Free Republic

If you send your kids off to high school thinking they will learn how to diagram sentences and write competently, you may want to check their English requirements. John F. Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has other ideas about learning English that include gender-neutral pronouns, discussions of sexuality, and anti-white propaganda. A student posted an assignment to social media, handed out by teacher Emily Thomson of Kennedy High's English department, that detailed "power and privilege" in America which, according to the assignment, names "U.S. born," "white people," "Christians," "middle, owning class," "heterosexuals," "men," and "veterans" as the oppressors...

May 1, 2008 Dear xxxxxx, The 2008 Legislative Session officially ended on April 23rd. A special session on transportation will follow. We will need to work in that session to protect the General Fund and make sure that dollars that should go to schools don't go to roads But, we can reflect and hopefully learn from the most difficult 2008 session. VEA bills fared poorly; in many cases because there was no money. There is new money for education, on a per-pupil basis 7.4% in 2008-09 and 1.5% in 2009-10. Considering the budget constraints, this is remarkable and reflective of...

HB 60 School divisions, local; requires 65% of each education dollar to be spent in classroom Teachers should get behind this strongly!! As classrooms only get about 50% of school spending, this is a 30% spending increase to the classrooms.....WITHOUT raising taxes....a win/win for everybody.

Marine Corps Sgt. Zach Richardson survived Iraq, but not Carson Middle School in Greensboro. When Richardson walked into the Greene County school last week, he expected to meet some of the sixth-graders who had written to him during his seven-month deployment. Instead, he was shown the door, coming under the scrutiny of a principal enforcing a policy that requires prior approval for visiting speakers. Principal Ulrica Corbett told teacher Matthew Lund, the Marine's host and former college roommate, to escort Richardson from the campus. On Wednesday, after the incident had gotten attention across the nation, the superintendent of Greene County...

<p>An early draft of the Communist Manifesto had a plank calling for the state to raise children, but it was removed from the final version for being too controversial. It has resurfaced in Arizona 156 years later.</p> <p>The state has done such a superb job in educating kiddies that it now wants to expand socialized education to all-day kindergarten. Proponents claim that early childhood indoctrination, er, development is necessary to lower the dropout rate and improve academic performance. In addition to all-day kindergarten, they also want the state to provide free pre-kindergarten. Free diapers and strained carrots will be next.</p>

One of the most powerful and insidious lobbying groups in the nation is the K-12 public education establishment, which feeds on the concerns of parents about their children, paints state legislators into a corner by threatening to portray them as not caring about children, and bombards the mainstream media with folderol about the need to increase public education spending -- for the children, of course. Since you won't read an expose in your local newspaper about the deviousness and power of the education lobby and how it is joined at the hip with leftist organizations, this article in intended to...

<p>NORTH PHOENIX - It's one of the great school-finance mysteries: How can a district spend millions building a fancy new school but in the same year lay off school psychologists and assistant principals?</p> <p>The answer and more will be revealed in a series of workshops beginning next month for Deer Valley parents and taxpayers. School officials are calling it "Deer Valley University," and in six 90-minute meetings, they aim to break down complicated finance formulas and explain things such as voter-approved bond money and why state facilities money used for construction projects cannot be used to hire staff.</p>

<p>SCOTTSDALE - Sequoya Elementary School parents plan to show up at today's Scottsdale Parent Council meeting and tonight's school board meeting to show their support for Principal Maureen Booth.</p> <p>The Scottsdale School Board last week started the process to fire Booth, saying she altered student test scores to get incentive money for teachers. They also say she falsified student enrollment counts during the 1998-99 and 1999-00 school years and failed to appropriately discipline an employee in 1999 who made inappropriate overtures to a fifth-grade student.</p>

The results from the 2003 Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards test were published on September, 3, 2003, showing that 79 percent of eighth-graders failed the math portion of the test, 45 percent failed the reading portion and 54 percent failed the writing portion. The AIMS test did not include the following questions but should have. Question: You have 100 Asians, 100 Hispanics, 100 Blacks, 100 Anglos and 100 Italians. They all have equal family income and attend schools with equal per-pupil spending. Who will get the best test scores? Answer: The 100 Asians. Question: Why do Asians get the best...

