Free Republic

A school board in Virginia is considering the repeal of a policy that would have forced 14-year-old minors to stand before the school board to be interrogated about their religious beliefs. The Goochland County policy is aimed at homeschool families that fall under Virginia’s decades-old religious exemption statute, which acknowledges parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children. The longstanding state statue allows parents to homeschool their children without reporting to the state if they have an objection to attending school outside the home that is based on “bona fide religious training or belief.” The Goochland school...

A Virginia school district has decided to scrap a policy that allowed it to interrogate Christian homeschool teenagers and their parents about their religious beliefs.Last November Douglas Pruiett and his wife received a letter from Goochland County Public Schools about updated procedures to the district’s requests for religious exemptions for homeschool students.Under the updated rules, once a child turns 14-years-old, the district requires that homeschool parents reapply for a religious exemption to public education.The Prueitts have seven children, three of whom were impacted by the revised policy.“Each application must be completed along with a statement of your bona fide religious...

On "Fox and Friends" Wednesday, Heather Nauert brought us an update on a controversial homeschooling policy in one Virginia town. The Goochland County School Board has now voted down a new policy that would have forced homeschooled children justify their religious beliefs within 30 days of their 14th birthday. The board's vote was in response to a flood of outrage by parents in the area. There is one more vote left to be taken on this issue.

Virginia parents are outraged over a new policy that demands homeschooled children justify their religious beliefs to a school board within 30 days of their 14th birthday. The controversial rule passed by the Goochland County School Board states, “Any student who together with his/her parents seeks an exemption from compulsory attendance due to their bona fide religious training or beliefs must submit a written application to the school board, setting forth the reasons for the request.” […] The Home School Legal Defense Association says the school board’s policy violates Virginia state law, which allows children undergoing religious training to be...

Jihad, in its many guises and forms, is being waged across America. No aspect of our society has been untouched by this relentless attack. Including our schools. Our education system has been infiltrated by the enemy, as the next generation of Americans is brainwashed with white-washed Islam. The assault is coming from all directions and it never sleeps. Muslim Brotherhood front groups have been, and continue to be, integrally involved in the development of Common Core curriculum. They make sure a false picture of Islam is integrated into lessons, from K – 12. Our children are exposed to all manner...

Brazilian Families Want Legal Homeschooling By Julio Severo A group of families made a 12-hour trip to be in Brasilia, Brazil’s capital city, to attend a vote in the Brazilian Congress on homeschooling. The vote was postponed, but the presence of these families and their children touched the hearts of many congressional representatives. Homeschool families in the Brazilian Congress These families, who were sponsored by ANED (Associação Nacional de Educação Domiciliar, National Home Education Association), promise to be in Brasilia again next Wednesday, when there will be a possible new vote. Congressmen touched by homeschool families The current Brazilian...

Last month, ALEC released its annual Report Card on American Education. The report ranks states’ education policy based on six areas, including state academic standards; charter school laws; private school choice programs; overall teacher quality; digital learning opportunities; and the regulatory burden placed on homeschool families. The study, which included research conducted by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), gave 11 states the top grade of “A” in the area of homeschool regulatory burdens. Those states are Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Texas. The number of states earning an “A” grade expanded...

Home-schoolers represent the only authentically radical social movement in the United States (Occupy Wall Street was a fashion statement) and so they must be suppressed, as a malevolent committee of leftist academics and union bosses under the direction of Governor Dannel Malloy is preparing to do in Connecticut, using the Sandy Hook massacre as a pretext. The ghouls invariably rush to the podium after every school massacre, issuing their insipid press releases before the bodies have even cooled, and normally they’re after your guns. But the Malloy gang is after your children. Malloy’s committee on the Newtown shootings is recommending...

The School Reform News, published by the Heartland Institute, found there are over 1,200 massive open online courses, or MOOCs, offered by over 200 universities and taken by an estimated ten million K-12 students. homeschooling Florida is the nation’s leader in offering MOOCs, where students watch video lectures recorded online and participate in online discussion boards, which could reduce the cost of higher education for students and state taxpayers. Michael Horn, cofounder of the Clayton Christianson Institute, said, “People would be foolish to overlook it.” Florida state legislators are considering moving the state to MOOCs at the K-12 level, but...

