Free Republic

An investigation is underway after racist names and swastikas were displayed on big screens during a Thursday assembly at the private Sidwell Friends School in Northwest D.C. It happened when Upper School students gathered for a presentation about OnSide, a student-founded project which uses soccer to help bolster an understanding between people of different backgrounds. Following the presentation, students took part in an online game, using their cellphones to answer questions. Their answers, along with the submitter’s username, were projected onto large screens. Some of the usernames were racist toward Asians and Native Americans. Two usernames contained swastikas. Once the...

I get a lot of e-mail from parents and teachers who wonder if President Obama, whose children go to the private Sidwell Friends School, knows what is actually going on with all of the standardized testing in public schools. Here’s an open letter to Obama explaining what he is missing, written by Rebecca Steinitz, a literacy consultant in urban high schools, a writer and an editor. She was previously director of the High School Program at Lesley University’s School of Education and an English professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, where she ran the Freshman Writing Program. Steinitz is also a...

The national debate over gun control may have been pushed to the back burner in favor of the “fiscal cliff” battle, but President Obama remains committed to confronting the issue no matter the resistance from gun owners and the National Rifle Association. In a rare appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Mr. Obama expressed strong support for a reinstatement of the federal ban on assault weapons, outlawing high-capacity clips and a better system of background checks for those seeking to buy firearms. He’s long supported those ideas, as have many Democrats, but the mass shooting at Sandy Hook...

The upscale Washington private school that counts Sasha and Malia Obama among its students was hit Tuesday with a prank email advising parents that, among other things, their children would receive "a voucher that may be redeemed for their choice of contraception" at the prom this year. Washingtonian magazine broke the news of the fake message, which purported to be a missive sent from the Sidwell Friends School administration. It is unclear how many families at the Quaker day school received the message, which was addressed to "Parents of the Sidwell Friends School Community." Contacted by Yahoo News, the school...