Free Republic

Do you know what’s going on in your kid’s school? The three R’s – reading, writing, and arithmetic – have taken a back seat to a fourth R. Max Eden, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explains what that fourth R is, and why it’s so destructive.

Popular entertainer Demi Lovato posted a video on her Instagram page showing comments critical of diversity efforts in the Carroll school district that has generated more than 2 million views. “It is horrifying to see how some of the parents at Carroll ISD in Southlake, TX are literally FIGHTING to uphold white supremacy and are resisting the anti-racism work that is so needed. @southlakearc keep pushing for change, this work is more important than ever,” Lovato wrote. The video is a compilation of comments from parents who attended Carroll school board meetings and who were critical of the school district’s...

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) released new coronavirus guidance Thursday, as President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration approaches, insisting “schools need to be open.” State agencies are now prioritizing in-person instruction, reported Richmond.com, after months of the Trump administration urging states to reopen schools.

The lawsuit goes on to say that during a meeting with the school’s principal, Jeannie Steenberge, and a faculty member, the two adults allowed the black students to berate and scream at their daughter, calling her “the biggest known racist in the school,” and accusing her of being “in love with Trump” because she owned Trump decals and other merchandise. “Everyone knows ALL Trump supporters are racist,” the petition claims one black student said. During another meeting, the parents’ petition says the principal told their daughter she was a racist, and that “we are all racists, we are white.” According...

If our irresponsible media would do its job, if our politicians and community leaders would be more involved in ending the great national embarrassment, if parents would understand what's going on in the classroom and become so angry they won't take it anymore, we could have better schools in no time. Here is a dirty little secret that deserves your consideration. Most of the problems in the public school are caused by deliberate human actions. Not innocent human error as when somebody pushes the wrong button. No; think of the situation where somebody cuts a plane’s fuel line.George Soros said...

Over the years, Campus Reform has reported on hundreds of instances of anti-Christian sentiment at American universities. Here are five of the worst instances from this year. 1. Harvard University. Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet called for a ban on homeschooling, decrying “conservative Christians” in the process. In a Harvard Gazette interview entitled “A warning on homeschooling,” Bartholet attributed rising interest in homeschooling to the “growth in the conservative evangelical movement,” stating that “conservative Christians” use the practice to “escape from the secular education in public schools,” after a failed effort “to have their children exempted from exposure to alternative...

Dr. Anthony Fauci said it’s possible that COVID-19 vaccines will become mandatory in order to travel to other countries or attend school. “Everything will be on the table for discussion,” Fauci, who will be chief medical adviser to President-elect Joe Biden, told Newsweek. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases stressed that it’s “not up to me to make a decision,” but added that “these are all things that will be discussed [under the Biden administration].” “I’m not sure [the COVID-19 vaccine] going to be mandatory from a central government standpoint, like federal government mandates,” Fauci...

A publicly funded charter school in Nevada created a hostile environment for students by instructing them to associate aspects of their identity with oppression, a new lawsuit alleges. William Clark, whose mother is Black and deceased father was White, claims he felt discriminated against and harassed by various aspects of the course -- including an alleged assertion that by not identifying with an oppressive group, students were exercising their privilege or underscoring their status as an oppressor.

The woke left rejects Homer, and the rest of the Western canon, because they hate any art that doesn’t reinforce their narrow-minded ideology.The woke are succeeding where Plato failed. In Plato’s most famous dialogue, the “Republic,” the character of Socrates argues the ideal polity will exclude Homer and the rest of the Greek poets and dramatists. But Plato, who loved the poets, leaves the door open for their return. As with much else in Plato’s work, the proposed ban on Homer should perhaps be taken seriously, not literally. Today’s cultural radicals, however, have no such subtlety. When they say we...

EMPOWERING PARENTS AND STUDENTS: President Donald J. Trump is taking action to expand K-12 educational options for disadvantaged children impacted by the pandemic.Today, President Trump signed an Executive Order offering flexibility to provide certain disadvantaged children with emergency K-12 scholarships to access in-person learning opportunities.The Order allows States and eligible entities to use available Federal Community Service Block Grants (CSBG) funds to provide life-changing scholarships to families whose children cannot access in-person learning. CSBG funds totaled nearly $1.7 billion in FY 2020.Scholarships provided with CSBG funds can help families pay for private school tuition, home schooling, micro schooling, learning-pod expenses,...

