Free Republic

New schools, accreditors, and tests—plus new rankings—mean much-needed competition.Admissions officers from two of the nation’s elite law schools joined the Advisory Opinions podcast in early August for a conversation about how students earn a coveted spot in their institutions. Surprisingly, both lamented the dearth of high objective standards at many of the prestigious colleges and universities from which their applicants came.“It’s actually absurd, the level of grade inflation,” said Kristi Jobson, dean of admissions at Harvard Law School. “When you have tons of people with high LSAT scores and everyone is coming with a 3.9 and up, how do you...

When a public high school in Orange County, Florida, aired a weekly “Witchy Wednesday” religious video series on the schoolwide TV system, led by students and featuring detailed instructions on casting spells and performing rituals, including soul cleansing and moon worship, many parents were stunned. The school canceled the series after public outcry and intervention from Liberty Counsel, in which the legal group asked for equal time for Christian instruction. But the larger question remains: Why would a public school introduce spiritual practices rooted in witchcraft to impressionable young students, and what does this reveal about the direction of public...

Zohran Mamdani made news a few weeks ago when he announced that he planned to do away with the city's gifted and talented program for kids, at least the part of it that started in kindergarten. Not surprisingly, Mamdani's positions on education seem to align with the rest of his far-left views, which means that he's generally against sorting students by ability and doesn't like standardized tests that are used for admissions in the city's top schools. This is true even though Mamdani himself attended one of these eight schools, the elite Bronx High School of Science. What I hadn't...

Jackie Norris, the chairwoman of the Des Moines Public School Board who once served as chief of staff to Michelle Obama, has pulled out of the race for Iowa's open U.S. Senate seat as recommended by her Republican opponent, Rep. Ashley Hinson. Hinson stressed earlier this month that Norris, a champion of DEI, had "lost all shreds of credibility" over the role she played in the hiring of the Des Moines district's former superintendent, a criminal illegal alien who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Sept 26. Ian Andre Roberts, a native of Guyana, has a lengthy...

QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. — An Arizona teenager is being told he can’t play on his school’s boys basketball team because of a clerical error made 14 years ago. The family of 14-year-old Laker Jackson says the mistake was fixed months ago, but Queen Creek Unified School District won’t accept the correction."He's a great kid, super personality, he's really smart and funny, a ton of friends," said Laker’s mother, Becky Jackson."He has kids over in the house all day long," added his father, Joseph Jackson. "Anytime there's a free day he'll have a group of kids over here."Laker Jackson is an...

Conservative activist Cam Higby was attacked outside Washington’s Union Station this week while attempting to engage in peaceful political discussions. The incident comes as Higby launches his “Fearless Tour,” an effort he says that is inspired by the late Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated while engaging in similar dialogue. In the viral clip, a woman is first seen kneeling beside Higby, reaching for his MAGA hat. As Higby repeats, “Stop, stop, stop,” the woman, identified as Taylor Forte, grew more aggressive, standing up and trying to rip the hat from his head before knocking him over in his chair. Higby...

🚨 52% of American Schools and Districts have begun rolling out a new program called Equitable Grading Equitable Grading means American students will have - Unlimited test retakes - No zeros for missing work - No homework, homework’s is excluded from final grades - No late penalties - No required participation “In short, everyone passes and more than half of US public schools have already adopted at least one of these policies and some districts have adopted all of them. Teachers themselves are calling it academic fraud. Meanwhile, the US already spends more per student than almost any other developed...

New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has a bold plan for the city’s schools: phase out the Gifted and Talented program in elementary education. His rationale is that these programs create disparities and feed inequality. It’s a familiar progressive argument. If some students are excelling, others must be suffering. If a child is recognized as gifted, it’s unfair to those who aren’t. The logic is as simple as it is destructive: equality means sameness, even if sameness means mediocrity. There is nothing wrong with recognizing giftedness. In fact, it’s common sense. If a child demonstrates unusual ability in math, science, writing,...

A North Carolina school bus driver who calls himself “Ms. Sharon” has been charged with sexually assaulting several boys whom he lured to his house, cops say. Leetwain Darrell Tate — a 48-year-old a male also known as just “Sharon” — was arrested Tuesday and charged with two counts of statutory rape and six counts of indecent liberties with a minor, according to Charlotte-Mecklenberg police. He is accused of assaulting at least four boys age 14 and 15 years old, but officials said there could be more victims. The children were found to be staying at his house, and one...

A 24-year-old illegal immigrant from Venezuela who posed as a teenager in Toledo, Ohio, now faces decades in prison after admitting to a scheme that lasted more than a year. Anthony Emmanuel Labrador Sierra pleaded guilty this past week to multiple charges after forging immigration documents and claiming to be a 16-year-old student at Perrysburg High School in January 2024, the New York Post reported. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio, Sierra, who crossed the border in 2019 and was only permitted to stay until March 2020 by the Biden administration, also illegally purchased...

