Free Republic

Progressive educators have an obsession for results, especially test scores. Higher scores supposedly prove children will be more “career and college ready” after graduation. Uphold Marriage and the Family; Uphold Society: Sign the Return to Order Petition For this reason, these educators are forever coming up with all sorts of one-size-fits-all programs like Common Core that they believe will solve the problem of flagging test scores. Since new schemes are always appearing, it would seem that they are not working. Educators should look at those things that work. If scores are the ultimate indicators of success, then it would stand...

“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer said that he is ” finding some interesting, compelling things” in his investigation of Jeb Bush on Tuesday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show.” Schweizer reported, “We’re about four months into the research project, obviously not as global in scope as the Clintons, but you know, as governor of the state of Florida, you have a lot of things that you can do. So we’re following the money. We’re looking at land deals. We’re looking at an airport deal. We are looking at some of the educational reforms that were instituted, and some of the big corporate winners...

Common Core teaches collectivism—socialism—and degrades various elements of education from math to English to science Think about the major policy undertakings of the Obama administration over the past six and a half years. It began with a “stimulus” that wasted trillions in the quest of generating jobs, but did little to nothing in achieving that goal. That was followed by ObamaCare which most agree has been a disaster for the nation’s healthcare sector and, finally, Common Core, a one-size-fits-all testing program intended, we were told, to improve learning standards in the nation’s schools. The only thing it has achieved is...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker's proposal prohibiting the state superintendent from forcing local school districts to adopt Common Core academic standards has been approved by the Legislature's budget committee. [snip] State Superintendent Tony Evers adopted the Common Core standards in 2010, but Walker's proposal would prohibit him from advocating for or promoting the standards to school districts.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received nearly a quarter of a million dollars last year for a speaking engagement on behalf of Academic Partnerships, a for-profit education company in which Jeb Bush held an ownership stake and on whose board he served. Clinton’s newly filed personal financial disclosure shows that she was paid $225,500 on March 24, 2014 by Academic Partnerships. At the invitation-only event in Dallas, Texas, Clinton reportedly said, “today a student doesn’t need to travel to Cambridge, Mass., or Cambridge, England, to get a world-class education.”

<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker's proposal prohibiting the state superintendent from forcing local school districts to adopt Common Core academic standards is up for a vote in the Legislature's budget committee.</p> <p>The Joint Finance Committee was scheduled to act on the proposal Tuesday.......</p>

FULL TITLE: Shocking video shows American schoolkids running in terror as teacher whips 'unruly' children with his belt A group of four boys fighting in their classroom were brutally halted when their teacher took off his belt and started hitting them with it. In shocking cell phone video posted to Live leak on Friday, likely recorded in an American classroom, children can be heard shrieking as the unidentified teacher whips them about three times with his belt. Chairs and tables are overturned, what appear to be middle-school aged boys and girls scream in fear and let out nervous laughter as...

Board members of California's Oakland Unified School District unanimously voted on Wednesday to cease suspending students for what they call "willful defiance." Those behaviors can include swearing/yelling at teachers, refusing direct orders, texting, and storming out of class, to name a few. The reason? Concern that too many black students are being suspended for willful defiance. One sophomore student, Dan'enicole Williams, told the San Francisco Gate, "They never take time out, if someone is sleeping in class, to ask what’s wrong. They may be acting that way because they didn’t eat the night before.” "We’re getting pushed out of schools,”...

Caleb Stewart Rossiter, a college professor and policy analyst, decided to try teaching math in the D.C. schools. He was given a pre-calculus class with 38 seniors at H.D. Woodson High School. When he discovered that half of them could not handle even second-grade problems, he sought out the teachers who had awarded the passing grades of D in Algebra II, a course that they needed to take his high-level class. There are many bewildering stories like this in Rossiter’s new book, “Ain’t Nobody Be Learnin’ Nothin’: The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools,” the best account of public...

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said, “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years since the Industrial Revolution.” For the U.N., it does not matter that the report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change shows that human activity is not causing climate change. Climate change is actually about changing capitalism.

Common Core is not a benign set of federals standards meant to make your children smarter, warns an educator who says it looks more like an indoctrination program to push students toward “green” jobs for a “green economy.” Alex Newman, coauthor of “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children,” pointed to speeches by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “He gave one to UNESCO in 2012, for example, and he bragged that he was using these standards and our government schools to create green citizens to take their place in the green world order with...

