Free Republic

Florida Governor Rick Scott is cutting taxes again, this time reauthorizing the popular school sales tax holiday. According to the AP, Scott “signed into law a bill reauthorizing the states “popular back-to-school sales tax holiday” which now includes new computers. The 6% tax reprieve for shoppers, which will take place Aug2-4, is for the purchase of clothing worth $75 or less, and for school supplies, like pencils, paper, etc., that are worth $15 or less. The new computer tax relief component of the law applies to new computers, including laptops, ipads, and other electronics “readers,” as long as they cost...

Joseph Stalin had been General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party for six years in 1928, when John Dewey, "the father of modern education," toured Russia with a group of educators. Later that year, The New Republic published Dewey's Impressions of Soviet Russia and the revolutionary world. This polemic stands as a remarkable testament to progressivism's disdain for mankind, reason, and truth. It is also Dewey's most honest and concise primer on the principles of his progressive education method. Anyone prepared to defend the idea of government-controlled schooling after reading this work is perhaps beyond reach of rational argument. Dewey's...

MADISON – Call it a quiet controversy. But there are a lot of people who don’t much care for Common Core State Standards. Opposition to the K-12 academic benchmarks that some conservatives have described as Big Brother education has swept the nation, and there is a growing core of Common Core combatants in the Badger State. They just don’t seem to get a lot of attention. Several tea party groups, however, plan to be front and center at 10 a.m. Wednesday in room 411 of the Capitol for an informational hearing on Wisconsin’s implementation of the Common Core. The joint...

As is often the case with my brain, I need to mull over things sometimes to decide what I think about them. Such is the case with Jason Richwine, the Heritage Foundation scholar who was driven out when it was discovered that his thesis (which passed inspection at Harvard) reached the following conclusions: So what is actually in the dissertation? The dissertation shows that recent immigrants score lower than U.S.-born whites on many different types of IQ tests. Using statistical analysis, it suggests that the test-score differential is due primarily to a real cognitive gap rather than to culture or...

CARSON CITY — Perhaps nobody at the Legislature this year has been more insistent than Nevada Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis that the state must immediately put more money into Nevada’s education system. And Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval could hardly have been more clear when he said he opposes and would veto Denis’ bill to increase payroll taxes for education. But Denis will make the case today that his payroll tax hike proposal is the best way to help Nevada’s schools next school year. Noting that Nevada consistently ranks near the bottom of state-by-state education comparisons, the Las Vegas Democrat...

Ball State University, a public institution in Muncie, Indiana, is purportedly looking into claims that a course centered around the subjects of creationism and intelligent design constitutes a violation of the separation of church and state. The college purportedly began its investigation after the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a church-state separatist group, sent a letter of complaint regarding physics and astronomy professor Eric Hedin. Hedin’s offense? He apparently encourages students to read books by scientists, journalists and proponents who embrace intelligent design. The description of his course, as reported by World on Campus, claims that students will “investigate physical...

An all too familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4th to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that dealt in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the college president — apparently nobody had...

TESCCC Board decides to end CSCOPE lesson plans AUSTIN -- A letter signed by all 20 members of the Board released this morning (Monday, May 20) stated they will notify their 875 school district clients that all lesson plans will be removed from their website on August 31st, 2013 and that districts cannot use any lessons they currently have beyond that date. The August 31st date corresponds to the notice clause in their contracts with their districts. The letter goes on to say that the Regional Service Centers will not produce lesson plans in the future. The 20 Service Centers...

Why does the U.S. Constitution make no mention of education? Because the Founding Fathers understood that the education of children must be at the local level. We now stand at the edge of a cliff as the federal Common Core State Standards continues its march across the country. How did we get here? In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education blackmailed the states with stimulus money in the form of Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. If states wanted to get out from under No Child Left Behind, and wanted more funding they had to agree to adopt the Common...

iera Wilmot got good grades and had a perfect behavior record. She wasn't the kind of kid you'd expect to find hauled away in handcuffs and expelled from school, but that's exactly what happened after an attempt at a science project went horribly wrong. On 7 a.m. on Monday, the 16 year-old mixed some common household chemicals in a small 8 oz water bottle on the grounds of Bartow High School in Bartow, Florida. The reaction caused a small explosion that caused the top to pop up and produced some smoke. No one was hurt and no damage was caused.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You are the mantle of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and Ralph Bunche and Langston Hughes and George Washington Carver and Ralph Abernathy and Thurgood Marshall and, yes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. These men were many things to many people and they knew full well the role that racism played in their life. But when it came to their own accomplishments and sense of purpose, they had no time for excuses. Every one of you has a grandma or an uncle or a parent whose told you at some point in life as an African American...

