Free Republic

It’s not surprising that an effort is underway to recall California governor Gavin Newsom, who administers a state with record homelessness, rising crime, and exploding pension debt. He rules imperiously, mandating arbitrary pandemic-related restrictions. In September, Newsom decreed a ban on gas-powered cars starting in 2035 because California is facing “a climate damn emergency.” And he signed a bill mandating the “study and development of proposals for reparations for blacks who live in the Golden State.” Newsom insisted in a tweet that “our past is one of slavery, racism, and injustice.” Is he aware that California was admitted to the...

Rather than dumbing down the curriculum, advisers proposed that first and second graders study ancient China and Rome and learn the names of capitals. October 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) -- Earlier this week, Canadian media outlets broke what we are supposed to believe is a hugely upsetting story. Curriculum advisers handpicked by Alberta’s government, they reported, had made a series of unthinkable recommendations. Professors were called upon to condemn the proposals; commentators struggled to catch a breath; the New Democrats in opposition were frankly hornswoggled. The new recommendations, it turns out, include teaching seven- and eight-year-olds about ancient Rome, ancient China,...

Michigan football helmets are one of the most distinguishable lids in college or pro football. The Wolverines winged look with the Maize and Blue colors has been in place for a century, but there will be a slight modification for this coming season. When the Michigan Wolverines hit the field for Saturday's season-opener at Minnesota, they'll have an "EQUALITY" sticker on the back representing the diversity and commitment to unity. The helmet decals will be worn by all Michigan's varsity sports this year after a student-athlete initiative in conjunction with the athletic department developed the designs that will be worn...

As Ronald Reagan might have said to embattled Oregon Democrat Gov. Kate Brown, “There you go again.� Now a small Christian school in Oregon is suing Brown and other state officials after claiming the state is discriminating against private and religious schools by keeping them locked down while allowing public schools to reopen. The lawsuit claims that Brown has allowed public schools with less than 75 students to reopen, but has continued her ban on the reopening of private/religious schools that meet the same qualifying number of student enrollment, as reported by the Daily Wire.The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed...

NAEP's changes might cause better test results, but they fundamentally alter the meaning of reading comprehension, which would hurt students. Much like the SAT adding an adversity score and the ACT allowing specific subject retakes, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the “nation’s report card,” is easing its standards to improve its numbers. As with the SAT and ACT, these changes carry significant implications for the way English is taught in American schools. This year, the NAEP’s governing board plans to change testing to “optimize the performance of the widest possible population of students in the...

Universities in the United States reported $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed gifts and contracts from foreign sources as a result of an investigation by the Department of Education. Federal law requires universities to disclose substantial foreign gifts and contracts to the Department of Education (DOE) twice a year. Many have for years failed to do so, while others have underreported. After the department opened an investigation into the matter in 2019, 60 schools that had never complied with the law disclosed $350 million in previously unreported foreign funds, according to a report (pdf) released by the DOE on Oct. 20....

Disaster The gravity of this issue is wildly out of proportion with the small amount of attention it's receiving in the broader conversation about this election. I took a train up to New York City the April after President Trump’s inauguration to cover a “Times Talk” discussion featuring Camille Paglia and Andy Cohen. Early in the event, Paglia said the moment she predicted Trump would win the 2016 election was when the Obama administration pushed transgender bathrooms. “There’s the election, right there,” she remembered thinking. That line stuck with me. It was, Paglia added, the “worst moment to approach a...

Gaggle is currently used in hundreds of districts across the U.S., relying on artificial intelligence and a team of moderators paid as little as $10 an hour to scan billions of student emails, chat messages and files each year in search of references to sex, drugs and violence.

Exploring Detroit's Largest Abandoned High School

San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) is changing its grading policies in an attempt to “make them more anti-racist.” The new grading removes “non-academic factors,” with the school district using the example of turning in homework late. “For months, the district has been working on multiple areas of its operations, including grading, in efforts to make them more anti-racist and equitable, partly in response to social justice protests that erupted over the summer in response to George Floyd’s death,” reported the San Diego Union-Tribune. Now, the school district’s new grading system will no longer take into account what the district...

