Free Republic

Florida is doing what no blue-state classroom dares: forcing students to confront the actual body count of communism instead of romanticizing it. Starting this fall, every public school student from sixth grade onward will receive mandatory instruction on the history and evils of communism under standards signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The curriculum covers the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Revolution, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and the recent capture of Nicolás Maduro. It details the mass deaths under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Castro, the failure of collectivism, and the superiority of free enterprise and private property....

Kentucky middle school parents are furious over instructional packets teachers assigned their kids that were filled with AI slop like misspelled state names and a faulty table of elements, according to a report. The packet, handed out on the first day of class at Farnsley Middle School in Louisville, featured a US geography map with jaw-dropping flubs like Kentucky being mislabeled “Venecky” and Louisiana as “Lookoong,” according to local news station WDRB. “Mom, did you know that we live in Venecky?” Stacey Morris said her son joked to her on the drive home after his first day. She didn’t know...

Colorado state officials on Thursday morning released the results of spring 2023 K-12 achievement tests and the results are mixed -- suggesting that where students were developmentally when their learning was disrupted by the COVID pandemic may play a role in how well they're succeeding academically today. In the English Language Arts portion of the Colorado Measures of Academic Success for example, higher percentages of students in grades 5, 6 and 7 met or exceeded expectations than in 2022, but grades 3 and 4 saw drops or nominal gains. The CMAS tests students in grades 3-8, finding that across the...

Earlier this summer, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that 50 organizations would no longer receive grants for the teen pregnancy prevention program (TPP), including Planned Parenthood. A federal judge has now blocked that change, though the organizations won't begin receiving funding again yet. Key Takeaways: * In June, over 50 organizations, including Planned Parenthood, were informed that they would no longer receive TPP grants due to the inclusion of "sexually explicit" content in their program materials. * Planned Parenthood and other groups have been criticized for including age-inappropriate, graphic sexual content in their sexual education programs....

Every generation searches for answers. Young people have always challenged the status quo, questioned authority and sought a better future than the one they inherited. That impulse is not only understandable, but it is often essential to a healthy democracy. It is how societies reform, innovate and correct injustice.Yet one question has resurfaced with increasing frequency on college campuses, social media and in political discourse: Why are some young people embracing communism or openly expressing sympathy for socialist and communist ideas despite the overwhelming historical record of communist governments?The answer deserves more than slogans or political attacks. It deserves honesty,...

Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to take a position on a raging debate over standardized testing in University of California admissions — dismissing as “anecdotes” the alarming reports from college professors about students who can’t do basic math. The governor was asked at a Wednesday press conference in Hayward about an open letter from more than 1,200 UC professors, including Nobel prize winners and leading scientists, who warned of a “severe” crisis of incoming freshman who are unable to even do fractions, forcing educators to dumb down Calculus and other advanced courses. “Show me the data,” Newsom said. “I have feelings...

I am a Portland mother of three. My oldest son, now 26, attended Lewis Elementary and had such a positive experience there that my husband and I built our home only blocks from Lewis so we could send our two younger children there as well. Lewis wasn’t just our neighborhood school. It was the school our family already knew and trusted. I’ve lived my entire life in Portland, Oregon. I am also a Christian, and I believe parents have the right and the responsibility to know what their children are being taught. I never imagined that asking would get me...

The H-1B visa program is draining the incentive for complacent politicians to fix the broken K-12 system used by many millions of ordinary Americans, says Daron Acemoglu, a famous economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The educated elite “has given up on the education of Americans because they think that they can fill any skill gap with importing those skills [via the H-1B program], whether they are nurses, whether they’re doctors, whether they’re programmers. That’s the problem,” Acemoglu told Tyler Cowen, a zealously pro-migration economist at George Mason University. Acemoglu is an ethnic Armenian who used the H-1B program...

A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university — where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she’s forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions students. “Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard. Stankova — who rose through...

