Free Republic

Colleges across the country are reporting a drop in SAT scores this year. I've been tutoring students in New York City for the SAT since 1989, and I have watched the numbers rise and fall. This year, though, the scores of my best students dropped about 50 points total in the math and verbal portions of the test (each on a scale of 200 to 800). Colleges and parents are wondering: Is there something wrong with the new test? Or are our children not being taught what they should know? Before 1994, the verbal section of the SAT was about...

The first science test administered in five years across the United States shows that achievement among high school seniors has declined across the past decade, even as scores in science rose among fourth-graders and held steady among eighth-graders, the U.S. Department of Education has reported. The falling average science test scores among high school students, announced Wednesday, appeared certain to increase anxiety about American academic competitiveness and to add new urgency to calls from President George W. Bush, governors and philanthropists like Bill Gates for an overhaul of American high schools. The drop in science proficiency appeared to reflect a...

The movement to give groggy teens a bit more shut-eye by pushing back the school start time is gaining steam. Fifty mothers gathered at a Central Middle School PTA meeting yesterday to hear how the Wilton League of Women Voters studied adolescent sleep patterns, concluded that the start of high school ought to be pushed back and then worked with the school system to change the start time from 7:15 a.m. to 8:20 a.m. without adding transportation costs to the district budget. "New research is showing that (adolescents') hormones and circadian rhythms don't allow them to go to sleep until...

I'm wondering how many have been in a public school lately, to see the awful mess they have become. Or to see, first hand, what kind of children we have coming up who will be running things one day. I teach at a public high school in a large south-central metro area. I started here this year. Before this, I had been teaching in the military system, which I now realize is very different from the regular public schools. The difference being that where parents actually have something to lose, they WILL control their children. I want you to know...

Leftist political indoctrination in the classroom is now even more pernicious in K-12 education than it is on the university campus. While their protestations are often a sham, the higher education professorate at least pays lip service to the ideal of political neutrality in the classroom and of disinterested scholarship. When there have been revelations of professors egregiously indoctrinating students in leftist political views or intimidating conservative students (as in the Ward Churchill case) administrators have responded that these are isolated examples. When confronted with surveys showing that liberals outnumber conservatives in their humanities departments by a factor of 10-1...

The Montgomery County schools' decision to grant students community service credit for attending Monday's immigration rights protest is raising concern among some parents as well as activists who say officials should focus on education, not political advocacy. Montgomery is the only Washington area school system offering students credit for taking part in the event, to be held on the Mall -- a decision Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said is consistent with how the system has operated. "This is nothing new,'' schools spokesman Brian K. Edwards said about the decision. "Advocacy is allowed." But in the superheated atmosphere surrounding the immigration...

It's lunchtime at Shelbyville High School, 30 miles southeast of Indianapolis, Indiana, and more than 100 teenagers are buzzing over trays in the cafeteria. Like high schoolers everywhere, they have arranged themselves by type: jocks, preps, cheerleaders, dorks, punks and gamers, all with tables of their own. Shawn Sturgill, 18, had a clique of his own at Shelbyville High, a dozen or so friends who sat at the same long bench in the hallway outside the cafeteria. They were, Shawn says, an average crowd. These days the bench is mostly empty. Of his dozen friends, Shawn says just one or...

BURBANK -- For seniors at John Burroughs High School, graduation is no small affair. A recent decision by the Burbank Unified School District Board of Education, however, has some worried that their stroll across the stage will lack meaning. A group of students who showed up en masse at last week's school board meeting, claim the decision to allow seniors who have not passed the California High School Exit Exam to walk at graduation compromises the integrity of one of the most important ceremonies of their lives. "We feel [graduation] is a big deal," said 18-year-old Scott Hanson. "They basically...

A bill that allows public high schools to offer classes on the Bible sped through the House on Monday, passing overwhelmingly with no debate. The legislation, which passed 151-7, would allow high schools to form elective courses on the history and literature of the Old Testament and New Testament eras. The classes would focus on the law, morals, values and culture of the eras. State Rep. James Mills, the proposal's House sponsor, said the legislation would withstand a court challenge because it treats the Bible as an educational supplement. Under the proposal, the Old Testament and New Testament would be...

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - A central Missouri high school drama teacher whose spring play was canceled after complaints about tawdry content in one of her previous productions will resign rather than face a possible firing. "It became too much to not be able to speak my mind or defend my students without fear or retribution," said Fulton High School teacher Wendy DeVore. DeVore's students were to perform Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," a drama set during the 17th Century Salem witch trials. But after a handful of Callaway Christian Church members complained about scenes in the fall musical "Grease" that showed...

