Free Republic

BILOXI, MS – On a chilly January evening, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump addressed an overflowing crowd at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum – at a rally billed as the largest presidential campaign event in Mississippi history. Trump’s wide-ranging speech touched on topics from “Trojan horse” Syrian refugees and trade deals to Common Core, the Iran nuclear deal, illegal immigration and ISIS. He told the audience that although he has not spent the most money of the GOP candidates he will begin to spend more in order to avoid taking “any chances.” Trump, however, argued his campaign should be a model...

Sort of a New Year's resolution... For many years I've focused on education reform; that work will continue. I have more than 400 articles on the Internet and over 3,000,000 views/visits on YouTube and various sites [e.g. FreeRepublic]. To find education articles and videos, simply enter your interest in Google with the name Bruce Deitrick Price. It's an easy way to find a lot of material quickly. You can assume this material is intelligent, practical, lucid, conservative, and intended to help every student advance as far as possible. During 2015, I was constantly struck by two main trends we need...

Speaking with Fox News host Chris Wallace this weekend, 2016 GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump made a remarkable statement about what he planned for the Department of Education, if and when he becomes president. "I may cut Department of Education," Trump said. "I believe Common Core is a very bad thing. I believe that we should be -- you know, educating our children from Iowa, from New Hampshire, from South Carolina, from California, from New York. I think that it should be local education." Many Americans agree, especially as the Department of Education has grown into a massive bureaucracy more...

Surging Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz is laying out what would be the most aggressive first day in office every for a new president, starting with the elimination of "every single illegal and unconstitutional" executive action taken by President Obama.In an epilogue to his father Rafael Cruz's upcoming autobiography, the Texas senator also said that he would rip up Obama's controversial deal with Iran, open an investigation into Planned Parenthood's abortion practice, end the IRS's "persecution of religious liberty," and shift the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem."All of that is on day one. It is an example of...

On January 1, California residents will have to accustom themselves to a number of new laws that will be implemented in the state. These are some the laws that will likely have the most profound effect: SB 172: High school seniors will receive their diploma whether or not they pass or even take an exit exam; the law also applies retroactively to students who have graduated since 2004; ... SB 707: Bans concealed firearms from college campuses and K-12 school grounds

I often wondered if progressives around me live in an alternate reality. How else can people so fat claim poverty and oppression when citizens of other countries live on less than $2 a day and are so thin, you can count their ribs through their skin? What causes this obvious delusion? There are quick answers - mental illness, mass hysteria, abundance, lack of jobs, lack of a moral compass, disintegration of families, the MSM telling them constantly that they are oppressed and enslaved to the “evil” white male, too much drug use, and indoctrination in schools to the detriment of...

I did not realize that holiday rape culture was such a persistent and deep problem in America, but after a very simple search on Twitter, I see that it has reached epidemic levels.

A ninth grade World Geography teacher who assigned students near Staunton, Virginia to hand copy the Arabic characters representing the shahada–the Islamic statement of faith–also circulated a Koran to her students while refusing to do the same with the Bible, according to reports from a parent meeting. Conservative talk show host Rob Schilling filed this report last Tuesday: Parents of students at Greenville, Virginia’s Riverheads High School were shocked by a recent assignment given in World Geography class.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lifted the visa ban on the European theoretician of radical Islam and virtuoso Jew-baiter, Tariq Ramadan, allowing him to take up a position similar to that he was offered at Notre Dame University, but which was filled because of his unavailability. At the same time, a U.S. entry prohibition against a South African leftist, Adam Habib of Johannesburg University, was voided. The decision to admit Tariq Ramadan is profoundly wrong. Adam Habib is an innocuous figure. Tariq Ramadan is not. Ramadan was first barred from the U.S. in 2004 ... the denial of...

A Virginia school district is defending a classroom assignment that required students to practice calligraphy by writing the Muslim statement of faith, "There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." Female students at Riverheads High School in Staunton, Virginia, were also invited to wear Muslim clothing -- a story first reported by The Schilling Show. "Neither these lessons, nor any other lesson in the world geography course, are an attempt at indoctrination to Islam or any other religion, or a request for students to renounce their own faith or profess any belief," the district said in...

What do Common Core and Obamacare have in common, other than the enthusiasm they engender in the White House and widespread disappointment they generate outside of it? Both programs have fatal computer glitches. "New Hampshire-based company Measured Progress, which developed online Common Core tests used in Montana, Nevada, and North Dakota, has acknowledged a major glitch in the tests' rollout," Chris Neal reported in School Reform News. "Technical malfunctions, such as servers crashing during testing, resulted in only 37 percent of Nevada students being able to take their exams." "Meanwhile, Montana and North Dakota only managed to test 76 percent...

