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Federal agents served a search warrant on Thursday at the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School in Midland, the largest cyber school in the state with more than 11,000 students. The Department of Justice would not say what agents with the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education were seeking there or at least three other locations where warrants were served. In a statement, the Justice Department said the Beaver County school, founded in 2000, “is not a current target of this investigation.” Founder Nick Trombetta, 57, could not be reached for comment. On June 30, he stepped down...

For more than 40 years, Mona McNee has been fighting the good fight on behalf of intelligent reading instruction. She is the author of "Step By Step" (a phonics program) and "The Great Reading Disaster" (with Alice Coleman, 2007, 335 pages), which chronicles the incompetence of the UK's Education Establishment. I always think of Mona McNee as the Patron Saint of Reading.Mona has recently prepared a booklet called "Why Billy can't read," which sums up her message in 30 pages. You can find a pdf of this booklet, and as well her free phonics program, on phonics4free.org (link below). Mona...

This dad wired his Autistic son because he was told that he was violent. The teacher and aids abuse the child and even called him a "b@stard". It makes me sick. Union teacher has tenure, aide was fired.

There have been many frauds of historic proportions — for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff's hoax has made headlines. But the biggest hoax of the past two generations is still going strong — namely, the hoax that statistical differences in outcomes for different groups are due to the way other people treat those groups. The latest example of this hoax is the joint crusade of...

Marie Antoinette, on hearing that French peasants had no bread to eat, suggested, “Let them eat cake.” This quip perfectly captured the haughty indifference which many people attributed to the French monarchy. A few years later, she was punished for her hauteur: execution by guillotine. The famous quote was probably never uttered. Real or not, it’s a handy symbol for an arrogant elite, indifferent to the suffering of the people. When you read in the newspaper that the US has 50 million functional illiterates, the disdainful queen should flash into your mind.During the 1920’s, the American population was moving toward...

CONCORD, Calif. — Instead of beating the bell between classes at Mount Diablo High, senior Charles Campos often finds himself waiting frantically for a chance to use a rare unlocked restroom on the sprawling campus. Relief has been hard to come by since beleaguered Principal Kate McClatchy closed all but one boys and girls' bathroom to the 1,400 students last year. Although McClatchy unlocked a second set of restrooms this week, the dearth of commodes may violate the state's education code. She refused to say why she did it, but district trustee Gary Eberhart said he's been told it's because...

[MORE ABOUT READING, SPECIFICALLY, THAT SO-CALLED BALANCED LITERACY IS ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE LONG-RUNNING HOAX:] So here’s the deal. The same people who lied to us about reading for 70 years now want us to believe they are finally telling the truth. They said that English isn’t phonetic, that children don’t need the alphabet and the sounds, that children need only to look at words and memorize the shapes. All this was utter nonsense. They further said that if children didn’t recognize a word (which they typically didn’t as it’s hard work to memorize a word by its shape), they...

About 15 percent of black students in St. Paul were suspended at least once last year, compared with 3 percent of whites. To address the problem, the district decided in 2009 to spend about $450,000 of $58 million it received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to institute the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) program. The program requires administrators and teachers to periodically evaluate their school rules and determine which ones call for suspensions and which call for lesser punishments. They're also encouraged to be more explicit about what is expected of students in order to be successful...

CHANDLER, Ariz. - Amy Furman, a seventh-grade English teacher, roams among 31 students sitting at their desks or on the floor. They are studying Shakespeare’s “As You Like It’’ - but not in any traditional way. In this technology-centric classroom, students are bent over laptops, some blogging or building Facebook pages from the perspective of Shakespeare’s characters. One student compiles a song list from the Internet, picking a tune by the rapper Kanye West to express the emotions of Shakespeare’s lovelorn Silvius. The class, and the Kyrene School District as a whole, offer what some see as a utopian vision...

SHELTON -- It began as a simple gesture. Shelton High School senior James Tate just wanted to make his good friend, Sonali Rodrigues, feel special. So instead of the usual way of asking her to the senior prom, Tate and two friends went to the high school campus in the middle of the night and posted 12-inch tall, cardboard letters on the outside of the building -- at the main entrance. The message that many saw when they arrived to school Friday, read: "Sonali Rodrigues, Will you go to prom with me? HMU Tate." She said yes. "It took a...

In his five-page response to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools dated April 28, Superintendent Fred Sanderson states he has “genuine concerns” about the Cobb Board of Education’s ability to “govern effectively.” Sanderson’s letter, which was obtained by the Journal through an Open Records Request, addressed allegations about the school board’s ethics and leadership. The allegations against the board were sent in a letter addressed to Sanderson by Mike Bryans, the state director of AdvancED and SACS, on March 29. Sanderson had 30 days to respond to the accreditation agency. On the lightning-rod issue of newly elected board members...

