Free Republic

As an adult who teaches, I got to choose an open school. Union politics have now barred millions of families from a similar privilege.I don’t blame schools for closing in March. Very little was known about COVID-19 then, so closures seemed the safest decision amid the uncertainty. Neither do I blame schools for a meager showing that semester. My own district threw together online curricula and instructional materials practically overnight. The results were dismal, but it’s the best many could have done given the situation. However, we’ve now had nine months to understand this virus, and all the evidence favors...

The idea that bars should remain open yet schools remain closed runs counter to any sense of logic, not to mention good public policy.The past nine months have seen more than a quarter-million Americans die from the coronavirus. Each and every death represents a tragedy — a life cut short, an empty place at the family table this holiday season, children mourning their parents, even parents mourning their children. But a separate and ongoing tragedy has also struck at countless more than another quarter-million Americans: Children who have disappeared from school following last spring’s COVID-19 closures. A survey conducted by...

As big government makes one-size-fits-all decisions for California families, leaving kids without essential resources and their constitutionally guaranteed right to education, parents are asking, 'What does that future look like?' California students have officially kicked off their school year, but they’ve hardly gone “back to school.” Thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom, 34 counties are on the so-called state monitoring list as of this writing, meaning children in those counties are barred from attending in-person classes.In coordination with the Dhillon Law Group, a band of California parents filed a lawsuit with a U.S. District Court challenging the Democrat governor’s mandate and...

The remote-learning experiment isn’t going well. This month the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education published a report looking at how 477 school districts nationwide have responded to the Covid-19 crisis. Its findings reveal widespread neglect of students. The report found only 27% of districts required teachers to record whether students participate in remote classes, while remote attendance has been abysmal. During the first two weeks of the shutdown, some 15,000 Los Angeles students failed to show up for classes or do any schoolwork. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, 10 weeks in, “the Philadelphia School District registers just...

Courtney Lancaster, a mother and Navy Veteran, expressed her outrage after police pulled up to her door and asked to search her home for weapons. According to the police, the school safety officer at Lancaster’s 11-year-old son’s school, Seneca Elementary, called law enforcement after spotting a BB gun in the background of a virtual class meeting.“I had no idea what to think. I’ve never been in any legal trouble whatsoever. I’ve never had any negative encounter with law enforcement,” she told Fox 45 News. “I had no idea. I really didn’t know what to think.”Although officers searched her 5th grader’s...

INFURIATING Scott G. McNealy has never been easier. Just bring up math textbooks. Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same. “Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says. Early this year, Oracle, the database software maker, acquired Sun for $7.4 billion, leaving Mr. McNealy without a job. He has since decided to aim his energy and some money at Curriki, an online hub for free textbooks and other course...