Nick Sortor @nicksortor 🚨 BREAKING: ICE just ARRESTED the Superintendent of Des Moines Iowa schools, who is an illegal immigrant from AFRICA, per @BillMelugin_ He was armed, and attempted to FLEE WTF? He led the LARGEST school district in Iowa. Our kids are NOT SAFE with Democrats in charge. INSANE Ian Andre Roberts will now be sent back to Guayana.

Jennings was perhaps the most outrageous government appointee in memory. He is a long-time homosexual activist who began his career in Massachusetts, and founded GLSEN, the national homosexual group that targets children in schools. Jennings' depraved record of pushing homosexuality and transgenderism to kids goes back decades. Jennings' Dept. of Education office received $410 million in FY 2011. Among other efforts, last year, Jennings helped introduce Bill 4530 in Congress that would require normalization of homosexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing, etc., in America's public schools. He also set up an "anti-bullying" conference at the White House in March, part of the larger...

Our experiences walking to and from school were similar to those of most of our classmates. Their parents did not drive them to school or put them on a bus. They let them walk. That was not unusual in America in the 1960s and early '70s. But it is today. An article published in 2011 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine noted that 47.7% of students in kindergarten through eighth grade walked or biked to school in 1969. By 2009, that had dropped to just 12.7% of students. A survey published in this same journal in 2019 reported that...

A shadowy for-profit company and its nonprofit counterpart provide free services to at least 40 far-left prosecutor offices, raising questions about whether it’s working on behalf of taxpayers or of donors who have essentially bought government. The Wren Collective is a shadowy group that emerged from a Cold War-era initiative aimed at promoting Soviet films in the United States. Its current iteration — funded by a former Enron executive and host of other leftist megadonors — claims that America’s “system of policing and mass incarceration is deeply flawed and intractably racist.” The group has intervened on specific criminal cases, written...

Like a great pendulum that has swung too far in one direction, American education has spent decades lurching away from its founding principles. For generations, our public schools have transformed from institutions that acknowledged the divine into sterile laboratories of secular indoctrination. Parents have watched helplessly as their children were taught to hide their faith like contraband, to whisper prayers as if they were speaking profanities. But sometimes, just when the pendulum seems frozen at its furthest point, gravity reasserts itself. The erosion didn’t happen overnight. Since the 1960s, a series of court decisions and bureaucratic edicts have systematically scrubbed...

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a curious new religious group began spreading throughout the fledgling United States. Their official name was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing – known colloquially as “Shakers” for their tendency to fall into ecstatic trances and literally shake or tremble during worship. The Shakers are most famous today for their belief in strict celibacy – even within the confines of marriage. All members, whether single or married before joining, had to agree to remain chaste for their entire lives. Because of this, their communities had no biological offspring. They...

This week, another transgender shoot-up of a Christian school provides more chilling evidence that the culture war is a spiritual war. The Minneapolis shooter’s actions and Democrats’ interpretation of them both demonstrate this. The New York Post published excerpts of the shooter’s journal posted on YouTube that include a drawing of him communing with a Satanic figure in a mirror. As I’ve written before, Satan-worshippers can be startlingly more direct than many Christians about the connections between their spiritual and political beliefs.

Robert “Robin” Westman, a man who identified as a woman, attacked Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis today, killing two and wounding 17 others. The two fatalities were children with 14 of the 17 wounded also being school kids. Three adults were also injured. Westman penned an alleged manifesto and posted a video before the attack. His mother reportedly used to work at the school before retiring in 2021. Some of the writings were written in Cyrillic, but New York Post reporter Diane Nerozzi translated some of the pages (via NY Post): Transgender Minneapolis shooter Robin Westman spoke of murdering “filthy...

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) announced it is placing Alexandria City Public Schools, Arlington Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, Loudoun County Public Schools, and Prince William County Public Schools (the Divisions) in Northern Virginia on high-risk status with the condition that all federal funding flowing to these districts is done by reimbursement only. This action is being taken after all five Divisions have been found in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX). The Department found the Divisions in violation of Title IX last month for their policies allowing students to...

The Fairfax County Public Schools system in Virginia has launched an investigation into accusations that school staff arranged abortions for students without notifying their parents, according to local reports. School officials at Centreville High School in Union Hill allegedly arranged and bankrolled abortions for girls in 2021, including a 17-year-old, according to local news outlet WJLA. “We learned yesterday of these concerning allegations from 2021,” FCPS said in a statement to the outlet on Wednesday. “We are launching an immediate and comprehensive investigation as we take all concerns of student wellbeing very seriously.” Pressed on whether FCPS staff have ever...