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A Dobson High School Advanced Placement government class with strong opinions about Barack Obama watched the president's speech Wednesday on a small, grainy TV in the corner of their classroom. Some of the students attentively watched the speech, giving questioning looks and comments, shaking their heads and laughing at some of Obama's words. Other students listened, occasion ally glancing up to watch, while texting on their cell phones, reading a book or finishing school work. The gymnasium's events were shown simultaneously in rooms throughout the Mesa school, and teachers were given discretion on whether to show the speech, the students...

02.10.09MARINE VETERAN KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL FOR POSSESSING FIREARMS WOU STUDENT TRIED, CONVICTED AND SENTENCED.The WOU student who was falsely arrested and charged with possession of a firearm in a public building, had all his criminal charges dropped by the Polk County DA tonight.The DA admitted no wrongdoing on his part, or on the part of the police who arrested Jeff Maxwell for a "crime" that does not exist.In a statement released to OFF's attorney, the DA said "I believe the Monmouth Police Department issued the citation in good faith and that there was an arguable violation. However, a careful...

January 21, 2009 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Almost from its inception, the Weather Underground [WU] was viewed with great concern by the FBI. As a result, the decision was made to place a high level informant within the group to help keeps tabs on its members' activities. That person was Larry Grathwohl, a Vietnam veteran and the only publicly identified FBI informant who succeeded in penetrating the Weather Underground, serving in that capacity from August 1969 until April 1970. Prior to his service in the FBI, he was a member of the Cincinnati Police force. PipeLineNews.org contacted...

Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted public competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them, according to a report by the CPS Office of Inspector General. That was just one example of questionable CPS actions detailed in the inspector general's 2008 annual report. Others included high school staffers changing grades to pump up transcripts of student athletes and workers at a restricted-enrollment grade school falsifying addresses to get relatives admitted. In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators...

Perhaps the most important argument against same-sex marriage is that once society honors same-sex sex as it does man-woman sex, there will inevitably be a major increase in same-sex sex. People do sexually (as in other areas) what society allows and especially what it honors. One excellent example illustrating this is an article recently written in the McGill University newspaper by McGill student Anna Montrose. In it, she wrote: "It's hard to go through four years of a Humanities B.A. reading Foucault and Butler and watching 'The L Word' and keep your rigid heterosexuality intact. I don't know when it...

Randolph Elementary School parents and guardians received messages Thursday about a 10-year-old boy who showed off a broken BB gun on his way home from school Wednesday afternoon. According to police, the boy showed the gun to three other students. The students told their parents, who reported the incident to the school. School officials then told police. Capt. Jim Davidsaver said officers contacted the boy at his home Thursday, recovered the BB gun, cited him for disturbing the peace and referred him to the Lancaster County Attorney’s Office. According to an e-mail sent to parents, the school has taken disciplinary...

Thousands of academics have signed an online petition in support of Bill Ayers, the 1960s-radical-turned-college professor whose ties to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama were a matter of hot dispute in Wednesday night's debate. The petition, which has circulated through university faculties across the nation, says critics of Ayers, an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, are trying to "intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue." More than 3,200 have signed the petition. The petition represents a rare attempt to defend Ayers, whose name has become a political epithet. Republicans have called him a "domestic terrorist," and...

A recent California Court of Appeals decision ruled that parents who want to home-school their children must be certified teachers in that state. The home-schooling community across the country has reacted to this decision with outrage, insisting they are entitled and equipped to educate their own children, and that certification ensures neither better teaching skills nor better-educated children. But many others applaud the decision, believing that certification is necessary to ensure a consistent, standards-based education and keep students from falling behind. YES from experts in the field: Marty Hittelman, a Los Angeles community college math teacher, is president of the...

Excerpt: 21 (105 ILCS 110/3) (from Ch. 122, par. 863) 22 Sec. 3. Comprehensive Health Education Program. 23-33 (a) The program established under this Act shall include, but not be limited to, the following major educational areas as a basis for curricula in all elementary and secondary schools in this State: human ecology and health, human growth and development, the emotional, psychological, physiological, hygienic and social responsibilities of family life, including sexual abstinence and prevention of unintended pregnancy until marriage, prevention and control of disease, including age appropriate instruction in grades K 6 through 12 on the prevention of sexually...

