Free Republic

NASHVILLE -- Police were seeking three suspects early Wednesday after three college students were shot across the street from the Tennessee State University campus. Authorities told CBS Nashville affiliate WTVF-TV gunfire rang out shortly after the suspects weren't allowed into a massive house party. The victims were taken to area hospitals. Police said one was in very critical condition after being shot in the head. The wounds to the others were described as non-life threatening. As many as 200 people were at the party at the time of the shooting. The victims attend TSU, Nashville State and Middle Tennessee State...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent over $1.1 million studying the “freshman 15,” trying to determine whether friends influence their college peers to eat more.Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) highlighted the project as an example of wasteful spending, calling out the agency for studying a myth invented by Seventeen magazine.“The ‘freshman 15’ is an old legend around college campuses; the idea that new college students, away from home and confronted with a campus food service smorgasbord tend to put on a few extra pounds,” Paul’s latest edition of “The Waste Report” reads. “Well the National Institutes for Health...

Common Core backers are sneaking a social and political agenda into nationalized curriculum, say critics, who now have new ammo in a writing lesson plan for teachers that they say gives a slanted perspective of the gun debate. A study guide dubbed, "The Battle Over Gun Control," authored by KQED, a northern Californian affiliate of National Public Radio, and the nonprofit, taxpayer-subsidized National Writing Project, states that "moderate gun control" measures introduced following the Sandy Hook school massacre were deep-sixed by the "powerful political influence" of the NRA. Second Amendment advocates say the wording, in supplemental material designed to help...

A year ago I received an invitation from the head of Counseling Services at a major university to join faculty and administrators for discussions about how to deal with the decline in resilience among students. At the first meeting, we learned that emergency calls to Counseling had more than doubled over the past five years. Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life. Recent examples mentioned included a student who felt traumatized because her roommate had called her a “bitch” and two students who had sought counseling because they had seen a...

A federal judge has ruled that they way in which Birmingham police uses pepper spray "to enforce basic school discipline" is unconstitutional.The court found that police used excessive force in reaching for the chemical spray to "deal with 'normal -- and at times, challenging -- adolescent behavior.'"The ruling does not keep police officers from using pepper spray in violent situations like a fight. The ruling listed several things the police department and school system must have ready by November 15, including developing a new training procedure and decontamination process for the pepper spray. School resource officers and police must also create...

ST. LOUIS • For 17 years, Karen Bryant has watched her beloved neighborhood along Martin Luther King Drive deteriorate. Bryant, who does alterations from a storefront along King, can recite a long list of flourishing businesses that used to line the street. They all left. Now she’s left sandwiched between two vacant buildings. Despite her location on a desolate and run-down area of Martin Luther King, she’s determined to stay. She and her husband even moved in above her shop to ward off thieves who have stolen her air conditioning unit and removed copper pipes from her store, which is...

College Tuition and Fees constitute one of the biggest threats to our economic outlook. Here is a chart of data from the relevant Consumer Price Index sub-component reaching back to 1978, the earliest year Uncle Sam provides a breakout for College Tuition and Fees. As an interesting sidebar, we've thrown in the increase in the cost of purchasing a new car as well as the more substantial increase for the broader category of medical care, both of which pale in comparison.

Alabama is updating its decade-old science standards to require that students understand evolution and learn about climate change, topics that can still be controversial in the Bible Belt state. Educators say the new rules — part of a major change that includes more experimentation and hands-on instruction and less lecturing — don't require that students believe in evolution or accept the idea that climate is changing globally. But public school students will be required for the first time to understand the theory of evolution. And teachers will be required to address climate change, which wasn't a focus the last time...

Invoking Hitler usually is done by an over-the-top left-wing politician about something a Republican did which has nothing to do with the actual situation. Using the name of Hitler for a Jew in any other context than historical debates or reminiscing about Mel Brooks’ The Producers should always be done with great caution. But the stifling of free speech permeating our society warrants this deviation from my long-standing policy. To me there remains nothing as sacrosanct as protecting rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution. As I often repeat, there is a reason it is the First Amendment. My...

California schools posted standardized test scores Wednesday for the first time in two years, and the results were not stellar. Just one-third of the state’s public-school students were tested as proficient for their grade level in math and only 44 percent in English, state education officials said. Under the old test in 2013, 51 percent of students were proficient in math and 56 percent in English.

