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...In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years. But in a nation...

...This film takes a deeper look at how the three superpowers of the 21st Century - China, India and the United States - are preparing their students for the future. As we follow two students - a boy and a girl - from each of these countries, we compose a global snapshot of education, from the viewpoint of kids preparing for their future. Our goal is to tell the broader story of the universal importance of education today, and address what many are calling a crisis for U.S. schools regarding chronically low scores in math and science indicators...

Saying their son was "silenced" by his teacher for talking about hunting in the classroom, the parents of a fourth-grade student at North Bennington Graded School took their son out of school and have taken their case to the local school board. Jared Harrington's mother, Wendy Bordwell, and his father, Martin Harrington, removed their son from school with 10 days left in the school year and home-schooled the 10-year-old boy. "We are aggressively pursuing Jared's right to free speech," Bordwell said. The couple addressed the local school board Monday night to air their grievance. Bordwell said in a telephone interview...

The issue of whether parents ought to be allowed to home-school their children will be heard before the California Court of Appeals later this month. A lower court declared the practice illegal under California law earlier this year. The California Teachers Association filed an amicus brief urging the court to uphold the lower court’s decision. According to the brief, “allowing parents to teach their own children is educational anarchy. It would privatize a function that has long been held the prerogative of the state.” “These home-schoolers insert a barrier between the state and its young citizens,” the brief continued. “This...

(snip) A report to be released today from the California Charter Schools Assn. takes a crack at it, comparing charter schools in Los Angeles with their traditional peers. Its conclusion is that charters generally perform better academically than nearby regular public schools, and that charters improve as they age. snip But by most measures, charters had the edge."It's pretty significant that seven out of 10 charters actually outperform their most similarly matched district public school," said Caprice Young, chief executive of the charter schools association, citing one finding in the report. She said the study was intended to answer the...

(snip) On Tuesday, 70 eighth-graders gathered at the gymnasium on the campus of KIPP: Aspire Academy, a public charter school, to pledge to return in four years with high school diploma in hand and tell their principal what college they're heading to. This class of eighth-graders, the second graduating class of the charter school that serves grades five through eight, has shattered stereotypes. Almost all the students are Hispanic and live within the boundaries of Loop 410. About 84 percent come from poor homes, and, for many, Spanish is the first language. (snip) The KIPP model is yielding results across...

...On May 29, 2008 the Worcester Telegram & Gazette published a story concerning a ten year boy who was immediately suspended when a school employee found him with a spent blank shell. According to the story entitled "Souvenir Rifle Shell Gets 4th Grader Suspended" the young man was given two of the spent casings by a uniformed veteran after a Memorial Day event. "This is a tragic example of how far over the edge this state and our schools have gone. For the school officials to react in such a manner is simply inexcusable," said Jim Wallace Executive Director of...

Parent's objection led to the motto being painted over at a Dallas-area elementary --- THE COLONY — A Dallas-area school will put "In God We Trust" back on a gymnasium wall after the U.S. motto was painted over when one parent objected. The motto had been on a wall at B.B. Owen Elementary School in The Colony. District spokesman Dean Tackett said a parent complained about displaying the word "God" in school, so the phrase was painted over. But Tackett said on Tuesday, in response to complaints from other parents about the hasty removal, "In God We Trust" will be...

No longer do we teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, or even those touchy feelly values that so many schools have spent so much time on. No, we’re simply watching children to make sure they don’t run with scissors, climb too high, or wash too many dishes. Too bad they can’t stop the shootings at their own schools before they start coming into our homes, or rather dragging us out of them, to make sure we’re safe.

Fairfax County, Virginia is about to re-draw district boundary lines, which will affect at least 1/4 of the families in that county. School board says this is being done primarily because South Lakes High School, in Reston, is under-enrolled. Reston, a planned community has a variety of income levels including government project housing for low or no income families. At South Lakes H.S., 1/3 of the students are on free lunch. Gangs have caused problems in the school and fights have been violent. The school does offer the International Baccalaureate program which has brought in a few serious students, yet...

