Free Republic

California school district is using lesson plans designed by its Black Lives Matter Task Force (BLM) to help teach 7th graders about their implicit bias during Black History Month, according to the curriculum obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. In an effort to address “issues related to racial justice,” Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) requires 7th through 12th grade teachers to use a curriculum created by the schools’ Black Lives Matter Task Force, a coalition dedicated to creating equity for African American students and staff within the district, according to screenshots of the curriculum obtained by the DCNF....

A lovely aphorism holds that education isn’t the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. But too often, neither are pails filled nor fires lit. One of the most bearish statistics for the future of the United States is this: Two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient in reading. Reading may be the most important skill we can give children. It’s the pilot light of that fire. Yet we fail to ignite that pilot light, so today some one in five adults in the United States struggles with basic literacy, and after more...

230,000 children who failed to show up for class when public schools reopened after the pandemic. It’s a tragedy without parallel in American history as many of the no-shows are very young — K through 3rd grade. Critical skills learned in early education were not taught to these kids, who are now hopelessly behind. ... Consider the fact that 65% of American fourth-grade students can barely read. This is a result of a radical shift to a new way of teaching children how to read. What was wrong with the old way? Well, it was old. ... What exactly are...

A student brought cotton balls to Diablo View Middle School allegedly to mock the celebrations of Black History Month, school officials said.

I grew up in Minnesota when it was a very nice, normal place; a time when the unofficial state motto was “30 Below Keeps The Riff-Raff Out,” and the meanest thing about it was that lady who scowled at Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat into the air on TV.But in a couple years, Christians will not be allowed to work as public school teachers. Neither will Muslims or Jews. The reason for this religious bigotry is new teacher licensing rules that will require teachers to personally affirm transgender ideology. Biology, genetics, endocrinology, physiology and anatomy have shown that, with...

Bashing the parents of the students you teach, especially those who fought to get kids back into your classroom and freed from irrational and harmful totems like face masks, is apparently a good career move for some New York City schoolteachers — and profitable, too. Bobson Wong, a 17-year veteran math teacher, was just awarded $20,000 and the MfA Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education for “influencing the teaching profession in exceptional ways” and his “ability to have a positive impact within [his] school community and drive change outside of [his] own classroom.” On Twitter, meanwhile, Wong regularly and...

For Tiffany Sorya, the path to becoming a homeschooling tutor to celebrities and other one-percenters was hardly intuitive. During her first years at Portland State University she admits that she was a “horrible” student. But by the time she graduated she had turned things around and was making such high grades that friends would ask, “How did you go from failing O(rganic) Chemistry to acing O Chem?,” she recalls. For fun, she started tutoring friends who needed help. But when the now 36-year-old, first-generation Cambodian American with Instagram-chic style (she has over 306,000 followers) graduated and moved to Los Angeles,...

We should stop teaching history in our schools. The way history is now being taught leads to a racist society, perpetuates white privilege, and overlooks the contributions of women and minorities. I ask school districts to immediately remove history curricula, books, and materials that unfairly communicate history until suitable alternatives are developed. Enslaved people built our young nation and made possible an economy that would throw off the control of the most powerful country then on earth, Great Britain. But, oh, at what a price. According to Bennett Minton in The Washington Post, some schools across the country intend to...

According to the Center of the American Experiment, the changes will impact teacher licensure programs and “require aspiring educators to ‘demonstrate’ ideologically driven content in their coursework to obtain their teaching license.” This goes for educators who end up teaching at private schools, too. -snip- In another section on “planning for instruction,” the draft standards say a teacher should “create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empower learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.”

The largest teachers’ union in the country recently proposed that its summer 2022 reading list for students include a book that defends the act of disrespecting the National Anthem by kneeling for it before sporting events. As reported by The Daily Caller, the National Education Association (NEA) lists the book “Why We Fly” on its website for suggested reading in August of 2022, as students prepare to return to school. The book includes marijuana use by teenagers and focuses on two cheerleaders who decide to kneel for the National Anthem after being inspired to do so by a football player...

