Free Republic

[O]ne issue still divides [Democrats]: education. It is a surprising fault line, perhaps, given the party’s long dominance on the issue. Voters consistently say they trust the Democrats over the Republicans on education, by a wide margin. But the split in the party is real, deep and intense, and it shows no signs of healing any time soon. On one side are the members of the two huge teachers’ unions and the many parents who support them. To them, the big problem in public education is No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature education law. Teachers have many complaints about...

It stands to reason that the chief of New Jersey's largest and arguably most complex school system would draw the highest pay, as retired Newark superintendent Marion Bolden did in her final year, with a $260,000 salary plus perks. Other large districts like Elizabeth, Toms River, Paterson and Jersey City follow suit, with their leaders all in the upper echelons making more than $220,000 last year, according to new state data on the salaries and other compensation of more than 3,600 administrators. But reflecting what has increasingly become a free-agent market for top administrators, enrollment is apparently just one factor...

New Jersey taxpayers will have to shell out more than $36 million in coming years to cover school administrator retirement payments as more than 30 school administrators are due six-figure retirement packages, according to a new state analysis. The state initiated the study, and new rules on retirement packages, after it was reported that retired Keansburg Superintendent Barbara Trzeszkowski was due $740,876 in unused sick time and other buybacks. That led to lawmakers to place caps on new contracts. The state Attorney General's Office is trying to get a judge to nullify the payment to Trzeszkowski. Meanwhile, the new numbers...

The state’s largest teacher’s union says teachers who have sex with their 18-year-old students should not necessarily face felony charges. The Washington Education Association filed a “friend of the court” briefing in the state Court of Appeals case of former Hoquiam High School choir teacher Matthew Hirschfelder, accused of having sexual relations with one of his 18-year-old students. “Eighteen- year olds aren’t kids,” union spokesman Rich Wood said. “They are minors. … And should consenting adults be subject to criminal charges? That’s the question behind this case and this law.” Hirschfelder has been charged with first-degree sexual misconduct with a...

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin claims he acted "rationally" in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a Russian school book claims. The book, A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will be used as a teaching guide in Russian schools, 55 years after Stalin died. It is designed for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young, and seems to follow an attempt backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to re-evaluate Stalin's record in a more positive light. Historians believe up to 20 million people died as a result of his actions, many times more than were killed under Hitler's...

California schools, required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act to lift more students over a higher academic hurdle this year, instead stumbled and slipped back, as nearly 1,400 fewer schools met test-score targets. The number of schools making "adequate yearly progress" plunged from 6,488 to 5,113 since last year, according to state educators who released school progress reports Thursday. That's a drop from 67 to 52 percent of the state's public schools. Officials said more schools faltered because No Child Left Behind requires a higher percentage of their students this year to have proficient scores in English and...

ANAHEIM A north Orange County high school has been told it can no longer ban a Bible club from meeting on campus and must offer them listings in the school's yearbook and Web site, it was reported Thursday. Until the federal court ruling, students had been prevented from starting a Bible club at Esperanza High School in Anaheim. Placentia-Yorba Linda School District officials argued that only curriculum-related groups are allowed on campus, the Los Angeles Times reported. But in issuing a preliminary injunction last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said that Esperanza does allow other groups -- such...

A pro-family advocate is questioning the National Education Association's endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The National Education Association (NEA) has endorsed Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid and plans to spend $50 million to target swing states. The NEA also says they will micro-manage members and send sophisticated electronic individualized messaging to members. However, Bryan Fischer of the Idaho Values Alliance (IVA) thinks the money would be better spent on educating children. "I think most parents would think if the NEA has $50 million to throw around, why don't they invest it in the classrooms where our children are...

All schools tell kids to study hard so they can make money. Why not admit it? These days, if a child asks why he should care about doing well in school, what kind of answer does he get? He gets the same answer from every source: from parents, teachers, and school administrators; from movies and TV shows; from public service announcements, social service programs, and do-gooder philanthropies; from celebrities, athletes, and actors; from supporters and opponents of education reform; from everybody....

we have embarked on one of the most radical endeavors families can undertake: home-schooling. Given preconceptions about this practice, I should note that we are not anti-government wingnuts living on a compound. We like literature, and nice wines, and Celeste would stab me in the heart with a spoon if I gave her one of those head bonnets the Amish women wear. We are not, in other words, stereotypical home-schooling parents. But neither are most actual home-schooling parents....

