Free Republic

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to debate two bills that could give the federal government unprecedented control over the way parents raise their children – even providing funds for state workers to come into homes and screen babies for emotional and developmental problems. The Pre-K Act (HR 3289) and the Education Begins at Home Act (HR 2343) are two bills geared toward military and families who fall below state poverty lines. The measures are said to be a way to prevent child abuse, close the achievement gap in education between poor and minority infants versus middle-class children and...

A reader sent me a heads-up to an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society ($, abstract here) titled "Climate Change Education and the Ecological Footprint".  The authors express concern that non-science students don't sufficiently understand global warming and its causes, and want to initiate a re-education program in schools to get people thinking the "right" way.So, do climate scientists want to focus on better educating kids in details of the carbon cycle?  In the complexities in sorting out causes of warming between natural and man-made effects?  In difficulties with climate modeling?  In the huge role that feedback...

The identity consciousness of pupils and students must be countered. They must be prepared to take their place as planetary citizens in a multi-cultural, multi-religious, non-racial and non-sexist society. Narrow-mindedness must be replaced by the largest possible degree of open-mindedness on all matters, thereby superseding any narrow ideological orientation.

Different types of educational curriculums, programs, and strategies are being used to support the acculturation of humanism in American schools.. Some of these are global education, non-directive education, affective education, and active learning. These methods use the guise as acceptable programs recognized by leaders of different aspects of our government and society. By having the acceptance of our governmental leaders, it has made the transition of these programs into mainstream America and its school systems a simple task. However, it is not too late to begin a counter attack. America must find out the truth about the evils contained in...

Many of the leading educators in the United States have accepted the humanist approach to education. These are the same people who have developed our curriculums, spent federal money on educational programs, and advised our government on educational trends. William H. Kilpatrick, one of John Dewey’s followers, stated that the old education format was based on “a psychology that stressed acquisition, even drill, and minimized critical thinking.”

TALLAHASSEE -- The citizen panel empowered to put amendments before voters ended its first meeting in 20 years with a bang Friday, asking Floridians to defy the state Supreme Court by allowing tax money to pay for kids to go to private schools. The proposal to allow the state to pay for private school vouchers was the last constitutional amendment -- one of seven -- the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission agreed to put on the November ballot. If 60 percent of voters agree, the measure will undo a 2006 Supreme Court ruling that threw out the vouchers as unconstitutional....

Hard Times at Douglass High," is an HBO documentary that aired last June. It captured much of the 2004-2005 school year at Baltimore's predominantly black Frederick Douglass High School. The tragedy is that what is seen in the documentary is typical of most predominantly black urban schools. Douglass' students are four to five years below grade level. Most of its ninth-graders read at the third-, fourth- or fifth-grade levels. In 2006, only 24 percent of its students tested proficient in reading, in math just 11 percent, and that's an improvement over previous years. Only one student managed to score above...

"Hard Times at Douglass High," is an HBO documentary that aired last June. It captured much of the 2004-2005 school year at Baltimore's predominantly black Frederick Douglass High School. The tragedy is that what is seen in the documentary is typical of most predominantly black urban schools. Douglass' students are four to five years below grade level. Most of its ninth-graders read at the third-, fourth- or fifth-grade levels. In 2006, only 24 percent of its students tested proficient in reading, in math just 11 percent, and that's an improvement over previous years. Only one student managed to score above...

The process that began in the 1960s to transform America’s elementary, middle and high schools into places where students could literally graduate without being able to read their diploma, where the teaching of mathematics was reduced to mush without rules, and where it was more important for students to feel really good about themselves than having to measure up scholastically with millions in foreign nations, has now reached the campuses of America’s colleges and universities. In a nation where it now costs thousands of dollars to fire an incompetent teacher, we have the specter of university and college presidents eliminating...

...Longer school days and longer school years work. Giving principals the power to hire good teachers and fire bad ones works. High expectations work. Giving a teacher freedom to hug a child who needs hugging works. Parental involvement works. Counseling for troubled students and families works. Consistency of effort works. Incentives work. Field trips that expose kids to possibilities you can't see from their broken neighborhoods, work. Indeed, the most important thing I've learned is that none of this is rocket science. We already know what works. What we lack is the will to do it. Instead, we have a...

