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Someone I know is going to be working as a teacher's assistant in a high-school U.S. History class. She is wondering if there are some good online sources that she can use that haven't been twisted by people with a leftist agenda. Would anyone be able to point me to some?

President Barack Obama is backing a controversial campaign by progressives to regulate schools’ disciplinary actions so that members of major racial and ethnic groups are penalized at equal rates, regardless of individuals’ behavior. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/27/obama-backs-race-based-school-discipline-policies/#ixzz21r5DlzVI

RUSH: Okay, now you people know, you are well aware one of the reasons you listen is I know liberals. I know them. I know them like every square inch of my gloriously naked body. Dealing with liberals is like dealing with a one-armed lunatic. They're just gonna keep swinging. They're gonna keep fighting no matter what you do. They never go away. And I know what they're gonna do and why they're gonna do it before they do it, and people marvel at this. We have an opportunity now because of the utterance of Elizabeth Warren, she's running against...

Until the late 1980s, many, if not most, states and countries did not have defined academic "content standards." Instead they had a curriculum, a program of study that described what should be taught and often how in every grade. Some programs were regional, others were state or nationwide, and some even were local to a school or a district. In some states they were mandatory; in others they were advisory in nature. In the late 1980s — in part as the result of global competition, of recognition that different schools offered programs of widely differing quality and of the 1984...

No wonder Gov. Rick Scott and Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson have suggested in recent weeks they are ready to reassess the FCAT. After more than a decade of leading the national charge on school accountability, Florida on Wednesday released 2011-12 grades for public elementary and middle schools that were largely meaningless. The grades have been tweaked, adjusted and tweaked again. Even ardent supporters of the A+ plan appeared willing to concede that the process, which began with the ill-conceived grading of the state's FCAT writing test, has been a complete mess. Now leaders in Tallahassee should begin the serious discussion...

The bulletin board at the front of Melissa Balzano’s classroom in West Orange is decorated with hand-written lists her students wrote in September, expressing their "Hopes and Dreams for Third Grade." For at least half the children in Balzano’s class at Mount Pleasant Elementary School, learning cursive topped the list. "It’s fancy writing," said Naomi Toms, 9. Cursive was once a mainstay of elementary schools, where children practiced the "tripod" pencil grip and the looping strokes of the letters. But these days little classroom time is spent teaching cursive writing, crowded out of the curriculum by the demands of an...

For those of you who have long since gotten sick of the trend among education experts toward “self esteem” rather than actual learning, this story will be extremely cathartic. Wellesley High School teacher David McCullough, Jr. (son of historian David McCullough) had apparently had enough of feeding blithering platitudes to his students and decided to tell the truth. The result sparked controversy among the parents, who didn’t like hearing their children accused of being cosseted and pampered little brats who believed they were special for no reason. But sometimes the truth hurts. Read the greatest hits below:

Howell Public Schools Superintendent Ron Wilson says teachers need their salaries raised significantly to ensure teaching career stays viable. He said he recently talked to a third-year teacher in his district who has a bachelor’s degree, three children and a stay-at-home wife. According to the district's union contract, that teacher would make $40,530 a year. Wilson said the teacher’s children are eligible for the reduced/free lunch program. "You're going to see kids making a choice not to go into education because they don't want to live like paupers. It's unfortunate," Wilson told the Livingston Daily newspaper. "I start to wonder...

A 17-year-old high school student working two jobs to support her siblings, while juggling college-level classes, spent 24 hours in jail this week for missing too much school, KHOU 11 News reported. Diane Tran, an 11th-grader at Willis High School in Willis, Texas said she was often too exhausted to get to school in time. Judge Lanny Moriarty said he warned the student last month not to miss any more classes or she would be violating truancy law, KHOU 11 News reported. When she missed school again, he had her thrown in jail. "If you let one run loose, what...

If you want to know what really goes on in our public schools, go to a teacher-of-the-year banquet. Here you will see why schools aren't about academics anymore. Educators will never admit it openly, but an event like this reveals so much that outsiders never get to see.