Despite being a favorite of the U.S. Republican Party establishment and a presumed top-tier candidate at the start of the race, Jeb Bush continues to struggle to gain momentum in the presidential campaign, even as the voting season quickly approaches. Bush's troubles were underscored this past week with the release of a new CNN/ORC poll, which suggested the former Florida governor now has the support of an astoundingly low 3 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning independents nationwide.

Jeb Bush has tried everything. His campaign allies have blanketed the airwaves with almost $30 million in ads. Aiming to shake the "low-energy" tag and prove his toughness, Bush hit Donald Trump as a carnival barker unfit for the serious job of being President. He attacked Sen. Marco Rubio, suggesting his former protege was a dilettante in a hurry. He cut staff, hired a debate coach, and pledged that "Jeb Can Fix It." Bush is now polling at 3% -- and dropping. The 3% figure puts Bush in sixth place in the national GOP race, according to the CNN/ORC poll...

Another Common Core-aligned math problem is going viral. This time a 3rd grade math problem was marked as incorrect even though the student found the correct answer. On the other hand, submissions with the wrong answer have been counted right. The question asked the student to find the result of 5 multiplied by 3, using the "repeated addition strategy." The student wrote "5+5+5" and correctly found the answer to be 15. Apparently, this strategy didn't fit with the Common Core-established method for teaching multiplication, so the teacher punished the student for getting the right answer in a way not prescribed....

When Wake County Public Schools switched from a school assignment policy based on race to one based on socioeconomic status, schools became slightly more segregated, according to new research from Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. However, segregation increased much more rapidly in four other large North Carolina school districts that simply dropped race-based strategies and did not attempt to pursue diversity in other ways. In addition, Wake County math and reading scores rose slightly and the achievement gap between black and white students narrowed after the switch. In the four other N.C. districts, scores fell among black students...

When Texas middle schooler Jordan Wooley recently highlighted a reading assignment that required students to deny God, school administrators, her teacher, and some students painted her as a liar. But a flood of support from residents across the state, including and Gov. Greg Abbott, is buoying her spirits as she heads to the Governor’s Mansion Saturday to share her story. Wooley, 12, testified before the Katy Independent School Board last Monday about a reading assignment at West Memorial Junior High in which her teacher instructed students to label statements as fact, opinion or commonplace assertion, which her teacher characterized as...

The principal of DeWitt Clinton HS, a struggling Bronx school in Mayor de Blasio's multimillion-dollar Renewal program, changed students failing grades to passing without teachers knowledge or consent, insiders told The Post. In one case, Santiago Taveras gave a senior who received a "no show" in a global-history class a 75 and changed her failing 55 grade in gym to a minimum passing 65, records show. She then got a credit for each class, which she did not deserve, several staffers charged. He thinks he is God and can do whatever he wants. ... Taveras changed a students failing 55...

Give thanks this day for some indirect blessings of liberty, including the behavior-beyond-satire of what are generously called institutions of higher education. People who are imprecisely called educators have taught, by their negative examples, what intelligence is not. Melissa Click is the University of Missouri academic who shouted “I need some muscle over here” to prevent a photojournalist from informing the public about a public demonstration intended to influence the public. Click’s academic credentials include a University of Massachusetts doctoral dissertation titled “It’s ‘a good thing’: The Commodification of Femininity, Affluence, and Whiteness in the Martha Stewart Phenomenon.” Her curriculum...

ORLANDO, Fla. - Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz signed a pledge to kill Common Core if elected.Cruz was the only one of 14 Republican presidential primary candidates at the Florida Sunshine Summit - a conservative rally put on by the state's Republican Party - to vow, in writing, to oppose any federal efforts to mandate, impose or influence standards assessments or curriculum across the country, Sunshine State News reports."As the Republican Party of Florida begins its Sunshine Summit, Senator Cruz's pledge provides needed leadership on the critical issue of education that so impacts the many residents and students of the State...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, officially committed to end the controversial Common Core State Standards if elected president, signing a pledge with Florida Parents Against Common Core on Friday. The pledge says he will oppose any federal efforts to mandate, impose or influence standards, assessments or curriculum across the country. Disgruntled by the lack of response from Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Department of Education over repealing Common Core, FPACC was ready to make its voice heard in one of the most important states for 2016, and members opted to start at the top of the political chain to...