Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) -- Middle and high school students can’t get a Coca-Cola or a candy bar at 13 Seattle public schools, but they can get a taxpayer-funded intrauterine device (IUD) implanted without their parents’ consent. School-based health clinics in at least 13 Seattle-area public high schools and middle schools offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), including IUDs and hormonal implants, to students in sixth-grade and above at no cost, according to Washington State officials. LARCs are associated with serious side effects, such as uterine perforation and infection. IUDs, specifically, can also act as abortifacients by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg....

It's a rare, if not historic pushback—tens of thousands of people across the Canadian province of Ontario are announcing loudly that they oppose the new sex education curriculum proposed by the province’s premier, Kathleen Wynne. Large numbers of protestors have made their voices heard in front of Wynne's office, in front of the provincial legislature at Queen's Park, and at the offices of Members of Provincial Parliament across the province. Harking from every culture and ethnic group, the protestors are demanding one thing: Let kids be kids. The entire phenomenon is startling for a number of reasons. First of all,...

The learning standards were new. The textbooks were not. So curriculum director Tammy Baumann and her team took the books apart, literally. Then they rearranged lessons, filled in holes with outside material and put it all together in what will be the K-2 math curriculum in the fall at her district in East Lansing, Michigan. It was a time-consuming but necessary response, Baumann said, to what appears to be a near-universal lament of teachers as they page through textbooks and websites: a lack of high-quality teaching materials aligned to the Common Core Learning Standards that have been adopted by most...

Scott Walker has formed a Testing the Waters Committee, which I assume has something to do with Marco Rubio’s response to the State of the Union in 2013. (Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.) The new committee will provide him with an additional conduit to raise funds between now and when he announces his presidential bid in July. But at the same time, he’s making some other moves, particularly in the area of tenure for professors at public colleges and universities. As Republican Gov. Scott Walker prepares to campaign for president as the...

Last year one-half of one percent of Michigan's public schoolteachers were considered to be “ineffective” according to performance evaluations conducted by the nearly 900 charter and conventional school districts in the state. Those assessments appear at odds with the actual academic performance of students, and teacher evaluations have become problematic in other ways since a state law was passed in 2011 mandating more teacher accountability. Of the 95,885 teachers evaluated, just 519 earned the lowest rating of “ineffective.” Under that 2011 law, a teacher rated “ineffective” three years in a row can be fired. The law also requires teachers' performance...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A Washington state school district pulled 143 students who lacked documentation proving they had received required immunizations from classrooms on Monday, in a first-in-the-state clamp-down triggered by a recent measles epidemic. The Spokane Public Schools, the state's second-largest district, made the decision after a measles epidemic in which more than 150 people fell ill across the United States, and a whooping cough outbreak in the state's eastern city. "(The students) stay out of school until they show compliance," district spokesman Kevin Morrison said. He said the district was the first in the state to take such action....

By Bruce Deitrick Price The following letter (sent via iPhone) is from Marilyn T., a teacher.  She has worked in the greater New York City area for many years and wants everyone to know how debased and crazy our classrooms have become.  She sums it up this way: “NYC is lost. Totally.” Every American should be keenly concerned about understanding and saving New York City, because your own city is probably using the same bad methods and heading toward the same level of failure.  The letter: Rather than choose what works in our schools, we are often using poorly designed programs in...

Barack Obama, for his own education, never set foot in a public school. When he was 10 years of age, his mother shipped him back from Indonesia to his grandparents in Hawaii so that young Barack could get a first-class American education. He entered Punahou, the expensive and most prestigious prep school in the islands. From there, despite his admittedly indifferent grades, Obama was admitted to Occidental, an elite private college in Los Angeles. He spent two years there, after which he transferred to Columbia University, one of the private Ivy League schools. After Columbia, Obama attended Harvard Law, another...

The principal of North Miami Senior High School inadvertently injected himself into the racially charged national debate over police treatment of blacks with a social media comment — and it wound up costing him his position at the school. The Miami-Dade County school district announced Wednesday that Alberto Iber had been removed as principal after going online to defend a white Texas police officer who waved a gun at black teens while responding to a call about an unruly pool party.

U.S. Rep. David Rouzer has introduced a bill he knows will never pass. Dubbed the States’ Education Reclamation Act of 2015, the legislation would dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and return its nearly $65.7 billion in annual funding to the states. That money would remain earmarked for education, he said, and could go to fund teacher raises or build new schools, among other uses. [snip] “The Democrats would never go along with eliminating the federal Department of Education. That’s well known,” Rouzer said. “And there may be some much-more liberal Republicans who have a difficult time with that as...

