Free Republic

VIDEO: Young Americans know nothing about 4th of July Campus Reform spoke with young Americans and students ahead of the 4th of July to see what they knew about the holiday. Most said America was a racist country but couldn’t answer simple questions about the country’s Independence Day.

President Barack Obama's nominee for Education Secretary told senators Thursday that the focus of decision-making on elementary and secondary education is "rightly shifting" to the states and away from the federal government. John B. King Jr. is poised to oversee the Education Department as it is losing some of its authority. A bipartisan education law passed by Congress and signed by Obama in December revamps the widely criticized No Child Left Behind Act, and substantially limits some of the federal government's influence ushered in by that 2002 law. The new law bars the Education Department from telling states and local...

2015 came to a close with something many people thought they'd never see: The end of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal education law that no one seemed to like, but that was long overdue for replacement because no one could agree on how to change it. Finally Congress and the Obama administration did agree, and to the delight of many conservatives NCLB was replaced with the Ensuring Student Success Act, a statute that appears to end federal micromanagement. Or does it? While the law says a lot that seems to rein Washington in, it leaves open several...

After seven years of rule by decree by President Obama's Chicago crony Arne Duncan, why are Republicans about to reauthorize the federal government's authority over the nation's public schools? And why is the new Speaker, Paul Ryan, rushing a 1,059-page bill to a floor vote only two days after the text was released on Nov. 30? Fourteen years ago, while the nation was distracted by the 9/11 attacks and the start of the war in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush was determined to enact "No Child Left Behind" to fulfill his father's pledge to be the "education president." In order...

President Obama would veto the House Republican plan to overhaul the controversial No Child Left Behind law, his administration said Wednesday. The GOP plan, known as the Student Success Act, “represents a significant step backwards in the efforts to help all of the nation's children and their families prepare for their futures,” said the Office of Management and Budget in a statement of administration policy. The bill “abdicates the historic federal role in elementary and secondary education of ensuring the educational progress of all of America's students, including students from low-income families, students with disabilities, English learners and students of...

The federal mandate to test U.S. school kids annually was at the center of a Senate panel’s work on Wednesday to fix the long outdated No Child Left Behind education law. […] Many educators and parents have complained that the law led to teaching to the test and too much test preparation, but supporters of the mandate such as civil rights and business groups said it’s a critical way to ensure that historically underserved groups of students are learning before it’s too late to help them. […] Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee,...

Few Americans who entered polling booths for the Nov. 4 election and pulled the lever for their favorite candidate for Senate realize that for most of American history, senators were chosen by the state legislatures. It wasn’t until 1913 that the 17thAmendment was passed, granting American voters the constitutional right of directly electing their senators.While this important amendment may seem innocuous, the reality is that few other changes to our Constitution have had the same detrimental effect on our nation than this single, nearly forgotten alteration.The passage of the 17th Amendment was driven largely by the populist movement of the...

The No Child Left Behind education law could be making a political comeback. Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is the incoming chairman of the Senate committee overseeing education, says his top education priority is fixing the landmark Bush-era law. His goal? Get a bill signed by President Barack Obama early next year. Doing so will require bipartisanship that’s been elusive since the law, primarily designed to help minority and poor children, came up for renewal in 2007. …

The federal government has restored Oklahoma’s flexibility to decide how to use $29 million in public school funding, state officials said Monday. The U.S. Department of Education had withdrawn Oklahoma’s waiver from portions of the No Child Left Behind Act in August, after legislators dropped Common Core guidelines that would have been in place for the current school year. Replacement guidelines—the ones in place before Common Core—weren’t certified until October as being capable of making high school graduates ready for college or the workplace. …

Everyone believes in "standards" don't they? So what could possibly be wrong with "Common Core" (the US education system's "Common Core State Standards Initiative")? After all, is it not "a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English... created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live"?* Not according to Dr. Duke Pesta, professor of English at The University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, who joins us for an extended and detailed interview on the genesis, content and ideology of Common Core...

Barack Obama may be in Warsaw as part of a European tour, but in a real sense he’s stuck in Washington. At a joint press conference after a state meeting in Poland, Obama got questioned about the deal that exchanged Bowe Bergdahl for five high-ranking Taliban detainees, including two wanted by the UN for crimes against humanity. Obama mainly avoided discussing the detainees, although he insisted that he was “confident” that the US could prevent them from being a threat to American security in the future.Instead, Obama defended the action by focusing on Bergdahl, perhaps learning a lesson from...

