Occasionally there are reports on the internet news services about astonishingly bad ideas which have been put into practice in public schools.  Somehow these atrocious practices don't get a lot of coverage in the mainstream news media; at least not with any negative connotations.

In the articles below, notice how many of these bad ideas originate on the west coast.

Quick jump to the Ritalin Section below.

Everything related to Common Core (federalized curriculum) has been move to this page.

Tennessee university reinstates professor fired for Charlie Kirk post, settles for $500,000.  Austin Peay State University in Tennessee has agreed to settle with a professor fired for a social media post he made in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk's assassination for $500,000.  Darren Michael, an associate professor of theatre, has also been reinstated, and the university has issued an apology to the campus community.  Michael was officially reinstated Dec. 30, according to WKRN, which obtained a copy of the settlement agreement earlier this week.  The agreement also states APSU will pay Michael $500,000 and reimburse him for therapeutic counseling services, the outlet reported.

The Editor says...
It isn't clear from the article above whether the professor was condemning or celebrating the shooting of Charlie Kirk.  But if he needed "therapeutic counseling services," and got an apology from a university, I guess that means he's a left-wing snowflake.  Congratulations on winning the lawsuit lottery.

Pennsylvania School District Settles With Mom After Secretly Calling Her Daughter A Boy.  A Pennsylvania school district is ending a legal battle stretching over a year and a half with a mother who accused it of going behind her back and secretly treating her daughter as a boy, a local news outlet reported.  [Advertisement]  Attorneys for Michelle Landerer filed documents with the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on Nov. 24, saying they had reached a settlement with the Dover Area School District, according to Pennsylvania-based outlet WHP TV.  Landerer accused the district in an April 3, 2024, lawsuit of referring to her daughter as "Caleb" and using male pronouns without Landerer's permission and only learned of it due to a conversation her son had with a teacher, according to a copy of the complaint posted by the Child and Parental Rights Campaign (CPRC).

Sometimes a Top Ten list is not enough.
The Left's Top 25 Lies Of 2025.  [#5] Illegal Alien Superintendent:  Sometimes liberals are the unwitting victims of lies.  And often others get hurt by their woke preferences.  Case in point, the liberal-led Des Moines Public School Board.  Its members were duped by Ian Roberts, the Guyana-born illegal immigrant they hired to lead Iowa's largest public school system.  It turns out Roberts was a criminal illegal alien with gun and reckless driving convictions, along with drug-related charges, on his rap sheet, as ICE documented in October.  The agency also revealed that Roberts, who had overstayed his legal right to be here, was carrying "a loaded handgun, hunting knife and $3,000 cash" in his car at the time of his arrest.  The educrat was hired by urban school districts over and over again — Des Moines the latest, in spite of his lying about his qualifications.  Why?  Probably because Roberts fit their DEI priorities.

This preschool in Texas got caught giving kids sleep aids meant keep the kids asleep during the day.  Parents had no idea until a 4 year old "snuck" one of the stickers home.  [Tweet]

Court Okays Silencing of Parents Who Asked Questions After Student With MS-13 Ties Brought Gun to School.  Would it surprise you to learn that the school board in Loudoun County, Virginia, has a habit of cutting off concerned parents who stand up to speak at school board meetings?  Or that it restricts media access to these meetings to such an extent that no questions can be asked of school board members?  And would it surprise you that a federal appeals court just gave the Loudoun County School Board permission to limit what parents can say at these meetings?  [Advertisement]  Of course it doesn't surprise you, because this is Loudoun County, after all, home to the "Chardonnay antifa" group of white liberal women who banded together to target parents who spoke out about critical race theory being taught in county schools.  Home to a school board so wedded to trans ideology that it's using taxpayer money to fight the Trump administration so boys can use girls' bathrooms and vice versa.  You get the gist.