Official tells group to ‘stay out of our schools.' A group that supports people trying to leave homosexuality is “like the KKK but only in the form of religion,” according to a teacher at Montgomery County, Md.’s Thomas S. Wootton High School. “STAY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS AND LEAVE OUR CHILDREN ALONE!” wrote the teacher, who happens to be the co-sponsor of the high school’s Gay Straight Alliance club. Using a school-issued e-mail account, the teacher sent those messages to PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-gays and Gays), after the organization distributed fliers to students in compliance with school policy....

Students at Boulder High School want an apology from national television host Bill O'Reilly, who's incensed over an April panel at the school that critics say encouraged young people to experiment with drugs and sex. Several of O'Reilly's shows have featured sound clips from the Conference on World Affairs panel "STDs: Sex, Teens and Drugs,"... Dan Caplis, a Denver radio show host who has spoken on O'Reilly's show about the issue, said he thinks the clips were in "perfectly fair context." "I think that Bill has been on target with this, and they should be glad that he's willing to...

OK ... so I can't really say that on the air, but at least those of you who read the program notes will know how I really feel about this. The trick today is to avoid sharing this absolutely accurate word with my listeners. The vote was 284 to 141. There were 56 "Republicans" in the mix. The bill was a bone for the ignorant; an anti-price gouging bill. This was in response to the recent rise in gas prices. These politicians wanted to go home for the Memorial Day break and tell their constituents that there were actually doing...

District leaders get more aggressive as they compete for new students. By GARTH BISHOP In one of the district's latest efforts to win back students, Columbus Public Schools officials have taken to the airwaves to promote the opportunities they offer. Last month, commercials advertising the district's good works began airing on three local radio stations. Those initial spots placed emphasis on the three school information fairs held by educators as they promoted the breadth and depth of programs available in the school system. The three radio stations -- all owned by Radio One -- were Magic 98.9 (R&B oldies), Joy...

WELCOME TO THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE! “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” T.S. Eliot ADVENTURES IN DIVERSITY TRAINING All of you undoubtedly know that the education system relentlessly promotes a leftist ideology. Still, you may find it instructive to read how the system works at the grassroots to reinforce the Gramscian voice...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Dozens of middle school students will be tested for hepatitis and HIV after their substitute science teacher allowed them to share needle-like instruments to prick their fingers for blood. The teacher, whose name was not released, was giving a life-science lesson to five seventh-grade classes Thursday at John F. Kennedy Middle School when he asked for volunteers to have their blood drawn using lancets so they could look at it under microscopes. Lancets are similar to the tools that diabetics use to test their blood sugar.

Homeschool leaders are renewing the call for Southern Baptist churches to develop an exit strategy from public schools. Building on the success of the past few years, advocates such as Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee member Roger Moran and Houston attorney Dr. Bruce Shortt are asking their fellow Baptists to support an exit strategy resolution at upcoming state and regional conventions. The resolution, listed at the end of this article, identifies the problems within public education and the damage it’s causing to Christian children. In 2004 exit strategy resolutions were introduced in Southern Baptist conventions in 15 states, and that...

Let me speak to you about dumbness because that is what schools teach best. Old-fashioned dumbness used to be simple ignorance: you didn't know something, but there were ways to find out if you wanted to. Government-controlled schooling didn't eliminate dumbness - in fact, we now know that people read more fluently before we had forced schooling - but dumbness was transformed. Now dumb people aren't just ignorant; they're the victims of the non-thought of secondhand ideas. Dumb people are now well-informed about the opinions of Time magazine and CBS, The New York Times and the President; their job is...

The 100 Best High Schools in America The Goal: Never has high school had to do so much for so many. NEWSWEEK unveils the top schools across the country and suggests what others can do to make the grade. By Barbara Kantrowitz Newsweek May 16 issue - In the winter of 1821, the civic leaders of Boston approved what was then a radical idea. At a time when advanced learning was largely restricted to the wealthy, they voted to create the country's first public high school, open to boys 12 or older who could pass an entrance exam. Ever since,...

