Free Republic

Destiny Brown, senior at Ohio State University, breathed a sigh of relief in her dorm room when the guilty verdict came down for Derek Chauvin. But minutes later, she learned that a 16-year-old Black girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, had been killed that afternoon by Columbus police. “I can’t even begin to process the fact we live in a world where people’s lives — guilty or not, innocent or not — their lives just do not matter,” Brown said. Overcome with a feeling of helplessness, Brown fired off a group message to her friends. Following the demonstration, the crowd marched to the...

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten channels Marx calling Jews 'privileged' members of the 'ownership class' to justify the harm she’s doing to children.What is motivating teachers unions to keep public schools closed for as long as possible?We’ve constantly heard from the left about the need to “follow the science” in dealing with the coronavirus, as President Joe Biden has repeatedly pledged to do. Yet the gap between administration policies or even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and the scientific facts about how the virus is spread is considerable.Given that we’ve known since last summer that younger...

Close to one year after the vast majority of public schools decided to suspend in-person learning due to the coronavirus, a new report shows just how much this misguided decision has negatively impacted the mental health of students across America.“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, particularly on that of young people,” according to a recently released report titled “The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health.”The new report, far from anecdotal, “analyzed data from its database of over 32 billion private healthcare claim records, tracking month-by-month changes from January to November 2020 compared to the...

Is there anything worse for black K-12 students who want to become engineers than teachers who think they can’t meet the same standards as their classmates?New York City’s Department of Education recently decided to change admission into its Gifted and Talented program from a single test for students in kindergarten through third grade to a questionnaire for the pre-K teachers of applicants and a lottery system. This change—widely criticized by parents — is a perfect example of the pitfalls of the current push for equity in education.I have no issue debating the merits of the previous admissions process. My problem...

“It’s like someone died,” Highland High athletic director John Barnhill said. Indeed, across the city athletes in APS – especially the ones in a fall sport – were being forced to confront the very real possibility that they won’t get any closure to their prep careers. When the APS board on Wednesday night voted to keep high school students in a remote learning model for the rest of the spring semester, that very likely put an end to the district’s hopes to contest any fall sports. Senior athletes interviewed by the Journal on Thursday expressed a mixture of frustration, anger,...

A professor at the University of British Columbia doxed 12 of her former students in a now-deleted tweet after she baselessly accused them of racism... Dr. Amie Wolf, who is a professor in the faculty of education, referred to the students as the "dirty dozen." She has since deleted her Twitter account. In a later interview, Wolf said that she tweeted out their names in order to prevent them from getting jobs in education, alleging that they were unfit to be teachers. The controversy surrounding Wolf and her students dates back two weeks, when UBC allegedly deleted a series of...

Threats to free speech on public college campuses are increasingly being driven more by students than administrators, a panel of experts who spoke at a virtual Baylor University event said Wednesday. The world's largest Baptist university hosted a webinar titled “Free Speech on Campus: Is it in Danger?” featuring conservative evangelical writer and former attorney David French, openly gay scholar and author Jonathan Rauch and other advocates for free speech. The event was held in coordination with the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and the Initiative on Faith & Public Life at the American Enterprise Institute.Notable conservative...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reiterated on Wednesday that schools can safely reopen even if teachers are not vaccinated against COVID-19. Last week the CDC weighed into the ongoing debate over whether to reopen schools for in-person instruction, noting that schools that are currently welcoming students into classrooms with certain safety precautions in place have had only “scant transmission” of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The CDC team reviewed data from studies in the United States and abroad and found the experience in schools different from nursing homes and high-density work sites where rapid spread has...

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...

By Right now in China, 195 million students K-12 are learning in-person in Chinese public schools. Meanwhile, millions of American public school students are learning in a failed remote system that can’t even keep track of thousands of students who haven’t shown up for class all year. In 2018, 15-year-olds in dozens of countries participated in the triennial Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The PISA test measures reading ability, math and science literacy, and other key skills. American scores are decidedly unimpressive, with students scoring in the middle of the pack for all categories. Most frighteningly, China beats the...