Four boys at the Hickory Middle School in Chesapeake, Virginia were suspended and may be expelled for handling a baggie full of oregano at the school. The ill-fated prank was held to be “unacceptable mockery of the school’s ‘zero tolerance policy’” by the school administration. “While oregano isn’t a banned substance, per se, I mean we use it home-ec classes, placing it in a small plastic bag and passing it to another student is the same thing a student would do if it were,” said Vice-Principal Jesse Twitman. “It’s an act of disrespect and defiance toward school authority. If there’s...

To put a child through 15,000 hours of Godless, Christless, Holy Spiritless, no-Bible, non-Christian “education” (K through 12) is sin and ignores what has been said by many of the greatest teachers of the Reformed faith. A Godless “education” is not bringing children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Such an “education” is not “for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31) — or which we are commanded to do everything. ... Here's a link to the rest of this page, rich in quotes from such luminaries as

While San Francisco schools have been squeezing every dime out of their dwindling budgets, the city's school board has increased its own budget each of the past four years, spending more on travel to conferences, taking taxis around the city and paying for a board member's babysitter.All told, the board has increased spending by 28 percent over the past four years, which includes the added cost of televising board meetings as well as increases in staff salaries and benefits, according to 600 pages of public records obtained by The Chronicle.In each of those years, the board failed to stay within...

Parents at Coconut Grove Elementary School are calling for the ouster of Principal Eva N. Ravelo this week after she told a parent in an e-mail to "eat sh-- and die." The controversy, which is now under review by the Miami-Dade County school district's central office, started Monday. Abigail DuBearn, a member of the school's Educational Excellence School Advisory Committee, or EESAC, had asked Ravelo and other council members whether student representatives of the committee "could be notified today and be invited to attend and participate'' at Monday's meeting. Ravelo, 44, then replied to DuBearn's e-mail with the message: "Advise...

Republicans love to bash Education Minnesota, claiming the statewide teachers union and its powerful lobbying force essentially control the Democratic Party. But this legislative session, the union is alienating even some of its DFL allies. Observers say relationships are strained because of the union's resistance to proposed reforms — particularly bringing in new teachers and stabilizing the statewide pension for educators. "I'm just absolutely frustrated with some of the stances they're taking on the issues," said DFL Rep. Marsha Swails, who is an English teacher at Woodbury High School. "Maybe all those folks in the Education Minnesota building are a...

Candidates for certification to teach in public schools in Texas are being told that they will be held accountable for any "heterosexist" leanings and must become agents working to change society, according to one candidate who was alarmed by the demands. The applicant, who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions, told WND part of the teachings on multiculturalism required him to read several online postings about the issue inside the education industry. One warns that "teachers and administrators must be held accountable for practices deemed to be racist, sexist, heterosexist, classist, or in any other way discriminatory." And a second...

In this age of political correctness, a college student's best friend is FIRE -- the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Since 1999, FIRE has safeguarded the civil rights of students across the ideological spectrum -- winning victories at 121 colleges and universities, bringing an end to 81 unconstitutional or repressive policies, and benefiting 2.7 million students. Now, FIRE is riding to the rescue of students at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where a heavy-handed attempt at thought control is underway. The Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group of the U's College of Education and Human Development has...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is demanding that the Lewiston (Maine) School District allow seventh-grader Nasra Aden to pray in school at the regularly designated times for Islamic daily prayers and in the regularly prescribed prostrated posture. The District has not been accommodating in-school prayers under the apprehension that prayers are not permitted in public schools. CAIR said it cannot accept the District’s insistence that any praying be done silently and unobtrusively. “Islam is a very vocal faith,” CAIR spokesman, Runha Amuk said. “God commands that we praise him frequently and openly. To demand silence is an insult to...

Two separate incidents of potential school yard mayhem were narrowly averted by decisive action on the part of public school officials in New York and Delaware. In Delaware’s Christina School District, 1st grade student Zachary Christie was spotted eating lunch with an unauthorized Boy Scout mess kit tool—a combination knife/fork/spoon. Disaster was avoided when the vice-principal quickly disarmed and immobilized the child. The school’s “zero tolerance” policy calls for the offending 6-year old student to be sentenced to 45 days in reform school. School officials rebuffed arguments that the child’s age and the circumstances should be taken into consideration. “This...