A podcast discussing AI in education from Hillsdale leader in K-12 education

Oregon State University requires undergraduate students who enrolled in summer 2025 or later to complete two “Difference, Power & Oppression” (DPO) courses as part of its Core Education curriculum. The university’s core education requirements include “Difference, Power & Oppression Foundations” and “Difference, Power & Oppression Advanced.” Many courses can fulfill each requirement. Professors must complete specialized training to teach DPO courses. In addition to “difference, power, and oppression,” participants in the DPO Academy learn about “feminist and critical pedagogies” and “fundamentals of curriculum transformation.” The description of the Advanced courses explains the reasoning for the requirement. “The inequitable distribution of...

*** The Times has been blasting a Trump administration plan to deregulate much of this quintessential Great Society program. Since its inception in 1966, Head Start has spent more than $240 billion in taxpayer dollars on early education and anti-poverty services for low-income children up to the age of five. Now at a median annual cost of $20,000 per child in Early Head Start (for infants, toddlers, and pregnant mothers) and $15,000 per each pre-K student, it imposes detailed requirements for class size—one teacher cannot supervise more than four two-year-olds, for example—medical screenings, and in-home visits.*** Last year, the White...

Those of us in the majority of Americans who have been deprived of an excellent education have never had more opportunities to remediate ourselves.Many Americans have assumed that if you want a serious education in history, philosophy, or literature, you must go to college, preferably a highly rated one. The Harvards, Yales, and Princetons of the world have theoretically been where the classics were taught, great ideas debated, and intellectual life was supposed to flourish.That assumption is beginning to change, and not just because of headlines like “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” The “academy” no longer has...

The full, updated American History and Civics Curriculum, which includes lesson planning prompts, assignments, and assessments Primary sources, images, and maps to support instruction Interactive, searchable flip books that make the material easy to navigate and share An online course that gives practical strategies for teaching American History with excellence

A Wake County lawmaker wants to prevent elementary school employees from dressing in ways that don't conform with their biological sex. State Rep. Erin Paré, R-Wake, in a post on her campaign Facebook page Monday night, floated the idea of a state law that would require sex-based professional attire for public-school employees. Mrs. Paré posted about the issue after hearing concerns from parents about the possibility of a transgender teacher in their southern Wake County elementary school, describing the teacher as “biological male, who dresses as a woman.” In a post Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter, Mrs. Paré added that...

The idea of the commencement speaker always seemed silly to me. They wait till the last moments of your education to bring in someone to inspire you. I would think it would be better to bring in someone on the FIRST day of school to get your head straight and on the path to success. What would you tell a student on the first day of school?

A six-year-old autistic boy was suspended from a school in Georgia after he bit his sandwich into the shape of a gun and pointed it at his classmate, his family said. John Medina, a first-grader at Sara Harp Minter Elementary School in Fayette County, was kicked out last March after administrators saw what happened, according to his parents and school records, Atlanta News First reported. Kristin Medina, the boy's mother, recalled the school calling her and saying her son was not welcome back after the lunchtime incident. 'And you're just like baffled,' Kristin told the outlet, stating that she believes...

They’re bot for teacher. A rural upstate New York school district will be one of the first in the nation to bring a humanoid robot into the classroom. The Salamanca City Central School District, located on Seneca Nation territory, will be introducing $57,000 AI-powered “Sally” in high school classes in September as a teaching assistant, it announced last week. “Sally” will have brown hair, latex skin and will be able to move its arms and hands — but won’t be able to cruise around the classroom since her legs don’t move. “It’s exciting but also a bit nerve wracking,” superintendent...

Body camera footage depicting a disturbing encounter between a Florida college student and police officers has gone viral after a cop appeared to misgender her. Jarrett Vick, 27, was arrested and charged with battery on law enforcement, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct on February 5 last year, according to the Orange County court docket. However, the student pleaded not guilty, and the case appeared to be dismissed. A year and a half later, Inside the Blue TV, a YouTube account that shares police body camera footage, posted the shocking encounter between Vick and officers. Officers were responding to reports of...

What Students Read In 1776 | The Books That Shaped The Revolution Have you ever wondered which books shaped the American founding or ignited the American Revolution? What were the students at Harvard and Yale studying in 1776? In this historical analysis, I cover the books the founders would have studied at Harvard or Yale and provide a breakdown of those that would have shaped their thinking. From John Adams, Nathan Hale, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, to the famous Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Warren, and Sam Adams, we learn what the founders were reading on the eve of the American Revolution....