Artificial Intelligence In The Classroom Destroys Actual Intelligence In Students.  If the goal is simply to produce outcomes, one could argue that AI usage should not just be tolerated but encouraged.  But education shouldn't be about producing outcomes — whether it be a sparkling essay or a gripping short story — but shaping souls.  The purpose of writing isn't to instruct a prompt or even to produce a quality paper.  The purpose is to become a strong thinker and someone who enriches the lives of everyone, no matter their profession.  Each and every step of the struggle it takes to write is essential.  Yes, it can all be arduous and time-consuming.  As a writer, I get how hard it is and how tempting it might be to take shortcuts.  But doing so is cheating oneself out of growth and intellectual payoff.

Driver Gets Fired for Requiring English on the School Bus.  A school bus driver was fired after she required students to speak English on her bus, in an effort to address and put a stop to bullying that was happening on the transport.  [Advertisement]  Diane Crawford, 66, placed a note on the bus window with the words, "Out of respect to English-only students, there will be no speaking Spanish on this bus," according to Local21 News.  [Advertisement]  Crawford, a "self-employed owner/operator" who was subcontracted by Rohrer Bus to serve the Juniata County School District in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, explained to the outlet that she placed the sign up "to encourage safe and respectful behavior."  Crawford added that the sign "was directed at a bilingual student who allegedly had a history of riling up other students in Spanish," according to the outlet.

Supreme Court Vacates Ruling That Upheld New York School Vaccine Mandate.  The Supreme Court on Dec. 8 vacated a ruling upholding New York's ban on religious exemptions to its school vaccine mandate and ordered a lower court to review its stance on the ban.  The case is known as Miller v.  McDonald.  Justices vacated the March decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had found the legislation banning religious exemptions to vaccination requirements was "neutral on its face" and did not "target or affirmatively prohibit religious practices."

Left-Wing Vermont School District Raises Somali Flag Next to American Flag.  A woke Vermont school district hoisted a Somali flag on Friday, as Democrats around the country defend Somali migrants amid President Trump's immigration crackdown and a growing fraud scandal in Minnesota's Somali community.  "We are raising the Somali flag this week in honor of our Somali youth and families in Winooski and Vermont," the Winooski School District posted to Facebook.  "On Monday, we will be gathering to celebrate together and to learn more about our civil rights."  [Advertisement]  The Winooski School District told OutKick the Somali flag was raised on one of its three flagpoles.  The American flag is on the highest mast, in accordance with the United States Flag Code, and the Vermont state flag is on the second mast, the district said.  The Somali flag was raised on the third mast, which the district said is "for affinity groups."

Apparently they have learned nothing.
Schools plunged into lockdown as 'super-flu' sweeps nation.  Headteachers in England and Wales have ordered what medical experts call a "firebreak", forcing schools to close and cancelling some assemblies.  At least three schools shut their doors for several days, while a slew of others introduced measures to prevent the spread of a mutated strain of flu which is wreaking havoc across the NHS.  Experts described a "tidal wave" of flu descending on the health service in the run-up to Christmas, with an average of 1,717 patients being admitted to hospital every day during the last week of November. [...] Dr Jamie Lopez Bernal, Consultant Epidemiologist at UKHSA said:  "Nobody wants anyone in their family, especially young children, to spend Christmas in hospital.  "The best defence against this is a vaccine, but time is running out as it can take up to two weeks from vaccination for your body to build maximum protection.  "So don't delay any longer, if anyone in your family is eligible, book that appointment today or take your child to the local community clinic."

Rhode Island school imposes $117,130.50 fee to see teacher curriculum.  It seems Rhode Island's Barrington Public Schools want $117,130.50 to show parents what a teacher was teaching.  That's right, a curriculum (or syllabus, if you prefer) is a few pieces of paper or just an online link.  A teacher's curriculum or syllabus enables parents to know what their kids are being taught.  It is transparency 101.

New York High Court Blocks Race-Grifters From Using Courts To Indoctrinate Children.  Four years ago, a group of race-grifter activists in New York City tried to sue their way into government-enforced racial quotas and race-centric curricula.  But New York state's highest court just decided they are not allowed to use the judicial system to mandate the indoctrination of children.  According to Defending Education (DE), which intervened in the case in 2021, far-left group IntegrateNYC's attempt to abuse courts to create racial quotas for students and blame the racial make-up of school staff and a "white and Eurocentric curriculum" for poor education outcomes among the city's black and Latino populations was put to an end Friday when the New York Court of Appeals dismissed the case.  [Advertisement]  The Education Article in the New York state constitution "does not permit judges to micromanage matters of educational policy, which are broadly entrusted to local control," wrote Judge Michael J. Garcia, an appointee of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y.

