Free Republic

As Obama's re-election campaign is in full swing he is seeking to regain the "Wet Behind The Ears" in debt up to their as! cash-strapped college graduates. Really creating Jobs aren't you Obama, what a guy.

The White House says President Barack Obama plans to offer millions of student loan borrowers the ability to lower their payments and consolidate their loans. Obama on Wednesday will use his executive authority to accelerate a measure passed by Congress that reduces the repayment cap on student loans from 15 percent of discretionary income to 10 percent. The White House wants it to go into effect in 2012, instead of 2014. About 1.6 million borrowers could be affected. Also, the 5.8 million borrowers who have loans from both the Family Education Loan Program and a direct loan from the government...

I don't know if anyone has followed a few threads I have put up over the past few years about our school district having "issues". Anyway, our older son is now in first grade and has been bringing home a folder nightly with simple books to read, same as when our daughter was in first grade. I help him nightly to read the book, it takes about 5 minutes and he can essentially read them himself, but because he just graduated to a new level (where the books become harder), some of the words in the new books he cannot...

About half of Illinois public high school students flunked state exams in reading, math and science this year, the worst performance in the history of the 11th-grade Prairie State Achievement Examination, statewide test results show. The record-low results, scheduled to be released Thursday, come after Illinois closed loopholes that kept academically weak juniors from taking the exams, a practice revealed in a 2009 Tribune analysis. Some local school officials attributed their declines in part to the larger testing pool that included less-prepared students. At the same time, grade schools posted the highest passing rate in a decade this year —...

Education is the key to the future: You've heard it a million times, and it's not wrong. Educated people have higher wages and lower unemployment rates, and better educated countries grow faster and innovate more than other countries. But going to college is not enough. You also have to study the right subjects. And American students are not studying the fields with the greatest economic potential. Over the past 25 years the total number of students in college has increased by about 50%. But the number of students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM...

In the millions of pixels devoted to the radical Occupy Wall Streeters, virtually nothing has been said about its anti-Semitic elements. The conservative Emergency Committee for Israel is out with an eye-popping ad: A growing number of Israelis and foreign Jewish groups are expressing concern over the anti-Semitic flavor of some of the “Occupy Wall St.” economic protests in the US. . . . In Los Angeles, California, protester Patricia McAllister, who identified herself as an employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District (we can only hope she is not an educator), had this to say: “I think that...

A growing number of Israelis and foreign Jewish groups are expressing concern over the anti-Semitic flavor of some of the "Occupy Wall St." economic protests in the US. From the 13th century expulsion of Englands Jews to the 19th century Russian pogroms to the Nazi Holocaust, sour economic conditions have historically formed the backdrop of rising anti-Semitism.(snip) Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper called the anti-Semitic outbursts ''hard to watch,'' and an Israeli commenter said, ''It's just like pre-World War II Nazi Germany. You think blood libels can't happen in America?''

AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents about drug cartels recruiting Texas high school students. DPS officials say they caught a 12-year-old boy driving a stolen pickup truck containing more than 800 pounds of marijuana last week. Last month, two Texas teenagers were lured to Mexico where they were kidnapped, beaten, ransomed and released in a remote area along the Rio Grande River. In one Texas border county, more than 25 juveniles were arrested for drug trafficking within the past year. “Mexican cartels have corrupted nearly an entire generation of youth living in Northern Mexico and...

It began when a small group gathered on Wall Street to protest about the dire state of the U.S. economy. Almost a month later that crowd has swelled to several thousand people who have clashed with police sparking mass arrests. The protest, coined 'Occupy Wall Street', has inspired similar demonstrations across America and become fuel for the Republicans as the presidential race heats up. Many of the protesters are students, angry about the amount of money they owe for an education they say is now worthless because of widespread unemployment. But, as one American blog suggests, no one forced these...

This are the shocking scenes that have led some people to accuse the Occupy Wall Street protesters living rough in New York's financial district of creating unsanitary and filthy conditions. Exclusive pictures obtained by Mail Online show one demonstrator relieving himself on a police car.

Occupy Wall Street may be "leaderless," but it's far from directionless. Less than three weeks after the protest movement began on Sept. 17, its "We Are the 99 Percent" message has exploded into a national rallying cry, inspiring not only a bustling mini-city in New York's financial district, but also an overnight network of sympathizers from Seattle to Miami. According to the unofficial umbrella group Occupy Together, some 500 cities worldwide will see "Occupy" events this week. And while the nebulous campaign is focused mainly on economic issues, it has also strived for inclusiveness, winning the support of diverse groups...