Female students scored higher in tests they believed were going to be marked by sexist examiners, the research found. Scientists believe that blatant sexism could act as a spur to drive some women to achieve as they want to prove chauvanistic attitudes are wrong. *snip* Students who had earlier been judged as sensitive to sexism, as measured by a questionnaire, scored worse if they had sat in the supposedly neutral office. But those assigned to the sexist office did well, achieving a higher score than their less sensitive peers.

The civics lesson for hundreds of Chicago Public Schools students who skipped the first day of classes to protest Illinois education funding shifts Wednesday from the North Shore to corporate America. The Rev. James Meeks, a state senator organizing the boycott, is scheduled to send buses of students to the lobbies of more than a dozen downtown Chicago businesses as part of a teach-in. Some of the same students who traveled to New Trier High School's Northfield campus on Tuesday are expected to sit in the lobbies of buildings including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, City Hall, Boeing Corp. and Aon...

The poster known as "bad" at JOM brings us this disheartening news. Obama hopes to bring the lessons of the failed lefty boondoggle he ran known as the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to your schools if elected: Citing Chicago's Academy for Urban School Leadership as one example, Obama also pledges to develop 200 new teacher residency programs across the country. He also would provide better professional development through school-university partnerships, provide funding for mentoring programs and help school districts and teacher unions create "career ladders" for teachers.Obama's education policy for the entire US would continue efforts found to be failures in...

Stalin's mass murders were 'entirely rational' says new Russian textbook praising tyrant By Will Stewart Last updated at 1:10 AM on 03rd September 2008 Comments (0) Add to My Stories Ruthless: 20 million died as a result of Stalin's actions Stalin acted ‘entirely rationally’ in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a controversial new Russian teaching manual claims. Fifty-five years after the Soviet dictator died, the latest guide for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young said he did what he did to ensure the country’s modernisation. The manual, titled A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will...

IN THE COMMENTS SECTION--->>> Have searched for much on this issue, and see nowhere that anybody is attempting to radicalize Annenberg or his generosity to public education. It's most unfortunate for the 470,000 public school students in the south side of Chicago that were disenfranchised by the financial shenanigans that Ayers, Obama, and Klonsky pulled off. $ 50 million or so from Annenberg, matching funds from foundations to make perhaps $ 125 million or more total, and they simply coordinated grants to many schools, many local 'charities', and all those 'leadership' grants to provide many to stand for elected office....

WASHINGTON — Republican John McCain, whose running mate disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, has opposed proposals to spend federal money on teen-pregnancy prevention programs and voted to require poor teen mothers to stay in school or lose their benefits. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's announcement Monday about her daughter Bristol was aimed at rebutting Internet rumors that Palin's youngest son, born in April, was actually her daughter's. Palin said her daughter intends to raise her child and marry the baby's father, identified in news reports as Levi Johnston, 18, of Wasilla, a high school hockey player whom Bristol...

They were just four words typically text-messaged to his cellphone -- "What are the numbers?" -- but to a teenage pot dealer at one of Montgomery County's elite high schools they were part of a code used by students interested in making a buy. The former dealer, speaking on the condition that neither he nor his school be identified, said he answered such texts in cryptic fashion: "24 x 16," for instance, meant $240 an ounce. "There is definitely a very large market," he said. "The bud follows the money." The teenager's account comes as school begins and several months...

So, where's the labor? On this particular holiday at this particular time, it's a question that more people are wondering about. Here's why: In a period of severe economic uncertainty, Connecticut's high school graduates still are opting for a college education that costs a record amount and no longer guarantees a good job, while industry is desperate for skilled workers and has jobs to give them. "We offer good-paying and interesting work, training and benefits, while students and their families are still going into debt to pay college bills," said Bernard Rosselli, president of Stewart EFI, an eyelet making company...

Hard Times Hitting Students and Schools By SAM DILLON LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With mortgage foreclosures throwing hundreds of families out of their homes here each month, dismayed school officials say they are feeling the upheaval: record numbers of students turning up for classes this fall are homeless or poor enough to qualify for free meals. “We’re seeing a lot more children in poverty,” said Lauren Roberts, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County school system, a 98,000-student district that includes Louisville and its suburbs. At the same time, the district is struggling with its own financial problems. Responding to a cut of...