CDC study shows there is no scientific rationale for vaccine mandates for kids attending school.  There is NO scientific justification for vaccine mandates for kids attending school.  Such mandates are unethical.  Every doctors recommending vaccine shots should tell parents "To be honest, it has no impact on mortality but it makes you feel like you are doing something to protect your kids and it helps to boost drug company profits."  Vaccine mandates are based on misguided beliefs, not on facts or science.  I'm baffled why not a single member of Congress is pointing this out.

A 4-Year-Old Was Allegedly Raped By A Teaching Assistant In A California Elementary School.  Superintendent Called It A 'Safety Incident'.  A 4-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a male teaching assistant who was left alone with her during nap time at the Sunset Elementary School in San San Yisidro California.  The school reportedly covered it up for MONTHS[.]  When superintendent Gina Potter finally addressed it, she simply called it a "safety incident."  A brave former student spoke out and shared her own story of abuse in this same district.  [Video clip]

Can Schoolteachers be Trusted?  I know of several high schools in Virginia caught in shameful gender and sexuality-related issues.  Two noteworthy incidents happened in Loudoun County in very blue northern Virginia.  The first involved a boy (claiming to be girl) who raped a girl in the girl's restroom and the school covered it up and transferred the boy to another school where he repeated the offense.  The news went viral due to a video of the girl's father being violently removed from a school board meeting for complaining about it.  The second incident had a reverse twist.  This happened last year when the "Loudoun Three" boys were charged for Title IX "sexual harassment."  Their "crime" was asking a girl (claiming to be a boy) why she was in their locker room and videoing them.  Since then, the charges were mysteriously dropped for the Muslim boy while the two Christian boys got an additional charge of "sex-based discrimination"!  A third incident happened a few days ago [...]

Deep-blue California is a national leader in de facto public-school segregation.  For a state long considered a progressive political force, California's record on desegregating its own public schools is abysmal.  In fact, a new study says, intense school segregation by race and class in the state is worsening — and it's happening faster than just about anywhere else in the country.  That startling reality check comes courtesy of a heavily researched report by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.  The authors found that over the past three decades, the proportion of intensely segregated schools in California — those with more than 90% students of color — has quadrupled to 44.5%.  That's nearly half of the state's more than 10,000 public K-12 schools. [...] Put simply, California kids on the wrong side of the segregation equation — those in schools with predominantly Black, Latino, Native American and multiracial populations, often in poorer communities — fare worse both in K-12 and long after.  Segregated schools perpetuate economic gaps among races and ethnicities.

School Ran Weekly Witchcraft Address, Shut It Down Once They Couldn't Force It on Christians Anymore.  Officials in an Orlando school district have canceled a weekly high school video program called "Witchy Wednesday," the Washington Times reported.  Chillingly, the program was ended after Christian students were allowed to opt out of sitting through occult programming, thanks to some good attorneys.  The first episode ran Sept. 10 at West Orange High School in the city of Winter Garden.  [Advertisement]  It opened with a full moon backdrop.  A teenage girl discussed moon cycles, burning incense, and casting spells.  [Advertisement]  She instructed students to "write your intuition down on your paper.  Fold it three times.  Burn your paper into your white candle.  Burn it completely and entirely to have your intention released into the universe.  That itself is your 'Light of Insight' at work.  You then cleanse the space around you once more to finalize your spell."

DHS Releases New Information on Extensive Criminal History of Illegal Alien Ian Roberts who was Working as Iowa School Superintendent.  [Press release] Today [10/3/2025], the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released new information on criminal illegal alien Ian Andre Roberts, who was serving as Des Moines, Iowa's school superintendent at the time of his Sept. 26 arrest.  [Photo]  When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials approached Roberts, he identified himself then sped off, abandoned his vehicle, and hid in a brushy area about 200 meters away, where ICE officers located him with help from Iowa State Patrol officers.  At the time of arrest, a loaded handgun, hunting knife and $3,000 cash were found in his vehicle.  On Oct. 2, he was charged with being an illegal alien in possession of firearms.  Roberts' rap sheet and immigration history reveal a long record of criminal conduct in the United States.  He should never have been serving in a role overseeing children in Iowa's largest school district.