Last Monday, a high school student in North Carolina engaged his social studies teacher in a heated debate about politics and the two leading presidential candidates. During the exchange, the teacher (an obvious Obama supporter) got very angry with the student and accused him of disrespecting the president. She even went so far as to tell the boy that he could be jailed for speaking ill of Obama. Sarah Campbell of the Salisbury Post first reported on the story. She claims that the school district is not releasing the name of the teacher and that she is not responding to...

After conceding that poor communication with teachers could have contributed to the unprecedented plunge in Florida students’ writing scores this year, the state Board of Education voted Tuesday to lower the passing mark for the test. Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson defended the decision against critics who said it was a quick fix for bad results on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT. He said changing the test’s passing score to a 3 from a 4 (out of 6) “corrected the process.” “The results still stand,” he said. Just 27 percent of fourth-graders statewide earned a 4 or better on...

Naomi Schaefer Riley, the only Conservative blogger at The Chronicle of Higher Education, was fired after thousands of readers complained about her post "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations." J.S. Tobin writes a vigorous defense. Per copyright issues, Ms. Riley's post can be accessed only by link in Comments.

Technology enables schools to rethink the way that they deliver instruction to students, and a recent phenomenon that’s catching on is called “flipping the classroom.” It works by having students receive direct instruction — often via online videos — outside of the classroom, enabling teachers to devote more time to collaboration, project-based learning, developing critical thinking skills and mentoring students individually. Clintondale High School in Metropolitan Detroit has flipped all of its classrooms, and may be the first school in Michigan to do so. Based on just their short experience with this model, it appears to be a remarkable success....

Are public schools becoming more and more like prisons? That’s what the documentary “The War on Kids” says. Based on interviews with educators, medical professionals, students and sociologists, the documentary, which received a limited film festival run in 2009 and is being released this week on the Documentary Channel, paints the picture of an increasingly authoritarian and paranoid school system that is failing its students, stripping them of their civil liberties and constitutional rights. “Kids have no voice. Everyone pretends to care, but it is never true, and it’s the children who are being blamed for all the failings in...

Entering my freshman year at Georgetown University, I should have felt as if I’d made it. The students I once put on a pedestal, kids who were fortunate enough to attend some of the nation’s top private and public schools, were now my classmates. Having come from D.C. public charter schools, I worked extremely hard to get here. But after arriving on campus before the school year, with a full scholarship, I quickly felt unprepared and outmatched — and it’s taken an entire year of playing catch-up in the classroom to feel like I belong. I know that ultimately I’m...

Last weekend I visited the U.C. Berkeley campus and on a whim attended a lecture with the provocative title “Teaching as a Subversive Activity — Revisited.” Because this was a presentation aimed at education insiders only, the lecturer, retired professor H. Douglas Brown from S.F. State, seemed perfectly willing to let the cat out of the bag about political indoctrination on college campuses. Fortunately, I had my trusty camera with me, so I was able not only to snap a few pictures but also record several key portions of his speech, which I found so eye-opening that I felt the...

An Enlightened, Committed People Who Understand The Principles Of Our Constitution - The Most Effective Means Of Preserving Liberty "Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant - they have been cheated; asleep - they have been surprised; divided - the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? ...the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it.... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free." James Madison America's...

The Latin root of educate is to "lead out from," as Moses led the Jews out from Egypt. The original concept was that children are living in ignorance, and we would naturally want to lead them from that world into a better world. A world where they know more and have more options. Freedom is central to this original concept. As you become educated --that is, as you learn more--you move from less freedom to more freedom. When George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and the other founders talked about public education, they were clearly thinking of schools that would liberate children....

More teachers nationwide are unsatisfied with their jobs and more are likely to leave the profession, according to the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher. The survey, which was released this month, reports that one of the “most dramatic findings” was that teachers have the lowest level of job satisfaction in more than two decades and there was a large increase in the number of teachers who are likely to leave the teaching profession. However, the sheer number of applicants for teaching jobs in Michigan casts question on just how miserable a profession teaching can be. For example, Davison Community...