INVASION USA High-school coach fired for aiding illegals' cause English prof: 'We gots 2 show the U.S. that they aint (expletive) with out us' ** A junior-varsity baseball coach at Cesar Chavez High School in Houston has been ejected from his sports duties after using his position to advocate the cause of illegal aliens. Rudy Rios admits he used a district copier to make fliers encouraging Hispanic students to attend a rally protesting restrictions on illegal immigration. According to the Houston Chronicle, the fliers read: "We gots 2 stay together and protest against the new law that wants 2 be...

....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.....

(AgapePress) - A school district in Maine has reaffirmed its reinstatement of a sexually explicit book several parents want removed from the local high school's curriculum. The Orono School Committee recently voted to retain the controversial novel Girl Interrupted in the ninth grade English literature class at Orono High School.Girl Interrupted, a novel written by Susanna Kaysen, was affirmed for use in the high school curriculum over the objections of parents and local residents who take exception to the profuse profanity and sexual content in the book. Michael Heath, head of the Christian Civic League of Maine (CCLM), says...

February 15, 2006 Teacher Unions Are Killing the Public SchoolsBy John Stossel Bosses, have I got an idea for you: Don't pay your best employees more, don't ease out your least productive workers, and for crying out loud, never fire anyone, not even for the most blatant misconduct on the job. It works for the public schools, doesn't it? Actually, it doesn't, but since they're government monopolies, they don't care. They never go out of business. They just keep doing what they're doing, year after year, churning out class after class of students handicapped by a poor education. Don't...

$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...

The New York City teachers union has decided not to stage a demonstration at ABC's offices on Feb. 14 to protest John Stossel's recent 20/20 feature criticizing the public education system, Stossel said in an email to viewers of the show on Thursday. "They are apparently planning something else," he wrote. "Stay tuned." Earlier in the week, Stossel said that he had been scheduled to receive an award from the union's Social Studies Conference "for the oustanding work which you have done for social causes." However, he said, after the broadcast the union wrote a letter withdrawing the invitation and...

When Mark and Jenny Sanford moved from Charleston to Columbia, S.C., they had a big concern: Where would their kids go to school? They wanted to send their kids to public school, but the middle school near their new home was not particularly good. But it turned out that this wouldn't have been a problem for the Sanfords because the reason they had moved to Columbia was Mark had just been elected governor. While students are normally assigned to schools based on where their house is located, Gov. Sanford's family was offered special options: People from better school districts invited...

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,”...

With public schools spending more than $100,000 per student on K-12 education, you'd think they could teach students how to read and write. South Carolina is one of many states to have trouble with this. It spends $9,000 per student per year, and its state school superintendent told me South Carolina has been "ranked as having some of the highest standards of learning in the entire country." So let's ask the infamous question, "Is our children learning?" Dorian Cain told me he wants to learn to read. He's 18 years old and in 12th grade, but when I asked him...

Each morning, when Gabriela Ocampo looked up at the chalkboard in her ninth-grade algebra class, her spirits sank. There she saw a mysterious language of polynomials and slope intercepts that looked about as familiar as hieroglyphics. She knew she would face another day of confusion, another day of pretending to follow along. She could hardly do long division, let alone solve for x. "I felt like, 'Oh, my God, what am I going to do?' " she recalled. Gabriela failed that first semester of freshman algebra. She failed again and again — six times in six semesters. And because students...

Just caught a network news segment on how the Chicago government schools – at the alleged urging of parents – are teaching kids there CHINESE, a language having 3 gazillion unique GRAPHIC – as opposed to our 26 alphabetical – characters and 4 or so basic SOUNDS! They claim they’re doing this so our kids can COMPETE with the Chinese – most of whom are busy learning a much easier language: ENGLISH!! I think teaching American kids Chinese is wonderful. These kids will then be able to explain why they are ignorant of biology, physics, math, basic science, etc. –...

