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Someone I know is going to be working as a teacher's assistant in a high-school U.S. History class. She is wondering if there are some good online sources that she can use that haven't been twisted by people with a leftist agenda. Would anyone be able to point me to some?

President Barack Obama is backing a controversial campaign by progressives to regulate schools’ disciplinary actions so that members of major racial and ethnic groups are penalized at equal rates, regardless of individuals’ behavior. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/27/obama-backs-race-based-school-discipline-policies/#ixzz21r5DlzVI

The bulletin board at the front of Melissa Balzano’s classroom in West Orange is decorated with hand-written lists her students wrote in September, expressing their "Hopes and Dreams for Third Grade." For at least half the children in Balzano’s class at Mount Pleasant Elementary School, learning cursive topped the list. "It’s fancy writing," said Naomi Toms, 9. Cursive was once a mainstay of elementary schools, where children practiced the "tripod" pencil grip and the looping strokes of the letters. But these days little classroom time is spent teaching cursive writing, crowded out of the curriculum by the demands of an...

This exam was given in 1931 by the West Virginia Department of Free Schools (now West Virginia Department of Education) to students seeking graduation from eighth grade. For many students, that was the last year of formal schooling. The exam is provided John N. Beall of Wilmington, NC, who received it from his father, the teacher who administered the test in a one-room school in Gilmer County, WV.

For those of you who have long since gotten sick of the trend among education experts toward “self esteem” rather than actual learning, this story will be extremely cathartic. Wellesley High School teacher David McCullough, Jr. (son of historian David McCullough) had apparently had enough of feeding blithering platitudes to his students and decided to tell the truth. The result sparked controversy among the parents, who didn’t like hearing their children accused of being cosseted and pampered little brats who believed they were special for no reason. But sometimes the truth hurts. Read the greatest hits below:

A 17-year-old high school student working two jobs to support her siblings, while juggling college-level classes, spent 24 hours in jail this week for missing too much school, KHOU 11 News reported. Diane Tran, an 11th-grader at Willis High School in Willis, Texas said she was often too exhausted to get to school in time. Judge Lanny Moriarty said he warned the student last month not to miss any more classes or she would be violating truancy law, KHOU 11 News reported. When she missed school again, he had her thrown in jail. "If you let one run loose, what...

If you want to know what really goes on in our public schools, go to a teacher-of-the-year banquet. Here you will see why schools aren't about academics anymore. Educators will never admit it openly, but an event like this reveals so much that outsiders never get to see.

Last Monday, a high school student in North Carolina engaged his social studies teacher in a heated debate about politics and the two leading presidential candidates. During the exchange, the teacher (an obvious Obama supporter) got very angry with the student and accused him of disrespecting the president. She even went so far as to tell the boy that he could be jailed for speaking ill of Obama. Sarah Campbell of the Salisbury Post first reported on the story. She claims that the school district is not releasing the name of the teacher and that she is not responding to...

Naomi Schaefer Riley, the only Conservative blogger at The Chronicle of Higher Education, was fired after thousands of readers complained about her post "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations." J.S. Tobin writes a vigorous defense. Per copyright issues, Ms. Riley's post can be accessed only by link in Comments.

Technology enables schools to rethink the way that they deliver instruction to students, and a recent phenomenon that’s catching on is called “flipping the classroom.” It works by having students receive direct instruction — often via online videos — outside of the classroom, enabling teachers to devote more time to collaboration, project-based learning, developing critical thinking skills and mentoring students individually. Clintondale High School in Metropolitan Detroit has flipped all of its classrooms, and may be the first school in Michigan to do so. Based on just their short experience with this model, it appears to be a remarkable success....

Are public schools becoming more and more like prisons? That’s what the documentary “The War on Kids” says. Based on interviews with educators, medical professionals, students and sociologists, the documentary, which received a limited film festival run in 2009 and is being released this week on the Documentary Channel, paints the picture of an increasingly authoritarian and paranoid school system that is failing its students, stripping them of their civil liberties and constitutional rights. “Kids have no voice. Everyone pretends to care, but it is never true, and it’s the children who are being blamed for all the failings in...

Entering my freshman year at Georgetown University, I should have felt as if I’d made it. The students I once put on a pedestal, kids who were fortunate enough to attend some of the nation’s top private and public schools, were now my classmates. Having come from D.C. public charter schools, I worked extremely hard to get here. But after arriving on campus before the school year, with a full scholarship, I quickly felt unprepared and outmatched — and it’s taken an entire year of playing catch-up in the classroom to feel like I belong. I know that ultimately I’m...

Last weekend I visited the U.C. Berkeley campus and on a whim attended a lecture with the provocative title “Teaching as a Subversive Activity — Revisited.” Because this was a presentation aimed at education insiders only, the lecturer, retired professor H. Douglas Brown from S.F. State, seemed perfectly willing to let the cat out of the bag about political indoctrination on college campuses. Fortunately, I had my trusty camera with me, so I was able not only to snap a few pictures but also record several key portions of his speech, which I found so eye-opening that I felt the...

The Latin root of educate is to "lead out from," as Moses led the Jews out from Egypt. The original concept was that children are living in ignorance, and we would naturally want to lead them from that world into a better world. A world where they know more and have more options. Freedom is central to this original concept. As you become educated --that is, as you learn more--you move from less freedom to more freedom. When George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and the other founders talked about public education, they were clearly thinking of schools that would liberate children....

Who perpetrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – a group of men merely fighting “for a cause,” or a band of radical Muslims bent on violent jihad? According to a new, comprehensive study of 6th-12th grade textbooks used by schools across the country, America’s children are being taught a very different answer to that question than many alive to witness 9/11 remember. SNIP

I AM a special education teacher. My students have learning disabilities ranging from autism and attention-deficit disorder to cerebral palsy and emotional disturbances. I love these kids, but they can be a handful. Almost without exception, they struggle on standardized tests, frustrate their teachers and find it hard to connect with their peers. What’s more, these are high school students, so their disabilities are compounded by raging hormones and social pressure. As you might imagine, my job can be extremely difficult. Beyond the challenges posed by my students, budget cuts and changes to special-education policy have increased my workload drastically...

Our Education Establishment, in plain sight, is doing a second-rate job. Who, we should ask, is in charge of this train wreck, and what motivates them?  First, let’s add up the evidence. The fifty million functional illiterates. The one million dyslexics. The poor performance against international competition, despite our huge budgets. The ignorance of average Americans about basic geographical, historical, and scientific information. SAT scores slide; kids cannot multiply and divide; students reach college not knowing what six times seven is. About 65% of the children in fourth and eighth grades are reading at a level below “proficient,” that is,...

John Dewey, widely considered the father of modern American progressive education, wrote the following in his 1916 book "Democracy and Education" : (Page 82, middle paragraph) (Gutenberg text) It is the aim of progressive education to take part in correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them. Wherever social control means subordination of individual activities to class authority, there is danger that industrial education will be dominated by acceptance of the status quo. Now this doesn't sound too bad, I suppose. Extreme inequalities? Who wants that? Well, Dewey also further explains this on page 63: 4. The "Individualistic"...

American universities tower high above China when it comes to producing human capital, by far America’s greatest comparative advantage.Consider two major news stories prominent in American discourse recently. First, China is rising. Second, American universities have had much abuse heaped upon them: declining standards, “neoliberal” corruption of academia and worries about universities exacerbating class divides.Both of those stories might be overblown. An American only a few years separated from college life and now a lecturer at China’s top university, I suggest that when it comes to higher education, American institutions are leaving China’s in the dust.No ComparisonThe weaknesses of the...

The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing on the Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act on February 16, 2012.