Indiana University reportedly punished several students for celebrating football wins in large groups in violation of coronavirus rules. School administrators became unhappy after students streamed onto Kirkwood Avenue to celebrate wins over Penn State and Michigan, according to Indiana Daily Student.

ANN ARBOR, MI — Fewer University of Michigan students are voting at Ann Arbor’s early campus voting location since the county issued a stay-in-place order for students. And that’s a concern for some who are hoping for increased student turnout in the 2020 presidential election.

Chinese students recently rushed to snap up spots to take an English-language test, suggesting a heightened interest in studying in the United States and other English-speaking countries. This comes despite the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington.The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the U.S. organization that administers the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), on Oct. 14 opened registration for 2021 TOEFL tests in China. Within five minutes of opening, all test spots in Beijing and Shanghai for the first eight months of 2021 had booked out.Test places in other Chinese cities, such as Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xi’an,...

The lead writer of The New York Times’ anti-American “1619 Project” suffered a meltdown last week when a colleague at her paper offered fair criticism of its revisionist and inaccurate account of history.On Oct. 9, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens published a more than 3,000-word essay outlining the project’s blunders that have led the academics with the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to call on the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke its award to the project’s chief essayist, Nikole Hannah-Jones.“Journalists are, most often, in the business of writing the first rough draft of history, not trying to have...

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that closing school campuses in the spring as the coronavirus pandemic took hold might have been one of the nation’s biggest “public health mistakes.” And, while appearing on the Drew Steele radio show, DeSantis equated people fighting the return of students to classrooms as the “flat earthers of our day.” Florida shut down school and college campuses in March, with students shifted to online learning. DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran have pushed heavily to reopen classrooms for the new school year. “In March we may not have had all the information, but in hindsight,...

A new study has found minimal evidence that the novel coronavirus is transferring inside K-12 school buildings despite reports of students and faculty across the country contracting the disease. Brown University researchers collaborated with school administrators and released data Wednesday from a new National COVID-19 School Response Data Dashboard. COVID-19 cases recorded in the dashboard show a relatively small degree of spread among staff and students. The study looked at data collected from more than 550 schools across 46 states over a two-week period starting Aug. 31, with more than 300 schools maintaining some level of in-person classes. Researchers found...

cops were forced to remove Reed Bender from a Mitchell school board meeting in South Dakota because he refused to wear a mask.. A district mandate from July says people must wear masks on school property .. But Bender refused to put one on or leave the building in Mitchell, South Dakota.. He told cops: 'Force me out. You're going to have to drag me out'.. When he refused cops threatened him with a stun gun and dragged him out.. His wife Teri Jayne Bender is supporting him on Facebook saying 'we got this'.. She says she supports 'maskers and...

A Democrat bureaucrat finally said what we all have known to be the truth: the Wuhan virus limitations that Democrat politicians and bureaucrats have imposed on Americans will go away after the election because that was the plan all along. As 2019 ended, the Democrats knew that Trump was cruising to re-election. He'd kept his base because he kept his promises about the wall, trade deals, the military, abortion, and our Second Amendment rights. Best of all, he'd supercharged the economy with tax and regulation cuts. The surging economy enticed other Americans who had not voted for Trump in 2016...

At least 7,000 health workers around the world have died as a result of contracting the coronavirus, according to analysis published by Amnesty International. The human rights group said at least 1,320 health workers were confirmed to have died as a result of Covid-19 in Mexico alone, the highest known figure for any country worldwide. Health worker fatalities related to the virus were also high in the U.S. (1,077) and Brazil (634), Amnesty International said. “Many months into the pandemic, health workers are still dying at horrific rates in countries such as Mexico, Brazil and the USA, while the rapid...

BERKELEY, Calif. - The man suspected of killing a 19-year-old UC Berkeley student in June has been charged with murder Berkeley Police Department said on Monday. Tony Walker, 60, of Berkeley was arrested at his home August 20 for the shooting death of Seth Smith on June 15. Smith, who was set to graduate from Cal next year, was found on the sidewalk of Dwight Way near Valley Street. Alameda County District Attorney's office charged Walker, a convicted felon, with murder as well as a number of criminal enhancements. Police had offered a $50,000 reward for information in this case....