Free Republic

A New Jersey law that removes a requirement for teachers to pass a reading, writing and mathematics test for certification will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025. The law, Act 1669, was passed by Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy as part of the state’s 2025 budget in June in an effort to address a shortage of teachers in the state... Individuals seeking an instructional certificate will no longer need to pass a “basic skills” test ... Just months earlier, Murphy signed a similar bill into law that created an alternative pathway for teachers to sidestep the testing requirement....

The Democrat Party is pushing to increase “literacy” on climate change-related material in America’s schools while students are performing poorly with respect to actual literacy. The party’s education platform mentions the importance of “climate literacy” for American K-12 students several times, emphasizing the purported need for students to be able to understand and interpret information relating to climate change. Meanwhile, the average reading score for both fourth and eighth grade students in 2022 had fallen by three points relative to 2019, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). “We will equip students with the knowledge and skills to...

Douglass Academy High School had 35 students with nearly 900 seats unfilled. None were proficient on the SAT. The Chicago Teachers Union wants to add at least eight staffers there and at every other school in the district at a cost of $1.7 billion. Only 35 students enrolled in Douglass Academy High School for the 2023-2024 school year, but the building can hold over 900 students. Logic would say it should be closed, but the Chicago Teachers Union prohibits closing it and other underused schools. In fact, CTU sees the 23 staffers at Douglass as inadequate. CTU’s new contract demands...

Schools in the progressive haven of San Francisco are facing a major budget crunch. Things are so dire that the district may have to actually close some schools. It’s amazing that these schools are having cash flow problems when you consider the taxes people pay to live there. Officials from the school district recently met with some financial experts who gave them some tough love. ... Late last week, two fiscal experts — appointed a few years ago to give guidance to the district — were authorized to suspend or reverse financial decisions made by the superintendent or school board....

The noteworthy British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once remarked that “there are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.” The Ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus also observantly wrote ”in war, truth is the first casualty.” There could easily be another corollary to these great quotes that could go ... in the battle over school board recalls, there are lies, damn lies, and recall campaign slogans. The Temecula Valley Unified School District recall campaign against current School Board President Dr. Joseph Komrosky is a prime example of the lies and mistruths perpetrated by a leftist dominated coalition of local...

It is hard to overstate just how much public education in the United States was permanently changed by extended school closures of 2020 and 2021. For an entire year, millions of students across the country were forced to attend classes via Zoom, wear masks that affected their cognitive abilities, and were generally socially isolated. At the same time, decision-makers in school districts from Virginia to California were pushing a political agenda that blatantly sought to shut parents out of the education of their own children. The swift and intense backlash from parents changed the politics of education forever. And documenting...

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is negotiating a new contract with the public schools system and is understood to be calling for an extra $50 billion to pay for wage hikes as well as other demands such as fully paid abortions for its members, new migrant services and facilities and a host of LGBT-related requirements and training in schools. To put the figure into context, the total base tax receipts for the state of Illinois last year were $50.7 billion.

Time to Change Our Language.. It is time to stop blaming “Covid” for breaking the economy, destroying businesses and livelihoods, and wreaking untold havoc upon families. It was not “Covid” that did this. It was not even the Chinese. It was our government. The government has conditioned us to blame the impersonal “Covid” for the destruction it wrought upon our businesses and families. We need to change the discussion by using the proper language to fix the blame where it belongs. Good generals can win a battle by picking the terrain upon which they fight. At Waterloo, Wellington forced Napoleon...

Teacher unions have strategically been pouring donations into Republican political campaigns, according to a report from the Daily Signal....... Teachers unions donated "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to certain Republican candidates’ state legislative primaries in states that tout school choice and parental rights bills, including Alabama, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy fellow Jason Bedrick told The Daily Signal that "the unions are terrified that parents are clamoring for more education choice, so they’re doing everything they can to stop it." He continued, "It’s obvious what’s going on here: In red states,...

For GOP lawmakers who view public education as a quasi-socialist project, the gaping hole in state budgets left by subsidizing private school tuition is a feature, not a bug. Bait-and-switch is an old retail tactic. You lure customers in with promises of a deep discount, only to inform them that the deal has a catch. The real price tag, it turns out, is quite a bit more. Though it took supporters of school vouchers a while to catch on, they’ve learned quickly that the trick works just as well in education policy as it does in retail sales. Pick a...

An annual report from the Inspector General of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) revealed that millions of dollars worth of tech devices were reported lost or stolen “without appropriate search and recovery efforts.” The fiscal year 2023 annual report released Tuesday states CPS schools reported 77,505 tech devices as lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year, totaling well over $23 million in original purchase price. The discovery, as a result of the district’s first post-COVID-19 inventory, calls the numbers “unacceptably high” and says the oversight process is in need of a “serious overhaul.” The report said the missing items included...