Giving American home educators a taste of what's to come if the U.S. government continues down the path of European-style socialism, Utah Judge Scott Johansen recently ordered, per a bureaucratic paperwork glitch, the removal of a homeschool mother's children if she refused to enroll them in public school. As if that were not bizarre enough, the mother, Denise Mafi, was threatened with two years jail time if her children failed to show up for class without a physician's note excusing them.

The Seattle Public school system may be finding itself in more hot water, following dustups over last fall’s “Myth Of Thanksgiving” incident, and last summer’s “Exploring White Privilege” conference. A reliable source has informed ORBUSMAX that at least one Obama supporter was caught openly selling Obama for President t-shirts, “on Seattle Public School premises during an official School District Training” for teachers, yesterday and today, at the Aki Kurose Middle school. The source says they overheard the Obama supporter being told by an attendee of the training on Monday that the table display was inappropriate and may be in violation...

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A controversial legal ruling that outlawed most forms of home schooling in California will face greater scrutiny because the underlying family court case was dismissed earlier this week. News of the decision broke Friday as thousands of members of the Christian Home Educators Assn. of California met in Long Beach, where they opened with: "We pray God you deliver home-schoolers in California from the mouth of the lion. . . . Change the hearts of these judges, we pray." The issue remains in legal limbo. On Thursday, the family court judge terminated its jurisdiction over two of the eight children...

This month 3,700 recent college grads will begin Teach for America's five-week boot camp, before heading off for two-year stints at the nation's worst public schools. Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money – the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy. Participants need only pass academic muster and attend the summer training before entering a classroom. If they took the traditional route into teaching, they would have to endure years of "education" courses to be certified. On average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially...

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (WCCO) ― Flying the Confederate flag has long been controversial in Southern states but now it's causing a heated debate at Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Minn. Three seniors who displayed the flag will not be allowed to attend their graduation ceremony Wednesday evening. "It was sitting like that in the parking lot," said Justin Thompson, as he held a Confederate flag that was hanging from a pole inside a pick-up truck bed. On Tuesday, three seniors, each with a rebel flag on the back of their pick-ups, parked at Kennedy High School. "I'm just a country type...

The state Education Department on Monday directed a Minnesota charter school to "correct" two areas related to religion at the school. Tarik ibn Zayad Academy, which focuses on Middle Eastern culture and shares a mosque with the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, came under fire after a teacher alleged that the school was offering religious instruction in Islam to its students. Charter schools in Minnesota are publicly funded and must be nonsectarian. The allegations first surfaced in an article by Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten. The Education Department subsequently began a review of the suburban Inver Grove Heights school and...

A group of Fairview High School students is suspected of organizing an after-school "fight club" that involved at least 12 students and as many as 60 spectators. Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said Thursday that 10 Fairview students, all boys, have been ticketed on suspicion of public brawling. Police think they were part of a club of friends that regularly met near the South Boulder Recreation Center for public "street fighting." "Apparently, they were gathering in the field after school hours ... where they were engaging in fights," Huntley said. "They see this as sort of a recreational, spectator-type sport...

A three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal has determined parents in that state have no legal right to home school. A Christian attorney in Sacramento says unless the ruling is reversed, literally thousands of students in the Golden State will be subject to criminal sanctions. (click here for special webcast starting at 2 p.m. CST) California Justice H. Walter Croskey has stated in an opinion that "parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order...

When Curtis Williams took the field for the Huskies' 2000 season opener, the University of Washington's media guide described him like this: Senior, strong safety, 5-foot-10, 200 pounds. Named, in 1999, the team's best hitter. Led team in solo tackles. Went to high school in Fresno, Calif., where he was a top recruit. The seventh of eight kids. Pursuing a degree in American ethnic studies. Here's what the media guide didn't say: When Williams played against Idaho, he had a warrant out for his arrest. He'd been arrested every year he was here: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000. He was...

Yoga Cred by: Deborah Lambert, January 29, 2008 Although students at Needham (Mass) High School may have felt a lot less stressed after principal Paul Richards stopped publishing the list of honor roll recipients last year, it seems the relaxation guru was just getting started, according to Michelle Malkin, who noted that his latest idea was for the school to sponsor “in-school yoga classes.” “It’s not that I’m trying to turn the culture upside down,” Richards told the New York Times, explaining that his goal was simply to bring “the culture to a healthier place.” These health concerns not only...