As families celebrate graduation around the country, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett asks if this is really cause to celebrate. He and coauthor David Wilezol discuss their book Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: “Students pay $100,000 or more for what they could get for almost nothing. With new technology and online breakthroughs, you could get a better education in a coffee shop or your parents’ basement than you will get...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Whistleblower 9 investigation uncovered a new grading practice in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools.

...Obama spoke passionately about the importance of education to the African-American community in a commencement address Friday... Back [when the school was founded], people were hungry to learn." But Obama said too much of the black community has lost that desire.

William J. Bennett and David Wilezol’s “Is College Worth It?” asks and authoritatively answers one of life’s biggest questions. The orthodox answer to the question, the authors write, is “Of course it is. Though the cost of attendance is ever increasing, those who go to college make more than those who don’t. And while the job market is bad, it's worse for those without college degree.” “Is College Worth It?” provides a thoroughgoing deconstruction of the “of course it is” delusion. It turns out that for too many, and maybe even most of our young people, the answer to this...

A North Carolina teacher is brain-washing students telling them Republican policies are hurting schools.EAG News reported: It appears that one North Carolina teacher is getting into the spirit of the new Common Core learning standards that promote the use of “informational” texts in the classroom. According to the StopCommonCoreNC.com, a fourth-grade teacher with Henderson County Public Schools gave students a brief reading assignment, titled “Raleigh’s Educational Plan.”(continued)

If you think back to your school days, teachers often spent a lot of time grading your tests. What could they do if they weren’t consumed with this task? XEROX, the well-known company famous for its document management technologies, has unleashed software that can actually hand-grade student tests, homework, and even essays. This technology goes way beyond the fill-in-the-bubble tests you may already be familiar with. When confronted with developing a technological solution that would help increase the amount of individual attention teachers could give their students (especially with tight budgets and large class sizes), researchers at the XEROX Research Center Webster...

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the Obama Administration’s denial of asylum granted to the Romeike family. The Romeikes fled Germany in 2008 when they were subjected to criminal prosecution for homeschooling. They were granted asylum in 2010 by Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman, but that grant was overturned by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2012. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit heard the Romeikes’ appeal on April 23 in Cincinnati, and issued today’s unanimous decision against the family.

Jay Harris, Downingtown East’s star wide receiver, said he phoned a Michigan State assistant two weeks ago and broke the news. He would not be a Spartan. “I wish we could’ve got you,” Harris said the coach told him. It was not a rival program that drew Harris, but instead a different career path. The 5-foot-11, 162-pound senior said he wants to make it as a rapper.

Common Core is an educational curriculum being forced upon the states by the Obama administration, which is scheduled to be mostly implemented this year in the 45 states that have adopted it. Common Core eliminates local control over K-12 curriculum in math and English, instead imposing a one-size-fits-all, top-down curriculum that will also apply to private schools and homeschoolers. Common Core was has been promoted in a manner that sounds good and commendable – “States working together to create national standards for education… standards that are designed to be robust and relevant in the real world.” Common Core describes itself...

A great deal has been written and spoken about Common Core, but it is worth rehearsing the outlines again. Common Core is a set of math and English standards developed largely with Gates Foundation money and pushed by the Obama administration and the National Governors Association. The standards define what every schoolchild should learn each year, from first grade through twelfth, and the package includes teacher evaluations tied to federally funded tests designed to ensure that schools teach to Common Core.