In the fall of 2021, it appeared that Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, would rather easily defeat his Republican challenger, Glenn Youngkin. But the election turned dramatically once a number of parents voiced their opposition to the racially-themed material that was being taught in schools. They didn’t think it appropriate to tell students that America is an irredeemably racist country and that white people hold power and use it to oppress minorities. These parents, of all races, had found out that, despite official denials, concepts embedded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) had been smuggled into school curricula. At this...

Aguest at a private reception last week with Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee secretly recorded the event and then sent the recording to a local media outlet. News Channel 5 then ran a hit story about Arnn’s accurate remark that “teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” Selected 30-second clips from the two-hour recording that betrayed event-goers’ confidence were next quickly amplified in state media, including the state’s biggest leftist outlet, The Tennesseean. This pressure campaign on Thursday caused a Tennessee public school to drop its use of...

The Los Angeles Unified School District is training teachers and staff that "merit" and "individualism" are concepts rooted in "whiteness" that must be challenged in schools. LAUSD required all employees to undergo "implicit/unconscious bias training" guided by Tyrone Howard, a critical race theory advocate and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, prior to the 2021-2022 school year. The training materials, which were obtained by Fox News Digital through a California Public Records Act (PRA) request, instructed educators to work toward being "antiracist" by challenging whiteness at school, which Howard argued exists in the concepts of "merit" and "individualism."...

...This was to be the successful road back to normalcy for public schools. But after two large COVID-19 surges, a year of angry school board meetings, parents claiming teachers were grooming kids for abuse, and fights over everything from mask mandates for students to what books they can read, teachers were already at a breaking point with nearly 500 quitting even if it meant losing their license. On top of all of that, Texas passed a law last year prohibiting teachers from discussing “a widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs," the state's so-called "critical...

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reacted Friday to New Jersey schools planning to teach gender identity to children. The Republican former presidential candidate blasted his successor, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, for embracing "crazy liberal policies."

Many of us who have been involved with the conservative side of politics often reminisce about the days when Republicans and Democrats got along better and could hang out socially. We’ve all heard the story about Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill being able to enjoy a drink together after a long day of going at each other. That’s so last century. A big reason for that is that the 21st-century Democrats have gone completely bat you-know-what leftist crazy. It’s easy to have a beer with someone you disagree with over tax policy; not so much with someone who wants to...

A school in San Diego County claims it has removed a “Wheel of Privilege” graphic from its professional development training materials after the image was exposed on social media and parents objected. The image was touted as part of professional development training by the Black Mountain Middle School in Poway Unified School District (PUSD), according to the Californians For Equal Rights Foundation (CFER), whose executive director posted the graphic on Twitter. The “Wheel of Power/Privilege” teaching tool was designed to rank people by power and privilege based on skin color, body size, and gender identity, as well as citizenship, language,...

An Indianapolis school district administrator announced he was fired Monday in the wake of a video he tweeted in early November in which he revealed district’s woke social justice educational agenda. Tony Kinnett, who served as the science coordinator for Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), reported on Twitter he was fired for: •Sharing that IPS recorded children in required racial justice sessions •Not sending IPS the personal info of [journalists] @TietzKendall and @AndyMarkMiller •Quoting Dr. Payne’s racist comments to students •Sharing public filesIndianapolis Public Schools just fired me for: • Sharing that IPS recorded children in required racial justice sessions •...

I’m Helping to Start a New College Because Higher Ed Is BrokenIf you enjoyed Netflix’s “The Chair” – a lighthearted depiction of a crisis-prone English Department at an imaginary Ivy League college – you are clearly not in higher education. Something is rotten in the state of academia and it’s no laughing matter. Grade inflation. Spiraling costs. Corruption and racial discrimination in admissions. Junk content (“Grievance Studies”) published in risible journals. Above all, the erosion of academic freedom and the ascendancy of an illiberal “successor ideology” known to its critics as wokeism, which manifests itself as career-ending “cancelations” and speaker...

frustrated because what you signed up for was for students to learn. And it just ended up being a conversation about points all the time.” These days, the Alhambra High School English teacher has done away with points entirely. He no longer gives students homework and gives them multiple opportunities to improve essays and classwork. The goal is to base grades on what students are learning, and remove behavior, deadlines and how much work they do from the equation. The changes Moreno embraced are part of a growing trend in which educators are moving away from traditional point-driven grading systems,...