Free Republic

In 1998, Californians voted to pass Proposition 227, the “English for the Children Act,” and dismantle the state’s bilingual-education industry. The results, according to California’s education establishment, were not supposed to look like this: button-cute Hispanic pupils at a Santa Ana elementary school boasting about their English skills to a visitor. Those same pupils cheerfully calling out to their principal on their way to lunch: “Hi, Miss Champion!” A statewide increase in English proficiency among all Hispanic students. Instead, warned legions of educrats, eliminating bilingual education in California would demoralize Hispanic students and widen the achievement gap. Unless Hispanic children...

Redefining Public Education Bethany Stotts, December 2, 2009 In the November Education Outlook issued by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), senior fellow Frederick Hess issues an ambitious set of K-12 educational reforms which, he argues, would modernize teacher hiring practices and public education. “Ultimately, the goal is to rethink the teacher challenges of the 21st century,” writes Hess. “While we should recognize that institutions change slowly and celebrate incremental advances, we should not allow that to obscure the goal: to recruit the most promising talent and then foster a more flexible, rewarding, and performance-focused profession,” he later adds. In the...

Marvin Olasky has touched upon a brilliant meme in terms of academia. As the universities and colleges have been hijacked by the Left, perhaps it is time to consider charter colleges. It would certainly improve the quality of education, considering the generation of know-nothings schools are producing these days. Cross-posted at RudyCarrera.com.

Those who believe that America is a special place where dreams can come true and everyone has the opportunity to succeed, had better keep their thoughts to themselves if they attend the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development. A new report posted by the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group of the University recommends those training to be Minnesota public school teachers must repudiate our cherished American dream. This “Task Group” even recommends teacher candidates adopt its party line that America is “an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.” Teachers must harbor hatred and resentment for...

How do we get politically correct students and schools? We get them by churning out politically correct teachers from teacher colleges and teacher credentialing programs which filter the teaching of education through the lens of political correctness. In a press release in October of this year, U.S. Secretary of Education's Arne Duncan stated, “By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom. America’s university-based teacher preparation programs need revolutionary change--not evolutionary tinkering.” The press release...

I had a somewhat disturbing conversation yesterday with Steve Fussell, the senior VP of human resources at pharmaceutical maker Abbott. His basic message, which I may pursue in a column down the road, was that Abbott is going to be hiring tons of people for high-paying jobs over the next decade, but not many of them will be Americans because we study the wrong things in college and we're not willing to work overseas. The key quotes: 1) "I hate to say we don't have the world's best universities. We may have the best minds, the best liberal arts education....

TAMPA, Fla. – Jeffrey Kolowith's kindergarten students read a poem about Christopher Columbus, take a journey to the New World on three paper ships and place the explorer's picture on a timeline through history. Kolowith's students learn about the explorer's significance — though they also come away with a more nuanced picture of Columbus than the noble discoverer often portrayed in pop culture and legend. "I talk about the situation where he didn't even realize where he was," Kolowith said. "And we talked about how he was very, very mean, very bossy."

There is so much for high school seniors and their parents to know about colleges that they not only need to get a lot of information but also need to make sure it is the right kind of information. A number of college guides have useful information but, unfortunately, the best-known and most pretentious of these guides — "America's Best Colleges"— is grossly misleading. There is no such thing as a "best" college, any more than there is any such thing as a "best" wife or a "best" husband. Who would be best for a particular person depends on that...

September 16, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Grading TeachersWe must distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers. By Marcus A. Winters In 2007, only 57 percent of fourth graders in New York City and 44 percent of fourth graders in Chicago could claim even basic literacy according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Yet, in the same year, less than 2 percent of New York’s teachers and less than 1 percent of Chicago’s teachers were deemed “unsatisfactory” in their official evaluations. Clearly, something is missing here. Current public-school evaluation systems do not distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers. We can dramatically...

Our Organizer-in-Chief will address students across America come September 8. In preparation for that teaching moment, Teaching Ambassador Fellows at the Department of Education have prepared a Menu of Classroom Activities to prepare the kiddies. Here are a few of the leading questions: Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials ...? Why is what they say important? What is the President trying to tell me? What is the President asking me to do?