The Mini-Golf Tax. The “Iron Man” Tax. The Burning Man Tax. I’m pretty sure most Nevadans enjoy one or more of those activities, which means if Democrats in the Legislature pass their new Nevada Entertainment and Admissions Tax, every Nevadan will curse them when they try to enjoy themselves on the weekend after a long workweek. Wow, this is stupid. So, instead of imposing a corporate tax on Wal-Mart like nearly every other state in the country, you’re going to tax me when I go to the movie theater? So I’ll pay $11.88 instead of $11? I love carrying 12...

This post is based in large part on an article titled Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally IllIs there a current tendency to consider those who cherish and seek to preserve our rights, including those under the First and Second Amendments, mentally ill for that reason? Interesting for the focused question it poses directly, the article should raise broader but similar questions about the current nature of academia in general. I have had no direct contact with academia since my years in undergraduate school (1959 - 63) and in law school (1963 - 66). "Back in the good old days," we were encouraged...

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced that it will no longer use the terms "mother" and "father" when collecting information about a student's legal parents when those parents apply for federal student aid. Instead of using the words "mother" and "father," the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid form (FAFSA) will use "Parent 1" and "Parent 2." The announcement states that the changes to the 2014-2015 federal student aid form "more accurately and fairly assess students' need for aid" and that "Gender-specific terms fail to capture income and other information from one parent when a student's parents are...

If Republican leaders were to fully embrace a conservative reform agenda, it would address pressing national needs. It would position the GOP as forward looking, contemporary, and have appeal to swing voters. It would demonstrate a commitment to a brand of conservatism that is practical rather than narrowly ideological. And it contrasts well with today’s reactionary liberalism, by which I mean liberalism that opposes virtually every effort to reform institutions and programs that are sclerotic, outdated, and ineffective. .... There are five obvious areas for Republicans to focus on, beginning with entitlement reform ... A second area Republicans should focus...

The Foundation for Individual Rights In Higher Education (FIRE) is the premier non-partisan organization fighting to protect free speech and other constitutional rights on campus.  The FIRE defends everyone’s rights, regardless of political affiliation.We have cited The FIRE numerous times here and at College Insurrection, and they have submitted a few guests posts on campus issues.The FIRE is not an organization prone to hyperbole.So when I received this email late this afternoon from FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley, it got my attention: THIS. IS. OUTRAGEOUS. The government has mandated speech codes on all campuses. I hoped I would never see this day, but...

Louisiana’s highest court ruled Tuesday that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s hallmark school voucher plan violates the state’s constitution. The state Supreme Court found that the school voucher plan is illegal because it diverts tax dollars to private schools from Louisiana’s “minimum foundation program,” which was created under the state constitution to pay for public schools.

A North Carolina high school pulled a teen’s senior portrait because she had the portrait taken with her baby boy. As ABC reports: A high school student is fighting back after her senior photo was pulled from the school yearbook. The photo shows North Carolina senior Caitlin Tiller holding her now one-year old son. The school asked students to have their picture taken with something that best represents them or an achievement. Tiller chose her son because he represented her drive to stay in school. The school didn’t see it that way. Caitlin says she was told the picture promoted...

A teacher was arrested after she allegedly raped a boy in her classroom after he handed in a test. The high school teacher in New Mexico is accused of raping her male student in her classroom. Jennifer Vigil, 31, was arrested Tuesday after the student told police he was forced into having sex with his teacher at the Pojoaque Valley High School in Santa Fe. Vigil maintains that the sex was consensual, but the student disagreed he claimed that the teacher forced him to have sex after she locked the door of the classroom and he was unable to leave....

Michelle Obama is going to speak at a Bowie State University function at the Comcast Center on the campus of the University of Maryland. As a result of security concerns, U of MD students who still have to finish finals will have to pack up and move out of their dorms BEFORE they have taken their final exams. This, when they should be studying ... In-state students whose parents DO NOT live locally AND out-of-state students have NO IDEA where they are going to live during the interim. MUCH LESS, how much time they will LOSE because they are moving...

“Another birther controversy could be brewing for 2016,” MSNBC host Chuck Todd informed on Monday. Though this time aimed at a Republican: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was born in Canada. While Cruz likely doesn’t face any real eligibility problems, Todd acknowledged, “questions are being asked.” Snip~ How exactly is “natural-born citizen” defined? Since Cruz’s mother was born in the U.S. and his father became a citizen in 2005, Todd explained, going on to list similar scrutiny faced by President Obama, George Romney, and John McCain. “The legal evidence seems to side with Cruz,” Todd argued, “but there is a...

