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Two recent events — one on the east coast and one on the west coast — raise painful questions about whether we are really serious when we say that we want better education for minority children. One of these events was an announcement by Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., that it plans on August 19th to begin "an entire week of activities to celebrate the grand opening of our new $160 million state-of-the-art school building." The painful irony in all this is that the original Dunbar High School building, which opened in 1916, housed a school with a record...

To campaign against the bullying of LGBT people as if disagreement with the gay lifestyle were an evil is itself a form of bullying.On June 19, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled in favor of a high school student named Daniel Glowacki, who had charged that his high school teacher, Jay McDowell, had violated his constitutional right to freedom of speech. He was granted one dollar in compensation. The court’s verdict, in vulgar terms, was that the pig had the right to say what he said. The facts, according to the court’s judgment, are these....

Just 31 percent of the state’s students in grades 3 to 8 were deemed proficient in math and in English language arts (ELA) on the new tests, compared with about 65 percent in math and 55 percent in ELA on last year’s tests. Kentucky, another leading-edge state implementing its own common core tests, experienced similar declines in scores last year. Most of the 45 states that have signed on to the Common Core are waiting until at least 2014-15 to implement common tests that are still in development. For those who support the Common Core, a set of standards for...

Larry Grathwohl, who had just come back to Cincinnati from Vietnam, was infiltrating the domestic terrorist group Weatherman, the only one to have done so. Larry saved potentially hundreds of lives when he alerted the FBI to a bomb placed near a Detroit police station and a restaurant. Bill Ayers, Education Secretary of Weatherman, told him that in the revolution, lives would have to be sacrificed. ... My interest in Bill Ayers began a few years ago when I learned about his career as a “Distinguished Professor of Education.” In reality he was working to destroy everything that was good...

Full Title: ‘Really Spooky’ Poem Praising Common Core Allegedly Recited by Dozens of 5th Graders at School Ceremony – Read It Here A substitute teacher in North Carolina recently sent Glenn Beck a copy of a poem that she claims roughly 80 fifth-grade students recited for their promotion ceremony (like graduation) at a school near Raleigh. Glenn Beck Reads 5th Grade We Learn More With Common Core Poem Classroom (Photo: Shutterstock) The poem does not, as some might expect, celebrate school being done for the year, friendship, memories, or anything of the like. Instead, it praises the virtues of the...

<p>This is new information received today from a FOIA request to the Social Security Administration by attorney Orly Taitz. She posted it on her website which Free Republic will not let you post a link to in the Source URL box above. Here is an excerpt from the press release she posted. The link to the press release in typed in below.</p>

MADISON — Sure, officials with the state Department of Instruction met with higher education stakeholders in crafting programs for college and career readiness as part of Common Core State Standards, but is that spectrum wide enough? Some educators don’t think so. Steffen Lempp, a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert in training elementary and middle-school teachers, told Wisconsin Reporter that nobody came to him for input before signing on to Common Core. “They don’t come to the math department. They go to the school of education,” Lempp said. “They very rarely consult with the math...

City results on state math and reading tests plummeted last year – confirming warnings that testing kids on tougher educational standards would shock the school systems from New York to Buffalo. Fewer than 30 percent of public school kids in grades 3 to 8 passed the state math exams last year, while roughly 26 percent passed the exams in reading, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s down from pass rates of 60 percent in math in 2011 and 47 percent in reading. The poor results were prompted by New York’s adoption of higher learning standards known as Common Core,...

Schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, are taking a moment to reevaluate things. According to WBTV, district superintendent Dr. Heath Morrison has taken steps to confront serious problems in the education system. Of the 22 task forces Morrison created, one is tasked with addressing recurring problems of the black male youth. In the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district during last year alone, 20,000 black males were given short-term suspensions while 3,000 white males were given the same punishment. The discrepancy was one motivating for the task force to recommend the founding of a new, all male, all black school. Proponents argue that such a...

NEW YORK (MainStreet)— The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Student Loan Ombudsman Rohit Chopra recently responded to those who asked the CFPB about the status of the $1 trillion that has already been borrowed to pay for college tuition. An August 5 article by Chopra paints a bleak portrait. Chopra found ...

