Free Republic

A long-time Hillary Clinton supporter who heads the nation’s second largest teachers’ union says she was aware of the former Secretary of State’s personal email address before the New York Times reported its existence two weeks ago. Randi Weingarten, a donor to Clinton’s previous presidential run and to the Super PAC backing her likely 2016 bid, said on Twitter over the weekend that the existence of the email account was not “secret.” Asked if she was aware of the personal email account, hdr22@clintonemail.com, before the Times published its scoop, Weingarten gave a one-word reply: “yes.” Weingarten did not respond to...

Denver Public Schools had four times the number of administrators as any other large metro area districts last year, and salaries and benefits for those staffers are $22 million more than the next largest metro district, Colorado Department of Education figures show. The teachers’ union president reviewed the data Watchdog.org obtained and said the nearly $68 million paid to DPS administrators would be better spent on students. “We need to be talking about keeping dollars closer to classroom when it comes to public education,” said Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. “Should they be putting the money...

Two California teachers who were already in hot water are now in worse trouble after authorities said the women plied male students with cocaine and had illegal sex with one boy during a supposed camping trip. Melody Lippert, 38, and Michelle Ghirelli, 30, have been charged with unlawful sexual intercourse and giving controlled substances to minors. The pair also gave alcohol to the minors during a two-day camping trip in December, according to a statement from the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

<p>AUSTIN - Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick unveiled key portions of the upper chamber's education agenda on Tuesday, reviving proposals long unpopular with teacher groups that Patrick said would empower parents and help students leave poor-performing schools.</p> <p>"We'll be talking about school choice and pre-K at a later date," Patrick said at a morning press conference in the Capitol, flanked by members of the Senate Committee on Education. "But reforming education is more than a single shot. It is a comprehensive plan that takes in every area of the state, takes in every student, every parent and every teacher."</p>

Warren, who is closely aligned with progressive union groups, ripped Walker in a tweet Saturday for what some saw as a comparison between union members and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria: "If Scott Walker sees 100,000 teachers & firefighters as his enemies, maybe it's time we take a closer look at his friends.” In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Walker said, “If I can take on 100,000 protestors, I can do the same across the world.” Walker, a possible 2016 presidential candidate for the GOP, tried to walk back his comments after his...

Another Presidents Day, like the presidents it was meant to honor, has come and gone and nobody remembers what it was all about, beyond another three-day weekend for federal employees and a little hype to sell automobiles and snake oil. Presidents Day replaces holidays to mark the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, and now, presumably, the catchall honor is extended to William Henry Harrison, Chester Alan Arthur and Millard Fillmore as well. When we observed George Washington's actual birthday (Feb. 22), schoolchildren talked about him as the "Father of Our Country." We traded stories, some of them myths, like Parson...

A bill that would make it easier for some immigrants to teach in Nevada's classrooms is gaining momentum in the Legislature because it would help alleviate the state's crippling teacher shortage.

<p>Lawmakers are considering bill that would make it easier to charge and prosecute teachers with distributing harmful material to minors.</p> <p>Proponents say that would give needed protection to students. Opponents say it could criminalize the teaching of biology or controversial works of literature and that communication is a better option.</p>

In November the frustrations of Maryland’s voters with their state’s failed Democrat leadership finally boiled over and provided Larry Hogan an upset victory over the Democrat’s chosen candidate Lt. Governor Anthony Brown. It would be easy to dismiss this victory as the revenge of Maryland’s far rural parts if places like Howard County, a bedroom community of both Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD, hadn’t also elected new Republican leadership. It’s obvious this election had deeper meaning: voters clearly repudiated the Democrats and their cronies’ failed leadership and commitment to business as usual. Yet, some in Maryland think they can continue...

As federal dollars pour into higher education, tuitions rise, administrative bloat expands, and part-timers teach more and more class sections! Allen B. West’s national Center for Policy analysis is offering a very critical view of “the higher education bubble” by researcher Farhad Mirzadeh. (1) “The result of infusing colleges with billions of dollars in additional funds will be to raise the cost of a college education even higher-just as student loans and federal grants have encouraged wasteful spending by colleges and universities across the country,” says West’s writer. A staggering ONE TRILLION DOLLARS in outstanding student loans equals more than...