This, at its most basic level, is disgusting and reprehensible.We know how far America – and the Left in particular – have strayed from religion. It’s really sad, and if the trend continues, will ultimately lead to our demise.Ask yourself, why is radical Islam so strong at the moment? The answer: religion.No matter how much radical Islamists have distorted the Quran, religion remains a main tenet of their teachings. In the U.S. today, you can’t turn on a TV show anymore without seeing at least one homosexual character, no doubt because Hollywood liberals want you to believe that out of every 10...

It’s clear that Jeb isn’t a conservative, but it’s mightily kind of him to be honest about it. He could also do what the Mitch McConnells of this world like to do: lie about it until they get elected after which they ‘suddenly’ become as progressive as Nancy Pelosi. That’s what Senator Ted Cruz recently said on Megyn Kelly’s show on Fox News. Well, OK, I admit I added the last part about Mitch McConnell myself, but I’m sure you get my drift. "I’m a fan of Jeb Bush. I’ll give him credit for candor and consistency. He is running...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)It’s clear that Jeb isn’t a conservative, but it’s mightily kind of him to be honest about it. He could also do what the Mitch McConnells of this world like to do: lie about it until they get elected after which they ‘suddenly’ become as progressive as Nancy Pelosi. That’s what Senator Ted Cruz recently said on Megyn Kelly’s show on Fox News. Well, OK, I admit I added the last part about Mitch McConnell myself, but I’m sure you get my drift. "I’m a fan of Jeb Bush. I’ll give him credit for candor and consistency. He is running...

We have previously mentioned the re-write of the AP guide for History. The new AP guide for teaching History is nothing less than (yet another) declaration of war against the very essence of America. Elizabeth Price Foley over at Instapundit has termed the MiniTru approved truth as “the oppression narrative.” An apt label for an education system that tears down American civilization as an “evil” and replaces it with a Howard Zinnified version of reality. As Foley notes: “How about just teaching our children about the founding, the Constitution, and the major historical eras? It isn’t a cultural anthropology or...

Sample questions guaranteed to make your brain hurt in all the wrong places. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is widely denounced for imposing confusing, unhelpful experimental teaching methods. Following these methods, some have created problems that lack essential information or make no sense whatsoever. Some 45 states and the District of Columbia have so far adopted Common Core standards, leaving students all around the United States to puzzle over mysterious logic and language devised in accordance with Common Core’s new methods. Here are eleven Common Core–compliant problems that have caused parents, students, and even teachers to scratch their heads...

And now, I present the super amazing transformation timeline of Mike Huckabee on common core. ———- Mid 2013: “These standards, known as Common Core State Standards, have been near and dear to my heart since I served as Governor of your neighboring state of Arkansas. And it’s disturbing to me there have been criticisms of these standards directed by other conservatives including the RNC. The truth of the matter is, these criticisms are short-sighted. Like many of you, I’ve heard the argument these standards “threaten local control” of what’s being taught in Oklahoma classrooms. Speaking from one conservative to another,...

HOOKSETT, N.H. – The New Hampshire Union Leader published a guest op/ed from a teacher who identifies herself as a liberal.  Diane Sekula is a teacher in Hooksett, NH and she was responding to a published article that said Common Core is a conservative flashpoint. Sekula writes:I come from a staunch Democrat family. By most people’s standards, I would be considered liberal. I am also, however, very much against Common Core. Public dissatisfaction with Common Core is not a partisan issue. It is a matter of importance for anyone interested in doing what’s best for the children of New Hampshire.She points...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attempted to draw a bright line between himself and Jeb Bush on the Iraq War in a CNN interview on Tuesday, definitively stating that given the absence of weapons of mass destruction he wouldn't have authorized the war. "I think President [George W.] Bush made the best decision he could at the time, given that his intelligence community was telling him that there was (weapons of mass destruction) and that there were other threats right there in Iraq," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead." "But I don't think you can honestly say that...

Likely GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush says he will try to convince grassroots groups of parents who oppose the Common Core standards to flip-flop and embrace the education initiative. When Megyn Kelly of Fox News Channel’s The Kelly File observed how unpopular the Common Core initiative is with grassroots conservatives in particular, Bush responded: “Common Core means a lot of things to different people, so they could be right, based on what’s in front of them…but the simple fact is we need higher standards; they need to be state-driven. The federal government should play no role in this – either...