Schools have been closed for the better part of a year now, for the putative reason that COVID-19 makes them unsafe. Only distance learning and Zoom and other online classes are safe enough for both teachers and kids, we’re told. Even though the science says otherwise, powerful teachers unions keep schools closed anyway. But why? Let’s start with a blunt fact: The teachers unions — including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), along with a host of radicalized local unions — don’t have your kids’ best interests at heart, despite their well-funded, slick propaganda...

The largest public school district in Washington state is reportedly training white teachers to “bankrupt their privilege” by focusing on social justice in the classroom, Discovery Institute scholar Christopher Rufo reported. A series of reportedly leaked documents shows what appears to be a training on critical race theory at Seattle Public Schools, prompting teachers to explain how they will promulgate racial justice in the classroom. The slides begin by asking teachers to acknowledge that they are meeting on “the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish People,” which is followed by “Stolen Labor Acknowledgments” asking them...

One is thriving after switching from online public school to in-person private education. The other is struggling, stuck in her virtual classroom. The lives of these two girls, Ella Pierick and Afiya Harris, encapsulate the growing divide in U.S. education as more affluent parents flee public schools. In Connecticut, enrollment fell 3%. Colorado reported a similar decline, with the steepest losses in one of its wealthiest counties. Chicago’s rosters dipped 4.1%, the most in 20 years. Parents with means are instead homeschooling; joining with other families to hire teachers in so-called pandemic pods; or signing up for private schools. Poor...

In the age of COVID, parents are taking a stand against public school identity politics and indoctrination by removing their kids. December 19, 2020 (FRC Action) — With school shutdowns, logistical complexities with online classes, and rampant uncertainty due to the coronavirus, it's been a monumentally difficult year for students, their parents, and teachers. But there has been a silver lining in all of this: more and more parents are having their eyes opened to the leftist agenda that has embedded itself in many of our nation's public schools. Just last week, a school board in Fairfax County in northern...

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City officials announced a series of admissions changes for hundreds of middle and high schools Friday in one of the most significant steps the nation’s largest school system has taken in years to address racial segregation. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is suspending merit-based screening systems for its selective middle schools for at least a year. That means that academic records, auditions and other assessments will no longer be used by schools to skim off the top-performing elementary school kids and segregate them from other children. A lottery would be used when...

During an interview aired on Thursday’s broadcast of CBS’ “Late Show,” President-Elect Joe Biden stated that we are “going to get to the place we can open schools.” And by this time next year, “we’ll be awfully close to” back to normal “if not there.” Host Stephen Colbert asked, “Do you think this time next year, when you’re both in the White House, we will have what you could call a normal Christmas? Will the country be back to normal?”

Public schools reported a decrease in the number of students for the first time in 30 years, many of them in early grades. Enrollment in Colorado public schools dropped by close to 30,000 students this school year — the first year-to-year decrease the state’s public school system has reported in more than 30 years. ... The overall drop in enrollment equates to a 3.3% decrease, with some of Colorado’s 178 school districts suffering dips of nearly 10% from enrollment during the 2019-20 school year. That could have serious consequences for the state’s public education system and districts budgets, which are...

The book (title above) by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, was reviewed by Samuel Blumenfeld for WND, and his article: https://www.wnd.com/1999/12/2877/ was published on December 2, 1999. The source URL goes to Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's website.

Montgomery County, Maryland is a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. Like many such jurisdictions, Montgomery County remains tightly locked down. Its public schools are closed, and all students are required to participate in “distance learning.” The results have been disastrous –particularly for minority students. Since the advent of the great “War on Poverty” liberal educators in Montgomery County and elsewhere in the nation have trumpeted their efforts to close the “achievement gap” -the yawning chasm that exists between the performance of white students and minority, particularly black, students. Quite rightly educators have focused on the fact that in an increasingly...

LOS ANGELES – A North Carolina man who engaged in a series of cyber and swatting attacks, including sending bogus threats of shootings and bombings to schools in the United States and United Kingdom, was sentenced today to 95 months in federal prison. Timothy Dalton Vaughn, 22, whose online aliases included “WantedbyFeds” and “Hacker_R_US,” of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was sentenced by United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II. Vaughn pleaded guilty in November 2019 to one count of conspiracy to convey threats to injure, convey false information concerning use of explosive device, and intentionally damage a computer; one...