Free Republic

How much do parents really know about Maryland public schools? Project Baltimore has learned the latest round of state test scores does not tell the whole story about student outcomes. Right now, if you go to the Maryland State Department of Education’s website, you can find the 2023 state test scores for every school in Maryland. The data was posted last week. The website is where parents and taxpayers can go to see how public schools are performing. But if you take a closer look at the test scores, there’s a lot you can’t see. For instance, if you’re looking...

Almost half of parents turning to homeschooling today say they are concerned about their children being “influenced by liberal viewpoints,” according to a Washington Post and George Mason University poll released Tuesday. The number of American families that are homeschooling saw a significant spike following the COVID-19 pandemic, with one study finding that the number had risen by 30% during the 2021-2022 school year, according to the Urban Institute. A new poll found that, when asked why they decided to homeschool, 46% of families replied that they were worried that “local public schools” are “too influenced by liberal viewpoints,” according...

A Fairfield father says that a federally funded health clinic operating within Lawrence High School provided his minor daughter with a baggy of prescription anti-depressants without his knowledge or consent. When the girl’s father, Eric Sack, discovered the baggy of pills over the weekend, his daughter told him that it was provided to her by the Bulldog Health Center, a School Based Health Center (SBHC) at Lawrence High School. Sack saw the the pills as an infringement on his parental rights, but he was also concerned that the school’s clinic sent unlabeled drugs with no child-resistant container into his home,...

Among them: ‘Bias crime reporting’ Fordham University requires new student affairs department employees to undergo “bias crime reporting and response” training, one part of a massive campaign at the institution called “Action Against Bias.” The training is among 87 different efforts spread across the school’s two campuses in the Bronx and Manhattan aimed at fighting bias at Fordham. Other efforts include a dinner for students-of-color only, social justice programming, talks on “whiteness,” discussions on preferred gender pronoun usage, “civility” training, “diversity peer leaders,” LGBTQ support, multicultural celebrations, a 12-step diversity program, talks on sexual identity, diversity-infused curriculums, role-playing workshops, and...

It’s hard to deny just how poorly Chicago’s public schools are performing when it hits you in the face. Such is the case with Paul Robeson High School’s 2014 prom theme: “This is Are Story.” That image came from veteran investigative reporter Chuck Goudie, who posted this image on his Facebook page. Some people might enjoy mocking the irony of the gross misuse of vocabulary. But unless the organizers of the prom festivities planned the wording this way as a joke, there’s nothing funny about the situation. Paul Robeson High School is located in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South...

A former Atlanta third grade teacher tearfully testified Monday that she gave in to pressure from an administrator to cheat on standardized tests. Stacey Smith, who taught at Usher-Collier Heights Elementary School, said testing coordinator Donald Bullock dropped off test booklets at the end of a day when students had been taking the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in 2009.

A California boy has been ordered to transfer to another middle school because he carries the genetic mutations for cystic fibrosis – even though his doctors and parents maintain he does not have the incurable, non-infectious disease, the San Francisco Gate reported. School officials said they believe 11-year-old Colman Chadam’s genetic makeup may put other students at risk and ordered him to move from Palo Alto’s Jordan Middle School to another district middle school three miles away after his parents disclosed his condition on a medical form in the beginning of the school year. Colman has never had the lung...

Howell Public Schools Superintendent Ron Wilson says teachers need their salaries raised significantly to ensure teaching career stays viable. He said he recently talked to a third-year teacher in his district who has a bachelor’s degree, three children and a stay-at-home wife. According to the district's union contract, that teacher would make $40,530 a year. Wilson said the teacher’s children are eligible for the reduced/free lunch program. "You're going to see kids making a choice not to go into education because they don't want to live like paupers. It's unfortunate," Wilson told the Livingston Daily newspaper. "I start to wonder...

They look like a picture-perfect young couple kissing in the park. The problem is, she’s his high-school teacher. Stunning global-studies instructor Julie Warning got a bit too worldly with a pupil in the middle of a Greenwich Village park after school — and the makeout session was caught on camera by one of her own stunned students.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A strong showing is expected in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, as more people join the sweeping movement sparked by Occupy Wall Street protesters. Demonstrators with the Occupy L.A. group have been living in tents outside of City Hall for about two weeks protesting against what they call corporate greed. On Tuesday, the teacher's union will join Occupy L.A. in a march to LAUSD headquarters where the school board will be meeting. They are looking to start a second occupation site to protest teacher layoffs. The union wants the district to re-hire the 1,200 teachers...

Their description of the perpetrators of abuse might strike some as hairsplitting. “Less than 5 percent of the priests with allegations of abuse exhibited behavior consistent with a diagnosis of pedophilia (a psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges, and behaviors about prepubescent children),” they note. “Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests.’” But their explanation is not very comforting. “Most sexual abuse victims of priests (51 percent) were between the ages of eleven and fourteen

Kyler Robertson's father was stabbed to death Sunday afternoon during an argument, a tragedy that the 16-year-old boy has struggled to understand. On Tuesday, still grieving, Kyler decided he would rather go to Byron Nelson High School and be around his friends than stay home. When he arrived at the Trophy Club school, his eyes were bloodshot and watery. He was accused of being under the influence of marijuana, according to a Northwest school district document provided to the Star-Telegram. Kyler was suspended for three days and was told that beginning Friday, he would be placed in the district's alternative...

While a California school district is seeing a boom in interest in a controversial educational philosophy that goes back more than 100 years, at the same time it's fighting a lawsuit over whether the system is legal in public schools. California's capital city offers two Waldorf-inspired public schools -- John Morse Waldorf Methods School (K-8), and the high school George Washington Carver School of Arts and Sciences. The Sacramento City Unified School District now is facing a trial in federal court on allegations that those schools are religious, making them ineligible to receive taxpayer dollars. The lawsuit, filed in 1998...

Lawsuit seeks over $25,000 in damages NELSONVILLE - A Nelsonville-York School District gym teacher has sued a Nelsonville couple who have been claiming he acted abusively toward their son. Teacher Anthony Mollica of Athens filed the lawsuit last week in Athens County Common Pleas Court against Robert and Tia Chubb of Nelsonville. The lawsuit accuses the Chubbs of a "campaign of defamation" and seeks more than $25,000 in compensatory damages and an award of punitive damages to be determined later. In previous articles about the situation, Brown News Service has not used Mollica's name because he has not been officially...

There was nostalgia to spare for state Sen. David Hann on a recent visit to Cooper Elementary School in Minneapolis, where he spent his early school years. And a jarring message to be delivered. Raised in Minneapolis, the 52-year-old Eden Prairie Republican, Vietnam veteran, and former theology student noted that the polished hallway floors looked the same. So did the beige lath-and-plaster walls. He quickly identified his sixth-grade classroom. A pleasant surprise was meeting an old classmate, Jim Hovey, now a school maintenance man. Hann and Hovey tossed around names of old classmates for awhile. Then as they shook hands...