The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) released their annual school report cards this week, and the results show that two taxpayer-financed Islamic charter schools operated by officials of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have failed miserably yet again. But protected by powerful political connections, including Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, and apparently indifferent to their exploitation of the Somali children that comprise the vast majority of their students, the Islamic extremists running the operation appear to have no fear of losing their cash cows. In fact, Ohio educrats have renewed one school’s contract after five...

NEW ORLEANS: Marsha Williams always hesitated when mail arrived from the government, but after Hurricane Katrina she began to fear the letters. One notice warned that her apartment building could be shut down because the landlord had not repaired storm damage. She worried: What did all the legal forms mean? Was there more paperwork she needed to send in? But at age 51, Williams was embarrassed that she could not read much more than her own name and address. "I didn't get a lot of school when I was a child. I guess they didn't have enough to go around,"...

Adrianna Gomez wakes her 14-year-old son before dawn every morning, lays out his coat and tie and drives him across an international boundary just to go to school. With a full day of classes at Pharr's Oratory Academy followed by soccer and tennis afterward, he often won't return to his spacious Reynosa home until nearly 12 hours later. Angelita Martinez Morales also hoped her children could attend Rio Grande Valley schools. U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested her Aug. 10 as she guided them across the river near Pharr. She later told a federal magistrate judge she had to get her...

One-third of graduates are receiving no financial benefit from their degree as young people drawn in by Labour’s mass expansion of universities see the value of studying decline for the first time. A study has identified a widening gulf between the highest-paid graduates, whose degrees have brought them soaring returns over the past decade, and those at the lower end. Among male graduates, 33.2% end up in nongraduate jobs five years after leaving university, from 21.7% in 1992. The proportions for women are similar. These graduates now earn 40% less than if they had found a job where degree was...

“Most of our students come in as good Republicans, but that’s just because they’re ignorant. We change that.” – A distinguished professor of history For the last decade or so, the general public has been regularly briefed on the fact that our universities, particularly the public ones, aren’t the places of balanced intellectual pursuit that they pretend to be. Yet study after study, report after report, and experience after experience argue the opposite: Intellectual “diversity” is often nothing more than variations on a liberal theme. Go too far away from the main leftist stream, and you aren’t being “professional” and...

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wants creationism taught in science classes. In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, the soon-to-be governor of Alaska said of evolution and creation education, "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

I just found out late last night that my local public high school is not saying the Pledge of Allegiance at any point during the school day. Is this the norm?? This information came to me via a foreign exchange student we are hosting who is in her senior year of high school at our local public institution. We were talking about her first week of school which commenced 8/27 and she said they have not done the pledge even once yet! She knew what it was, she knows the words - she learned them before coming here. But her...

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two high school students who say they are offended by the school's policy of allowing prayer at voluntary events and holding Christmas concerts at churches. The students, from Pace High School in Pace, Fla., are identified only as Minor I Doe and Minor II Doe in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court because they are both under 18. The complaint alleges disclosure of their names would put the students at risk of "social ostracism, economic injury, governmental retaliation … and potential physical harm." Benjamin Stevenson, staff...

This is why the Defense Department, and the US Army especially, is the most successful government institution in the US.Facing a decreasing pool of eligible recruits, the Army has started a learning program for dropouts to get up to speed before going to basic training. Hey, all you crabby leftists with smug bumper stickers wishing the DoD would have to hold bake sales to purchase their weapons take note: This is America's war machine picking up the education system's slack. Yeah, our teachers union dominated schools are failing, but don't worry, as usual, the Army's got our backs.What other government...

According to a Government briefing document one of the aims of the switch is to "put immigration, the Commonwealth and the legacy of the Empire into a clear historical context...This can help pupils prepare for life in a diverse and multi-ethnic society".Kevin Brennan, the children's minister, said: "Although we may be ashamed to admit it, the slave trade is an integral part of British history. It is inextricably linked to trade, colonisation, industrialisation and the British Empire.

[M]y impression is that many prosperous parents pay mere lip service to education. A study of elementary-school families last year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics bears this out. Researchers at Brigham Young and the University of Michigan found that parents preferred teachers who make their children happy over those who emphasize academic achievement. My experience in a nonobsessive school district is consistent with this. Our family's intense focus on learning is regarded warily by some parents, whose dissatisfactions with school are mostly about testing and creativity but never about a lack of foreign-language instruction or overall academic rigor. Indeed,...

