Free Republic

On October 1, 2024, Leandra Blades, president of the Placentia-Yorba Linda (Calif.) Board of Education appeared at a candidate forum at Travis Ranch School in Yorba Linda and recounted what she and her colleagues achieved over the past four years. A former police officer who was reluctant to seek elective office, Blades recalled how she was persuaded to run for a seat on the Board of Education by concerned parents who wanted “a voice in their children’s education.” So she threw her hat into the ring and was eventually elected to the Board in 2020. At the time, the schools...

For almost 400 years America has seen its citizens educating their children and themselves, though both the scope, structure and quality of education has changed somewhat during that time. For much of the history of the United States, education of children took place primarily at home, often along with private schools for some, and locally managed and supported schools for others. Education included the general ethos of Christianity and Biblical morality as well as academic subjects. The New England Primer and later, the nation-wide McGuffey's Readers (120+ million copies) were the primary instruments of education, and in helping to form...

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned world leaders that the coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented disruption in education across the world and impacting millions of children. Guterres’s remarks came in a recorded video released on Tuesday along with a 26-page policy brief over “education during COVID-19 and beyond.” “The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the largest disruption in education ever. In mid-July, schools were closed in more than 160 countries, affecting over 1 billion students. At least 40 million children worldwide have missed out on education in their critical pre-school year,” Guterres said. The U.N. secretary-general said that...

One would have to be living under a rock to ignore the sickening carnage of October 7, the latest outrage in a horrific terrorism campaign that Hamas has been waging against innocent civilians in Israel for over thirty years. In 1993, all but a tiny sliver of American society, the containing its most radical and foreign elements, recognized Hamas as a monumental evil that must be eradicated without equivocation or regret.But thanks to the toxic brew of mass immigration and K-12 indoctrination, the America of 2023 is a very different place. Now, college professors applaud bestial acts of rape, murder,...

Barely six months after South Carolina lawmakers approved legislation allowing K-12 students to customize their education, the state affiliate of the National Education Association is attempting to force children to remain in assigned public schools. The South Carolina Education Association is the latest in a long line of education special-interest groups that oppose parental rights and have sought to limit students’ learning options through litigation. National teachers unions and their state affiliates have filed suits against parental choice in education in Arizona, Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, Puerto Rico—the list goes on. Fortunately for children, the unions and other lobbying groups...

Laura Jackson became seriously concerned about her daughter and math when the girl was in third grade. While many of her classmates flew through multiplication tests, Jackson's daughter relied on her fingers to count, had difficulty reading clocks and burst into tears when asked at home to practice math flashcards. At school, the 9-year-old had been receiving help from a math specialist for two years, with little improvement. "We hit a point where she was asking me, 'Mom, am I stupid?'" Jackson recalled. One day, when having lunch with a friend, Jackson heard about a disorder known as dyscalculia. She...

The current education system is changing and many are of the opinion that it's not for the better. Parents are reconsidering their decision to send their children to school and are opting for homeschooling as a more convenient and quality alternative. A former teacher, who goes by @mindfull.mentor on TikTok, smartly shared a series of videos explaining what children would be missing out on if they were homeschooled. Contrary to the train of thought, the videos call out the exhausting practices and systems schools follow, indicating why homeschooling is the better pick. The former teacher said, “If you decide to...

Claims that a California school told students that white people had "no culture" have sparked controversy, with a parent expressing outrage about the alleged incident. The mother of one of the students reported the claims to the San Ramon Valley Unified School District last week, saying that her daughter was taught about white privilege during a choir class and was told by an "equity teacher" that white people have no culture. She added: "During this, the teacher's discussion with the class, she stated that white people had no culture and any culture that they did have was stolen. She gave...

Ongoing work by researchers into how aspartame affects the brain has linked the artificial sweetener with learning and memory deficits in mice. The offspring of male mice that consumed aspartame at levels equivalent to much lower doses than those deemed safe by the U.S. FDA demonstrated spatial learning and memory deficits over the course of a controlled 16-week exposure. The most recent research is an extension of a study which linked aspartame consumption to anxiety in mice, with effects extending up to two generations. "The thing we noticed here, unlike the anxiety (research), this went only one generation. It was...

