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Some trends are so evident that even I can't miss them. Chapter 9 of a book I wrote in the 1980s, Prodigal Press, has the title, "Network News and Local Newspapers: The Coming Economic Judgment." It was easy to forecast that "use of personal computers in homes will lead to a more efficient delivery system" for the news, and that in the process liberal behemoths would stagger and fall. Should Christians be upset that some major city news­papers have gone out of business, and that even the mighty New York Times has mortgaged its headquarters? No: We should work on...

The Track Not Taken by: Allie Winegar Duzett, September 30, 2009 Students today can sometimes go to high school and college simultaneously—but what happens when it’s over? “With nearly half of African-American students and 40 percent of Latino students attending high schools where the majority of students do not graduate, we must change our approach,” Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education stated at a recent hearing. What witnesses before the committee intended to do was expand the so-called “dual enrollment” program, in which students can go to high school and college...

The world’s most prestigious universities have begun posting entire curricula on the Web—for free. Is there such a thing as a free higher-education lunch? I enrolled to find out. I was not screwing around. When I took the first physics class of my life, at age 35, it was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and my professor was Walter Lewin, one of that institution's most respected instructors. Lewin is a man so comfortable with his vectors that he diagrams them in front of a classroom audience while wearing Teva sandals. OK, I wasn't really "at" MIT. And "took" the...

Dropouts Seek a Boost From Equivalency Exams Numbers Seeking a Degree Swell -- But Gains May Be Limited A growing number of Americans are taking high school equivalency tests in their hunt for any leg up in a bleak labor market. Adult-education centers across the country report backlogs and waiting lists for prep courses cramming dozens of topics and years of lessons into weeks or months. But the potential for a better job and pay that drives many to seek a General Educational Development diploma comes with a caveat: The certificate generally is of limited value unless students use it...

... American junior tennis has had a major change in the last five years. Aspiring pros now commonly abandon regular school for home or online educational programs. Although alternative schooling is not new to junior athletics, tennis is perhaps the only sport whose full participation requires it because of year-round competition and travel. Smith persuaded Mkrtchian and three others to join a special U.S.T.A. training program. “It’s got to be a six-hour day,” Smith said. “It’s normal for foreigners.” Marcos Giron, then 15, was convinced after hearing about Roger Federer’s ambitious junior tournament schedule. But Giron was considering the option...

A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military. Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative...

The soaring costs of a college degree are prompting colleges to consider a three-year degree program. Britain has long granted a degree for three years of college. I would like to suggest a one-year degree program. And I don’t mean an associate’s degree. Here are some hard facts most colleges will never tell you and most parents could not tolerate hearing. The general requirements of the first two years at most colleges are what high school should have been. That is what junior should have learned had he not been busy getting high, getting drunk, and being socially promoted. Better...

High school sophomores should be ready for college by age 16. That's the message from New Hampshire education officials, who announced plans Oct. 30 for a new rigorous state board of exams to be given to 10th graders. Students who pass will be prepared to move on to the state's community or technical colleges, skipping the last two years of high school. (See pictures of teens and how they would vote.) Once implemented, the new battery of tests is expected to guarantee higher competency in core school subjects, lower dropout rates and free up millions of education dollars. Students may...

America’s university system is creating a class-riven nation. There has to be a better way. To ask whether too many people are going to college requires us to think about the importance and nature of a liberal education. “Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood,” John Stuart Mill told students at the University of St. Andrews in 1867. “Their object is not to make skillful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings.” If this is true (and I agree that it is), why...

Higher (Priced) EducationBy Burt Prelutsky Oscar Wilde once described a cynic as a man who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. It makes me wonder, were he alive today, if he would characterize us as a country of cynics or merely dismiss us as a nation of fools. I mean, how is it that Americans who lived hardscrabble lives 150 years ago could read, write, do math problems, and quote at length from Shakespeare and the Bible, while today, in spite of “Sesame Street,� pre-school, Operation Head Start, computers, and mind-numbing hours of homework, millions...

[M]y impression is that many prosperous parents pay mere lip service to education. A study of elementary-school families last year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics bears this out. Researchers at Brigham Young and the University of Michigan found that parents preferred teachers who make their children happy over those who emphasize academic achievement. My experience in a nonobsessive school district is consistent with this. Our family's intense focus on learning is regarded warily by some parents, whose dissatisfactions with school are mostly about testing and creativity but never about a lack of foreign-language instruction or overall academic rigor. Indeed,...

As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher Education (www.martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539)." The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight and a half years in college. That's even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students. Only 23 percent...

Posted on Saturday, August 02, 2008 8:44:19 AM by Soliton don't remember when I first learned about the theory of evolution, but nowadays I find myself reading of it a great deal in the popular press and hearing it discussed in the media. As my daughter enters elementary school, I find myself anxious to discuss with her teachers what they will cover in science class and where in their curriculum they plan to teach evolution. OUR COUNTRY HAS LAWS THAT SEPARATE church and state. Public institutions like schools must be neutral on the subject of religion, as required by the...