Recently released video shows a 13-year-old boy receiving a barrage of blows and kicks from three 15-year-old boys as they all rode home in a Pinellas county school bus. The dispute began on July 9 when one of the three boys tried to sell the younger boy marijuana while the two were in a bathroom at their drop out prevention school, prompting the younger teen to notify school officials, according to WFLA.com. Later that day, Joshua Reddin, Julian McKnight and Lloyd Khemradj were on the bus when they confronted their peer about the incident and began beating him....

The number of New York students passing state reading and math exams dropped drastically this year, education officials reported on Wednesday, unsettling parents, principals and teachers and posing new challenges to a national effort to toughen academic standards. In New York City, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the tests in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department. The exams were some of the first in the nation to be aligned with a more rigorous set of standards known as the Common Core, which emphasize deep analysis and...

In America, a good education is available everywhereThese days, it seems like everything is made into a political football. Perhaps the one thing we can agree upon is the importance of education for everyone. Currently in the United States, approximately 30 percent of the people who enter high school do not graduate. This was considerably less of a problem during the agricultural age or the industrial age, when all one needed to be successful financially was a strong back and a willingness to work. Now that we have advanced to the technological-information age, education has assumed paramount importance for success...

One can't imagine the fear in the hearts of the parents of those nine black students who walked past shouting placard-carrying mobs as they entered Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Each day, they were greeted with angry shouts of "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate." In some rural and urban areas, during the school desegregation era, parents escorted their 5- and 6-year-old children past crowds shouting threats and screaming racial epithets. Often there were Ku Klux Klan marches and cross burnings. Much of this protest was in the South, but Northern cities were by no...

L.A. Unified and seven other California school districts on Tuesday won relief from some strict and costly provisions of federal education law. Besides Los Angeles, the school districts are Long Beach, Santa Ana, Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Sanger.

When Angela Morgan learned about the opportunity to transfer her son out of Riverview Gardens High School, it was like finding a winning lottery ticket..... Morgan’s son is among nearly 2,600 students in the St. Louis region who are hoping to benefit from a decades-old but largely untested Missouri statute. Now, by order of the state’s highest court, that law — which allows students in unaccredited school districts to transfer to better schools — must be followed, no matter the cost or consequence. The effort has spawned a monumental logistical headache, as districts in St. Louis, St. Louis County and...

The Wisconsin school teachers protests and attempts to recall Gov. Walker resulted in not only losing the battle but instead helped to further new laws across the US that allow teachers to drop union membership. Now the National Education Association (NEA) and other teacher unions are seeing a decline of those willing fill the coffers of these organization.

A school bus driver can be heard on surveillance footage pleading for help from a dispatcher as he witnessed a 13-year-old viciously attacked by three older teens. "You've got to get somebody here –quick, quick, quick," John Moody said. "They are about to beat this boy to death." The victim came away from the July 9 beating with two black eyes and a fractured hand, according to WFLA. Authorities charged the three suspects, all 15-year-old boys, with aggravated battery and one of them with unarmed robbery.

Professor says kids no longer need to learn spelling and grammar because of smartphones The Daily Caller 4 hours ago Education Several skills that every kid once learned in school are going the way of the dodo in a hurry. Diagramming sentences is practically an extinct art, for example. Cursive handwriting and memorized multiplication tables look to be swiftly headed that way. Apparently, the next thing that kids will no longer need to learn is spelling and grammar. Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in northeast England, announced that traditional language rules are out of fashion,...

Kim Ki-hoon earns $4 million a year in South Korea, where he is known as a rock-star teacher—a combination of words not typically heard in the rest of the world. Mr. Kim has been teaching for over 20 years, all of them in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies, known as hagwons. Unlike most teachers across the globe, he is paid according to the demand for his skills—and he is in high demand. Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and...

The best educated children in America don't go to school. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, compared home schoolers and public school students on the results of three standardized tests -- the California Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford Achievement Test -- for the 2007-2008 academic year. With public school students at the 50th percentile, home schoolers were at the 89th percentile in reading, the 86th percentile in science, the 84th percentile in language, math and social studies.