The University of Hawaii at Manoa, Kapolei High School, isisHawaii and Ainoa, Inc. have partnered to launch UHM SEED Academy, a new public 'bricks and clicks' high school offering a blended curriculum of core, Advanced Placement, and world language courses taken online and hands-on STEM electives in science, technology, engineering and math taught on-campus at Kapolei High School. The UHM SEED Academy is a high-quality, innovative alternative to the traditional school experience and is currently enrolling students tuition-free for the 2008-09 school year, which begins August 11. The combined online and face-to-face curriculum provides students enrolled at UHM SEED Academy...

...The fundamental problem with the voucher debate is that it is always seen as an either/or proposition. For Republicans, it is the panacea to all the educational woes, and that is nonsensical. For Democrats, they say it will destroy public education, and that too is a bunch of crap. I fundamentally believe that vouchers are simply one part of the entire educational pie. There is no surefire way to educate a child. We've seen public schools do a great job (I went to them from kindergarten through college) along with private schools, home schooling, charter schools and even online initiatives....

In the State Board of Education races, simple math could start another round in the long-running fight in Kansas about evolution. Five seats on the 10-member board are up for election this year, and of those, three are held by moderates who are not seeking re-election. Moderates now hold a 6-4 advantage over social conservatives on the board, so flipping one of those moderate seats to a conservative would create a 5-5 tie. Flipping two moderate seats would produce a conservative majority and could renew the battle against evolution that has brought attention to Kansas several times during the past...

BAGHDAD — “This ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, between the two historic rivers, taught the world how to read and how to write,” said Ahmed Rubayee, the Director General of Baghdad’s Rusafa 2 Education Department at al Neel school opening last week. “That is what we are doing here today, establishing a school, and to once again, be civilized and concentrate on teaching our children to read and write.” During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Director General Rubayee congratulated Officer in Charge of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Loyalty Resident Office Maj. Robert Culberson for the successful completion of the $797,000...

Of all the themes that recur in this column, one fills my inbox with angry e-mails like no other. It is the notion that you can and should take control of your own life and your economic destiny. It’s my deeply held conviction that if you learn how to do the right things and make good decisions, you will never need to participate in any “recession.” People hate this. Every time I say it, I get barraged with indignant feedback from people who tell me I don’t understand how tough it is. This was never more true than after my...

...On the subject of elementary and secondary education, the two seem to have gotten their roles completely mixed up. Obama is the staunch defender of the existing public school monopoly, and he's allergic to anything that subverts it. John McCain, on the other hand, went before the NAACP last week to argue for something new and daring. That something is to facilitate greater parental choice in education....

Berea College, founded 150 years ago to educate freed slaves and “poor white mountaineers,” accepts only applicants from low-income families, and it charges no tuition. “You can literally come to Berea with nothing but what you can carry, and graduate debt free,” said Joseph P. Bagnoli Jr., the associate provost for enrollment management. “We call it the best education money can’t buy.” Actually, what buys that education is Berea’s $1.1 billion endowment, which puts the college among the nation’s wealthiest. But unlike most well-endowed colleges, Berea has no football team, coed dorms, hot tubs or climbing walls. Instead, it has...

....The original No Child Left Behind law recognized the importance of teacher quality but did not properly emphasize teacher performance in the classroom. The reforms in the District and elsewhere offer a lesson for national policymakers: To best serve our nation's children, Congress needs to fix No Child Left Behind rather than abandon it. Lawmakers can do this by identifying, promoting and rewarding successful teachers; by better targeting professional development; and by strengthening provisions that hold teachers accountable for the performance of their students. Congress should encourage states to develop programs that attract the best and brightest teachers to the...

If there's one thing you have to give Philadelphia's leaders credit for achieving, it's consistency. Under the "leadership" of every mayor and city council going back decades, the city has seen its population plummet, and with it, our prospects for growth and world-class status. Consider these gems: Between 2000 and 2007, Philadelphia lost 4.5 percent of its residents, the largest percentage drop of any Top 25 city. As far as actual numbers, the only city which lost more people in that span was New Orleans, and I think the Big Easy had a weather-related incident which prompted that city's mass...

If college students can take more than four years to graduate, why not high school students? State educators are considering a proposal to raise the number of years before graduation for some Michigan high school students. Under today's regulations, students count as "dropouts" in state records if they don't finish high school in four years -- even if they receive their diplomas within the next year. But that could soon change. "This is great news," said Mary Beth Handeyside, director at Omni Adult and Alternative Education, the alternative high school of Carrollton Public Schools. "It's not only in the interest...