Stacy Davis Gates owes more than $5,500, but makes more than $289,000 ... The progressive president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) owes thousands in unpaid utility bills despite making an eye-popping salary ... Stacy Davis Gates owes the city of Chicago $5,579 in unpaid water, sewer and trash bills as of Nov. 7, 2023, despite bringing home "at least" $289,000 a year. Documents uncovered by the group show Davis Gates started a payment plan for the amount in July 2023, but quickly defaulted. ... This latest revelation adds to the mounting evidence of her hypocrisy. She spurns responsibility and...

Fox News California teachers union pushing for homeless access to school parking lots amid looming strike The Fresno school district says it does not plan to meet the union's demands Kassy Dillon October 5, 2023 A teachers union in California is pushing for the Fresno Unified School District to allow homeless families to park their cars in high school lots amid a looming strike. The demand is included in the Fresno Teachers Association's "last, best, and final" contract offer to the superintendent. The document also asks for the district to allocate $500,000 for security in the lots. "We do not...

Dear TVUSD School Board, The school board’s proposed parental notification policy is both a common sense and worthy proposal to what so many voters, parents, and taxpayers want in our school district as well as in society at large; a return to normalcy. It has long been a normal standard throughout virtually all school districts that parents receive timely and pertinent notifications from school officials for a variety of reasons, including school sponsored field trips, medical, psychological and counseling issues, extracurricular activities, student commendations, as well as disciplinary actions, and the safety and security of the students. It is only...

National Education Association is the most evil labor organization on the planet. All of the teachers’ unions are evil, but the NEA is the biggest, ... The teachers’ unions weren’t able to hide their nastiness from the public ... They did what they’ve always done — put their interests above those of the students and, as we are now finding out, doomed those kids to being forever behind. One of the more bizarre things we saw back then was the far-left regime in Chicago battling with the teachers’ union there to let the kids go back to school. Then-Mayor Lori...

Property-tax relief? Hardly. Proposition HH on this fall’s statewide ballot is really about growing government. And it attempts to do that by piggybacking on public outrage over skyrocketing property tax bills. The proposal’s purported property-tax “relief” — served up by Gov. Jared Polis and his legislative allies as one part of their dizzyingly complicated scheme — is a ruse. As with every attempt to play politics with a crisis, there’s a hidden agenda. And that agenda is to snooker Colorado voters into letting the state keep and spend billions of dollars in surplus tax revenue that otherwise would have to...

Chicago Public Schools has a school utilization problem. Over 34% are less than half full, 57% are underutilized, and 5% are overcrowded. Just 35% are at ideal capacity. The Chicago Teachers Union is preventing solutions. About 322,000 Chicago Public Schools students are set to return Aug. 21, with more than 1 in 3 students entering buildings less than half full. Nearly empty school buildings eat resources that should go towards students’ educations. Those educations are lacking when just 14% of CPS 3rd through 8th grade students from low-income families met proficiency standards in reading and 9% in math. School capacity...

By Jen Wiersma, Trustee for the Temecula Valley Unified School District, Area 3 Standing up for parental rights over our children’s education is more than a campaign slogan; it is essential. As parents are taking action to regain control of their children’s education, we are seeing disinformation campaigns launched to upend their efforts. As a newly seated Temecula Unified School District (TVUSD) board member, I’m compelled to address the inaccuracies perpetuated by Assemblyman Corey Jackson, author of Assembly Bill 1078 and the co-sponsor of the bill, Tony Thurmond, California Superintendent of Public Instruction. Since the November 2022 general election, where...

California’s statewide teachers’ union sent a letter June 27 to the Chino Valley Unified School board criticizing its recent decision to allow only government flags on school property—and threatening to take legal action against the board if the policy is not reversed. The board voted 4–1 June 15 to allow only the California and U.S. flags on school property. The California Teachers Association—with more than 300,000 members—in partnership with local union Associated Chino Teachers alleges in the letter the decision violates teachers’ right to free speech under the First Amendment as well as a state employment law. The union also...

There are many reasons why so many US public schools remained persistently closed for well over a year, but at the top of the list is Randi Weingarten. She is the President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and served as the self-appointed and media-anointed spokesperson for teachers’ unions throughout the pandemic. Weingarten appeared regularly across national media outlets for well over two years, relentlessly touting the dangers of public schools and the risk to teachers from in-person instruction. She also painted anyone who advocated for schools to open as heartless and cruel. Now that it’s become clear what...