Free Republic

Public school teachers may soon be allowed to wear jewelry or clothing bearing a religious emblem or symbol while on the job. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Monday voted 201-1 to approve a Senate-passed bill that repeals a section of the state’s school code that penalized a teacher for such religious displays and held the school board liable if they failed to enforce that mandate from 1949. The bill now goes to Gov. Josh Shapiro for enactment. The governor is expected to sign it once it reaches his desk, said his spokesman Manuel Bonder. Once enacted, the law take...

MADISON — Some kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders in Madison public schools are apparently preparing for futures in either political cartooning or time on a psychiatrist’s couch. Kati Walsh, an elementary art teacher at the Madison Metropolitan School District in July posted some of her students’ drawings of Gov. Scott Walker in jail. Walsh suggests her young Rembrandts’ ideas for their sketches popped up out of thin air. “One student said something to the effect of ‘Scott Walker wants to close all the public schools’… So the rest of the class started drawing their own cartoons and they turned very political....

We all know that public schools don't allow Christianity. The mere mention of Jesus' name could cause all kinds of un-holy hell to be directed at the bigoted hatemonger who uttered it. It's been that way for a while. But do you know what our government school textbooks teach about Islam?

-Survey results find strong support for school choice amongDemocrats, Independents, Republicans- PORTLAND, OR (January 5, 2009) – Nearly nine out of ten Oregon residents would send their children to private, charter, or virtual schools, or educate their children in a home school setting if they had the decision-making authority, according to the results of a public opinion survey released today by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Cascade Public Policy Institute, and several other state and national organizations. Eighty-seven percent of residents polled would opt for schools other than regular public schools, according to the survey. “As we have...

An activity book for children about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks being distributed to schools with funding from Keyspan, North Fork Bank, and the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges contains pages of "trivia questions" and math problems about the attack. The booklet, funded in part by an event involving Olympic silver medal winner Nancy Kerrigan, is intended to make for "a happy 9/11 commemorative event," said Tara Modlin, the founder of the organization distributing it, Stars, Stripes & Skates."To teach kids about an event so morbid, we needed to make something fun for them," she said. But the...

My ninth grader just found out she has a 69 in Algebra 1. She is/was an honor roll student and has been doing very well in school. She has A's and B's in all of her other subjects and should have an A in Algebra, as well. Ashley, my daughter, started off the 2nd semester of Algebra 1 with a 90. About 2 weeks into the start of the new year, she was bumped to another teacher along with four others because they were ahead of the rest of the class. The new teacher resigned from the school three weeks...