Vote to dismiss Churchill passed 8-1

Honorable Thomas Zampino of the Family Division of the New Jersey Superior Court has ordered penal charges against a home-schooling mother of seven.   According to a report by Matt Bowman on the website constitutionallycorrect.com, the mother's supposed infraction is home-schooling her children without supervision from the local school board - a right explicitly upheld in New Jersey law.   According to the court's opinion, Tara Hamilton is the defendant in a suit brought against her by her recently estranged husband, Stephen Hamilton.  Stephen brought the suit in an attempt to force Tara to enroll their school-age children, aged 12 to 4...

The head of the nation's largest teacher union hailed a summit meeting for clergy and educators initiated by the Baptist Center for Ethics an historic first step toward building bridges between public schools and people of faith...."Many of you in your pulpits, sometimes your greatest detractors may be your board of trustees or your deacons," Weaver addressed ministers. "What we are saying is if in fact we can help you, select some of us to be on your deacon board or trustee board. We will solicit you, perhaps, to run for school board. We will solicit you to help with...

The day starts at Redmond Elementary School with students taking the Pledge of Allegiance, and then the PeaceBuilders Pledge, a promise that the children will build peace in school, at home and in the community... The PeaceBuilders program, which employs techniques and activities to promote nonviolence and prevent bullying, is built around a simple tenet, that students, teachers and staff members will be good to one another, won't hurt each other and will tell someone they trust when they have conflict with one another... "The school has adopted this as a way of life; it's an undercurrent in everything going...

As part of an “activism class,” students at Solebury School, a private school near Philadelphia, were taken to an abortion clinic, donned vests worn by abortion staff, and helped to escort women into the building. During the field trip students were not permitted to speak to pro-life demonstrators standing outside the building. “This is very, very disturbing,” said Eileen Stone, a prayer service participant. “These students are only seeing one side. Shouldn’t they see another perspective? After all, education is about seeing the whole picture.” The teacher organizing the trip, Jason Gordon, said the students weren’t permitted to speak with...

LOS ANGELES -- This city is the main front in the pitched battle over the No Child Left Behind Act. Like many large urban school districts across the nation -- though more brazenly -- the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is resisting the law's core command: that no child be forced to attend a failing school. In LAUSD, there are over 300,000 children in schools the state has declared failing under NCLB's requirements for adequate yearly progress. Under the law, such children must be provided opportunities to transfer to better-performing schools within the district. To date, fewer than two...

Home-schooling is thriving across the country as more parents choose to take personal responsibility for their children's education. The rapid growth of home-schooling caused home-school critic Rob Reich to say in the April 18 issue of Family Circle magazine, that "today everyone knows someone who's home-schooling." As a result of the growth of home-schooling, more people are coming into contact with home-schooled children. Consequently, it is likely that home-schooling will continue to gain acceptance as a viable education alternative.

High School Valedictorian Refuses to Bow Down; Has Speech Censored June 21, 2006 Brittany McComb was the valedictorian at Foothill High School recently. She graduated with a 4.7 GPA. She earned the right to address the other graduates at Foothill, located in Henderson, Nevada. She gave a copy of her graduating speech to the school administrators. It contained some Biblical references and even mentioned (one time) the name “Christ.” The school administrators censored some of the Biblical references. They also censored the single reference to Christ. Then the school officials handed the speech over to the ACLU for approval and/or...

SACRAMENTO, April 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dr. James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family said in his weekly radio broadcast that the California legislature is devoted to a “far, far leftist” ideology. On April 17, Dobson stated, “Some of the bills that come out of (the California) legislature are flat-out off the wall.”The legislature, Dobson said, is controlled “by those who represent a far leftist philosophy, and the conservatives, mostly Republicans, don’t have the votes to stop it.”The most recent example he noted was characteristic of the movement to the “extreme” left was the State Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval...

....Wilson then sat down with teacher and parent liaison Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmad, who also is the imam at an Islamic center in Minneapolis, to work with ArtStart in determining how to meet state standards without running afoul of Muslim doctrine. "We said, 'Look, we can do better than this,' " Wilson said. NO HUMAN IMAGES Out the window right away went masks, puppets and that classic of elementary school art class, the self-portrait, said Sara Langworthy, an artist with ArtStart. Revamping the curriculum "definitely requires stepping outside of the normal instincts that you fall back on," she sai.....