Prepare ye the way of the Common Core. And then the Word will be made Fed. And Obama will dwell amongst us forever. Amen. -- From the Book of Common Core  Parent Led Reform, in collaboration with Truth in American Education, hosted a second rally via Twitter Thursday May 2nd to stop the implementation of Common Core standards. Common Core standards are national, top-down K-12 education ideology imposed by federal and state government. The #Stopcommoncore Twitter rally reached of nearly 9.8 million Twitter users. The traffic was so heavy and the complaints from liberals so loud that Twitter temporarily suspended...

When I mention online learning to my colleagues at Wesleyan University, most respond initially with skepticism. But based on my experience, I know that real learning can take place on the Web. I am currently teaching a massive online open course, or MOOC, on Coursera. Most MOOCs have great attrition, and mine is no exception: There were almost 30,000 students registered at the start, yet 4,000 remain active as we near the end of the semester. Unlike most MOOCs, which focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, mine is a classic humanities course. "The Modern and the Postmodern" starts off...

Is President Obama taking-over our nation’s public schools? Is a United Nations agenda infiltrating America’s K-12 classrooms? No, not exactly. Not Yet. But the so-called “Common Core” public education agenda could be paving the way for some serious trouble.Here are a few basic assumptions that people are making about Common Core – along with the facts of the matter. Assumption # 1 : “Common Core” is a set of educational curriculum requirements being imposed on the states by the Obama Administration. Technically speaking, this is false. “Common Core,” whose official name is the “Common Core State Standards Initiative,” is not,...

So it seems daughters school is stressing "service hours" (volunteer hours) as the only way to get into a decent college. Daughter has high grades in every class, has a full course load, band, two varsity sports and a couple of clubs. More then I ever did and I went to a respectable institution of higher learning! And... Gasp... May even have to get a job in a year or so when she wants that car she keeps talking about! But no! Not enough! Now the school demands, and backs it up with college admissions material, that kids must have...

A Philadelphia mother wants her son’s high school teacher fired after he bought the teen the novel Fifty Shades of Grey for in-class reading. Maya Ladson says she was shocked to find a copy of the racy read in her 14-year-old’s book bag back on March 9. That shock turned to outrage when she found out how he got the book. “The minute I found out about it, it raised concern,” the mother told NBC10.com Thursday. “This is not OK to me. This is major.” Ladson's son, who is a 9th grade student at Eastern University Academy Charter School in...

A text-message relationship between a Stranahan High band director and a female student evolved into make-out sessions during school hours and marijuana-fueled sexual trysts at his Hollywood home, according to a police report. Martin Anthony Brown, 33, is accused of taking the then-17-year-old girl to his Oak Garden Lane home, where they smoked marijuana and engaged in oral sex and intercourse. The report also says he pulled the girl from class during school hours so that they could make out in his classroom office.

More than 200 Wisconsin teachers and school administrators traveled to Green Bay last week to attend CREATE Wisconsin’s 2013 state conference. EAGnews decided to join them, to get a first-hand look at what the program, sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, is all about. State officials contend the CREATE program is nothing more than an effort to help teachers better understand and serve minority students. But as EAGnews previously reported, CREATE appears to have a much more broad and progressive agenda than simply working to close the achievement gap between students of color and their white counterparts. Many...

Princeton, N.C. — The Princeton High School community is rallying around a student who was arrested and expelled for having an unloaded shotgun in his car in the school's parking lot.David Cole Withrow, 16, was charged Monday with bringing a weapon on educational property, which is a felony. He was expelled from school and won't be allowed to graduate with his class later this month. Withrow, an Eagle Scout and honors student, accidentally left his gun in the car after skeet shooting over the weekend. When he realized, he went inside to ask school officials if he could leave campus...

Tuesday, April 30, 2013 The Best Minds of My Generation Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The one thing that gave me hope for my generation was our cynicism. We might not believe in anything, but at least we wouldn't believe in everything. We might be apathetic, but that just meant it was harder to enlist us in causes. We didn't just march to the beat of our own drummer, we questioned the need for having a drummer and a beat. We were burnt out on everything and done with it all. Of course it wasn't really...