Teacher pensions are a huge and growing crisis waiting to explode without major reforms, warns a new report released Tuesday by an educational think tank.“Do the math on teacher pensions and it just doesn’t add up,” argues the National Council on Teacher Quality in its report, Doing the Math on Teacher Pensions. Total unfunded teacher pension liabilities in 2014 were a whopping $499 billion dollars, the group found. That amount is surging rapidly; in 2012, the total was just $394 billion, meaning that pension debt is growing by over $50 billion a year.Some states are in a particularly huge hole....

More than half of American teachers support school choice, A Democratic pollster said at the National Press Club on January 22, 2015. “Fifty-five percent of teachers support the concept of school choice,” Debbie Beck said. Beck’s previous clients have included the National Education Association (NEA). “The 2014 election shows that nearly every candidate who campaigned on school choice won,” Kevin Chavous, a former Democratic councilman from Washington, D. C., said at the same event. “Teacher’s unions spent at least $80 million in 2014 to express opposition to candidates supportive of such education reforms—and lost nearly every race,” according to the...

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveals American schools as world leaders in spending per pupil but underachievers in student academic achievement. American academic performance has improved over time, but only at a rate close to the international average, leaving our relative position stagnant. The national average, however, conceals a great deal of variation between American states and jurisdictions—some of which have raced ahead while others have trailed behind. Using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which tests a representative sample of students in Reading and Mathematics in all 50 states, it becomes clear that while...

New York recently administered a test to 11,371 people who want to become public school teachers, a new requirement mandated by the State Board of Regents. Keep in mind that these are college graduates who have been through education schools. Surely they all possess enough knowledge of English to pass the basic Academic Literacy Skills test – right? Not even close. Only 68 percent achieved the passing score of 520 points out of 600. Graduates of colleges in New York City did even worse. At many schools, the pass rate was under 50 percent and at one, not a single...

Two high school teachers in Southern California have been arrested on suspicion of having sexual relations with students on an overnight beach camping trip. South Hills High School teacher Melody Lippert allegedly met a group of male students in November at the beach in San Clemente, where she gave them alcohol and "engaged in a sexual relationship with one of them," according to the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

This year, judges in California and Michigan approved the exit plans of two of the largest municipal bankruptcy filings in the country’s history. In California, Stockton upheld its obligations to the state’s pension system behemoth, Calpers, while paying its other creditors as little as pennies on the dollar. Detroit, meanwhile, was able to restructure its obligations to all of its creditors, including city pensioners. While the exit plans differed, both judges ruled similarly: public pension obligations could be shortchanged like any other debt. Stockton and Detroit aren't alone. Cities and states across America are facing catastrophic budget shortfalls. After decades...

Here’s a story which you didn’t expect to see coming out of the New York State government. There was a bill on the table which would have exempted New York teachers from being fired if they received the lowest proficiency ratings based on Common Core guidelines. In a bit of irony, this was a bill that Governor Andrew Cuomo had originally proposed himself. But when it came time to finalize it, Cuomo had harsh words for the current system. Declaring the state’s teacher-evaluation system a joke, Gov. Cuomo on Monday night vetoed legislation that would have barred the use of...

More than a decade ago, Congress ordered states to figure out a way to distribute qualified teachers fairly, so low-income and minority children weren’t so often stuck with inexperienced and unlicensed educators. As it turns out, they’ve done a lousy job. cut The data in the new Educator Equity Profiles come from the 2011-12 school year. States are supposed to use them to draw up new strategies for distributing teachers fairly; those plans are due to the Education Department by June 1. The department has created an Equitable Access Support Network to help states with the process.

California public employees now enjoy the highest benefits of any state in the nation. To pretend to fund this largess, California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) is an “outlier” among public pension plans in using creative accounting to blur its grossly underfunded status. This has allowed its school district clients and unionized employees to short-check their annual payment for the nation’s most lucrative teachers' pension benefits. But pressure from Moody’s credit rating agency is causing CalSTRS clients and unionized teachers to make big increases in pension and benefit funding. The latest “hokey-pokey” drama is the California State Teachers’ Retirement System...

Less than half of states make a vibrant effort to provide a wide array of options to their students. In all, 51 private school choice programs exist in 24 states and in Washington, D.C. Fourteen states offer tax-credits scholarship programs, while just two – Arizona and Florida – offer education saving account programs. As a result, private school choice is an area where states tended to do poorly on the report. It would be beneficial for student achievement if policymakers worked to create more options for educational opportunity. The relative decline of American academic achievement corroborates that reality. According to...