Michigan mom says [her] 11-year-old son was expelled after dismantling [a] classmate's loaded gun at school.  A Michigan woman said her 11-year-old son was expelled after he disassembled a loaded gun his classmate brought to school.  Savitra McClurkin said she has been trying to enroll her son, Sakir Everett, into another school ever since he was abruptly kicked out of Dwight Rich School of the Arts in Lansing in May.  "I'm upset with everybody," McClurkin said in a phone interview Monday.  "I'm not just mad at the district, I'm mad at some of these teachers, administrators, as well as the city, because they did not handle this right."  In a statement, the Lansing School District said it issued its decision "after a thorough investigation, including review of video evidence, numerous witness statements, and careful deliberation, as well as a disciplinary hearing."

Evil flourishes when reason is abandoned.  "Father of education" John Dewey (1849-1952) developed a system to dumb down children called "progressive" education, and his approach is used today in most schools, both public and private.  He was a social determinist and diehard socialist, who loathed individualism and capitalism.  He aimed to turn America into a socialist state like the Soviet Union, so, to that end, he created a plan to fundamentally transform education.  He thought that there was no free will, the child was formed by social relationships instead of his own mind, and the individual should be subordinated to the group — but perhaps Dewey's most horrific position was his view of reality.  Unlike the educator Maria Montessori, he did not think that objective truth existed.  Instead, he thought that truth is whatever the group believes.  So, unless there were some social benefit, he viewed the individual pursuit of knowledge as a negative objective and even discouraged it.  The purpose of education, according to Dewey, is to socialize children, not to understand the real world.  The idea that "the truth is whatever the group believes" stands against identifying the facts of reality and paralyzes thinking.  With this kind of system, relationships take primacy over truth, so, to avoid conflicts among the students, children feel pressured to agree rather than to try to figure out right from wrong or truth from falsehood.

Schoolgirls [are being] told they can escape undressing with boys in their locker rooms by admitting they are mentally ill.  In Temecula, California, junior and senior high school girls will henceforth have a choice between letting biological males hang around in their bath and locker rooms ... and proclaiming themselves to be mentally ill.  You read that correctly.  The only way these girls will be able to avoid sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with their male counterparts will be for their parents to fill out a "Mental Health Accommodation Request Form." [...] So, a young girl must be suffering from a "disability" if she doesn't want males to watch her undress, use the bathroom, or shower?  As a parent, I would have anxiety if adults in charge of my daughter's school wanted to force her to share a bathroom and a locker room with boys.  And the "authorities" — whether at that school or in the government — who made this so would have PTSD shortly after meeting with me.

A Win for Religious Liberty Against Required High School Hindu Meditation Class.  In a dramatic win for religious liberty, Chicago Public Schools have been ordered to pay out over $2.6 million to high school students in a class action religious freedom case.  Former public school students in Chicago were required to participate in a Transcendental Meditation (TM) program during class.  There was no opt-out and no parental permission required.  "As part of their in-school curriculum," attorney John Mauck, partner at Mauck & Baker, explained, "the students were either required to participate in Transcendental Meditation or were deprived daily of a half hour of academic opportunity and made to maintain silence while their classmates focused their minds on secret mantras."  The TM sessions were put in place by the Chicago Board of Education and the New York-based David Lynch Foundation, which aims to, "ensure that every child anywhere in the world who wanted to learn to meditate could do so.  Now the Foundation is actively teaching TM to adults and children in countries everywhere."