The Huffington Post recently released a copy of Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry’s college transcript from Texas A&M. The academic picture wasn’t pretty. Perry struggled in some familiar classes (an F in organic chemistry, a D in economics) and some bizarre ones (a C in gym, a D in something the transcript labeled only as “Meats”). Are Perry’s low college marks all that astonishing for a high-profile politician? Apparently not. Let’s take a look at a few other big names who didn’t light the academic world on fire. 1. Al Gore Gore’s the brainiest politician around, right? Possibly, but you...

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Ten Muslim students broke the law by shouting down a speech by an Israeli diplomat at the University of California, Irvine, in a carefully drafted and executed plan that flouted repeated warnings by campus officials, a prosecutor said Monday. In closing arguments at the trial that stoked fierce debate about free speech, prosecutor Dan Wagner told jurors that emails among the students revealed they knew they could be arrested when they got up, one by one, and shouted pre-scripted statements to interrupt Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's talk on U.S.-Israel relations in February 2010. "The right to...

Some California schools are turning away middle and high school students who have not received a required whooping cough vaccine while others are defying a law passed last year after a historic spike in cases of the potentially fatal disease. The law approved last September initially required all students entering grades seven through 12 to get vaccinated by the start of the 2011-2012 school year. Lawmakers passed a 30-day extension this summer as districts worried many students wouldn't meet the deadline.

Math professors are appalled at the lack of math skills they see in some education students -- who in turn can't adequately teach math to their own students when they get in a classroom. "We've kind of been watching a train wreck," University of Winnipeg math Prof. Anna Stokke said Friday. So far, 184 people have signed a petition demanding far higher standards for admission to faculties of education, 173 of them math, science and engineering professors. They're demanding the provincial government beef up high school graduation requirements for people intending to become teachers. Some teachers didn't get adequate math...

A Broward woman is accused of taking her big sister responsibilities a little too far after hopping on a school bus and attacking students who were allegedly heckling her little sister, Broward Sheriff's Office said. Cynthia Haynes, 23, was arrested Wednesday and charged with two counts cruelty toward child abuse and burglary for the attack, an arrest report stated.

A New Jersey first grade teacher who wrote that she was a "warden for future criminals" on Facebook says she was speaking "out of frustration to their behavior." Jennifer O'Brien defended herself Wednesday at an administration hearing that will determine whether the tenured Paterson teacher should lose her job. O'Brien told an administrative law judge she wrote the post in exasperation because six or seven unruly first-graders kept disrupting her lessons. She said one boy had recently hit her. The teacher posted her remark to 333 friends on March 28. However, it was forwarded and led critics to call her...

Bill bans teacher-student flingsBy Jo Ciavaglia Staff writer Updated: 12:16 pm, Mon Aug 22, 2011 She was a 17-year-old student. He was a 43-year-old math teacher. When their romance was revealed in 2009, many called it morally and ethically wrong. **SNIP** Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Ferman, whose office initiated the push for the bill to make student-teacher sexual relationships a felony, says the crimes happen frequently, and they do “enormous” damage to young people. Ferman believes the bill would provide a strong deterrent for school employees. “When misdeeds have no consequence, there is not disincentive to act. What we...

HARRISBURG, Pa.—Foreign students who walked off their jobs in protest this week at a plant that serves The Hershey Co. may soon be getting a free trip to see some of the United States' cultural and historical landmarks. Rick Anaya, chief executive of the nonprofit that helped bring the students to the U.S., said Friday that the plan emerged after a two-hour conference call with representatives of the other companies involved in their employment. The students began a strike Wednesday, saying their work was so strenuous and low-paying they've been unable to see much of the country.

The Hamas terrorist rulers of Gaza have banned eight young academic scholars from leaving the region to further their studies abroad. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights condemned the move Wednesday, informing media that Hamas was refusing to allow the teens to leave Gaza. The ban came one day after the human rights organization issued a similar statement slamming a Hamas decision that mandates NGO (nongovernmental organizations) and human rights workers to apply for travel permits at least two weeks in advance of any plans to leave Gaza. Hamas has also become embroiled in a battle of wills with the...