SAN FRANCISCO – Last week we were stunned to learn that chaos has been the norm in the St. Paul, Minnesota school district, due to a student disciplinary policy that replaces suspensions with time-outs, counseling and other less punitive measures. We also learned that the controversial policy was influenced by the Pacific Educational Group (PEG), a radical San Francisco-based consulting firm that claims black students lag behind academically, and tend to have more disciplinary problems, because American K-12 education is designed to benefit white students – aka “white privilege.” Now it’s becoming obvious that several other large school districts around...

Family members were fuming after being turned away from the Northridge Academy High School ceremonyMothers were left in tears as more than 100 people were locked out of a Souther California high school graduation ceremony Thursday because too many tickets had been distributed. Family members were fuming after being turned away from the Northridge Academy High School ceremony, which was inside the California State University, Northridge's Matador Gymnasium. They were forced to wait outside as their loved ones went through their commencement. Campus police said about 150 people ended up without a seat. To make matters worse, they had already...

What just happened at a Denver middle school is the latest example of a lunch program failing to deliver meals students actually like, following the guidelines championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. Kepner Middle School’s food problems, however, went beyond seeking to provide lunches that meet the National School Lunch Program guidelines. Related Stories Stephanie Torres, a student at Kepner, raised the alarm at a school board meeting about meals not properly prepared, food shortages, and limited choices that prompted a school board member and representatives from Padres y Jóvenes Unidos (“Parents and Youth United”) to make a lunchtime visit...

Barbara Byrd-Bennett has resigned as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools amid a federal investigation into a $20.5 million no-bid contract. In a letter dated last week, Byrd-Bennett said she planned to step down Monday. She did not give any reasons for her decision. Byrd-Bennett has been on paid leave since mid-April, when school officials released wide-ranging subpoenas from the federal investigation. Her paid leave was scheduled to end next week and she had not been expected to return to her post. The investigation centers on a $20.5 million no-bid contract at CPS related to an elite nonprofit education...

A teacher aide who was found passed out in a bathroom by students at a northwest Denver school allegedly had a syringe sticking out of her arm. The paraprofessional, Cassandra Rein, 27, was found Thursday morning in the bathroom at Denver Center for International Studies at Ford Elementary School by four first grade girls...While Denver Public Schools has only gone as far as to say that Rein is a teacher’s aide, her Facebook page states she’s a preschool teacher. She was placed on administrative leave...Rein appeared in court for an advisement hearing Friday morning and bonded out of custody on...

Two years after California passed a law that permits transgender youth to use whatever bathroom they wish, school districts continue to grapple with compliance, though major strides have been made. “You can’t just build a restroom or retrofit one tomorrow,” said Kurt Dearie, a history teacher at Carlsbad High School who has been a co-advisor for the school’s Gender Sexuality Alliance since 2002. “The lack of money and all kinds of things make this more challenging today.”

<p>BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Educators and parents in southern Indiana are calling for more training and awareness of the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students after a high school’s failed attempt to establish a “Straight Pride” club.</p> <p>A group of students at Bloomington High School North had proposed starting the faith-based club in the 2015-16 school year. Principal Jeff Henderson said federal law required the school to allow the club, which students had said would offer “specific supports for heterosexual students.”</p>

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.”— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. One of the nation’s largest, sharpest, and wealthiest school systems, Fairfax County, has announced a bright, new idea (to take effect in 2016) that will directly influence district students in grades seven through twelve. It’s not a faster way to learn math, a more creative way to write stories, or a better...

Private school kids can read. Classical academy kids can read. Montessori school kids can read. Homeschooled kids can read. Spot the pattern? It’s only kids in public schools who can’t read. Why is that? You would think our education professors would figure out what the schools are doing wrong. In fact, they have not figured out very much in the last 80 years. Our professors seem mainly concerned with perpetuating the wrong ways to teach reading. And so the crisis continues. Truth is, reading is easy to teach and easy to learn. All the phonics experts agree: reading is no...

(Nov 27, 2013) Referred to as ‘Common Core lead standards authors’ by the Council of Chief State School Officers, David Coleman and Jason Zimba are just two in a long list of Common Core creators whose academic roots are with the education-for-a-revolution machine borne by Annenberg Institute, Carnegie Corporation, Bill Gates, et al. Today, Coleman and Zimba are head of Student Achievement Partners, an organization that played a leading role in developing the standards and actively supports districts and states in implementing them. Prior to Student Achiement Partners, Coleman and Zimba were co-founders of the Grow Network (now owned by...