Free Republic

Americans want to honor the veterans and service members who sacrifice so much to defend our freedom. That’s why we have holidays like Memorial Day. Yet members of our military deserve more than speeches and parades. They deserve parental choice in education. “[W]hile our service members fight for our freedoms abroad, too many military families are denied education freedom at home,” according to former deputy U.S. Secretary of Education Mitchell Zais. And he should know: Zais served in the U.S. Army for 31 years and retired as a brigadier general. The lack of parental choice in education hits military families...

What do mask mandates, global shutdowns, and gender-neutral “theybies” have in common? They’re all new ideas, born of a new America — and they’ve come at a cost. The decline of our country escalated with the Covid pandemic and Biden’s presidency. Family and friends are encouraged to snitch on one another, pledging loyalty not to each other, but instead to the state. Lockdowns and constant fear-mongering have caused suicide and overdose rates, even among children, to skyrocket. Inflation is at an all-time high, and America is once again kowtowing to China. It’s difficult to look at the Brave New World...

A nationally-renowned private Christian school in Memphis is facing attacks from LGBT activists and a radical county commissioner for following the teachings of the Holy Bible. Briarcrest Christian School drew fire after they announced a training session for parents and students on a Gospel response to sexuality and gender titled, “God Made Them Male and Female. And It Was Good. A Gospel Response to Culture’s Gender Theory." Briarcrest promised an "enlightening look into the craziness our culture is throwing at our kids and leave equipped with a gospel response to share with them." "When Superman is rewritten to be a...

The left is truly dumbing down America’s kids. It’s nothing new. But based on the insane education policy recently implemented by the state of Oregon, it looks like the future of America’s already awful public school system is getting worse. Last month, as the media just learned, Oregon’s Gov. Kate Brown quietly signed a bill that dropped the requirement that high schoolers had to prove they were proficient in reading, writing and math before they graduated. The bill’s supporters claim that considering math and reading as essential skills all these years has been, you guessed it, unfair to kids of...

As parents gear up for a new school year, there is more on their minds than just checking off their back-to-school shopping list – which will cost more this year, by the way, thanks to Joe Biden’s reckless tax and spend policies that have caused record inflation. Instead, moms and dads across Ohio and this country are facing much more serious questions about their children’s well-being and education – questions that the big hand of government is attempting to dictate and control. Will school be fully in person after a disastrous year of online learning? Will masks be mandated for...

The commonwealth of Virginia, which used to be reliably red and mostly conservative, is providing more evidence of an increasingly blue and liberal hue. Virginia is "considering" renovating its math courses. As the publication Virginia Mercury noted, "In webinars (Virginia Department of Education) officials have been upfront that the initiative is based on data, especially standardized test scores that show Black, Hispanic and low-income students have lower pass rates on state math assessments than White and Asian students. Those critical of the initiative have argued that Virginia is lowering its standards in favor of certain students instead of improving instruction...

“We now have an intelligentsia which, though very small, is very useful to the cause of Hell.” -C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape LettersA masterful piece of religious prose disguised as satire, C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is a series of messages from senior devil Screwtape to his protégé Wormwood on how best to corrupt mortals. Originally released during World War II, its tight 175 pages provide charming, timeless wisdom. In an addendum released shortly before the author’s death in 1963 – Screwtape Proposes a Toast – Lewis pivots from dispensing universal wisdom to directly criticizing social trends of his day, trends...

And not only might it be in your own living room, but it could become an excellent pathway toward taking back our beloved Republic from the insidious forces which have lurched us to the left for decades. There are compelling reasons for parents to yank their kids from the typical school, especially for those who love America and its founding values and principles: the rampant teaching that the United States is a racist and evil country and has been from its very beginnings, the precipitous decline in academic rigor and results which has increasingly plagued our schools for generations, and...

Second only to his fixation on "climate change" is President Biden's focus on "systemic racism." In addition to reinstating mandatory race theory training for federal employees, Biden proposes spending even more money we don't have to fix a problem beyond the government's reach. As with original sin, curing racism is best solved internally. It is a matter of the heart. If racism is systemic, meaning it is embedded in white people, how is it possible to eliminate it? Do those on the receiving end of discrimination have a role to play? This is a question Democrats never address. If spending...

A Tennessee high school principal is on administrative leave after he told students they should be alarmed by the recent crackdown on free speech on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Barton Thorne, the principal of Cordova High School, told students during morning announcements that they needed to be aware of the censorship happening on social media. “I’m not going to tell you what to think, I just want to help you think,” he told students on a video that was later posted on YouTube. “This isn’t about Trump,” he said. “This is about speech.” Principal Thorne asked the...

