Free Republic

Since I started teaching several years ago, after 25 years in the movie business, I’ve come to learn firsthand that everything I’d heard about the feminization of our schools is real—and far more pernicious to boys than I had imagined. Christina Hoff Sommers was absolutely accurate in describing, in her 2000 bestseller, The War Against Boys, how feminist complaints that girls were “losing their voice” in a male-oriented classroom have prompted the educational establishment to turn the schools upside down to make them more girl-friendly, to the detriment of males. As a result, boys have become increasingly disengaged. Only 65...

BERTHOUD - The Thompson School Board will be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on one of its ex-students -- an 11-year-old autistic boy. Luke Perkins went to Berthoud Elementary School, but his parents felt he wasn't receiving the proper education for his needs. "He wasn't learning even the basic things he was going to need in life," says his father, Jeff Perkins. The Perkins decided to enroll their son in the Boston Higashi School in January 2004. The school specializes in teaching children with special needs. The tuition is over $130,000 a year, and its students live at the...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill Friday that would have given special education students a reprieve from the state's high-stakes exit exam. The bill would have implemented a legal settlement between the California Department of Education and the Oakland-based Disability Rights Advocates, which filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of special education students. The bill sent to the governor by the Legislature differed from the settlement, however, and drew objections from the state's school superintendent. Schwarzenegger also vetoed a bill that would have eased the exit exam rules by allowing high school students to graduate without passing...

CLOVIS, Calif. - The chant began late in the fourth quarter in the basketball gym at Clovis East High. The students started it first, clapping their hands in unison and pounding the bleachers with their feet. It didn't take long for the parents to pick it up, too. The noise grew until the whole gym seemed to shake. "We want Ryno. We want Ryno." Pacing the sideline, coach Tim Amundsen felt himself getting goose bumps. Less than 4 minutes remained in the game, and Clovis East was winning comfortably over rival Buchanan High. Now Amundsen had a decision to make....

MOUNTAIN GATE, Calif. (AP) - An autistic teenager suffered a head injury and a broken elbow in a beating by three sheriff's deputies who mistook him for a prowler, authorities say. Pierre Cowell, a 17-year-old who does not speak, had wandered from his home early Friday. A neighbor, who did not recognize him, called 911 after seeing him outside her home about 2 a.m., Capt. Tom Bosenko said Monday. The woman became alarmed when she heard the doorknob jiggling, he said. As three deputies approached the house, Cowell ran toward them and bumped one of them, Bosenko said. When Cowell...

She was a bright 9-year-old with a high IQ and a flair for creative writing. When she grew anxious and refused to do homework, her parents and school were at a loss. No one considered it a learning disability, until sixth grade when she tried to commit suicide. She was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a neurological disorder that can interfere with basic social skills. Still, looking at her academic record, officials in her Maine school district said that while she needed extra support, they saw no reason to place the girl - known as L.I. in court documents - in...

Went to the required in-service session for the school district I work in today and learned some things about special-ed that I didn't know. Some was quite eye-opening and head-scratching.

Check your local listings for airtimes. (Current show is updated every weekday at 5pm EST.) HEALTH Health Experts Warn of Antidepressant Dangers for Children, Teens By Darla SittonCBN News Producer In America, Prozac is the only drug the FDA has "approved" for pediatric depression. CBN.com – (CBN News) - As many as one in eight adolescents suffers from clinical depression. And these kids are often treated with anti-depressant drugs that have been tested and approved for adult use. But the drugs may not be safe for children. Corey Baadsgaard doesn't remember storming into his honors English class with a...

New Forms of School Choice: The Real McKaysSchool Choice Forces Emboldened by Recent String of Judicial and Legislative Victories By Robert Holland Printer Friendly   Email a Friend The fastest-growing voucher program in the land is the McKay Scholarship, which three years ago emerged in the choice-friendly climate of Florida. As of July 2003, more than 9,200 Florida special-education students were using McKays to attend private schools equipped to accommodate them. (Special education is education lingo for  individualized instruction developed  to meet the needs of each student judged to have a disability.) McKays predate the June 2002 Zelman decision. But the...

<p>Sweeping reform of the federal special-education program passed the House yesterday, but two Republican efforts to allow taxpayer support for handicapped students in private schools were defeated.</p> <p>By a vote of 251-171, the House passed a $125.9 billion, seven-year reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), with reforms to reduce paperwork and limit the practice of identifying children with reading and behavior problems as disabled.</p>

(1010 WINS) (Hackensack) -- Bergen County school officials are apologizing to the parents of special education students. That's because the students names and addresses were inadvertently given to the campaign of County Executive-elect Dennis McNerney a few days before the November fifth election.Deputy Superintendent Leonard Margolis says a secretary mistakenly provided the information when a McNerney staff member asked for the names of students in the county's technical school district. State and federal laws prohibits the release of information regarding special education students without their parents consent. Some parents and Republican officials have called for an investigation into the matter...

As New Hampshire’s Senate race drew closer to Election Day, President Bush added to the campaign fodder last week by announcing a plan to speed generic drugs to the market. “I think (Bush has) done the right thing,” Rep. John Sununu, R-N.H., his party’s Senate candidate, said Wednesday. “I’ve always been very committed to protecting the integrity of the patent system.” Sununu was referring to the fact that the proposal would close patent loopholes that effectively allow drug companies to renew their drug patents. Colin Van Ostern, press secretary to Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, Sununu’s Democratic opponent, said the Bush proposal...

The California Youth Authority's teachers union plans to picket the Northern California Youth Center in Stockton today, protesting the alleged failure of the Youth Authority to discipline wards for sexual harassment and assaults. The California State Employees Association alleges that the disciplinary lapse has led to a spike in incidents across the state, exposing teachers to more violent episodes. Teachers claim that wards have groped them and masturbated in front of them in the classroom. They say they have been hit with rulers, erasers, chalk and clipboards, and wards have spit and thrown urine on them. It is only a...

Schools claim to be swamped by a growing number of disabled students, but it’s a myth. The education establishment claims that a burgeoning population of special-ed students is overwhelming the public schools, draining needed resources from the general education budget. The answer to the crisis, educrats argue, is to boost the federal special-ed subsidy—and, they add, with the law governing special education, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), coming up for congressional renewal, now’s the perfect time to do it. But the growing special-ed population is an artificial problem, largely of the schools’ own making. Virtually all of the...