Free Republic

Hands-on skills are staging a comeback at leading-edge districts, driven by high college costs and demand for more career choices.. In America’s most surprising cutting-edge classes, students pursue hands-on work with wood, metals and machinery, getting a jump on lucrative old-school careers. School districts around the U.S. are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. They are betting on the future of manual skills overlooked in the digital age, offering vocational-education classes that school officials say give students a broader view of career prospects with or without college. With higher-education...

Edgar was a pain in the neck. Or maybe we should say, it was difficult for some of the teachers at Edgar’s high school to appreciate his distinct learning style. Edgar was disruptive. He had a smart mouth and tried to talk his way out of everything, including his poor grades in core classes. Today, barely out of high school, Edgar is the lead foreman for a California-based union carpentry company that designs and builds upscale retail shops for high-end clients like Louis Vuitton. He is well established on a lucrative career path at a time when some of his...

A California teenager accused of being behind a flurry of swatting incidents across the country targeting schools and the homes of FBI agents has been arrested in connection with a swatting attempt at a Florida mosque last year, according to court documents filed by state prosecutors. Alan Winston Filion, 17, was arrested last month at his home in Lancaster, California, and extradited to Florida on Tuesday, court documents say. He was charged as an adult on four felonies, including charges related to false reporting that triggered law enforcement response. Filion entered a not guilty plea to the charges. He is...

BALTIMORE — The latest round of state test results is raising alarm in Baltimore City Schools. Project Baltimore found that 40% of Baltimore City high schools, where the state exam was given, did not have any students score proficient in math. Not one student. “This is educational homicide,” said Jason Rodriguez, deputy director of People Empowered by the Struggle, a Baltimore-based nonprofit. In 2021, the group held rallies calling on Baltimore City Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises to resign over low test scores, falling graduation rates, and a lack of transparency. Now, after seeing what Project Baltimore discovered, Rodriguez is...

Esparto High School near Sacramento confirmed it canceled a game after it said six players tested positive for COVID-19. Two California high schools have confirmed that they canceled football games because of COVID-19 cases among students. Esparto High School near Sacramento confirmed that it canceled a game after it stated that six players tested positive for COVID-19. It also stated that multiple players were also injured and that it didn't have enough players for a game. This comes as there have been concerns that virus-related rules might be reimplemented in the coming months. ... Hundreds of miles away, a high...

The White House made a target of Gov. Ron DeSantis again after his administration rejected a proposal to teach critical race theory in Florida high schools. On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “Unfortunately, in Florida, extremist so-called leaders ban books, block history classes, and prevent teachers from freely discussing who they are and who they love. Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.”On Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed blocking the College Board’s Advanced Placement African-American history class “is incomprehensible. … If you think about the study of black Americans, that...

Cherry Creek School District will no longer highlight valedictorians at graduation because ‘learning is not a competition’

Men are the vaccine. An injection of masculine, male energy can improve every problem plaguing America. We can flatten the curve overnight. Southwood High School in Louisiana took the jab earlier this month. After three straight days of on-campus violence and 23 students arrested, a group of 40 fathers injected themselves into the school. The violence stopped the day "Dads on Duty" started walking the hallways and greeting students as they entered the building. CBS Evening News spotlighted the dads on Friday in a two-minute story. The story spread virally throughout the weekend. Even on masculinity-hostile Twitter, the story was...

The Jefferson fiasco underscores how activist school leaders and alumni, from California to Massachusetts, are conspiring to recklessly overhaul school policies, education standards, and curriculum this year.FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. – After a crusade by educational arsonists targeting the nation’s No. 1 high school, America’s meritocracy is about to go up in flames. The Fairfax County School Board is set to vote Thursday night to gut the race-blind, merit-based admissions testing process at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. T.J. is a state-chartered magnet school legislated to serve academically gifted and advanced students. The school board plans to replace...

DOWNERS GROVE, IL - The Illinois Tollway, in partnership with Blick Art Materials and MB Real Estate (MBRE), is inviting high school art students to participate in the 2019 Tollway Map Cover Art Contest for a shot to land on the cover art of the official 2019 Illinois Tollway Map. Recognizing the Illinois Tollway's commitment to diversity, the theme for the 2019 contest calls on student artists to submit artwork that illustrates the importance of diversity and inclusion. Areas of focus for the 2019 Tollway Map Cover Art Contest may include, but are not limited to, the following themes: Diversity...