The fact that charter schools have posted some of the highest state test scores among Buffalo schools this year speaks to the validity of what was once considered an educational experiment. As recently reported, a couple of city-based charter schools posted math and English test results among the best of any schools in Erie and Niagara counties — and charter schools significantly outperformed the city’s traditional public schools. Tapestry, South Buffalo, Elmwood Village and Buffalo United consistently ranked in the Top 10 among all Buffalo schools in the recent math and English tests. Community, Westminster and Pinnacle schools appeared in...

If we had no armed central state to seize money from people against their will and fund the government schools, we'd have no tax-funded government schools. Which means your public school teacher had a fatal conflict of interest when he or she taught you "why we need to have a central state, with the power to shoot or jail people who don't pay up." I'll bet he or she never mentioned, as one of the reasons, "Because otherwise my paychecks would stop coming." Be deeply suspicious therefore of most of the reasons you've been given for "why we need a...

The long-serving president of New York City's powerful teachers' union was tapped last week to lead the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers - a post from which she'll have ample opportunity to push her education agenda on the national level. "Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities and homework assistance," she said. "And suppose the schools included child care and dental, medical and counseling clinics." A one-stop nanny state, in other words - owned and operated by Randi Weingarten & Co. Weingarten's push for all-purpose schools is hardly surprising, of course. What...

Randi Weingarten has delusions of grandeur. She thinks she should be given the power of a dictator instead of those of a teachers union president. Instead of just teaching kids, Weingarten imagines that she should become doctor, nanny, nutritionist, psychologist, and mother to every kid in America. She imagines that she should be given the care and feeding of all the nation's kids. Parents? Who need 'em when we've got Mother Weingarten to trot them off to re-education camps where they will be fed and cared for on a daily basis? Catch the arrogance, see this nanny-state despot lining...

State school pupils are set to be taught Islamic traditions and values in compulsory citizenship lessons. The move - part of a package of initiatives announced by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears yesterday - is designed to curb extremism. Education campaigners warned however against giving Islam a privileged position over other faiths. Other plans announced by Miss Blears also drew criticism - including a state-funded panel of Islamic scholars and theologians to provide community leadership. Prominent Muslims said this scheme was naive because Government endorsement would erode the credibility of those taking part, especially among the young and disaffected. Another measure...

The head examiner of a British school-examination board, Peter Buckroyd, whose examinations are taken by 780,000 children, recently explained to teachers why a pupil who answered the question, “Describe the room you’re in,” with...

Arguments were heard today in a federal district court case to determine whether a state university system can dictate that private Christian schools in the state teach their college prep courses from exclusively secular, Bible- and God-free textbooks. As WND reported earlier, the University of California system adopted a policy last year that basic science, history, and literature textbooks by major Christian book publishers wouldn't qualify for core admissions requirements because of the inclusion of Christian perspectives. Robert Tyler, who is representing Calvary Chapel Christian School and five students in the case against the University of California, told WND that...

...Gradually, he realized he wanted to teach children. After three years introducing middle-schoolers at Sandy Spring Friends School to social studies, he decided on his life's work: starting a school like none the Washington area has ever seen... ..."The model is inspired by the success of home-schoolers," he said. Students will set their class schedules, enabling them to learn at their pace and in their styles. Teachers will act as advisers, not taskmasters... ...Much of Shusterman's plan is inspired by John Dewey, a 20th-century educational philosopher whose devotees have called for teachers to be "guides on the side, not sages...

When he was a state senator in Illinois in June 2002, Barack Obama was explicitly asked by Chicago media personality Jeff Berkowitz whether he supports school vouchers. “I would support anything that is going to be better for the children of Illinois,” he said. He emphatically added that “I am not closed minded on the issue.” In February 2008, Obama spoke to reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the issue. Still keeping an open mind, he said, “If there was any argument for vouchers, it was ‘Let’s see if the experiment works.’ And if it does, whatever my preconception,...

