Free Republic

Sometimes you just know you’re right – like when you find yourself on the opposite side of a debate with an admitted domestic terrorist.In the July-August 2011 edition of “Monthly Review,” Bill Ayers, along with his brother Rick, wrote the introduction to a series of articles on public education. “Education at the beginning of the twenty-first century is in crisis and contestation. The economic instability of capitalism…has had the effect of further compromising a capitalist educational system already beset with problems.“The hijacking of school reform by neoliberal corporate planners, private foundations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, U.S....

This is one part of a running series entitled “Indoctrination Fridays,” a weekly review of leftist propaganda incorporated into public school curriculum, much of it geared towards elementary students.  For more of the series, please visit PublicSchoolSpending.com.Any good community organizer knows an effective protest requires two things: a bully to excoriate and a catchy slogan that resonates in the public mind.Even though most protestors are “uncomplicated” people, don’t be deceived; staging an effective rally is not a simple task.First, a bully must be identified. For progressives, a bully is anybody who disagrees with you politically, so there is no shortage of...

A Sacramento-based advocacy group has filed referendum papers seeking to let voters decide the fate of a new California law requiring public schools to teach about societal contributions made by gay and lesbian people. Capitol Resource Institute, which describes itself as a "watchdog for family values," filed its documents this month with the state Attorney General's Office, which is a prelude to launching a signature-gathering campaign. The group hopes to kill Senate Bill 48, legislation that Gov. Jerry Brown said "represents an important step forward for our state"

"This is a disaster," Mark Miller, the Wisconsin Senate Democratic leader, said in February after Republican Gov. Scott Walker proposed a budget bill that would curtail the collective-bargaining powers of some public employees. Miller predicted catastrophe if the bill were to become law -- a charge repeated thousands of times by his fellow Democrats, union officials and protesters in the streets. Now the bill is law, and we have some early evidence of how it is working. And for one beleaguered Wisconsin school district, it's a godsend, not a disaster. The Kaukauna Area School District, in the Fox River Valley...

State Rep. JoAnne Favors is calling for Hamilton County school board member Rhonda Thurman to step down over what Favors is calling Thurman’s “overtly racist” comments in the Sunday Times Free Press. Favors spoke at a news conference at the schools central office, flanked by the black members of the school board and county commission and surrounded by other black leaders, teachers and community members. She’s said she’s gotten an enormous number of calls from teachers, parents and others over Thurman’s assertions in the Sunday newspaper that suburban schools had been neglected while inner-city schools got extra resources. In a...

Dozens of Atlanta public school educators falsified standardized tests or failed to address such misconduct in their schools, Gov. Nathan Deal said Tuesday in unveiling the results of a state investigation that confirmed widespread cheating in the city schools dating as far back as 2001. "I think the overall conclusion was that testing and results and targets being reached became more important than actual learning for children," Deal said. "And when reaching targets became the goal, it was a goal that was pursued with no excuses." Falsifying test results made the schools appear to be performing better than they really...

It's a trend that would seem to defy conventional wisdom: As public school spending has declined in California in recent years, student achievement test scores have gone up. Statewide, school districts spent 6 percent less from 2008 to 2010, but the percentage of second- to seventh-grade students scoring proficient on the state's standardized English test rose from 48 percent to 55 percent. In the Sacramento region, the same held true. School districts in the four-county region cut annual spending by about $120 million, or 4.4 percent, from 2008 to 2010, hampered by the lousy economy and state funding cuts. That...

High school seniors in Maryland will have to be literate on environmental matters to graduate from now on. Maryland’s Board of Education passed the environmental literacy graduation requirement on Tuesday. Gov. Martin O’Malley says Maryland is now the first state in the nation to have such a requirement. The No Child Left Inside Coalition, which pushed for the requirement, says 48 other states are considering similar requirements, a sign of the increasing popularity of environmental education. Under the graduation requirement, public schools will be required to infuse core subjects with lessons on conservation, smart growth and other environmental topics. School...

There has been ample tongue-clucking about abysmal student scores on the civics and history portions of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), but the real scandal has gone unnoticed. It is certainly a shame that two-thirds of fourth-graders and nearly three-quarters of eighth-graders don’t know the purpose of the Declaration of Independence, and that over half of America’s high-school seniors score below the basic level on history. What’s worse, however, is that some of what students are expected to know about the principles of the American Founding is at odds with what the founders themselves believed. Fourth-graders, for...

The rising generation of Americans ages 18 to 29 are more likely than their elders to support gay marriage, but believe more or less as the country at large does about abortion, according to a major new survey of attitudes on social issues released Thursday. The survey, produced by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), used 3,000 phone interviews and a number of focus groups to produce data on the “millennial” generation’s views on major social and moral matters. “We wanted to cast some light on where exactly millennials are on these issues,” said Robert Jones, the founder and CEO...