Parents of elementary school children in California were upset that their kids were the targets of a sex survey conducted by the Palmdale School District. The survey, distributed in 2002, focused on how often prepubescent school kids thought about sex and touched themselves--you know, just the kind of things educators need to know to in order to effectively teach reading, writing and math skills. The parents filed a lawsuit, claiming that the survey "violated parents' substantive due process and privacy rights." Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Fields v. Palmdale School District [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0356499p.pdf], dismissed the suit, saying:...

CHURNING OUT LEFTISTS If you are sending your child to a government school for their daily programming, chances are overwhelming that your bundle of joy is going to wind up becoming a liberal Democrat. Today, courtesy of The Los Angeles Unified School District, we're going to show you how it's done. There was a Bush-bashing rally being held in Los Angeles the other day. It was called "The World Can't Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime." Eager for as many people to attend as possible, the school district allowed 800 high school students from 10 schools to walk right...

Netherlands court bans complaining mom Copyright © 2005 AP Online This story was published Friday, October 7th, 2005 The Associated Press AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A woman in the Netherlands has been banned from any contact with her daughter's school or teachers after complaining too much, a court ruled Friday. The woman, whose name was not released, "overloaded" the Borgh Elementary School in the northern city of Zuidhorn "with an incessant stream of questions, comments and complaints," a panel of judges at the Groningen District Court wrote in their judgment. "For causing an illegal hindrance ... she will be barred...

A GOOD WEEK FOR GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS .... ... but then, what week IS a good week for turning your child over to the government to be educated? Dacula High School, Gwinnett County, Georgia You heard about this last week on the show, and you saw Larry Nease on CNN this morning. "Doc" Nease is a science teacher at Dacula High School. For the past 10 years or more Doc has had a policy in his classrooms that if you fall asleep or disrupt the class you will get a zero for your class work for that day, or your grade...

BRADENTON -- Stash the basketballs, the kick balls and jump ropes. And don't even think about breaking a sweat in the new era of physical education class in some elementary schools. Twelve plastic cups are all that's needed for the latest craze in some elementary school gym classes. In sport stacking, kids arrange eight-ounce cups into pyramids and collapse them into nested stacks at lightning speeds. The fastest time wins. Sound easy? Maybe a little, shall we say, stupid? "We're the first to admit it sounds pretty goofy and pretty silly," said Bob Fox, a former Colorado gym teacher who...

OPEN COURT is a government-approved reading program for elementry children in California Schools. It is one of only two which are approved. I do not know what the other one is. I do know that this program is creating children who are totally socialist. Basically, it is a program in which students MUST work two and a half uninterrupted hours each day (on just Open Court (This time-requirement is set by a state mandate called, "Reading First."). The program is put ahead of math--the principal at the known school has told the teachers to "forget about math" because they will...

When a friend told coach Stu Gorski in 1995 that Mount Adams School District had hired "a phenomenal wrestling coach," Gorski froze. "Tell me you didn't hire Randy Deming," he pleaded. The district had. Gorski, a football and golf coach in Whatcom County, knew Deming for years as a rival coach at nearby Blaine High School. Gorski also knew of Deming's reputation as a groper of girls who had even been charged with child molestation. When Gorski learned Deming would also be teaching girls, he warned: "You're putting him back into the fire." GORDON KING / YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC Randy Deming...

A movement to drag the teaching of science in the United States back into the Dark Ages continues to gain momentum. So far, it's a handful of judges -- "activist judges" in the view of their critics -- who are preventing the spread of Saudi-style religious dogma into more and more of America's public-school classrooms. The ruling this month in Georgia by Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper ordering the Cobb County School Board to remove stickers it had inserted in biology textbooks questioning Darwin's theory of evolution is being appealed by the suburban Atlanta district. Similar legal battles pitting evolution...