Due to restrictions can only post link. College president to resign, collect $400,000

We all know if Nancy Pelosi gets an Obama Administration, we'll probably get some version of a Fairness Doctrine for broadcasting. I would hope if John McCain is elected, we get some kind of Fairness Doctrine for education. The same arguments apply. The left argues that both ideological sides should be equally represented on the public airwaves. I counter that both ideological sides should be equally represented in education where public funds subsidize tuition. The blatant pitch by Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org illustrates an almost braggadocio when it comes to what the left loves when it comes to their constituents:...

HARROLD, Tex. — Students in this tiny town of grain silos and ranch-style houses spent much of the first couple of days in school this week trying to guess which of their teachers were carrying pistols under their clothes. Harrold School Superintendent David Thweatt pushed for the policy to arm teachers with concealed guns. "Country people are take-care-of-yourself people." “We made fun of them,” said Eric Howard, a 16-year-old high school junior. “Everybody knows everybody here. We will find out.” The school board in this impoverished rural hamlet in north-central Texas has drawn national attention with its decision to let...

An article in Georgetown University's newspaper The Hoya welcomes the new director of its Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Questioning (LGBTQ) Resource Center and does some end zone celebration for our benefit. Georgetown, you may remember, is a university in the Jesuit Tradition.   You'll be edified by the following details:Jack Harrison (SFS '09), co-chair of GU Pride, also said he hopes to work closely with the new director in developing programming for the year. … Harrison said GU Pride is looking to launch efforts this year to make the campus more "trans-friendly" by working to provide bathrooms and better housing options for...

SYLMAR, CA Philip Long’s words were urgent, “Terry, I think they are going to hand down a ruling against homeschooling and it will set a bad precedent for the State of California!” I asked him how can I help. “Talk to my lawyer, Christopher Blake,” Philip said. I called Christopher and identified myself as Terry Neven, the principal of Sunland Christian School, the homeschool program where the Long family was enrolled. Sunland had served the Long family for almost 10 years, knew about their challenges, and embraced helping them. I asked Christopher what could be done. He told me it...

All pupils aged between 11 and 14 will be taught about the slave trade and the British empire when term begins next month to help them understand modern-day issues such as immigration. The two subjects, aimed at highlighting the influence of ethnic minorities, will join the two world wars and the Holocaust as periods that must form part of the history syllabus. Schoolchildren will learn about the roles of William Wilberforce, the MP who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, and Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who drew attention to the horrors of the trade after buying his freedom and...

FORT JACKSON, S.C. (AP) - Austin Swarner left high school to care for his mother while she fought a losing battle with cancer. Tony Brown wanted to begin supporting himself and left two classes shy of a diploma. Haelee Holden got tired of trying to make it through school while flipping burgers until 1 a.m. But the U.S. Army, eager to fill its ranks amid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn't see them as dropouts. They are recruits who only need a GED before they're ready to begin basic training. And so, the Army formally opens its first prep school...

We are sending our 3yo boy to a preschool class at a Catholic school in Massachusetts. We met the teacher yesterday at an open house. She said we can send toys for our son to play with, but no toy swords or guns. She will also not allow the children to draw swords, guns, or samurais, because she does not think children should play with or draw "violent" things. She's a nice lady and I am sure she means well. But I don't think boys are harmed by playing with toy swords or guns or that those who draw soldiers...

Continuing to follow up on what can be learned of Barack Obama's tenure as the Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), evaluations of the program during his tenure available on line demonstrate that in his only real executive test, Barack Obama was a dismal failure squandering millions of dollars on education programs which had basically no real effect. They also strongly suggest Obama's claim that un-repentant terrorist Bill Ayers is just a teacher who lived down the block is an outright lie. The structure and tone of the CAC, addressed in the documents, leave a strong...

DELAWARE, August 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an interview with Bob Krebs, the Communications Director for the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, to which Senator Joseph Biden belongs, Krebs confirmed that Biden's Bishop will not permit the Senator even if elected Vice President of the United States of America to speak at Catholic schools.When asked for the Bishop's take on Senator Biden and his stand in favor of abortion, Krebs directed LifeSiteNews.com to Bishop Michael Saltarelli's 2004 statement on 'Catholics in Political Life' which, said Krebs, "very plainly states Bishop's position in this matter."In that document Bishop Saltarelli notes that,...