... According to a report in EAG News, a chief recommendation coming out of the state panel that was “charged” with “making recommendations to reduce the risk of future tragedies” has concluded that more oversight of homeschoolers will accomplish that goal. The report’s “chief recommendation” is “tighter scrutiny of homeschoolers … to prevent an incident such as the December 2012 slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Elementary School in Newtown,” EAG said. ...

About a year ago, when I first started considering taking my kids out of public school, I wasn’t met with the kind of incredulous questioning that I expected after suggesting something so reckless and foolhardy. For the most part people were excited and supportive and helpful. Many thought we were already homeschooling, in fact. What surprised me most though is that folks who were concerned about the prudence of such a decision weren’t worried that my children might not learn enough or the the right things. They didn’t wonder how my kids would know how to be quiet when they...

When a Kansas City family pulled their son out of a public elementary school to homeschool him, the local school referred them to the district attorney’s office for truancy. A homeschool advocacy organization intervened, and the school was forced to back down and apologize. In Kansas, as in several other states, families must register their homes as “private schools” to homeschool their children. The family followed the law exactly, naming and registering their school and notifying their son’s elementary school in February that he would be withdrawing. But a few months later, in May, the school sent the family a...

An appeals court in Germany has ruled that a family court's decision to keep legal custody of four children away from their parents, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich, was wrong, and ordered that complete custody be returned to the family. However, the court maintained that homeschooling endangers children and they should go to school. "We have won custody and we are glad about that," Dirk said in a statement released by Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association, which has been assisting the Wunderlich family since their children were taken on Aug. 29, 2013. The court said taking the children away was...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Even though the police shooting of an unarmed man in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson is only weeks old and a grand jury is still trying sort out what really happened, a Washington-based nonprofit is offering a classroom lesson plan that draws a link between the incident and the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1960s Black Panther Party. Teaching for Change says its “Teaching about Ferguson” guide can help students think critically about the shooting of Michael Brown in an Aug. 9 confrontation with police and ways they can be proactive in their own communities. “The Black Panther Party’s 1966...

This year the movie God Is Not Dead preyed on every Christian parent’s fear of sending a child off to college only to have their family’s faith and values undermined by an atheist college professor espousing some form of moral relativism. The movie hinges on a certain cliché, but the cliché is a cliché because many of us took a class with “that professor.” He might not have been so over-the-top, but his prejudices were evident. The American university tends to be fairly hostile to the conservative movement. One of the core tenets of conservatism is the Judeo-Christian teaching that...

At the end of her seventh grade year a few months ago, my daughter was of the opinion that she had not received the education that she should have, so she determined to find courses online that she could take over the summer. What she found (completely on her own) turned out to be a full time public school- online! She starts tomorrow at Connections Academy Texas. With her mother and I both working, she'll be attending school at her Grandmother's house for the time being. I'm very excited about this- my child is *very* intelligent, and with self-paced courses...

Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning – the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it – where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic. We call it “Political Correctness.” The name originated as something of a joke,...

As conservatives, we seek to build on past successes wherever we can rather than start anew. Fortunately, when we look at the question of education, the next conservatism quickly finds a lot to build on. The existing conservative movement has done some things right in this area. The most important achievement is the home schooling movement. Today, over a million American children are getting real educations at home instead of being propagandized in the public schools. Unfortunately, a new problem has cropped up which the next conservatism needs to take on now, before it gets bigger. Political Correctness, which is...

(D)escriptions, written by Twin Cities area high school teachers, of how their schools teach literature classes. This one comes from Edina High School, which was once known as an excellent institution: Acceptance and inter-cultural understanding can be fostered through the use of powerful texts, discussion, analysis, and exploration in the classroom. An English curriculum grounded in social justice rests on a belief based in equity—that each person should have access to resources regardless of race, gender, ability, age, socio-economic status, or sexual orientation.

SELMA, Ala. - An Alabama teacher was suspended without pay after being accused of having sixth-grade students re-enact the deadly police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida. The Selma Times-Journal quoted Dallas County School Superintendent Don Willingham as saying the social studies teacher used poor judgment during a lesson on current events. School officials haven't identified the teacher, who works at Brantley Elementary School....