After battling a California school district for more than a year over its teaching of evolution, a parent has filed a civil-rights lawsuit in federal court alleging his constitutional rights to free speech, equal protection and religious freedom were violated. Larry Caldwell's suit against the Roseville Joint Union High School District and school officials in Sacramento centers on his attempt to introduce a curriculum that changes how the theory of evolution is taught, without introducing religious content. His "Quality Science Education Policy" and related instructional materials include presentation of scientific weaknesses of evolution in biology classes. "Currently, only the scientific...

The Guerrilla Curriculum On the Corporatizing of Children by John Taylor GattoFalconers have no difficulty understanding that to carry a falcon on one’s arm in opposition to its nature you have to put a bag over it’s head; and horsemen know that a fast horse can be made to run more slowly by adding lead weights to its body; why is it so difficult to acknowledge then that some people might want to transfer these principles of mechanical intervention known to animal trainers to the scientific management of human children? That is to say, to impede their natures in interest...

BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS Parents kicked out of 'gay day' Concerned mom tried to videotape event Posted: December 17, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Two parents who objected to a Massachusetts high school's homosexual-awareness day were expelled from the campus after a mother began videotaping a session. Brian Camenker, an activist who has a son at Newton North High School in Newtonville, Mass., and Kim Cariani, mother of two students, said four police officers and the school principal warned they would be charged with trespassing if they didn't leave the campus Wednesday. Kim Cariani tried to videotape a "gay day" session at...

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...

FRUITA — None of the six boys associated with bringing a gun to Fruita Middle School this month will be allowed back in the school, Principal Ken Haptonstall said Monday. Haptonstall will recommend expulsion for all of them. Haptonstall’s announcements were greeted with enthusiastic applause from about 500 concerned parents who gathered for an early Monday morning meeting with school and law enforcement officials at the school. School officials are confident they have identified all students involved in the gun incidents, Haptonstall said. Haptonstall and Fruita Police Chief Mark Angelo answered questions about two incidents involving guns at the school....

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>

State's Schools Improve In No Child Left Behind Standards Twice As Many Schools Meet Progress Standards Compared To 2003   POSTED: 1:58 pm EDT September 29, 2004 UPDATED: 2:45 pm EDT September 29, 2004   GREENVILLE -- State Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum says more than half of the public schools in South Carolina showed adequate yearly progress required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.Tenenbaum said 56 percent of the state's public schools met the goals. Only 23 percent of schools met the standard last year.Tenenbaum said she's pleased with the progress. But she said the state has a...

Families from three Maine towns went to court Friday to challenge a state law that prohibits public money from being spent on religious school tuition. The families, who live in Durham, Raymond and Minot, claim they are being discriminated against by a law that allows towns to pay public and private school tuition for their neighbors' children, but will not pay the families' tuition bills because their children go to schools with religious affiliations. "It's all about fairness," said Jerilyn Ward of Raymond, who is not Catholic but sends two of her three sons to St. Dominic Regional High School...

JAVITS CENTER, NEW YORKAs recently as 1996, the Republican-party platform called for the abolition of the Department of Education as an unconstitutional, heavy-handed, and ineffective entity. Eight years later, things have changed. Conservatives in New York this week knew there was trouble once they read the first sentence of the platform on "No Child Left Behind." It read: "Public education is the foundation of civil society." (In comparison to "family," which earned the description of being the "cornerstone.") The second sign of trouble was learning that the subcommittee handling education was chaired by Rep. Phil English (R., Penn.), a key...

Gere attacks Bush over sex education 18/07/2004 - 12:51:59 Hollywood heart-throb Richard Gere launched a scathing attack on American President George W Bush's attitude to sex education in Bangkok on Tuesday. The passionate actor was speaking at the 15th International Aids conference in the Thai capital, after visiting India the previous week with his younger brother David to highlight the Aids epidemic. Gere took the opportunity to attack Bush's unrealistic approach to sex education after the president proposed in the 2005 budget that $270m (?216.8m) should be put into funding programs which dissuade teenagers from having sex. During his time...