My father always said that anyone who lived through John F. Kennedy’s assassination remembers what they were doing at the precise moment the president was shot. This may well be true, but we also lucidly recall the circumstances of far lesser events such as the controversy surrounding the publication of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The furor its conclusions caused is forever ingrained in my memory. At the time I was a psychology graduate student and found that most of my associates were familiar with the work but...

My father always said that anyone who lived through John F. Kennedy’s assassination remembers what they were doing at the precise moment the president was shot. This may well be true, but we also lucidly recall the circumstances of far lesser events such as the controversy surrounding the publication of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The furor its conclusions caused is forever ingrained in my memory. At the time I was a psychology graduate student and found that most of my associates were familiar with the work but...

High-school students' performance on SAT college-entrance exams stalled, and the gap widened between low-scoring minority groups and the overall population, raising questions about the quality of teaching in U.S. schools. Average scores for the class of 2008 were 502 for the critical-reading section, 515 for mathematics and 494 for writing. Each of the three numbers was identical to the averages in 2007, meaning combined scores remain at the lowest level so far in the current decade. The reading scores of the past two years were the lowest since 1994. Math represented the worst showing since 2001. Each section is judged...

Put On Your Happy Face by: Bethany Stotts, August 26, 2008 Less than one quarter of high school graduates who took the ACT have a 50% probability of getting a B in all four college-level subject areas of math, English, reading, and science, test results from the American College Testing Program (ACT) show. “This year’s results, released Wednesday, reveal that more than three in four test-takers will likely need remedial help in at least one subject to succeed in college,” wrote the Associated Press on August 13. Previous statistics, released this July, indicated that about 60% of America’s community college...

When I listen to the AFT and NEA union thug bosses at the DNC two things POP out at me. 1) The teacher's Unions are firmly in the pocket of the Democrats, or vice versa. We will never have education reform until people understand the unions are political big government liberals, not interested in education, only interested in more pay for less work (smaller classes and thus the need for more dues paying teachers). 2) Their message alwasy goes unchallenged by the media. Thre is no connection with higher per pupil spending and educational outcomes - it's time to freeze...

In a bid to correct what he called a “knowledge deficit” among New York City public school students, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced on Monday a pilot program that would overhaul the way children in 10 city schools are taught to read. The program, devised by E. D. Hirsch Jr.’s Core Knowledge Foundation, is being paid for with $2.4 million in private donations raised by the Fund for Public Schools. Called the New York City Core Knowledge Early Literacy Project, it will run for three years, following kindergartners at the 10 schools through the first and second grades. The...

For the second consecutive year, SAT scores for the most recent high school graduating class remained at the lowest level in nearly a decade, according to results released Tuesday. But the College Board, which owns the exam, attributes the lower averages of late to a more positive development: a broader array of students are taking the test, from more first-generation college students to a record number of students — nearly one in seven — whose family income qualifies them to take the test for free.

Giving American home educators a taste of what's to come if the U.S. government continues down the path of European-style socialism, Utah Judge Scott Johansen recently ordered, per a bureaucratic paperwork glitch, the removal of a homeschool mother's children if she refused to enroll them in public school. As if that were not bizarre enough, the mother, Denise Mafi, was threatened with two years jail time if her children failed to show up for class without a physician's note excusing them.

A week before the start of the new school year, principal Denise Magee roamed the hallways of Campbell Middle School in Smyrna, Georgia, preparing for battle. The adversary? Preteen and teenage bullies. Toting anti-bullying posters and masking tape, Magee was determined to let students see from Day One that she had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to that kind of harassment. "Middle-school kids are just cruel to each other," Magee said. "They speak their minds, so you see bullying in the form of teasing, taunting, social isolation and name calling." The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated...

Katyn “deserved revenge”? Created: 25.08.2008 15:09 “Stalin was an efficient leader, not a murderer. The killing of Polish officers in Katyn was a well-deserved revenge,“ will be the new official historical theory taught in Russian schools. Before the opening of the new school year, the Russian Academy of Qualification Improvement and Professional Retraining of Education Employees has released guidelines for teachers regarding the history syllabus in schools. From now on, Russian pupils will be informed that some 22,000 Polish officers were indeed killed by the NKVD in Katyn in 1940, but the act was fully justified and “politically suitable”, reports...