The End of The Great Disabling.  It is rare that a report by Policy Exchange reduces people to tears, but I felt a wave of deep emotional relief coming over me yesterday after I spent two hours reading every line.  I cannot commend the authors Zachary Marsh and Jean André Prager highly enough for: 'Out of Control:  Addressing the Rise in Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Disorders amongst Children and Young People'.  I hope the detailed and humane study marks the beginning of the end of what I have come to understand as 'The Great Disabling'.  I work within the SEND paradigm and believe it to cause more harm than help.  A well-meaning if misdirected conglomerate of medical professionals, private companies, educationalists, academics and statutory instruments have produced a situation whereby children are labelled with conditions they don't have and, at vast cost to the taxpayer and in the darkest of all ironies, given 'support' that doesn't work and instead hinders their ability to succeed educationally, emotionally and financially.

Addressing the Rise in Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Disorders amongst Children and Young People.  1 in 5 children in the UK are now identified as having Special educational needs / disabilities (SEND), with the number of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) for those with the most severe needs increasing by 83% from 2015/16 to 2023/24.  The number of 11-to 15-year-olds receiving Disability Living Allowance (DLA), in which the 'main condition' determining eligibility was a learning difficulty, such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), increased by 70% between 2018 and 2024.  These developments must be seen within a wider context too:  there are now almost one million under-25s not in work, further education or training (NEETs), with a link between those with psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders and NEET status.

'Horrendous' religious freedom violation leads to payout by Chicago Public Schools.  A court-approved settlement of over $2.6 million is being paid to 207 former Chicago Public School students who were required to participate in a Transcendental Meditation program during class.  The settlement approved by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly requires the Chicago Board of Education and the New York-based David Lynch Foundation to pay $100,000 to the lead plaintiff and from $3,000 to $9,500 each to the remaining students who filed claims.  Attorney John Mauck, partner at Mauck & Baker, said the so-called "Quiet Time" program was a horrendous violation of religious freedom.  "The David Lynch Foundation, which promotes what they call 'Transcendental Meditation,' which is really totally Hindu worship and Hindu meditation, worked its way into the Chicago schools for a number of years," Mauch explained.

Beware Universal Mental Health Screening.  How would your child score on a common mental health screening?  A mental health professional might view the results and conclude that your child has a mental health problem that needs to be psychiatrically diagnosed and treated, even medicated.  Will this help your child thrive?  Or will it reshape their identity in undesirable ways?  Will you be comfortable with your child taking medications that alter their developing brains and could perturb their sexuality?  When your child reaches adulthood, will they be able to withdraw from these drugs, or will they despair to find out that their body and brain have adapted to them, making this difficult or maybe even impossible?  For any parent with even minor reservations about our current medical and mental health system, these aren't theoretical questions.  A new public policy has just made them very salient.

Parents must stay alert as public schools hide life-altering decisions from families.  There is a quiet but deeply troubling trend sweeping through our nation's public schools — a movement in which teachers, counselors and administrators are actively intervening in children's lives on the most personal of issues while deliberately keeping parents in the dark.  Across the country, lawsuits are mounting as schools are found secretly facilitating the gender transition of minors without informing their parents.  This is not just a pedagogical overreach — it is a gross violation of parental rights and a dangerous assumption that strangers know better than mothers and fathers what is best for their children.

5-Year-Olds Made to Write Valentines to Migrants.  The more depraved the ideology, the earlier indoctrination must start for it to take hold.  This is why American kindergartners are immersed in LGBTism — and why British children of the same age are taught to love the savages imported from the Third World to cancel their future: [...] The "Rwanda scheme" (aka the Migration and Economic Development Partnership) was a policy introduced by the Tories in 2022 in an attempt to stop England from being transformed into Rwanda by generously bribing Rwanda to stop invading the UK.  It was held up by the UK Supreme Court in 2023 on the grounds that it violates the "human rights" of Rwandans to expect them to stay in Rwanda.  Then Two-Tier Kier came in and announced the cancellation of the plan.  Only four welfare colonists were sent home under the plan, none of them forcibly. [...] The hope by leftists is that by the time they realize they have been brainwashed to embrace their own destruction, it will be too late.  They will live in New Rwanda.