ROXBURY, Mass. — The community of Roxbury had high hopes for its newest public school back in 2003. There were art studios, a dance room, even a theater equipped with cushy seating. A pilot school for grades K-8, Orchard Gardens was built on grand expectations. But the dream of a school founded in the arts, a school that would give back to the community as it bettered its children, never materialized. Instead, the dance studio was used for storage and the orchestra's instruments were locked up and barely touched. The school was plagued by violence and disorder from the start,...

CNN) -- Joshua Gravens can't do a lot of the normal things parents do, like drop his son off at school, attend parent-teacher conferences, or take his daughter to the park, a library or anywhere else children gather. For the offense of inappropriately touching his 8-year-old sister when he was 12, Gravens, 26, has spent almost half his life as a registered sex offender. The designation subjects him to residency and zoning restrictions that dictate where he can live and spend time. It has also made him the target of harassment, death threats and hampered his ability to find a...

LA teachers oppose feeding 200,000 students Breakfast in classroom. Teachers Union vs SCIU Rush Morning update

A Northville mother is upset about the unedited version of "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" that her seventh grade student is reading in school. According to an article on myfoxdetroit.com, parent Gail Horalek filed a formal complaint with the Northville school district about a passage in the book that she thinks is too graphic for students that age. In the passage, Anne Frank discusses the discovery of her genitalia.

A bill to give Florida teachers a pay increase is getting mixed reviews. The $480 million bill was approved by legislators over the weekend and is expected to be signed by Gov. Rick Scott. The raises would be based on teacher evaluations that include student performance. Under the plan, teachers ranked as highly effective would receive a $3,500 pay increase and those ranked as effective would receive a $2,500 raise —while those considered to need improvement or to be unsatisfactory would not receive a raise. Scott, who initially proposed a $2,500 increase for every teacher, congratulated legislators on their progress.

While it is not possible to answer all the e-mails and letters from readers, many are thought-provoking, whether those thoughts are positive or negative. An e-mail from one young man simply asked for the sources of some facts about gun control that were mentioned in a recent column. It is good to check out the facts — especially if you check out the facts on both sides of an issue. By contrast, another man simply denounced me because of what was said in that column. He did not ask for my sources but simply made contrary assertions, as if his...

Wheelchair-bound Ron Tuitt, 56, a Paterson, N.J. second-grade teacher who peed into bottles that he then had students take to the bathroom to be flushed has been fired. Wheelchair-bound Ron Tuitt, 56, would ask his second-grade class to close their eyes as he urinated into the container. RELATED: VIDEO: STUDENT, TEACHER COME TO BLOWS OVER MAKEUP Once it was full, he would choose a child to take it to the restroom to be emptied. He also forced students to go on personal errands, let them sit in his chair and sent parents inappropriate emails. RELATED: FEMALE SPECIAL ED TEACHER...

Michigan legislators are working to put the brakes on Common Core and restore authority over what is taught in Michigan classrooms to state policymakers, local school leaders, and—most importantly—teachers and parents. As the Washington Times reports, “The state House on Wednesday passed an amendment, attached to the Education Department budget, that prohibits any funding for the controversial Common Core system.”

Young girls at a New York middle school were instructed to ask one another for a lesbian kiss and boys were given guidance on how to tell if women are sluts during an anti-bullying presentation on gender identity and sexual orientation, angry parents allege. The special health class was held last week at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, NY. The students were separated by gender – with students from Bard College leading the workshops. Parents are especially furious after their young daughters were told that it was perfectly normal for 14-year-old girls to have sex and there was...

A number of students at St. John's University in New York are protesting the administration's invitation to Republican Peter King to speak at their commencement ceremony next month. King is pro-life and pro-marriage so the usual red flags are avoided. But a petition created by students which already has over 1,119 signatures alleges that King is unfit to speak at the commencement because he has made "discriminatory and offensive" remarks in the past. The petition alleges that King's hearings on the dangers of Islamic radicalization amount to "trials against American-Muslims" which contradict the mission of the university to respect the...