$10 million spent annually by district for classroom subs... Driven by parental concerns about teacher absenteeism, the Chicago Public Schools for the first time will start scrutinizing schools with high numbers of teachers taking sick days. On any given school day in Chicago, an average of 1,500 teachers, about 6 percent of the teaching staff, call in sick or take a personal day, according to a Tribune analysis of teacher payroll records. The absentee rate is highest on Fridays, when an average of 1,800 teachers don't show... For each of the last six school years, Chicago teachers missed an average...

Researchers find it shocking that 11 percent of American girls between 15 and 19 claim to have same-sex encounters. Clearly they’ve never observed the social rituals of the pansexual, bi-queer, metroflexible New York teen. Alair is wearing a tight white tank top cut off above the hem to show her midriff. Her black cargo pants graze the top of her combat boots, and her black leather belt is studded with metal chains that drape down at intervals across her hips. She has long blonde curls that at various times have been dyed green, blue, red, purple, and orange. (“A mistake,”...

Think of sexually evocative bumping and grinding to bass-heavy hip-hop tunes. Think of lap dancing, standing up. That's "freak dancing," a trend among high schoolers nationwide for more than a half-decade that Seattle Public Schools is now not only taking notice of but trying to stop. Steve Wilson, the Seattle district's chief academic officer, said at a community meeting at Roosevelt High School Tuesday night that the district was setting a new policy after incidents at Roosevelt and other high schools in which parents had written to complain and students had been disciplined for freak dancing. Parents and school administrators...

SEVIERVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Frustration with public education seems to be growing among the nation's Southern Baptists, with supporters of Christian schools and home schooling arguing that if God is absent from the classroom then their children should leave, too. ``What has happened is not so much that the Christians are leaving the public schools as that the public schools have left the Christians,'' advocate Ed Gamble said. Gamble is executive director of the Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools, an Orlando, Fla.-based group that supports the more than 600 Southern Baptist schools created in the past eight years. ``As...

AgapePress) - A researcher has revealed some disturbing trends regarding the sets of beliefs Christian students in public schools have about the most important issues in life. Dan Smithwick is the founder and president of the Nehemiah Institute, a group that provides a biblical worldview testing and training service to Christian educators. He is the developer of what is called the "PEERS test," a tool to assess the worldviews of young people, and says the majority of public school students from evangelical Christian homes consistently score in the "socialist" category on the test. According to Smithwick, this outcome should come...

God Is Banned From Thanksgiving In Maryland Public Schools By Sher Zieve Nov. 23, 2004 Although the Thanksgiving Holiday and celebration were founded upon giving thanks to God, Maryland public schools have banned students from giving thanks to Him. This school system is adamant that ‘students may give thanks to anyone but, God’. Charles Ridgell, St. Mary's County Public Schools curriculum and instruction director, said: "We teach about Thanksgiving from a purely historical perspective, not from a religious perspective." The problem with this statement is that Thanksgiving, in the United States, was founded upon Christian religious tenets. Therefore, any accurate...

<p>PRING, Tex. - In front of her gated apartment complex, Courtney Payne, a 9-year-old fourth grader with dark hair pulled tightly into a ponytail, exits a yellow school bus. Moments later, her movement is observed by Alan Bragg, the local police chief, standing in a windowless control room more than a mile away.</p>

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Cartwheels and handstands have gotten an 11-year-old girl temporarily bounced out of her Los Angeles-area school. Deirdre Faegre was suspended for a week after repeatedly disobeying school officials who told her not to perform gymnastic stunts during lunchtime. "Our first concern is the safety of all children," San Jose-Edison Academy Principal Denise Patton told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Patton said Deirdre could accidentally strike another student, or injure herself, and other children could get hurt trying to imitate Deirdre, who has been doing gymnastics for five years.

<p>Is there gender bias in American schools? Evidence is growing that the answer is yes. But if you think it's girls who are suffering, you're wrong. Today, boys are on the short end of the academic stick, and their performance gap with girls is both startling and alarming.</p>