel laureates all gathered at the House of Sweden to share their work in an informal symposium. While much of the discussion was limited to the topic areas of certain laureates, one thing that almost all of them could agree on was that the federal government's reduction in research funding was a terrible development. James Rothman, who won the prize in medicine, believes that the cuts make the U.S. unable to retain the world's top young scientists. In fact, he said he now tells his students to go abroad. "I actually advise my students not to...

In our latest entry in what I like to call the Irony File, it seems that numerous college students are losing their school-based health insurance due to ObamaCare. While it may be petty of me, I can't help but feel some vindication as everything conservatives have been saying since 2008 are coming to pass, but yet the youth vote chose to support Obama overwhelmingly in both of his elections. In 2008, Obama got 66% of the youth vote and he received 60% of their vote in 2012. Now the harsh reality is crashing into their cloistered world and they're not...

The left planted its flag atop the educational establishment long ago. If we are to hope for better schools and smarter kids, that dominance must be overturned,” Dr Kevin Donnelly writes at Quadrant Online. “Forget the cultural-left bias and PC group mentality of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, when it comes to a pervasive ideological commitment to the left nothing beats Australia’s education establishment.” Dr Donnelly says the arrival of the Abbott Government immediately started the alarm bells ringing inside the system. “There is nothing surprising or new about such outbursts. Australia’s educationalists, along with those in other English-speaking nations, embarked...

This past election season, I tried an experiment with the twelve 6th-graders in my history class: I challenged them to develop a fictional candidate and persuade the rest of us to vote for him by creating a commercial. My hidden agenda was to find out which of the kids' political positions were influenced by their parents and whether, if given the opportunity to evaluate their positions from scratch, they might choose differently. The students were ready -- dare I say waiting -- for it. See, our school happens to be in Hyde Park, that ivy-covered, venerated neighborhood otherwise known as...

Islamic students were chained to the wall and beaten at the Masjad As-Salaamah Mosque in Ohio. The mosque’s name translates to “Mosque of Peace.” Via IM41:

President Obama and his administration’s handling of several scandals have been “deceitful,” according to students at the University of Northern Colorado - Greeley. In an interview with Campus Reform on Wednesday students expressed doubts that Obama has been blind to scandals like Fast and Furious, or the false promises within the Obamacare rollout. Watch students “There’s no way he couldn’t have known about that”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — University of California President Janet Napolitano said Wednesday she is devoting $5 million to provide special counseling and financial aid for students living in the U.S. illegally, a move aimed at disarming critics who worried she would be hostile to the small but vocal student population. The former Homeland Security Secretary announced the initiative in her first public address since she became head of the 10-campus university system a month ago — an evening appearance in San Francisco organized by the Commonwealth Club. She also pledged $10 million for recruiting and training graduate students and post-doctoral...

When college students voted for Obama, not once but twice, did they become what is now labeled as America’s lost generation? Have they been betrayed as their futures were mortgaged with huge student loans and then found out that the employment opportunities are being outsourced to job contractors in India and other foreign countries?

In the UK there is a constant talk of the need for immigrants’ skills and an endless repetition of the fact that there are many necessary jobs and positions which would be left vacant without immigration. Let’s see. Is it the number of unskilled and manual workers which is not high enough to fill the vacancies? In that case, why are there millions of people on welfare in Britain? In the United Kingdom, 5.6 million of working age are not working and receive state hand-outs in various forms – and this number has remained stubbornly high even at times...

WAVY, the NBC affiliate in Hampton Roads, Virginia asks “has zero tolerance gone too far?” as it reports this story: A suspended seventh grade Virginia Beach student will find out soon if he is expelled for the rest of the year for shooting an airsoft gun. Like thousands of others in Hampton Roads, Khalid Caraballo plays with airsoft guns. Caraballo and his friend Aidan were suspended because they shot two other friends who were with them while playing with the guns as they waited for the school bus. The two seventh graders say they never went to the bus stop;...

Home schooled children outpacing public school students Do you know there are 10 and 12- year-old students already attending college classes in America? It is happening every day as parents flee the public schools and instead educate their children at home.

I'm curious to know if anyone saw the Hannity panel with college students last night and what you thought of it.

We spend about twice as much as other developed countries as a fraction of national output. Yet our results are mediocre. Public and private spending is growing much faster than our income ? putting us on a course that is clearly unsustainable. It appears we are buying quantity instead of value. Outcomes vary wildly from state to state. And programs that target the poor seem to be backfiring instead. I could easily be talking about health care. Instead, I'm speaking about higher education ? making some of the same points that President Obama made the other day. Unfortunately, both fields...

Are public universities making up for the loss of American students by encouraging the cash-rich Chinese to send their college-age children to schoosl in the U.S?

Sometime what you are selling is so awful and useless you can’t even give it away. The Communists who run Vietnam are learning this simple truth up front and personally. They are trying to get young people interested in learning all about the wonderful Communist system they live under but they are just not interested. They are so disinterested in what Marx, Lenin and Barack Obama’s hero Ho Chi Minh had to say that they will not use their precious college years studying their works; even free of charge. Last month Nguyen Tan Dung the head Red decreed that students...

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — The Obama Administration is showing why it...

A 1912 eighth grade exam surfaced recently at a museum in Kentucky, something that proved interesting when comparing education from 100 years ago and today. According to the CS Monitor on Aug. 12, the exam was donated to the museum and hit the Internet today. The eighth grade exam was called the “Common Exam” and was taken by students in the courthouse once or twice a year. If passed, the students could receive their scholarships to attend high school. There were 56 questions, a 40-word spelling quiz, and also a separate reading and writing test. The areas of study on...