On August 1, 2003, The Arizona Republic carried a front-page story on the good news of Stanford 9 scores increasing in Arizona. But instead of simply reporting the facts about the scores, the story added the opinion that school spending is inadequate in the state. Was the story part of an ongoing public school propaganda campaign to increase per-pupil spending, or was it balanced reporting? You be the judge after reading the following. Please let me know what you conclude. First, as backdrop, my belief and bias is that the establishment media deliberately misrepresent the facts in much of what...

<p>NEW ORLEANS - Apparently the truths in the Declaration of Independence aren't so self-evident.</p> <p>When Rep. Roger Wicker asked high school seniors in his Mississippi district to name some unalienable rights, he got silence. So the Republican congressman gave the advanced-placement history students some help.</p>

<p>Any Arizona school that expelled four students within two years because they brought guns on campus could be labeled "persistently dangerous," the Arizona State Board of Education decided Monday.</p> <p>But the frightening label, created by a new federal law, is unlikely to be used in Arizona.</p>

When students enter college, their English instructors want them to have a good grasp of grammar and usage skills. Unfortunately, high school English teachers don't consider those skills important, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. A national curriculum survey by ACT, the company that creates the widely-used college admissions test, found that grammar and usage were the least likely to be taught at the 700 high schools surveyed. Among the high school teachers surveyed, 90 percent said they taught sentence structure, writing strategy, organization, and style, and 83 percent taught punctuation. Only 69 percent said they taught grammar and usage. College teachers...

<p>Police are accusing Tempe Union High School District officials of repeatedly ignoring pleas for cooperation in a teacher sexual misconduct investigation and refusing to hand over key evidence.</p> <p>But an attorney for the district says school administrators are stunned by the accusations in a police report issued Tuesday, insisting they have cooperated fully with investigators.</p>

<p>It's the type of behavior one would expect in a bar, not a classroom.</p> <p>The Arizona Department of Education investigated 130 claims of sexual offense by a teacher or administrator in 2002, more than double the number of claims in 1995. Out of the 769 reports from 1995 to 2002, 128 resulted in disciplinary action.</p>

Educational use: CDs teach Joliet students math and reading JOLIET - Sony PlayStations are usually associated with video games, but students at Marshall and Kelly elementary schools are finding a more educational use for them this year. Several classes of students at both schools are taking part in a new program that loans out Sony PlayStations to students for the school year. Instead of video games, the students receive educational CDs with math and reading lessons, said Danielle Gustafson, director of technology for the Joliet Grade School District. "The kids are very excited about using them," Gustafson said.Before the PlayStations...

Memphis City Schools dominate state probation list By Aimee Edmondson edmondson@gomemphis.com August 23, 2002 NASHVILLE - Forty-six Memphis City Schools were placed on probation by the State Board of Education today, bringing them one step closer to a possible state takeover in two years if they don't show adequate improvement. Friday marked the first time the state put schools on probation. Last year, it named 64 Memphis schools to a list of low performers that risked being placed on probation if they didn't improve. Memphis schools make up the bulk of the state probation list, with far more than any...

   West Valley student gets diploma after threat of lawsuit By Monica Alonzo-DunsmoorThe Arizona RepublicJune 10, 2002 12:00:00 A threatening letter from her lawyer and an opportunity to retake an exam hours before graduation helped a West Valley high school student get her diploma last month.The Sunrise Mountain senior failed a required English class but graduated with her class despite her teacher's objections after retaking and passing the test five hours before the ceremony.The girl received her diploma, but her English teacher, Elizabeth Joice, wasn't there to see it. Joice didn't attend the May 23 ceremony.On May 22, Stan Massad,...