Illinois' Disastrous School Mental-Health Program.  Last week, Governor J. B. Pritzker made Illinois the first state to require mental-health screenings for all public school students.  The governor boasted that such assessments, which screen every student in grades 3-12 for potential mental-health challenges, will enable "those who are struggling [to] get the help that they need as soon as possible" and "improve academic and social outcomes."  He's wrong.  By requiring schools to screen all students, the law will make it tougher for young people who need mental-health services to get them, while exposing students who don't need treatment to potential harm.  In recent decades, American schools have become increasingly entangled with the mental-health system.  Today, many schools believe that they're obligated to screen for, diagnose, treat, and prevent mental illness — tasks for which they lack a mandate and the relevant expertise.  What began as a legal obligation to serve disabled students under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has expanded into an all-consuming quest for student "wellness."  The premise behind Illinois' law is that by universally screening students for mental-health conditions, schools will catch problems early.  That's a noble goal, but decades of research have shown that it is not feasible.

Entitled Virginia Superintendent Wants Security Guard To Protect Her From Criticism.  T.S. Eliot claimed that "April is the cruelest month," but in this homeschooling dad's opinion, that dubious honor belongs to August.  In one of the great ironies of modern American life, we choose to send our kids back to school amid the dog days of summer, a sweltering time that would be better spent at the community pool.  Back-to-school time is also an expensive proposition.  The National Retail Federation claims that between new clothes and shoes, school supplies, and electronics, the average family will fork out over $850 this year to outfit their K-12 children.  Teachers have it even worse; according to Adopt-A-Classroom, the average teacher spent almost $900 out of his own pocket to buy classroom supplies in the 2024-2025 school year.

'Queen Reid': Embattled Virginia schools boss demands personal bodyguard on top of lavish salary, perks.  Three years after leaving a sleepy Seattle suburb to run the school district in Fairfax County, Va., outside the nation's capital, Michelle Reid earns more money than the U.S. president and gets a car allowance.  Now she wants a taxpayer-funded personal bodyguard.  In new job posting No. 25212BR on BrassRing, an online recruitment platform, the Fairfax County public schools superintendent is advertising for an "Executive Protection Agent," based at the school district's C-suite headquarters on Gatehouse Road in Falls Church, Va.  The deadline for applicants is Aug. 5.  The new job would earn between $84,552 to $143,880, according to the FCPS pay scale for a "Unified Scale-Schedule B/Grade 006" job, paying far more than the starting salary of about $58,000 that a new teacher gets in the school district.

Florida Dept. of Education Calls for Discipline of School Board After Chair Cheered Death of Hulk Hogan, Silenced Opposing Parent.  The Florida Department of Education on Friday sent a scathing letter to Alachua County School Board Chair Sarah Rockwell in response to her now-deleted social media post celebrating the death of Hulk Hogan as "one less MAGA," and the board's attempt to silence a parent at Thursday's school board meeting.  [Advertisement]  "Your recent unprofessional conduct has been brought to my attention.  You made disparaging comments about the death of a conservative public figure, leading the public to lose confidence in your ability to treat all students and families fairly," Commissioner of Education Anastasios Kamoutsas wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by Breitbart News.  [Advertisement]  "That concern has now been reaffirmed by your decision to allow the rights of a parent defending a conservative position to be violated at the July 31, 2025, Alachua County School Board Meeting," he continued.  "Your conduct during this meeting was inexcusable.  You should be ashamed of your failure as a board member, let alone the board chair,"  [Tweet]

Black students demand segregated spaces from white students.  Black college students across the country have demanded that they be segregated from white peers, calling for "safe spaces" on campuses meant only for so-called students of color.  The requests for segregated spaces are found among some of the demand lists put forth by students who took part in protests this fall alleging their campuses are oppressive, discriminatory, and represent institutionalized racism.  The demands have been presented to campus administrators and are chronicled by TheDemands.org, a website run by a racial advocacy group called the Black Liberation Collective.  Not all of the 76 demand lists, each from a different university, seek segregated spaces — but several do.

'Unconstitutional': DOJ Sues Kentucky for Giving Discounted College Tuition to Illegal Immigrants.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently filed a lawsuit against the state of Kentucky.  The DOJ is suing Kentucky over the state's regulations that allow in-state tuition prices to be provided for students who are illegal immigrants or who lack certain documentation.  "No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens," said Attorney General Pamela Bondi in a statement.  "The Department of Justice just won on this exact issue in Texas, and we look forward to fighting in Kentucky to protect the rights of American citizens."  This case against Kentucky is a continuation of the Trump administration's push to eliminate American taxpayer funding for illegal immigrants.  The Kentucky case is preceded by a court victory in Texas, which overturned a similar state law.  These decisions also align with two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump aimed at curbing taxpayer-funded benefits for undocumented immigrants.