An alarming discovery coming out of City Schools. Project Baltimore analyzed 2017 state testing data and found one-third of High Schools in Baltimore, last year, had zero students proficient in math. But that’s not all we found. In the midst of that troubling number, there are some bright spots. Most mornings, at Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys, start the same way – with students chanting the school’s motto in the gym. “There’s an urgency about the work we’re doing,” said Jack Pannell, the school’s founder. That urgency was born out of need. “Nine out of ten black boys in Baltimore...

New arts program will connect student artists to PA Turnpike New partnership, Art Sparks, will develop public art created by local students HUMMELSTOWN, PA. (March 30, 2017) — Today, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) and Pennsylvania Council for the Arts (PCA) announced a new partnership that connects student artists with art being developed for stops along the PA Turnpike. The new program, called Art Sparks, will utilize the PCA’s Arts in Education residency program to develop student-created, original pieces of art for Turnpike service plazas across the 550-mile system. These public art pieces will be on display in service plazas...

There's a reason why nobody really noticed when major media outlets dropped their education beats: They weren't doing much to begin with, other than recycling public school press releases. You can get a flavor of this by perusing the articles that the so-called mainstream media occasionally publish on education. For example, the Associated Press (AP), in a story that got a lot of pick up, reported on March 16, 2017 that "Teaching current events in the age of President Donald Trump has become fraught with peril for some educators who have interjected their personal political beliefs into the classroom." "A...

To get to the truth behind these "hate incident" reports, one needs to understand the shoddy methodology the SPLC used to collect data and create its reports Unlike the rest of the Left, which is currently obsessed with Russians, Russians everywhere, the disciplined, prolific fabulists of the Southern Poverty Law Center have stayed admirably on-message. Morris Dees and his neo-Marxist minions laboring behind the thick walls of the group’s “poverty palace” in Montgomery, Alabama, continue to push the line that the greatest threat to America is white men.

The giddy 13-year-old boys oohed and aahed as they stared down the black shotgun barrels and aimed at clay targets they imagined whizzing through the air. “You guys are welcome to test any of these out,” said Dusty Minke, a sales agent for Browning, as the teens elbowed each other for spots at his kiosk. “We’ve actually had a couple of kids who did so good on the test range that they were like, ‘Can I use this for my rounds?’ We let ‘em, and their scores went up — and they’ll hopefully go and buy one.” It was day...

For years, Sharon High School parents had help finding their sons and daughters among the sea of gowns on graduation day: boys all sported deep maroon, while girls wore pristine white. But last year, students approached principal Jose Libano with a proposal: end the tradition, which alienated some students. Now, all graduates wear maroon. Around the region, longstanding customs of assigning graduation colors by sex are giving way to new realities, driven by transgender student activists and supportive educators and classmates of all stripes. The change reflects a growing awareness that simple categories of male and female do not fit...

1. School for the Talented and Gifted. Dallas, Texas. For the fourth consecutive year, the School for the Talented and Gifted, a Dallas magnet school known as TAG, was ranked as the No. 1 public high school in the country. BASIS Scottsdale in Arizona took second place in the national rankings for the second year in a row 3. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Alexandria, Virginia. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia moved up one spot to No. 3 4. Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology. Lawrenceville, Georgia. Jefferson traded places with...

A World History teacher in Maryland’s La Plata High School is forcing his students to study Islam, the so-called “religion of peace.” When Marine Kevin Wood learned his daughter was being force fed “The 5 Pillars of Islam” in her government run school, he was outraged and brought the matter to the attention of school officials requesting that his daughter be excused from preparing a three page assignment on Islamic beliefs. Now it is Wood who is being forced to defend himself and has been barred from even entering his child’s school. Wood’s objection should have led to an immediate...

Today, September 20, 2012, the winners of the 2012-2013 Catholic High School Honor Roll competition were announced by The Cardinal Newman Society. Since 2004, the Honor Roll has recognized excellence in Catholic identity, academics and civic education at Catholic high schools across the United States. The top 50 schools are recognized for overall excellence, and other schools receive honors for special recognition in particular categories. This year seven schools were recognized for excellence in Catholic identity, six schools for academics, five schools for civic education, and five schools for two of the three categories. “Since competition began in 2004, the...

A pair of professors from Penn State found out that most high school teachers do not teach evolution as a proven scientific fact and the duo don’t like it one bit. “Creationism has lost every major U. S. federal court case for the past 40 years, and state curricular standards have improved,” Michael D. Berkman and Eric Plutzer asserted in the January 28, 2011 issue of Science magazine. “But considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America’s classrooms.” Berkman and Plutzer based their conclusions on research drawn from the National Survey...