Free Republic

A 28 percent enrollment decline in the Hazel Park school district over just five years is among the factors that led Hazel Park High Principal Don Vogt to pink slip 15 schoolteachers. The principal claims many of those are the newest teachers and among the school’s best educators. Vogt's comments were included in a Bridge Magazine article last week that highlighted how the district had turned itself around academically. Recent projections of a rapidly growing deficit, though, triggered layoffs and now threaten to wipe out the high school's new academic success. But if Hazel Park does have to lay off...

Republican presidential candidate and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker spoke about improving education at a conference at Harvard University in July 2012 on Learning from Improving School Systems at Home and Abroad: International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance. The conference was hosted by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance. Governor Walker spoke about the reforms he put in place in Wisconsin which gave local school districts the ability to make better decisions for their students while effectively managing their budgets. Click here for the complete video from that conference and here for videos from individual panels. Gov. Walker's...

A Brooklyn teacher who was arrested in 2011 on charges of drugging and raping a middle school student is demanding that the city let her keep her teaching job, according to a new lawsuit. Claudia Tillery, 45, argues in papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court that she was acquitted of all criminal charges in April 2014 and the Department of Education’s hearing officer improperly used sealed evidence, DNA tests and the prosecutor’s testimony to toss her from the teaching post she's had since 1996.

Orange County (New Jersey) school board officials voted Wednesday to terminate the employment of a third grade teacher who had her students write "get well" letters to a convicted cop killer. According to NJ.com, Marilyn Zuniga, a third grade teacher at Forest Street Elementary School in Orange, was suspended last month after she had her students write the letters of encouragement to Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is currently serving a life sentence for killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Marilyn Zuniga's employment was terminated as part of a larger personnel restructuring agenda. By including Zuniga's termination in a larger...

In my proverbial day, long after the Industrial Revolution but before Kim Kardashian bottomed out the Bell Curve, kids were not coddled nor were they allowed to act like disrespectful, uncouth derelicts in our nation's classrooms. If students gave teachers attitude or let alone cursed – that vulgarity which is commonly tolerated today – they were immediately sent to the office and admonished without refrain. If you refused to leave, or God forbid continued to be a disruptive force, someone would drag you out by your ear and kick your “suspended” ass to the curb; no second thoughts, no regrets,...

An old teacher-licensing test that blacks and Hispanics had trouble passing poses a grave threat to city coffers — $300 million, according to internal budget documents obtained by The Post. Taxpayers are on the hook for cliams by thousands of minority teachers as part of a civil-rights case in which a judge ruled they were illegally fired, demoted or denied jobs for failing the racially discriminatory Liberal Arts and Sciences Test.

I've done a lot of thinking about this and I'd like feed back

A federal judge is questioning whether a new exam for aspiring teachers in New York is discriminatory against minorities, a case that could derail the state’s efforts to create a more rigorous set of tests for entry into the profession. Black and Hispanic applicants have been passing one of the exams, intended to measure reading and writing skills, at lower rates than white candidates, prompting concerns of decreased diversity in the teaching ranks. The judge, Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has asked the state for extensive documentation on the development of the test, which was first...

Alevtina is one of several teachers who lost their jobs in St. Petersburg after being outed by an anti-gay activist. While most resigned quietly, the 27-year-old music teacher decided to fight her dismissal in court — an unusual step in Russia where gays have faced increasing pressure in recent years. The rising anti-gay sentiment has coincided with the passage of a controversial Russian law that prohibits exposing children to gay "propaganda." The law has made it easy to target teachers, because they work directly with children.

ATLANTA (AP) — A group of former Atlanta educators convicted in a test cheating scandal were locked up in jail Thursday as they await sentences that could send them to prison for years. In one of the nation's largest cheating scandals of its kind, the 11 defendants were convicted Wednesday of racketeering for their roles in a scheme to inflate students' scores on standardized exams. They include teachers, a principal and other administrators, who were accused of falsifying test results to collect bonuses or keep their jobs in the 50,000-student Atlanta public school system. A 12th defendant, a teacher, was...