NEA Family Feud by: Bethany Stotts, July 18, 2008 It’s that time again. The National Education Association teacher’s union met in Washington, D.C. over July 4th week for its annual convention and to endorse Barack Obama for president. Obama has drawn criticism from pro-life groups for his strongly pro-choice stance, having declared in 2007 that “the first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” which would overturn state restrictions on abortion. Following in this pro-choice vein, the NEA convention also once again upheld the original language of Resolution I-15, which “supports family planning, including the...

Historical Progress? by: Bethany Stotts, July 18, 2008 Despite what Americans have been hearing about the nation’s poor civics literacy, renowned education reformer Diane Ravitch suggests that, on historical subjects at least, civics education may have made “some headway.” She writes in the summer edition of Hoover Digest, “Yet compare [the results of two 1986 and 2007 surveys] I did, and it appears to me that those interviewed in the [Common Core] telephone sample of 2007 were somewhat better informed than their parent’s generation of 1986...On most questions of a factual nature, the proportion who answered correctly was either higher...

Free Congress Foundation frequently is asked for a recommendation for good institutions of higher learning. Paul T. Yarbrough agreed to undertake a review of the best institutions in this country. He spent months acquiring catalogues, reviewing materials and asking questions. What follows is his exclusive report. We hope this will be an annual exercise. [SNIP] For our survival as a nation, to advance the cause of liberty and preserve what is left of our Judeo-Christian culture, faith and reason must infuse the life of an American college. There is no other way to achieve excellence. Do any institutions in our...

The eight students walked into a room at Lincoln High School prepared to discuss an issue many people, including some of their teachers, considered taboo. They were blunt. Carlos Garcia, 17, an A student with a knack for math, said, "My friends, most of them say, 'You're more Asian than Hispanic.' " "I think Carlos is Asian at heart," said Julie Loc, 17, causing Carlos to laugh good-naturedly. Asian students who get middling grades often get another response, she said. "They say, 'Are you really Asian?' " Julie said. "It's sad but true," said Eliseo Garcia, a 17-year-old with long...

Speaking of Change... by: Deborah Lambert, July 17, 2008 No doubt about it. Ivy League schools have issues. But when 11 percent of Yale’s senior class, 10 percent of Georgetown’s and 9 percent of Harvard’s head off to teach at some of America’s most impoverished inner city schools for the next couple of years, something’s going on. The Wall Street Journal reported that last month, 3,700 recent college graduates showed up at Teach for America’s five-week boot camp, the program that precedes their two-year teaching stints where salaries will average somewhere between $25,000 and $44,000, depending on location. Teach for...

What they found was 12 percent of United States high school biology teachers consider creationism a "valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species," and believe "many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory."

A four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is no longer enough to guarantee a steadily rising paycheck.

A new statewide count of high school dropouts, based on the tracking of individual students, shows significantly higher numbers than have been reported for years in California. The dropout report, released Wednesday by the California Department of Education, estimated that one in four high school students - 24.2 percent - failed to graduate with their classes or move into another educational program to continue their high school education. The estimates were derived from data from the 2006-07 school year. By contrast, the state claimed a 13.9 percent four-year dropout rate for the prior year. The difference is due to a...

A just philosophy of government is predicated upon the understanding that the family is the first government and that all other government must first be at its service. In his marvelous apostolic exhortation on the family ("The Role of the Christian family in the Modern World") the Servant of God Pope John Paul II affirmed the social and political role of the family and called for the development of a “family politics”. Catholics, other Christians, other people of faith and all people of good will should embrace this challenge to develop just such a "family politics". It is time to...

CNN reported July 11 that according to the National Institutes of Health, U.S. teen pregnancies in 2006 rose for the first time since 1991. Translation: "One-third of girls in the U.S. got pregnant before age 20." In the same article, CNN reported a "striking decrease" in the percentage of eighth graders smoking, down from 10 percent in 1996 to 3 percent in 2007. While federal health experts were at a loss to explain the spike in teen pregnancies, a Centers for Disease Control official said smoking abated due to "efforts convincing kids and adults not to smoke," according to CNN....

Deploying a long-promised tool to track high school dropouts, the state released numbers today showing that 1 in 4 California students quit school in the 2006-07 school year, including 1 in 3 in Los Angeles. The rates are considerably higher than previously acknowledged but lower than some independent estimates. The figures are based on a new statewide tracking system that relies on identification numbers that were issued to all California public school students beginning in fall 2006. The ID numbers allow the state Department of Education to track students who leave one school and enroll in another, even if it...