Free Republic Homeschool Forum 2008-2009A spot for homeschoolers on Free Republic to share information Once again, we are reviving our Free Republic Homeschool Forum where homeschoolers can share tips and talk about curriculum for the upcoming year. Below is a list of educational books, curricula, and other resources recommended by homeschoolers on Free Republic. This list was compiled, updated, and reformatted using the suggestions many of you gave on our last thread. (If any corrections are needed, please advise.) Feel free to add more of your favorite books and products to the comments below. Which curriculum has worked well for...

Is the GED test the same in every state or is it different? My son took it yesterday and said it was a piece of cake and said people you would not think would be able to pass it did. Then I had educators from out of state saying that it was a very hard test and one where a lot of studying would be required. My son took it because the public school would not accept credit for his first two years of high school at a non accredited private school. Long story but he dropped out of public...

A Modest Proposal for Education Reform "A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism If a little learning is a dangerous thing, then today's schools and universities, purveyors of a little learning par excellence, should be shut down as a public menace. Never before have we spent so much money and granted so many degrees to produce so many people who lack even fundamental abilities in rational thinking. Twenty odd years ago during a brief...

For the last few decades there has been a lot of controversy among many people about the break-up of families. They have a point, and it's an important one. But when families are intact, there is something else little noticed but very important. As Ortega y Gassett has written, "People do not live together merely to be together. They live together to do something together." Because of the way American life has evolved (in large part due to the interference of the State), there was no place for most teenagers when I was growing up, in society or the family....

Most people learn over time, but often learning comes too late to be fully useful. There are certainly many things that I know now that would have been extremely useful to me earlier in my life; things that could have saved me from many of the mistakes and hurts I suffered over the years—and most of those that I inflicted on others too.

I was beginning to get a little worried. After 12 years of homeschooling, college was just around the corner. It was time to make decisions- and lots of them. As a freelance writer, I wanted to major in professional writing. But one small problem loomed in my way… Money. Those little green wads of paper that make the world revolve. Twenty grand a year for tuition just wasn’t an option. Neither was going into debt. Today, college loans and bills stalk the college grad for years after graduation. In fact, CNN news reports that loans pay 51% of a college...

Lawyers representing a Massachusetts school district named as a defendant in a parent's civil rights complaint have said teachers at Estabrook Elementary School have a "legitimate state interest" in teaching the homosexual lifestyle, and parents have no input into those decisions.... ...."The state must fight 'discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation' in ways that 'do not perpetuate stereotypes,'" the lawyers for the school district argued. They also explained to the judge that, in their opinion, parents have no right to control what ideas the school presents to elementary schoolchildren, and if parents disagree with that dictate, they can take...

At an educators' meeting in Washington last fall, conversation turned to whether the federal government should support programming for this nation's most gifted and talented high school students. Educators overwhelmingly said that top students in secondary schools need no assistance, much to my dismay. Priority must be given to those not meeting the minimal standards in science and math, they reasoned. The ugly secret is that our most talented students are falling through the cracks. Not one program of such major governmental agencies as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation or NASA specifically targets the top 5...

Montgomery County - Although Montgomery County school officials have been making controversial new teachings on sexual orientation seem as if they’re optional, the reality is that all 10th-graders must take the class in question in order to graduate, officials said. Schools chief public information officer Brian Edwards explained to The Examiner that the 18-week health course — which includes two hotly contested lessons mentioning transsexuality and bisexuality within a three-week unit on family life — is required. Administrators have emphasized during meetings leading up to the approval of the new sex-ed curriculum that the lessons are “opt-in” — meaning parents...

1) Mandate high school graduation or equivalency as compulsory for everyone below the age of 21. Just as we established compulsory attendance to the age of 16 or 17 in the beginning of the 20th century, it is appropriate and critical to eradicate the idea of "dropping out" before achieving a diploma. To compete in the 21st century, all of our citizens, at minimum, need a high school education. 2) Establish high school graduation centers for students 19-21 years old to provide specialized instruction and counseling to all students in this older age group who would be more effectively addressed...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Education and business leaders urged an overhaul of the U.S. school system, including ending high school at the 10th grade for many students. Current teaching is failing to prepare young Americans for the global economy, members of a bipartisan panel said Thursday. Beginning teachers should earn more, according to the group, and money for this idea could come from the scrapping of conventional teacher pension plans in favor of other benefits such as 401(k)s. "People have got to understand what we've got is not working. It's not working for kids, but it's not working for teachers either,"...

We have been discussing inexpensive ways to fast track kids through high school to avoid the liberal agenda: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315730/posts?page=84#84 The thread title was not well thought out, because some parents might instinctively skip over it due to attached stigma, whether real or imagined.

I've been getting asked more and more about my position that high school is a waste of time and my recommendation for parents to give their children a choice to skip high school. This is in response to the liberal agendas now prevalent in high schools as well as the simple fact that such a strategy would give kids a 4 year head start on their peers. Below are some useful links for investigating this option. I will repost my own experience under that. http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/school/equivexam.html UCB Parents Advice about School Taking the High School Equivalency Exam Advice and recommendations from...