A new report from the National Opportunity Project reveals that school districts across America – in red and blue states alike – are now considering teachers’ social and political views alongside instructional qualifications during the hiring process. -snip New research makes clear that public school districts nationwide are prioritizing adherence to woke ideologies when determining who can teach our children. Here is what NOP found: Applicants in the Denver Public School system for an elementary art teacher position must: “Lead for racial and educational excellence and work to dismantle systems of oppression and inequity in our community…” In Georgia, City...

In this video I discuss the new grading standards being pushed in Portland Public Schools which would essentially destroy education completely.

A divided Georgia school board upheld a decision to fire a fifth-grade teacher who read a picture book to her students about gender identity amid ongoing discussions nationwide about the content kids are exposed to in the classroom. Katherine Rinderle, who has been employed as a teacher for a decade, read the book My Shadow is Purple to her students at Due West Elementary School in Cobb County in March, prompting complaints from parents. The book uses colors to represent the concept of gender identity, as the main character's shadow is purple, but for others, their shadow is blue or...

TEMECULA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California school board has voted to approve a social studies curriculum for elementary students, resolving a dispute with Gov. Gavin Newsom over lesson plans that mentioned the state’s first openly gay elected public official.

The refrain across much of the Deep South for decades was “Thank God for Mississippi!” That’s because however abysmally Arkansas or Alabama might perform in national comparisons, they could still bet that they wouldn’t be the worst in America. That spot was often reserved for Mississippi. So it’s extraordinary to travel across this state today and find something dazzling: It is lifting education outcomes and soaring in the national rankings. With an all-out effort over the past decade to get all children to read by the end of third grade and by extensive reliance on research and metrics, Mississippi has...

If someone punches back once after being poked at repeatedly for months and months without consequence, who should get in trouble? Allison Arnall Davis recently went viral after her son Drew received out-of-school suspension for beating up another boy. On Facebook, Allison explains that she's not mad at Drew for doing what he did because the boy Drew beat up has been tormenting him for months. Her son finally fought back against the bully who has been torturing and threatening him while the school has sat back and done nothing. Allison's post has prompted an impassioned discussion about bullying, school...

There are some students who don’t really speak, who don’t really engage, who don’t show signs of confidence in the classroom. But when that particular child finds a special thing and is energized, and talkative, and proud of what they’ve made or what they’ve learned — a teacher knows he or she has made a real difference in that kid’s life. Anja Cleveland works with fourth and fifth graders to construct wood products at Danielsville Elementary School, and she said she’s seeing that happen on a regular basis, the brightness in the eyes, the silent child speaking, the energy that...

I reviewed five of the most commonly used AP U.S. History textbooks that cover all the way through the Trump presidency. Used every day by high school students in college-level history classes, the books all contain anti-Trump editorializing, false narratives, and employ selective editing to leave out significant stories that occurred during the Trump presidency. The books all appear on the College Board’s list of textbooks that meet the AP Course Audit curricular requirements. Nearly all of the textbooks claim “Russian meddling” was responsible for the 2016 election of Donald Trump, despite that narrative being debunked through multiple studies and...

For decades IQs were climbing in the Western World. It was called the “Flynn effect.”Average IQs were defined as 100 in each succeeding iteration of the IQ test, as by definition the average was normed to 100. But if you rescored earlier IQ tests based upon prior norms, the average IQ would have increased by about 15 points or one standard deviation.In other words, if you took an IQ test in 1942 and scored 100, by today’s scoring you would have an IQ of 86.That is, until the past 10 or so years. In the past 10 years, IQs have...

Is the humanities degree going the way of the dodo bird? An article in The New Yorker, “The End of the English Major,” posits as a eulogy for the bustling humanities programs of yesteryear, citing dwindling investment and a generational shift toward science and technology and degrees that can be monetized. Faculty members at the Graduate Center, however, say that while the article is a clarion call, the death of the humanities is exaggerated. The desire and need to study the human past remain strong. Scholars shared their views on the current state and future of the humanities: Tanya Agathocleous,...

California school district is using lesson plans designed by its Black Lives Matter Task Force (BLM) to help teach 7th graders about their implicit bias during Black History Month, according to the curriculum obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. In an effort to address “issues related to racial justice,” Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) requires 7th through 12th grade teachers to use a curriculum created by the schools’ Black Lives Matter Task Force, a coalition dedicated to creating equity for African American students and staff within the district, according to screenshots of the curriculum obtained by the DCNF....