Free Republic

There is growing evidence that charter schools are empowering parents, pioneering fresh teaching methods, encouraging state and local innovation and help students escape underperforming schools.

Amy Chua, the "Tiger Mother" who launched a thousand panic attacks among ambitious but lenient parents, is back with an almost-great book about why some groups achieve spectacular success in America while others languish. Written with her husband Jed Rubenfeld (both are law professors at Yale), "The Triple Package" examines a number of groups who've succeeded in this country and advances a thesis about why groups (and nations) prosper or decline. The success of Asian-American immigrants (this principally includes people from China, Japan, Korea and India) is legendary. Less familiar is the bounding achievement of Nigerian immigrants. Though they account...

The federal government has lost track of tens of thousands of foreign students who came to the U.S. to study and then took jobs, often in violation of the terms of their visas, according to a new internal audit. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t even consistently collect information or have the tools to monitor all of the foreign students who take part in the optional practical training (OPT) program, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report released late Friday. “The problems with OPT are extensive and serious. The report not only calls into question the department’s oversight...

Students and parents rejecting costly college loan burdens Higher education accompanied by student debt is losing its appeal for many college-age Americans and their parents. The result could be a move by many colleges and universities to find ways to cut costs and even offer tuition discounts.

Cancel the philosophy courses, people. Oh, and we're going to be shuttering the political science, religion and pre-law departments too. We'll keep some of the English and history folks on for a while longer, but they should probably keep their resumes handy. Because, you see, they are of no use anymore. We have the answers to the big questions, so why keep pretending there's anything left to discuss? At least that's where Erin Ching, a student at Swarthmore College, seems to be coming down. Her school invited a famous left-wing Princeton professor, Cornel West, and a famous right-wing Princeton professor,...

"BAGHDAD — A group of Sunni militants attending a suicide bombing training class at a camp north of Baghdad were killed on Monday when their commander unwittingly conducted a demonstration with a belt that was packed with explosives, army and police officials said."

A 1000 high school students checked into this guy's hotel...after the initial shock..*smiles*...he gets to record this......ENJOY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaDCfA1uxh0

Alert parents are becoming aware that sexual abuse of students by teachers is not just an occasional problem rather something that is happening in every state in America. However some administrators choose to ignore sexual misconduct and even when it is discovered perpetrators often go unpunished.

Americans love sports, as evidenced by the fact that the Super Bowl last Sunday was the most watched television event in history. While the game was a blowout and boring because of it, people didn’t tune in to see a tie, they watched to see one team beat the other, unambiguously. But sports, at least on the professional level, are just about the last bastion of meritocracy left in the country, and the damage its loss will bring to the future is immeasurable. There were controversies this week in Silver Spring, Maryland, and with comedian Jerry Seinfeld that will have...

[Video] SHOCKING: Students Sign Petition to Imprison All Gun Owners in Concentration Camps February 3 2014 by Dan Cannon Share This Post Wow. Just wow. This video really makes me lose faith in my generation. Either these people simply don’t care what they are signing or they really agree with imprisoning legal gun owners and repealing the Second Amendment. Either way – not good. In the video, Mark Dice, who is known for his videos where he gets people to sign outrageous fake petitions, showing just how uneducated most people are on the issues, asks students to sign a petition...

Common Core State Standards are under pressure by parents and lawmakers are getting the message. They are using legislation to boot the U.S. Department of Education’s indoctrination of students in their districts.

As those in power continues to hang onto the 19th century model of education or accept Common Core indoctrination for their students, parents are moving toward becoming the “deciders” as they chose charter and private schools, homeschooling, and online programs, it is leaving thousands of empty school buildings all across America. According to a recent study among the cities with vacant school buildings are

It is no secret that our culture as a whole is descending into an ever-deeper sexual confusion. Recently two examples of this were in the news.In the first article which I summarize here, a Canadian couple have chosen to raise (impose upon?) their child a “genderless” upbringing. For now, they have refused to tell any of their family or friends the sex of their child, whom they call “Storm,” and groom and dress the infant child ambiguously.I would like to provide excerpts of a much longer article here and comment as we go. As usual, the article is in bold,...

Elementary and middle school students had an opportunity to have fun while at the same time learning about the Founding Fathers and the importance of the Constitution and Bill of Rights at a Freedom Camp held in December 2013.

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...