A New Jersey high school student claims two teachers told him to remove a flag supporting President Donald Trump from his wall at home, calling the flag “unacceptable,� ABC 13 reported.  Anthony Ribeiro, a 17-year-old student at Toms River High School North in Toms River, New Jersey, wants an apology from the school after two teachers told him to remove the flag during remote classes, according to ABC 13.“He said, ‘If you’re not gonna take it down, it’s unacceptable, and I’m gonna have to ask you to leave the class for today.’ At that point, I waved goodbye, and I was out of...

The officials in charge of San Francisco's public schools are hard at work—not coming up with a plan to quickly reopen the schools, but to rename as many as 44 of them. As parents, teachers, and principals deal with the frustrations of distance learning, the San Francisco Unified School District recently asked them to brainstorm replacements for schools that are "inappropriately" named after problematic historical figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and even Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D–Calif.). "I don't think there is ever going to be a time when people are ready for this," Mark Sanchez, president...

Public concern about higher education is clearly widespread. The causes are many: ugly treatment of visiting speakers, a stifling political uniformity resulting in ideological extremism and hatred, and fringe radical ideas seeping out of the campuses into the wider world. Less publicly visible are numerous recent studies that tell us how little most recent graduates have benefited from higher education. They record astonishing deficiencies in reasoning, writing, reading, basic knowledge, and civics. But with all this, the public is still uncertain. Most see the symptoms but don’t quite know what to make of them, and so continue to send their...

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) is expected to teach Texas politics at Texas State University’s Department of Political Science in the Spring of 2021, according to the University Star. “Pending finalization of his hire, O’Rourke will join the department as an instructor teaching a synchronous online class,” the article said. Political Science Chair Ken Grasso told the paper O’Rourke gravitated toward Texas politics when the two discussed potential class subjects.

A French teacher who had recently shown students cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was beheaded outside his school on Friday, in what President Emmanuel Macron called an "Islamist terrorist attack". The assailant, whose identity has not been established, was shot by police as they tried to arrest him and later died of his injuries, police said. The attacker shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest") as police confronted him, a cry often heard in jihadist attacks, a police source said.

Students will no longer be graded based on a yearly average, or on how late they turn in assignments. Those are just some of the major grading changes approved this week by California's second-largest school district. The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) is overhauling the way it grades students. Board members say the changes are part of a larger effort to combat racism... Academic grades will now focus on mastery of the material, not a yearly average, which board members say penalizes students who get a slow start, or who struggle at points throughout the year. Another big change,...

Whites and non-whites training to be Residential Assistants at the University of Kentucky were segregated according to their race and put through different presentations. The separate trainings were provided to Young America’s Foundation through the organization’s Campus Bias Tip Line, which included emails and documents about the training. White RAs were sent to a “White Accountability Space” where they were given a document that listed 41 “common racist behaviors and attitudes of white people.” ... The person who alerted YAF to the segregation wished to remain anonymous and said that white students were required to have the document on their...

REXBURG, Idaho (NEXSTAR) – Officials at Brigham Young University’s Idaho campus are warning students that intentionally contracting COVID-19 is grounds for possible permanent dismissal, according to a statement on the school’s website. “BYU-Idaho is deeply troubled by accounts of individuals who have intentionally exposed themselves or others to COVID-19, with the hope of getting the disease and being paid for plasma that contains COVID-19 antibodies,” according to the statement. The university warned on Sept. 25 that it might have to close the campus if the school failed to stay under coronavirus thresholds laid out by Eastern Idaho Public Health. That...

A University of Illinois student was evicted from his dorm and fired from his job as a resident assistant after refusing to quarantine per orders of the Champaign-Urbana Public Health Department. He told CBS 2 in Chicago and Campus Reform that he has never tested positive for COVID-19 and that this is all a mistake. “I’m being penalized,” Xavier Josephs told CBS2. “I lost my RA position." “I pose no health risk to any student,” added Josephs, who is facing possible dismissal from the school after being notified by the Champaign Urbana Public Health Department that he had contact with...

While cultural debates have roiled primary and secondary education, the National Assessment of Educational Progress has been largely free of ideological conflict. Known as the “nation’s report card,” NAEP tests students in math and reading and, less often, in civics, U.S. history, and science. These tests are not high-stakes student assessments because the NAEP does not calculate individual scores; rather, it measures school-system performance by state and large districts, and, as such, it is the nation’s best indicator of trends in student learning. The NAEP’s current framework defines reading comprehension as “a dynamic cognitive process,” involving “Understanding written text”; “Developing...