National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent endorsed the conspiracy theory that President Obama's birth certificate is a forgery in his regular column for conspiracy website WND. Riffing on a recent claim by Obama that his critics promote "phony scandals" involving his administration, Nugent wrote in his July 31 column that "more of us believe in the American hero Sheriff Joe Arpaio's thorough investigation into your phony birth certificate and phony history than the phony media's smoke and mirrors." In July 2012 Arpaio, a controversial Arizona sheriff, announced that a "Cold Case Posse" under his direction determined that Obama's "long-form...

School officials in Florida are defending a textbook that declares Muhammad as the “Messenger of God” after critics accused an Islamic education group of launching a stealth jihad in American public school classrooms. The Prentice World History textbook being used in Brevard Public Schools includes a 36-page chapter on Islam but no chapters on Christianity or Judaism. According to a copy obtained by Fox News, The ninth grade textbook declares that Muhammad is the “Messenger of God” and instructs students that jihad is a duty that Muslims must follow. “Jihad may be interpreted

Hello friends, conservatives and fellow patriots! I cordially invite you to learn about our latest venture entitled, “Washington’s Axe”, a feature-length motion picture slated for nationwide release in the fall of 2014. America is badly broken, spiritually sick, beyond bankrupt and in serious need of reform. Many citizens are near the breaking point. Those of us desperate to “do something” find most political options futile. How do we positively influence our culture? Our answer is to reawaken our nation’s spirit through the power of entertainment. To reintroduce the magic of personal freedom, the romance of liberty and the noble principles...

Fall semester won’t start for several weeks, but Georgia State University has already received a handful of complaints about a new student club — the White Student Union. Freshman Patrick Sharp said he started the club so that students of European and Euro-American descent can celebrate their shared history and culture and discuss issues that affect white people, such as immigration and affirmative action. The club is not an official student group recognized by the university. Sharp said any student can join and that he would work with other clubs, such as the Black Student Alliance, on common issues. ~SNIP~...

Dave Miceli doesn't know me from a hole in the ground, but he's my new hero. Anyone that can dredge up the guts to teach in Baltimore's public schools automatically becomes a candidate for hero status in my book, especially if said anyone has taught in these schools for 20 years, as Miceli has. But it was his bold, insightful, no-punches-pulled letter to the editors of the July 15 edition of the Baltimore Sun that put Miceli on my hero's list. I'm reprinting that letter in its entirety. ................. "Regarding your recent editorial, 'How to end the killing,' your last...

Along with decisions about what to eat for lunch and which clubs to join, California public school students may soon may be allowed to choose which gender they would like to be. The California legislature has passed a bill, AB 1266, that would require all public schools to allow youths to choose which gender-segregated facilities and activities fit their “identity,” including restrooms, locker rooms and sports teams. The bill awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown to be enacted into law. Ads by Google Great Wolf WaterparkFun For Everyone Under One Roof. Book for Total Family Immersion! www.GreatWolf.com/Mason_OH Men Care...

The San Diego Unified School District voted unanimously on Tuesday for teachers to discuss the George Zimmerman case with middle and high school students. Trustees Richard Barrera and Marne Foster introduced the proposal, saying that opening a dialogue on race relations would allow students to speak honestly on how they identify with Trayvon Martin “and have feelings of fear, anger, and skepticism that they will live in a just society as they prepare for the future,” ABC 10 News reported. According to the report, the plan, implemented by the district’s Office of Race Human Relations and Advocacy, would “allow students...

The federal government is hiring what it calls a "Behavioral Insights Team" that will look for ways to subtly influence people's behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.

I'll be the first to criticize public education for not being challenging enough and simply passing kids on to the next grade without teaching them anything...but is this too much for first graders? Here's a partial list of what 6 year olds will allegedly be able to do after completing this lesson plan: 2. Explain the importance of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the use of canals to support farming and the development of the city of Babylon 4. Identify cuneiform as the system of writing used in Mesopotamia 6. Explain the significance of the Code of Hammurabi 9....