On Friday, the U. S. Department of Education sent a letter to Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz, threatening to revoke the state’s waiver from No Child Left Behind – because Indiana exited the Common Core national standards last month. The letter states: “IDOE (Indiana Department of Education) met ED (Department of Education) requirements in its approved ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act/[No Child Left Behind]) flexibility request through the 2013-14 school year by adopting and implementing standards common to a significant number of States. Because the IDOE will no longer implement those standards, IDOE must amend its ESEA flexibility request and...

Recently, Peter King, the court jester of the House of Representatives, had this to say to PMSNBC's Andrea Mitchell about Tea Party heroes Rand Paul and Ted Cruz: *** "I'm really more concerned about why more Republicans around the country didn't join me in denouncing Ted Cruz. We now have people on the sidelines coming forward who we have to take a stand here. We cannot allow our party to be taken over by the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. I mean, these are people, isolationists, I consider them RINOs, because they don't represent traditional Republican principles. Ted...

A Republican rewrite of the No Child Left Behind education law seems to be losing momentum as conservatives in the party don't think the bill does enough to reduce Washington’s influence and moderates warily eye proposals that would expand charter schools’ role. The sweeping education law’s update was the latest example of fractured Republicans in the House, where the party has a majority but often stumbles over internal disagreements. Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Tuesday visited a Washington public charter school and pledged his support for such programs that compete with traditional public schools for students and dollars. The Virginia...

Three Congressional bills have been introduced to alter No Child Left Behind as the 2014 proficiency deadline approaches. Newsmax reported on June 7 that “House Education Committee Chairman John Kline introduced a bill Thursday that would gut the decade-old No Child Left Behind law, returning power to the states to craft their own curriculums without strings attached to qualify for federal school funds” (emphasis added). However, so many states have been granted waivers on No Child Left Behind that the law has been essentially gutted already. Currently, 37 states and the District of Columbia have received waivers which exempt them...

A number of states have decided to separate their education achievement goals by race as part of their No Child Left Behind waivers. The question remains whether this move marks a “realistic” approach to education, or a major step backward for education fueled by lowered expectations for racial groups. “I put the question of states adjusting expectations based on a student’s ethnicity to Carla O’Connor, an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan,” writes Emily Richmond for The Atlantic. “O’Connor, who specializes in African-American student achievement and urban education, said the new sliding bar for...

Nationwide states are taking a different road for No Child Left Behind, with 34 states now having applied for or been granted NCLB waivers by the Obama Administration. In particular, Florida has come under fire for its publicized race-based education goals. As the New York Times notes, only eight of 34 states may have avoided this waiver provision. According to Lizette Alvarez, reporting for the Times, “Florida is one of several states required to cut its achievement gap in half for all students by 2018, including those who are black, Hispanic, white, Asian, low-income, disabled or speak English as a...

Mitt Romney certainly wasn’t the first choice to be the Republican presidential nominee for most limited government activists. Some have reluctantly warmed to Romney in recent months because they find him preferable to Obama. Other liberty lovers, particularly those within the Ron Paul-inspired Liberty Movement, refuse to throw their support behind Romney or Obama. Regardless of whether a liberty-minded president is an option on the big ticket, the outcomes of the congressional races are far more important, as Congress will truly determine the fiscal policies coming out of Washington. If we really want to put an end to reckless spending,...

Only 29 percent of Orange County's public schools met the 2012 federal No Child Left Behind testing targets, according to figures released Thursday. "I would not say 71 percent of our schools are failing," county Superintendent Al Mijares said.

Emigrant Bank was recently identified to receive a waiver that would allow the bank to opt out of rigorous Dodd-Frank requirements. These of course are the same new rules and regulations that Barack deems essential to the nation. Yet when the bank’s owner, Howard Milstein, who is a close friend and was a bundler for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, protested that the new rules would seriously crimp operations of his bank, the Obama Administration worked with members of congress to grant him a waiver from the new rules. Other financial institutions and banks have consistently and vehemently argued that...