A preliminary list of public schools that missed federally mandated academic goals for the 2010-’11 school year includes more than 90 schools in Milwaukee, a spike from last year as proficiency standards have risen. Milwaukee Public Schools had 94 of the 228 schools in Wisconsin that missed the so-called adequate yearly progress, or AYP, requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act, according to information released Tuesday by the state Department of Public Instruction. Last year, 78 schools in MPS missed the academic goals. The federal standards for reading rose from 74% of students scoring proficient or above last year,...

In a strongly-worded letter, the American Civil Liberties Union today said they are "deeply troubled" by a student-led prayer at the graduation ceremonies of Bastrop High School earlier this month. The joint statement was signed by representatives of the national ACLU, the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It was addressed to officials of Bastrop High School and the officials within the school district. A copy was released to the media as a press release. The debate began after a Bastrop High student contacted the ACLU about prayer at...

Lawmakers Propose Legislation To Educate High School Students About Dealing With Unwanted Newborns May 26, 2011 2:51 PM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – New legislation is being proposed which would require high schools to make it part of their public health curriculum to teach students what to do if they give birth to a newborn that they do not want. State Sen. Eric Adams, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes are behind the measure. Hynes said the curriculum would teach young girls with an unwanted pregnancy that “there’s a way to deal with it without getting involved...

Today and tomorrow, Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland will be teaching children from kindergarten through fifth grade that there are more than two genders, Pacific Justice Institute reports. In a press release, Pacific Justice Institute provided the following details: The two days calendared for this are entitled "Gender Spectrum Diversity Training." In documents released by the school, students will be taught that "gender is not inherently nor solely connected to one's physical anatomy." Further, gender is a "complex interrelationship between (physical traits) and one's internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither as well as one's outward...

Twin Rivers Unified School District's use of AmeriCorps volunteers has pleased parents and angered the California School Employees Association, which has filed an unfair practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board. It is the second charge the CSEA and its Twin Rivers chapter have filed with PERB since April. Both charges are in the initial review stage, a PERB official said. Parents are countering the first charge with a petition to keep the youthful AmeriCorps volunteers, who tutor kids, hold after-school activities and assist in school cleanup events. Officials at the CSEA and its Twin Rivers chapter say the...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. -- A western Indiana school district wants to give its bus drivers the authority to search students for weapons or drugs. The Tribune-Star reported that a Vigo County School Corp. proposal would allow the drivers to search a student and the student's belongings if there is an immediate threat of harm or danger to those on the bus. Ray Azar, director of student services, said the Terre Haute-based district wants its drivers to have the authority to conduct searches in case they are on the road and must immediately respond to an emergency situation. That would include...

[Note: I take quite some time to get to the subject of climate change. Please bear with me, I think it is important to lay the proper foundations first.]Children are impressionable. They don't have much previous experience or knowledge stored away in their little brains, so they aren't able to judge the accuracy of factual information very easily. This isn't a knock against children. In fact, it is one of the delightful things about them. I have two young girls, and watching them learn about the world around them is incredibly fascinating. They don't have preconceptions about how things work....

(CNSNews.com) – Next year on Earth Day, the Obama administration plans to announce which U.S. schools have been selected as “Green Ribbon Schools,” a designation that will “honor” schools for “creating healthy and sustainable learning environments” and for “teaching environmental literacy.” The Green Ribbon Schools program was announced in late April, but details on how schools will be picked or what the honor entails have not been released. Jo Ann Webb, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education, told CNSNews.com that the program is still under development. “The criteria have not been developed yet,” Webb said. “The plan is for...

A blistering two-hour legislative hearing into problems within the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing ended Tuesday with a key lawmaker committed to toppling the panel's bosses. Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, who chairs the Joint Legislative Audit Committee that held the oversight hearing, said afterward that he plans to write a letter asking Gov. Jerry Brown to intervene. "I'm prepared to ask for the resignation of the executive director and the entire management team," said Lara, D-Bell Gardens. Whistle-blower Kathy Carroll, a former commission attorney whose complaints sparked a state investigation that led to the hearing, characterized her former workplace as a...

I wrote the below letter to the editor to a liberal editor at a liberal newspaper (Akron Beacon Journal) in a liberal city (Akron), and so it had to be not so critical of teachers, public employee unions in general, or Democrats at large. That is how you get an editorial written in local newspapers which have the same mindset as the NY Times. Dear Editor "I can understand why public school teachers would object to being judged by how they perform in schools where undisciplined and uninterested children stifle the teaches so much that they would never be able...