(CNSNews.com) – To help “create a classroom where students aren’t limited based on gender stereotypes,” teachers should address classes using words like “friends or “students” rather than girls and boys, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) advises in a new back-to-school guide.The first tip suggested by the HRC’s Welcoming Schools Initiative is for teachers to avoid using gender to “divide and address students.” The guide claims that separating students for activities according to gender “can leave some students feeling out-of-place, making them distracted or isolated and not able to focus on learning.”The guide recommends finding new, inventive ways of dividing students...

In the days ahead, millions of kids will pack their bags and leave home (hopefully for good) to go to college. For parents experiencing this for the first time: welcome to the biggest financial scam in America. Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University and an expert on college costs, puts it very plainly: "Colleges and universities may be the least cost-efficient institutions in the United States. No industry, perhaps other than prostitution, has seen less productivity improvements than higher education." As the father of two college kids I can personally attest to the astonishing rip-off of college tuition...

College affordability is a hot political topic these days, with President Obama pushing to make two-year community colleges free for all Americans. People want college to be affordable both to raise future productivity and to address inequality issues by equalizing access to higher education as much as possible. Yet as important as this issue it, it has also been one fraught with misguided policy and is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. New research by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows exactly how bad the flaws in our current government policies are. David...

How do you fix a failing high school? Change the grades. Under pressure to boost student achievement, the state-designated “out of time” Automotive HS in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, has resorted to rigging Regents exam scores. The failing scores of five students who took the Regents in January were switched to passing scores of 65 or higher on their transcripts, the city Department of Education has confirmed. One junior saw his scores upped to pass two exams required for graduation — Living Environment (biology) and algebra — even though he had failed both classes. The student insisted he deserved a break on...

A group of Saudi students caught in a cheating scandal at a Montana college were offered flights home by their kingdom's diplomats to avoid the possibility of deportation or arrest, according to a cache of Saudi Embassy memos recently published by WikiLeaks and a senior official at the school involved. The students were in a ring of roughly 30 alleged cheaters at Montana Tech accused of having systematically forged grades by giving presents to a college employee. The cheating was discovered — and the staffer was fired — following an investigation made public in early 2012, but the memos reveal...

Graduating students at New York middle school received misspelled diplomas featuring the word 'departmemt' **SNIP** The misspelled word appeared in the phrase 'New York City Department of Education' positioned at the top of the diplomas awarded to the students. The word had an extra 'm' instead of the letter 'n'. 'I'm sure next year they will be pouring over those diplomas to make sure every "i" is dotted and "t" is crossed,' Gardner told Fox 5. Another parent told the station that the Upper East Side school did not mention the mistake or issue an apology during the ceremony.

A teacher at Encinal High School in Alameda, Calif., allegedly told his tenth-grade students to find their parents’ sex toys and condoms and take selfies with them for extra credit. A local CBS affiliate reports that two of the students’ mothers, Kimberly Cobene and Evangeline Garcia, had heard about the assignment from a counselor at the school. “It was to go into your parents’ private drawers or whatever to seek out sexual toys or condoms, or anything of that nature and to take a selfie with it,” Cobene said. According to CBS, the school administration has tried to play off...

Modern progressive college students have become so militant they’re frightening their own like-minded professors, according to an account posted by one such professor on the website Vox. The professor, using the pseudonym Edward Schlosser, claims to have taught for nine years and currently works at a midsize state college. Over that time, he says, students have decisively shifted to become so protective of their fragile emotions that defying their sensibilities can be “suicidal” for one’s career. “Things have changed since I started teaching,” Schlosser writes. “The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this,...

I'm a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students. Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me...

HUTCHINSON, Kan. – Two of five teenagers accused of conspiring to carry out a shooting at Hutchinson High School were back in court Tuesday morning where one entered a “not guilty” plea to the charges, that being 16-year-old Takota Bowman (shown above). Later, 16-year-old Dominic Collins was before Juvenile Judge Patty Macke Dick where his attorney asked that he be released from custody, arguing that his client had no history with the court or history of violence. Attorney Mike Robinson also argued that he has done well in detention. But Assistant District Attorney Cheryl Allen argued against it citing things...