Free Republic

Chicago’s teacher’s union voted on Sunday to defy Chicago Public Schools administration and refuse to return to in-person teaching even though pupils are due back in classrooms on February 1st. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has been locked in a power struggle with the union for some time, with teachers and union brass insisting that it is not safe for teachers to return to classrooms, even though Chicago’s private schools have been in-person for months. At one point, the Chicago Teachers Union, or CTU, suggested that any plan to return to in-classroom teaching would be both racist and sexist. As the...

On his first day in office, President Biden guaranteed new protections for the LGBTQ+ community under an executive order. But for transgender athletes, the move isn’t quite a victory. "Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports," reads the executive order "on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation." The administration concludes that under the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Bostock v. Clayton County, Title IX of the Education Amendments also prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity...

Joe Biden obliterated women’s sports on the first day of his presidency. Biden also reinstated the rule allowing transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their “gender identity.” In other words, a biological male can now waltz into a bathroom and locker room to watch your teenage daughter change into gym clothes. Any learning institution that receives federal funding must admit biological males to women’s teams, women’s scholarships etc. Section 1. Policy. Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they...

Because Democrats don't hesitate to use power even if they lack legitimacy, they will go farther than Obama did in pushing transgender ideology on American children over the next four years.The next several years are likely to reopen the floodgates to leftists’ long repurposing of public schools to indoctrinate children with lies about sex. According to leftist reporting, once in office Joe Biden plans to quickly use executive power to push transgenderism in schools, farther than President Obama did. In Congress, Democrats plan to prioritize legislation to do the same, potentially with Republican support, with the so-called Equality Act and...

In the latest sign of trouble for the standardized testing empire that has played a major role in college applications for millions of students, the organization that produces the SAT said on Tuesday that it would scrap subject tests and the optional essay section, further scrambling the admissions process. The move comes as the testing industry has been battered by questions about equity and troubled by logistical and financial challenges during the coronavirus pandemic. Critics saw the changes not as an attempt to streamline the test-taking process for students, as the College Board portrayed the decision, but as a way...

Over 14,000 school boards, with about 100,000 members, set the course for instruction in classrooms across the country. To understand the views of parents and school board members in debates about K-12 content and policy, The Heritage Foundation commissioned a nationally representative survey.

...on Tuesday morning, when he went to sign in to the district platform, he was locked out. The same thing happened to other teachers who refused to go back as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) carried out the first part of her school reopening plan, despite fierce resistance from the Chicago Teachers Union. The school district is requiring all teachers in the tier that started offering in-person instruction on Monday to teach from their schools... ...It started disciplinary procedures early in the week on more than 140 employees for not reporting to schools in person and has withheld pay and...

New standards proposed by the Minnesota Department of Education would banish lessons about World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, the Civil War, the American Revolution, communism, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Replacing those significant history topics will be "systemic racism," how democracy has "excluded certain groups," an "awareness" of "the LGBTQ+ community" and how the disenfranchisement of freed blacks during Reconstruction connects to "persistent discrimination and inequity" today.

A Florida teacher was hit with charges for allegedly spraying students with disinfectant for not properly wearing their masks, the local NBC affiliate reports. Christina Reszetar was arrested on Wednesday at Largo High School in Largo, Florida. The 51-year-old was booked into Pinellas County Jail where she was charged with four counts of child abuse. Per the Largo police report, Reszetar said four students refused to wear their masks properly so she allegedly sprayed aerosol disinfectant "into the path of their faces and bodies." Reszetar appeared in front of the court on Thursday where she denied the accusations. Police reports...

The Minnesota Department of Education has released its first draft of K-12 social studies standards for the next ten years, a proposal that omits most of the significant events in American history and focuses, instead, on “systemic racism” and the oppression of “marginalized” people throughout U.S. and Minnesota history.

President-elect Joe Biden is promising that on “his first day in office” he will issue an order requiring all schools that receive federal funding to let transgenders play on the sports teams and use the bathrooms and locker rooms that accord with their “gender identity.” Biden will take office next Wednesday, January 20. On his campaign website Biden promised to: “Ensure young LGBTQ+ people are supported and protected in our schools and college campuses by: Guaranteeing transgender students have access to facilities based on their gender identity.” “On his first day in office," says Biden’s website, “Biden will reinstate the...