Turning Classroom Opposition into Opportunity by Jayme Durant * “Let your speech always be with grace…that you may know how you ought to answer.” (Colossians 4:6) One of my daughter’s required courses in college was philosophy. Early in the semester, the professor opened the class by reading some Bible verses and then asking the students to raise their hands if they believed what he just read. My daughter was one of a very few with an upraised hand. She happened to be sitting in the first row that morning. The professor looked at her and said, “Well you want to...

Test for eighth graders in Kentucky dated 1912 ignites debate over kids' intelligence today A general examination to test eighth grade students in Kentucky's Bullitt County school system in 1912 has stumped some adults and ignited a debate over the intelligence of children today. The arithmetic, geography, civil government, physiology, grammar and history questions range from 'What is a personal pronoun?' to 'Who first discovered Lawrence River?' and 'Define Cerebrum'. Posted on Lew Rockwell, the type-written test has promoted some adults to try and answer the questions, and caused some parents to critique the U.S. school system. 'I performed poorly,'...

A traffic sign near a preschool has some drivers asking questions. As a driver isn't it our job to obey all posted street signs, but how do you do that with this one, privately posted in front of a preschool, "please slow drively?" It has caused some perplexed reactions. "It looks like they might have done it on purpose. Is it funny? Yes, it's funny," one man said. "With people these days, I'm pretty sure it was done on purpose," a woman said.

ReelzChannel is getting back into the Kennedy family business, and once again likely to make some waves. In November, the network that aired the Emmy-winning 2011 miniseries "The Kennedys" will debut "JFK: The Smoking Gun," a new documentary offering the theory that John F. Kennedy was killed, not by Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle, but by the friendly-fire bullet of an inexperienced Secret Service agent. "The only possible gun that could have been in that area is that Secret Service gun. So the finding is that it was an accidental discharge. Nobody's claiming anybody did anything wrong. But at the time,...

Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform blog,Yes. The national intelligence has fallen that far. The morons in West Philly can't spell 'Cat'. At least 75% wouldn’t know the Vice President of the U.S.. More than 50% can't add 5 + 5. And 80% wouldn't know when and why the Civil War was fought.

By The Editors Mitch Daniels, whom some Republicans would like to see president of something more than Purdue University, is under attack because as governor of Indiana he objected to the use of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States in public-school curricula. In recently published e-mails, the plainspoken Governor Daniels described Zinn’s work as “anti-American” and “crap,” which, when expressed in sufficiently polite language, is the professional consensus: “a polemicist, not a historian,” says Arthur Schlesinger; his work a “deranged” “fairy tale,” says Harvard’s Oscar Handlin; a man who traded in “every left-wing cliché with which the...

ARCADIA, CA, July 26, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pro-family leaders reacted with stunned disbelief this week to the news of a settlement in the case of a Southern California girl whose parents filed a federal civil rights complaint against their local school district after their daughter was not allowed to sleep in a hotel room full of boys during field trips, despite her belief that she is a boy trapped in a girl's body. After two years of investigation by the Obama administration's Department of Justice, the Arcadia Unified School District agreed to a settlement in which they admit no wrongdoing,...

I'm in NY and my daughter's schools just recently put out their "school supply lists" -- what students have to have for each class and supplies they "share" like tissues, whiteboard markers, colored pencils. My kids are in high school and Jr High. It cost me $206 for school supplies! And we spend about $17,000 per year per student in this district! Wayyy over taxed!! My parents couldn't have afforded this for 4 kids. I told the Superintendent this was ridiculous. She tried to steer me to a "charity" group that could help me get the supply's. I said I'm...

On Sunday’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on ABC, Washington Post columnist George Will took on proponents of federal assistance for Detroit, which declared bankruptcy earlier this month. According to Will, the city isn’t undergoing a fiscal crisis, but is facing a much more serious cultural one, which is the source of its woes. “Can’t solve the problems because the problems are cultural,” Will said. “You have a city, 139 square miles. You can graze cattle in vast portions of it. Dangerous herds of feral dogs roam in there. You have 3 percent of fourth graders reading at the national...