Public Education is Collapsing:  One Suburban Disaster.  [Scroll down]  One suburban South Carolina school district has it all.  Richland Two School District just outside Columbia shows suburbia can't avoid the collapse of public education.  Before we get to the violence, let's start with the mismanagement.  What kind of mismanagement features at Richland Two?  Every kind.  The Richland Two School Board is so dysfunctional that the South Carolina inspector general produced a thick report on the chicanery.  The report sports chapter titles like "Board Decorum and Dysfunction," "Surreptitious Recording of Board Executive Sessions," "Board Member Travel Advances," and, of course, that regular feature in corrupt government bodies, "Circumvention of FOIA."  Richland Two yanked parental access to the school library catalog so parents could not see the books their children read.  We all know why.  When the Manhattan Institute published a guide, "Woke Schooling:  A Toolkit for Concerned Parents," administrators went after parents, saying an organized conspiracy existed to disrupt school board business.

After Ruining Education By Dropping Phonics, Liberals 'Discover' Phonics Works.  For decades, phonics was the gold standard for teaching children how to read.  There's a pretty good reason for that: the alphabet and written word are symbolic visual tools used to convey sounds, words, and phrases that are aural.  Finding a way to associate the aural with the visual is an obvious way to bridge the gap.  [Advertisement]  The human brain is wired for spoken language, which is why children focus on words, facial expressions, and lip movements very early in life and begin speaking fairly young, and also why people with fairly profound intellectual disabilities still learn to speak and understand.  We are speaking beings.  Not so with reading, and especially not so with alphabets, which is why pictograms preceded alphabets, which associate individual letters with sounds.  That is a level of abstraction one step beyond pictures.  Alphabets just beg to be taught with phonics.  That is a concept so obvious that, of course, "education specialists" decided that it couldn't be so, and they went in search of alternatives.  The result?  More and more kids can't read.  [Tweet]

Black Texas State Rep Is Pushing To Segregate Classrooms By Race Again.  A Texas State Representative is pushing for race-based classroom assignments, claiming students perform better when taught by teachers who share their skin color.  [Video clip]

SoCal Teacher Plummets from Teacher of the Year to Incarcerated Child Sex Offender.  In just two years, a former Southern California educator has taken a steep fall from "teacher of the year" to a 30-years-to-life prison term for sexually abusing two of her sixth-grade students.  A Chula Vista Superior Court Judge in San Diego County Friday sentenced Jacqueline Ma, 36, to the prison term after she pleaded guilty in February to two counts of forcible lewd acts on a child, one count of lewd acts on a child, and one count of possessing child sexual abuse material.

Trump Admin Now Coming After In-State Tuition For Illegals.  It's always been absurd that illegals who are illegally present in the U.S. get in-state tuition:  if a student is from New Jersey they do not get in-state in North Carolina.  At least they are from the U.S.  But, does Trump have the power to do anything about it? [...] Sure, the Constitution gives the federal government authority on immigration.  And the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) prohibits states from offering pos-tsecondary education benefits to undocumented immigrants based on residency unless the same benefits are available to all U.S. citizens, regardless of state residency.  But, these are states giving a discount.  That has nothing to do with the feds, right?  Yes, but, most, if not all of the schools and states take federal money to fund the schools.  That gives Los Federales power to dictate policies.  Like not giving illegals in-state tuition.  Whoops!

Terror in the making.  For a long time, I held a great deal of respect for Harvard.  Then they admitted David Hogg, a state college reject, simply because he'd become a famous activist, and I realized how all those famous people who got into Ivy League schools got there.  They weren't that smart, they just looked good for the school.  Couple that with legacy admissions, and I realized that Harvard and other Ivy League schools weren't elite institutions, but institutions for elites.  There's a difference.  Things have gone downhill since then, believe it or not.  The antisemitism that runs rampant on school campuses is very much alive and well at schools like Harvard, and it's costing them.