A flood of calls and mail from social conservatives who don't want gay students on a list of potential bullying targets helped stall votes on a proposed school safety law. Legislators have been working on a bullying bill for more than a year, and until Tuesday morning thought they had a compromise that would pass both House and Senate. It turned out that including "sexual orientation" in a list of more than a dozen reasons a student might be bullied or harassed was a sticking point. Both the House and Senate plan to vote on a bullying bill before they...

"I don't want to send another generation of American children to failing schools." (Barack Obama, Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, Des Moines, Iowa, November 10, 2007) The signature initiative of an Obama campaign for a second term would be nationalizing public education, kindergarten through grade 12. If it happens, say goodbye to the Independent School District (I.S.D.) as we've known it. The Obama campaign document entitled "The Blueprint For Change: Barack Obama's Plan For America" continues to be ignored by the old media news. The section entitled "Plan To Give Every American Child A World Class Education," was profiled earlier in much of...

By Jerry Markon and Ben Hubbard Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, July 15, 2008; Page B01 A Saudi-funded academy in Fairfax County used textbooks as recently as 2006 that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, told eighth-graders that these groups are "the enemies of the believers" and diagrammed for high school students where to cut off the hands and feet of thieves, a Washington Post review of the books has found. Saudi officials acknowledged that the textbooks used at the Islamic Saudi Academy had contained inflammatory material since at least the mid-1990s but said they ordered revisions in...

Higher education could heal itself by teaching civics—not race, class, and gender.The university is worth fighting for. No other institution can carry the burden of educating our young people. That’s why we must redouble our efforts to restore integrity, civility, and rigorous standards in American higher education—particularly in the area of civic education.I’ll be the first to admit that the situation is dire. I sympathize when critics throw up their hands in despair. I sometimes feel that way myself. Darkness often prevails in places where the light of learning should shine. I often trade horror stories with my friend Hadley...

Per this whole is it schools or is it society debate, studies like this new one from Andrew Zau and Julian Betts (pdf) are pretty depressing. They show that it’s possible at a pretty early point in a child’s schooling experience to see what their trajectory is. The don’t blame the schools crowd would have a stronger case if, armed with this information, states and schools were seriously crafting interventions to get these kids back on track. But no. Instead, perversely, they often get the least.

A New Frontier for Title IX: Science Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science. --snip-- “Colleges already practice affirmative action for women in science, but now they’ll be so intimidated by the Title IX legal hammer that they may institute quota systems,” Dr. Sommers said. “In sports, they had to eliminate a lot of male teams to achieve Title IX parity. It’ll be devastating to American science if every male-dominated field...

...A new poll shows that 82% of Hispanics consider education as one of three most important issues facing this country. The survey also shows that, even while Hispanics trust Democrats over Republicans on education by more than a two-to-one margin, that ratio could change if Republicans heavily promote school choice while Democrats oppose it.... ...This survey found that although Hispanic voters generally consider public schools to be effective...Fifty-two percent of Hispanic voters have a favorable view of school choice, according to the poll, while only 7% had an unfavorable view. When asked about vouchers specifically, 32% expressed a favorable opinion...

Education is slipping in priority among many voters but not among Hispanics, many of whom see school choice as a deciding factor in whom to vote for this fall. This has implications for the presidential election. A new poll shows that 82% of Hispanics consider education as one of three most important issues facing this country. The survey also shows that, even while Hispanics trust Democrats over Republicans on education by more than a two-to-one margin, that ratio could change if Republicans heavily promote school choice while Democrats oppose it. The poll was conducted last year among more than 800...

Senator Obama apparently felt free enough from obligations to the American Federation of Teachers, which is meeting in his home city of Chicago, that he skipped their convention and appeared by video. The AFT had endorsed Mr. Obama's opponent, Senator Clinton, in the Democratic primary. Too bad Mr. Obama doesn't feel free enough to deviate from the union's policy agenda. That he is captive to it was made clear by his prepared remarks. "What I do oppose is using public money for private school vouchers. We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands...

Randi Weingarten, the New Yorker who is rising to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President Bush’s focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services. Ms. Weingarten, 50, is running unopposed for the presidency of the national teachers union, whose delegates at an annual convention in Chicago are expected to elect her Monday. In a speech prepared for delivery after the vote, Ms. Weingarten criticizes No Child Left Behind, President...