Free Republic

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....

A lovely aphorism holds that education isn’t the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. But too often, neither are pails filled nor fires lit. One of the most bearish statistics for the future of the United States is this: Two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient in reading. Reading may be the most important skill we can give children. It’s the pilot light of that fire. Yet we fail to ignite that pilot light, so today some one in five adults in the United States struggles with basic literacy, and after more...

230,000 children who failed to show up for class when public schools reopened after the pandemic. It’s a tragedy without parallel in American history as many of the no-shows are very young — K through 3rd grade. Critical skills learned in early education were not taught to these kids, who are now hopelessly behind. ... Consider the fact that 65% of American fourth-grade students can barely read. This is a result of a radical shift to a new way of teaching children how to read. What was wrong with the old way? Well, it was old. ... What exactly are...

A student brought cotton balls to Diablo View Middle School allegedly to mock the celebrations of Black History Month, school officials said.

For Tiffany Sorya, the path to becoming a homeschooling tutor to celebrities and other one-percenters was hardly intuitive. During her first years at Portland State University she admits that she was a “horrible” student. But by the time she graduated she had turned things around and was making such high grades that friends would ask, “How did you go from failing O(rganic) Chemistry to acing O Chem?,” she recalls. For fun, she started tutoring friends who needed help. But when the now 36-year-old, first-generation Cambodian American with Instagram-chic style (she has over 306,000 followers) graduated and moved to Los Angeles,...

We should stop teaching history in our schools. The way history is now being taught leads to a racist society, perpetuates white privilege, and overlooks the contributions of women and minorities. I ask school districts to immediately remove history curricula, books, and materials that unfairly communicate history until suitable alternatives are developed. Enslaved people built our young nation and made possible an economy that would throw off the control of the most powerful country then on earth, Great Britain. But, oh, at what a price. According to Bennett Minton in The Washington Post, some schools across the country intend to...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insulted a Capitol Hill reporter after the journalist asked him to comment on the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “What do you think about the January 6 committee,” Scott Wong, a reporter for NBC News who previously worked at The Hill, asked Gingrich during a press scrum at the Capitol on Thursday.

According to the Center of the American Experiment, the changes will impact teacher licensure programs and “require aspiring educators to ‘demonstrate’ ideologically driven content in their coursework to obtain their teaching license.” This goes for educators who end up teaching at private schools, too. -snip- In another section on “planning for instruction,” the draft standards say a teacher should “create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empower learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.”

The District of Columbia does not appear to have a contingency plan for unvaccinated students, who are banned from attending schools in person this fall after the first twenty days, according to comments made by Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Thursday. During a press conference, Bowser, a Democrat, admitted there are no alternative options, including virtual learning, for students who cannot attend school due to the District’s vaccine mandate, meaning unvaccinated children will effectively be left without an education. Over 40% of blacks ages 12-17 are not vaccinated, according to city data. The Daily Signal asked Bowser what the plan...

The largest teachers’ union in the country recently proposed that its summer 2022 reading list for students include a book that defends the act of disrespecting the National Anthem by kneeling for it before sporting events. As reported by The Daily Caller, the National Education Association (NEA) lists the book “Why We Fly” on its website for suggested reading in August of 2022, as students prepare to return to school. The book includes marijuana use by teenagers and focuses on two cheerleaders who decide to kneel for the National Anthem after being inspired to do so by a football player...

In the fall of 2021, it appeared that Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, would rather easily defeat his Republican challenger, Glenn Youngkin. But the election turned dramatically once a number of parents voiced their opposition to the racially-themed material that was being taught in schools. They didn’t think it appropriate to tell students that America is an irredeemably racist country and that white people hold power and use it to oppress minorities. These parents, of all races, had found out that, despite official denials, concepts embedded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) had been smuggled into school curricula. At this...

Aguest at a private reception last week with Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee secretly recorded the event and then sent the recording to a local media outlet. News Channel 5 then ran a hit story about Arnn’s accurate remark that “teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” Selected 30-second clips from the two-hour recording that betrayed event-goers’ confidence were next quickly amplified in state media, including the state’s biggest leftist outlet, The Tennesseean. This pressure campaign on Thursday caused a Tennessee public school to drop its use of...

The Los Angeles Unified School District is training teachers and staff that "merit" and "individualism" are concepts rooted in "whiteness" that must be challenged in schools. LAUSD required all employees to undergo "implicit/unconscious bias training" guided by Tyrone Howard, a critical race theory advocate and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, prior to the 2021-2022 school year. The training materials, which were obtained by Fox News Digital through a California Public Records Act (PRA) request, instructed educators to work toward being "antiracist" by challenging whiteness at school, which Howard argued exists in the concepts of "merit" and "individualism."...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is suggesting that her city’s dramatic rise in carjackings since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is linked to students being kept away from classrooms with remote learning.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Pittsburgh Public Schools has informed families that several schools will be moving to remote learning today following a bridge collapse in the East End. “Due to the impact of a bridge collapse in the East End and high call-offs among bus drivers, all K-5, K-8 and 6-8 and Special Schools will transition to remote learning,” Pittsburgh Public Schools Director of Public Relations Ebony Pugh told KDKA in an email. High schools and 6-12 schools will continue in-person learning. The district will still operate on a two-hour delay schedule. However, Pittsburgh Public Schools transportation is canceled for those...

A parent in Arlington, Virginia, slammed the teachers’ union in the state by editing an error-ridden letter that demanded officials delay reopening schools and posted the corrected version on social media. “Hey @VEA4Kids, are you going to send out more of these grammar worksheets over break?” the parent wrote on Twitter. “My kids and I had a great time spotting errors! Did we find them all?” The parent rewrote the lead sentence, which includes strange descriptions and the incorrect style for the planned return to school date: “On behalf of the members of the Arlington Education Association, this dire expression...

frustrated because what you signed up for was for students to learn. And it just ended up being a conversation about points all the time.” These days, the Alhambra High School English teacher has done away with points entirely. He no longer gives students homework and gives them multiple opportunities to improve essays and classwork. The goal is to base grades on what students are learning, and remove behavior, deadlines and how much work they do from the equation. The changes Moreno embraced are part of a growing trend in which educators are moving away from traditional point-driven grading systems,...