A Tennessee high school principal is on administrative leave after he told students they should be alarmed by the recent crackdown on free speech on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Barton Thorne, the principal of Cordova High School, told students during morning announcements that they needed to be aware of the censorship happening on social media. “I’m not going to tell you what to think, I just want to help you think,” he told students on a video that was later posted on YouTube. “This isn’t about Trump,” he said. “This is about speech.” Principal Thorne asked the...

One of the most controversial and reviled of Catholic documents is Pope Pius IX’s 1864 “Syllabus of Errors,” a long list of popular opinions that the Roman pontiff strongly condemned. Placing the document within its proper historical context, Pius XI was concerned by developments in such countries as the United States, where Catholic education was increasingly restricted under what were called “Blaine amendments.” Among the “errors” Pius IX assailed in the document is the belief that “all public institutes intended for instruction… on the education of youth… should be fully subjected to the civil and political power at the pleasure...

The lawsuit goes on to say that during a meeting with the school’s principal, Jeannie Steenberge, and a faculty member, the two adults allowed the black students to berate and scream at their daughter, calling her “the biggest known racist in the school,” and accusing her of being “in love with Trump” because she owned Trump decals and other merchandise. “Everyone knows ALL Trump supporters are racist,” the petition claims one black student said. During another meeting, the parents’ petition says the principal told their daughter she was a racist, and that “we are all racists, we are white.” According...

Public schools across the country are quickly responding to Wednesday’s events at the U.S. Capitol by offering “emotional support” for students and teaching vocabulary words such as “insurrection” and “sedition.” Ally Stanton, a kindergarten teacher in Needham, Massachusetts, told 25 News: I had a lot of students coming in this morning saying things such as Mommy and Daddy were watching a lot of news, bad guys got into the White House, there were bad people that were trying to hurt others in Washington. A lot of them were really concerned because they know that people shouldn’t be breaking into buildings…...

Just over half of all teachers ordered to report to Chicago Public Schools on Monday did not show up to prepare for in-person instruction as the district rolls out its reopening plan, CPS says. Should teachers and staff continue to not report to schools as expected, the district may begin a progressive discipline policy that could lead to their firing, CPS' CEO indicated Tuesday. A total of 60.2% of all school-based staff required to return reported to work Monday, CPS CEO Dr. Janice Jackson said during a news conference Tuesday. That included 49.7% of all teachers and 70% of all...

Schools have been closed for the better part of a year now, for the putative reason that COVID-19 makes them unsafe. Only distance learning and Zoom and other online classes are safe enough for both teachers and kids, we’re told. Even though the science says otherwise, powerful teachers unions keep schools closed anyway. But why? Let’s start with a blunt fact: The teachers unions — including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), along with a host of radicalized local unions — don’t have your kids’ best interests at heart, despite their well-funded, slick propaganda...

The largest public school district in Washington state is reportedly training white teachers to “bankrupt their privilege” by focusing on social justice in the classroom, Discovery Institute scholar Christopher Rufo reported. A series of reportedly leaked documents shows what appears to be a training on critical race theory at Seattle Public Schools, prompting teachers to explain how they will promulgate racial justice in the classroom. The slides begin by asking teachers to acknowledge that they are meeting on “the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish People,” which is followed by “Stolen Labor Acknowledgments” asking them...

Racial tensions in America reached new heights during 2020. The Media constantly covered violent riots and swelling protests as BLM and other agitators capitalized on racial divisions. And while most Americans struggled with government overreach as the nation reeled from knee jerk reactions to a “global pandemic”, many didn’t notice what was happening behind the scene. Namely, the propagation of critical race theory in the U.S. educational system.

I tried hard to word a decent headline but the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) makes it impossible. The teachers will not return to the classroom with the students in January. So the cash-strapped city will hire supervisors to be in classes and at the school with the students. This is because the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) refuses to get back to work. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) took advantage of the situation (what else is new?) to issue new demands and collective bargaining. They even blamed the pressure to reopen schools on sexism, misogyny, and racism. No, it had nothing...