Private schools offering lavish extracurricular activities give their pupils an unfair advantage and should be forced to share their facilities with state pupils, says a report commissioned by the prime minister. Former cabinet minister Alan Milburn was asked to look at how class barriers could be broken down in Britain and found that middle-class children whose parents do not move in the "right" circles, as well as those from poorer families, now risk being shut out of professions that have become more socially exclusive.

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List 1 Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it? 2 Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact...

Henry Ramirez, meet Kyle Gosselin. We thought you should be introduced, at least virtually, because you have some things in common. You're a couple of low-key, low-drama, low-maintenance 17-year-olds who have just navigated 11th grade at large public high schools. Both of you are planning to go to college. Both thinking about careers in medicine. Both willing to work hard (but not insanely hard). Both smart (but not gunning to be No. 1). In the 20 or so miles that separate Jefferson High School from La Cañada High, in the miles between inner city and suburb, there exists a social...

MOUNDSVILLE - Days of lugging home heavy backpacks filled with textbooks could soon be over for students in Marshall County, where school officials may stop requiring them to complete their homework. Bonnie Ritz, director of curriculum and instruction, said administrators have discussed a policy that would not penalize students for failing to do their homework. The idea is that students who do their homework would improve their grades, but students not doing the work would not see grades suffer as a result. She said the concept grew out of concerns that some students in the county don't have sufficient help...

Erin Cummings couldn't find a teaching job in Pennsylvania when she graduated from Penn State University in 2003, so she went to Maryland and taught third grade. "I knew I always wanted to come back to Pittsburgh. I was born and raised here," said Cummings, who returned to Carlynton School District in 2006 as a long-term substitute before becoming a full-time first-grade teacher. It took Chris Fox a little longer to return home after landing his first teaching job in Virginia in 1996. He came back in 2006 to take a job in Riverview School District in Oakmont. "It takes...

WASHINGTON, April 6 /Christian Newswire/ -- The deadline for enrolling in the 2009 National Bible Bee Competition is April 30, 2009. The Bible Bee Headquarters is urging families interested in participating in the National Bible Bee to contact the nearest Local Bible Bee and sign up now! To locate a Bible Bee in your community, you can visit the National Bible Bee website at www.biblebee.org and click the U.S. Google Map. Simply zoom in and click one of the green markers in your area for contact information! The Shelby Kennedy Foundation is excited to introduce this first-of-its-kind annual National Bible...

"Our initial reaction was that the reprint illustrated the reliance on force-fed rote memorization of yesteryear. On further reflection, most of the questions are still appropriate. They stress a broadness of education, which seems largely lacking today. Enjoy testing yourself; the questions are tough for 8th graders or adults!"

Monday March 2, 2009 Denver Archbishop: "Very Bad Period of Catechesis" in Church "Bearing Bad Fruit in Our Time" EXCLUSIVE: LifeSiteNews interview with Archbishop Charles Chaput By Steve Jalsevac TORONTO, Canada, March 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - During a LifeSiteNews interview last week, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput stressed that "not nearly enough" US Catholic bishops have been speaking out strongly on the current state of the culture. He also noted that the poor instruction of Catholics over the past 40 years has to a large degree been responsible for many of today's serious problems within US Catholicism, especially the lack...

"Thus impoverished, writers and intellectuals generally veered sharply to the left in these years. Indeed, 1929-1933 was a great watershed in American intellectual history. In the 18th century American men of ideas and letters had been closely in tune with the republicanism of the Founding Fathers. . ."

Republicans and conservatives are in jeopardy of being "educated" out of existence. That begs the question, why in a county that is over 60% Republican and conservative, do we allow our local school system to be run by liberals? Yes, while conservatives have slept, the local school systems across the country, including ours, have been completely taken over by liberals. It is not only the liberals alone that have made this possible. It is also RINO (Republicans in name only) that have supported these liberal policies and made it possible for them to dominate the school system. Locally RINO's like...