MADISON — For parents who believe fleeing liberal cities for the suburbs will free their children from the racist Woke indoctrination smothering public school curriculum, think again.  The father of a student at River Bluff Middle School in the Madison suburb of Stoughton says the eighth-grade class has been assigned the book, “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You.” The book is co-authored by Neo-Marxist Ibram X. Kendi, peddler of “critical race theory” ideology which sees “white supremacy” behind every social injustice and promotes “anti-racism” through actual racism. Simply put, it promotes widespread discrimination against white people or those of Asian ancestry as a kind...

From the president on down, we’re seeing a welcome pushback against Marxist indoctrination in our colleges, government agencies, and even the military. It had better happen soon, too, because in K-12 schools, hapless children are being subjected to the awful, anti-American 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter curricula. But at least there is movement at the top of the academic and government food chains.In Maine, Republican state Sen. Lisa Keim has written a forceful letter to the University of Maine System board, objecting to University of Southern Maine President Glenn Cummings’ order for everyone on campus to “align” with Black...

Now that Labor Day weekend is in the rearview mirror, American students are preparing to go back to school—in some form or fashion. Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter (BLM) is gearing up to indoctrinate America’s students with a crash course of pro-socialist, anti-America rhetoric. In 2016, BLM launched its Black Lives Matter At School program, which it defines as “a national coalition organizing for racial justice in education.” Although this may not ring alarm bells, it certainly should.Four years later, BLM has infiltrated the nation’s public schools, and they are ready to make their presence felt. “We are calling on all educators,...

As with legions of others in his generation, my nephew has been brainwashed by years of less-than- honest educators. When it comes to U.S. history, he knows precious little about the Constitution and proclaimed that he “doesn’t care much about the Constitution,” which actually protects him every day. He claims that it is an old document and that while some parts of the Constitution might be good, “some parts are awful.” In a vigorous email exchange, when I asked him to identify an awful part, he took a long time to reply. Then he referred to slaves in the South...

Black politicians, civil rights leaders and their white liberal advocates have little or no interest in doing anything effective to deal with what's no less than an education crisis among black students. In city after city with large black populations, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., less than 10% of students test proficient in reading and math. For example, in 2016, in 13 Baltimore high schools, not a single student tested proficient in math. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. Citywide, only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state's English test....

Evidence shows school choice—or, as it should be called, “education freedom”—has obvious benefits for society. The expansion of National School Choice Week (NSCW)—the celebration created to spotlight the successes of school choice—is a testament to the movement’s positive effect on our nation. The concept of school choice is really simple: Every child, regardless of where he or she lives, how much money the child’s parent makes, etc., should have access to the educational opportunities parents deem best. Proponents of education freedom rightfully acknowledge every child is unique, and rather than force children into a one-size-fits-all classroom, they should instead be...

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says that the city's specialized high schools have a diversity problem. He's joined by New York City Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, educators, students and community leaders who want to fix the diversity problem. I bet you can easily guess what they will do to "improve" the racial mix of students (aka diversity). If you guessed they would propose eliminating the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test as the sole criterion for admissions, go to the head of the class. The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is an examination that is administered to New York...

Indeed, there can be concrete benefits to consolidating local school districts in Pennsylvania. But operational concerns – contractual, economic and, to some, even parochial -- stand to trump any rush to future mergers, concludes a new analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. “Given past experience, consolidations in Pennsylvania seem very unlikely,” says Eric Montarti, research director at the Pittsburgh think tank (in Policy Brief Vol. 18, No. 39). “(F)ew consolidations occur because there are deep-seated local objections and serious economic reasons for not pursuing” them. The commonwealth today has 500 public school districts. But 66 years ago, in...

No cliché is more ubiquitous at teacher protests than signs that read, “if you can read this sign, thank a teacher.” That is, unless you disregard variations on the theme of “pay us more.” And yet, student performance on national and international tests suggest that the reading comprehension of most American students does not extend far beyond an understanding of nine-word sentences and basic signage. In the United States, only a fortunate few acquire reading proficiency. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have barely budged since 2002. On the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS),...

My dream of a nation free from government schools and odious teachers unions, wherein parents responsible enough to bring another human into this world are also responsible enough to ensure that human is educated without the government’s help, is unlikely to soon become reality. However, further limiting the influence of our current, failing, monopolistic education system would move us closer to the educational vision imagined by our Founding Fathers.Teachers unions insist anyone who favors giving parents educational freedom regarding how and where to educate their children is out to destroy public education. But it’s important to note “government schools” are not...