<p>The truth is usually a tough thing to accept, so I understand if this is flagged. It would be a cowardly thing to do, but I understand it. Some people just ignore unpleasant truths. However, if you think ignoring the problem, or trying to censor the truth, will help our black children improve, you're dreaming. This is important, so I'm happy to repost - indefinitely if necessary.</p>

<p>The federal government plans to investigate an Arizona high school over a "Redneck Day" celebration two months ago that was inspired by the popular Duck Dynasty television show on A&E.</p>

Nominated as Most Creative Video 2nd Annual YouTube Awards

School grades released Friday for elementary and middle schools in Broward and Palm Beach County showed significant decline, with the number of failing schools increasing in both districts. The Florida Department of Education said statewide the number of A-rated schools dropped from 48 percent to 29 percent. Meanwhile, the number of F schools jumped from 2 to 4 percent. Members of the state Board of Education acknowledged last week that the grading system is flawed. As a result, they decided for the second year to limit schools to one grade drop, even if they would have fallen two, three or...

The U.S. Department of Education has officially opened an investigation into allegations that an Arizona high school’s campus-wide “Redneck Day” amounted to a federal civil rights violation. The kerfuffle giving rise to the investigation arose back in May at Queen Creek High School on the outskirts of Phoenix. The student council hatched a plan to energize students for prom week that included a faculty adviser-approved “Redneck Day.” The point was to dress like – and spoof – “Duck Dynasty,” an A&E reality TV show which follows a wealthy, eccentric Louisiana family. It’s not exactly clear how dressing like a hillbilly...

While a "progressive" education highlights perceived societal flaws and teaches what to think, a classical education emphasizes cultural bulwarks and teaches how to think. The Benefits of a Classical Education The New American 25 July 2013 Since the end of the Second World War, and especially since the mid-1960s, America has been deluged with seemingly endless stories of the failure of its educational system. Testing reveals that there exists a significant percentage of high-school graduates who cannot identify the Pacific Ocean on an unlabeled map of the world, who do not know that Abraham Lincoln served as president of...

Dickinson State University got caught issuing hundreds of phony degrees to foreign students, something for which nobody outside of former President Richard McCallum has been held accountable. McCallum, who I guess we’re supposed to believe pulled of this fraud by himself, was merely fired. Horwarth’s article quoted a newspaper editor in West Virginia who covered the HLC’s decision to remove accreditation from Mountain State University. “If I’m Dickinson State, I would be nervous,” he told Horwarth. That article prompted angry denunciations from DSU officials and North Dakota University System Chancellor Larry Skogen who called the idea of lost accreditation “impossible.”...

"I think you should check out the APEX program," my high school counselor Mrs. Workman suggested. APEX stood for Area Program Enrichment Exchange, and involved several L.A. area high schools, including Fairfax High. Intended for "advanced" students, the program allowed them to take courses not offered at their home school. In my case, I had exhausted all of the Spanish courses at Crenshaw High, the predominately black inner-city school I attended. But Fairfax, predominately Jewish, had higher-level courses and would accept me. "It'll be a way for you to continue your Spanish -- where, I see from your transcript, you...

According to a USA Today/Bipartisan Policy Center poll, "Americans by more than 2-1 say the best way to make positive changes in society is through volunteer organizations and charities, not by being active in government." Even better news: People under 30 are especially put off by politics and are "significantly less likely than their parents to say participating in politics is an important value in their lives." Why is this good news? There are at least two reasons. One is that the less faith people have in government, the more they are likely to have in themselves. The second is...

The U.S. Justice and Education departments said Wednesday that a transgender California student who is anatomically female but lives life as a male must be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities designed for boys. The first-of-its-kind decision from the agencies tasks the Arcadia school district outside Los Angeles to change district policies and practices to accommodate the rising ninth-grade student. Teachers and staff must be trained in how to prevent gender discrimination, and federal agencies will be keeping tabs on the district through at least 2016.

What do you do if you’re a liberal who supports a woman’s Gosnellian right to abortion on demand after 20 weeks performed by a doctor who’s failed to secure admitting privileges at the local hospital? MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry has the obvious answer: Wear tampons on your ears. http://conservatives4palin.com/2013/07/msnbc-host-dons-tampon-earrings-to-demonstrate-solidarity-with-late-term-abortion-fans.html