In one of the biggest cheating scandals of its kind in the U.S., 11 former Atlanta public school educators were convicted Wednesday of racketeering for their role in a scheme to inflate students' scores on standardized exams.The defendants - including teachers, a principal and other administrators - were accused of falsifying test results to collect bonuses or keep their jobs in the 50,000-student Atlanta school system.The educators fed answers to students or erased and changed the answers on tests after they were turned in to secure promotions or up to $5,000 each in bonuses, the court was told.However the person...

Full title: Atlanta cheating scandal teachers go to cells in hand-cuffs: Eleven educators face up to 20 years in prison for inflating their students' test scores to get bonus money for their schools . . . and for themselves The 11 teachers, testing coordinators and other administrators were convicted Wednesday of racketeering after a five-year investigation Evidence of cheating was found in 44 schools across the Atlanta school system, with nearly 180 educators involved A racketeering charge could carry up to 20 years in prison and most of the defendants will be sentenced on April 8 The cheating came to...

How bad is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s cut to higher education going to hurt? Bad, if UW Eau Claire is any indication. It’s the first university location to announce buyouts for employees, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports today. Three-hundred-twenty-five staff members — including those with tenure — are being offered “go away” packages by University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Chancellor James Schmidt. That’s a third of the people who work there. Under the terms of the UW-Eau Claire offer, employees 55 and older with at least five years of service in select departments and units will be eligible to receive a...

A long-time Hillary Clinton supporter who heads the nation’s second largest teachers’ union says she was aware of the former Secretary of State’s personal email address before the New York Times reported its existence two weeks ago. Randi Weingarten, a donor to Clinton’s previous presidential run and to the Super PAC backing her likely 2016 bid, said on Twitter over the weekend that the existence of the email account was not “secret.” Asked if she was aware of the personal email account, hdr22@clintonemail.com, before the Times published its scoop, Weingarten gave a one-word reply: “yes.” Weingarten did not respond to...

Denver Public Schools had four times the number of administrators as any other large metro area districts last year, and salaries and benefits for those staffers are $22 million more than the next largest metro district, Colorado Department of Education figures show. The teachers’ union president reviewed the data Watchdog.org obtained and said the nearly $68 million paid to DPS administrators would be better spent on students. “We need to be talking about keeping dollars closer to classroom when it comes to public education,” said Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. “Should they be putting the money...

Two California teachers who were already in hot water are now in worse trouble after authorities said the women plied male students with cocaine and had illegal sex with one boy during a supposed camping trip. Melody Lippert, 38, and Michelle Ghirelli, 30, have been charged with unlawful sexual intercourse and giving controlled substances to minors. The pair also gave alcohol to the minors during a two-day camping trip in December, according to a statement from the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

<p>AUSTIN - Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick unveiled key portions of the upper chamber's education agenda on Tuesday, reviving proposals long unpopular with teacher groups that Patrick said would empower parents and help students leave poor-performing schools.</p> <p>"We'll be talking about school choice and pre-K at a later date," Patrick said at a morning press conference in the Capitol, flanked by members of the Senate Committee on Education. "But reforming education is more than a single shot. It is a comprehensive plan that takes in every area of the state, takes in every student, every parent and every teacher."</p>

Warren, who is closely aligned with progressive union groups, ripped Walker in a tweet Saturday for what some saw as a comparison between union members and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria: "If Scott Walker sees 100,000 teachers & firefighters as his enemies, maybe it's time we take a closer look at his friends.” In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Walker said, “If I can take on 100,000 protestors, I can do the same across the world.” Walker, a possible 2016 presidential candidate for the GOP, tried to walk back his comments after his...

Another Presidents Day, like the presidents it was meant to honor, has come and gone and nobody remembers what it was all about, beyond another three-day weekend for federal employees and a little hype to sell automobiles and snake oil. Presidents Day replaces holidays to mark the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, and now, presumably, the catchall honor is extended to William Henry Harrison, Chester Alan Arthur and Millard Fillmore as well. When we observed George Washington's actual birthday (Feb. 22), schoolchildren talked about him as the "Father of Our Country." We traded stories, some of them myths, like Parson...

A bill that would make it easier for some immigrants to teach in Nevada's classrooms is gaining momentum in the Legislature because it would help alleviate the state's crippling teacher shortage.