Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Textbook purchases will be one of the first victims in anticipated education cutbacks due to widespread state budget woes, insiders say, leaving the $9 billion textbook industry prospects weak in the coming years. Moreover, the selection method used by more than half the states to choose books is a high-stakes, winner-take-all process in which publishers invest millions of dollars developing products they're not sure will sell, adding unpredictable demand to an already bleak market outlook. Nationwide, states are slashing budgets in the face of some of the deepest shortfalls in 40 years. Thirty-seven states have...

PHILADELPHIA -- A suburban Philadelphia school board has voted to name a new high school after Bayard Rustin, the late civil rights activist known both as an aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and for taking controversial political stances. In a 6-3 vote Monday, the West Chester Area school board decided to name the school after Rustin, despite critics who objected to naming it after a man who was gay, briefly a member of a Communist youth group in the 1930s and who was a conscientious objector during World War II. "If every one of the 16 million...