(AgapePress) - A school district in Maine has reaffirmed its reinstatement of a sexually explicit book several parents want removed from the local high school's curriculum. The Orono School Committee recently voted to retain the controversial novel Girl Interrupted in the ninth grade English literature class at Orono High School.Girl Interrupted, a novel written by Susanna Kaysen, was affirmed for use in the high school curriculum over the objections of parents and local residents who take exception to the profuse profanity and sexual content in the book. Michael Heath, head of the Christian Civic League of Maine (CCLM), says...

WASHINGTON - Science and math have zoomed to the top of the nation's education agenda. Yet Amanda Cook, a parent of two school-age girls, can't quite see the urgency. "In Maine, there aren't many jobs that scream out 'math and science,'" said Cook, who lives in Etna, in the central part of the state. Yes, both topics are important, but "most parents are saying you're better off going to school for something there's a big need for." Nationwide, a new poll shows, many parents are content with the science and math education their children get — a starkly different view...

827 Seattle students informed they will be freshmen again... Nearly one in four Seattle Public Schools sophomores is missing required credits and has been reclassified as a freshman, potentially delaying graduation. The move, effective this semester, was part of a package of changes the district announced in October to help better prepare high school students to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning and graduate. Under district policy, high school students have to complete five credits a year to advance to the next grade. At some schools, the rate was far higher than one in four students. At Rainier Beach...

For more than a century, American educators and education policymakers have chosen sides in a great debate about the nature and function of American high schools.   The origins of this long-running argument can be traced to 1893, when the influential Committee of Ten, a blue-chip panel of educators, issued a report proposing that all public high-school students receive a strong, liberal-arts education. Ever since then we have been fighting about whether our high schools should be college prep for the masses or, as another blue-ribbon panel would put it 90 years later, a “cafeteria-style curriculum in which the...

High schools across the nation are considering an elective course in Bible literacy. That's pitting advocates of church-state separation against proponents of the class who say their mission is purely scholarly. Lawmakers in Alabama and Georgia in the past few weeks have introduced legislation clearing the way for their high schools to offer the course, which is based on the textbook The Bible and Its Influence. The book's publisher, the Fairfax, Va.-based Bible Literacy Project, says about 300 school districts are considering the course, which covers the Old Testament, followed by both Jews and Christians, and the New Testament, the...

Two days after San Leandro High School teachers were ordered to hang posters in their rooms promoting tolerance toward gay students, many faculty and students said the move was long overdue. "It shouldn't even be a debate. Kids need to feel comfortable in class, and the adults need to make sure that happens," said senior Je'Nea Woods. "The school environment's supposed to be about students. Everyone should feel safe whether they're homosexual or not." The school board-mandated posters sparked a controversy Monday when a handful of the school's 120 teachers said the posters -- which feature pink triangles, a rainbow...

Senior: School discriminates against boys MILTON, Mass. (AP) -- A senior boy at Milton High School has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys by making it easier for girls to succeed academically. Doug Anglin, in his complaint filed last month with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, claimed girls faced fewer restrictions from teachers and boys are more likely to get punished. "The system is designed to the disadvantage of males," Anglin, 17, told The Boston Globe. "From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down,...

Some high school Spanish students may have learned some new words Monday, but they weren't in Spanish. Fernando Del Pino, a Spanish teacher at Tates Creek High School, was suspended with pay Tuesday while the district investigates allegations he showed the R-rated movie The 40-Year-Old Virgin to students Monday, said Lisa Deffendall, spokeswoman for Fayette County Public Schools. "The movie certainly wasn't in Spanish," Deffendall said. The movie is about a 40-year-old single man named Andy, played by Steve Carell, who has never had sex. His friends try to help him gain experience. The movie is R-rated -- meaning it...

Five teachers at San Leandro High School have refused to comply with a school district order to display a rainbow-flag poster in their classrooms that reads, "This is a safe place to be who you are," because they say homosexuality violates their religious beliefs, ...The high school's Gay-Straight Alliance designed the poster, which includes pink triangles and other symbols of gay pride. In December the school board approved a policy requiring all district teachers to hang the posters in their classrooms. District officials said the poster is an effort to comply with state laws requiring schools to ensure students' safety...

When Republican senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools. The measure, backed by the Bush administration and expected to pass the House when it returns next month, would provide $750 to $1,300 grants to low-income college freshmen and sophomores who have completed "a rigorous secondary school program of study" and larger...