This High School Principal Can't Stop Selling Out America's Best Schools To China.  A principal who came under fire for helping China clone America's best STEM high school has a new job — and he's trying to partner with the Chinese yet again.  During his time at the helm of Virginia's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Evan Glazer began the process of handing over the school's curriculum, syllabi, and floor plans to China for replication after receiving several large donations from Chinese entities to a nonprofit linked to the school.  [Advertisement]  Glazer, who left the school in 2017, is now president of the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA), a residential school in Aurora.  Under Glazer's leadership, the school has looked to develop research programs with the Thomas Schools, a group of China-based schools that were created with backing from Chinese Communist Party-linked entities.  Emails obtained by Defending Education and shared with The Daily Wire show that the taxpayer-funded IMSA and the Thomas Schools have proposed establishing a joint venture in 2025.

Qatar and China Are Pouring Billions Into Elite American Universities.  Foreign donors have given as much to U.S. universities in the last four years as they did in the previous 40, according to a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute shared exclusively with The Free Press.  The study shows an explosion in overseas funding for American schools between 2021 and 2024, with nearly $29 billion in foreign money donated during that period.  Qatar and China are among the largest sources of funding.  That $29 billion figure is more than double the total for the preceding four years, and accounts for half of the estimated $57.97 billion in foreign funding since 1986, when the federal government began tracking the data.

US Universities Don't Like Unmasking Their Foreign Donors.  A New Trump Order Aims To Make Them.  For decades, federal law has required U.S. universities to disclose the sources of large foreign donations to the federal government.  But the Biden administration sparsely enforced the law, allowing foreign nationals from adversarial countries to funnel cash to top American schools and stay anonymous.  In some cases, it's unclear whether the schools themselves are keeping close track of the foreign money they accept.  In early February, the Washington Free Beacon filed state records requests with 11 public universities for the identities of foreign donors that gave the schools more than $20,000 in the past two years.  Some, like the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Michigan, said it would take months of searching or more than $1,500 in fees to provide an answer.  That won't fly with President Donald Trump, who last week signed an executive order outlining more robust enforcement of the Higher Education Act of 1965's foreign donor disclosure requirements.  In some cases, it already appears to be spurring action.

Harvard is jeopardizing $9B in federal funding to lead the radical left's anti-Trump agenda — so much for the best and brightest.  In an article that hails the Ivy League school's rejection of any White House penalties over eruptions of antisemitism on its campus, [New York] Times writer Elisabeth Bumiller approvingly quotes several people who praise Harvard's stance and declare that it carries political significance way beyond the actual issues involved.  Her larger point is clear:  This is war with an administration the left loves to hate. [...] In their letter rejecting intervention, Harvard's lawyers say it "will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights."  As others have noted, what would we call this blanket defense if the students who had been harmed were black instead of Jews?  In refusing even to negotiate, the so-called best and brightest have opened themselves to massive financial penalties.  The blowback started immediately, with the White House announcing it has frozen $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and canceled a $60 million contract.

Baltimore student has cops called on him, gets suspended from school after asking why there was no American Flag in his classroom.  This story sounds too wild and bizarre to be true.  But it is.  Baltimore student Parker Jensen noticed that in his two classrooms at Towson High School in Baltimore there was no American Flag present.  Jensen thought this was wrong and, by Baltimore school policy and Maryland law, he was right.  He asked his Vice Principal about it twice, and when nothing was done Jensen showed up at the board of education.  But what happened next is too bizarre to believe.  [Tweet with video clip]  He went to the Baltimore County Board of Education to talk to someone and find out why the flag wasn't flying.  No one would come talk to him.  He sat and waited an hour.  Then they called the cops on him!

Cop-Hating School Principal Won't Let Cop Into School After Responding To A Bomb Threat.  An officer body-camera video is making the rounds on social media following a heated confrontation between Columbus police and a middle school principal.  CPD officers responded to a call about a possible bomb threat at Ridgeview Middle School on March 13 after being contacted by a safety and security officer.  During the encounter, a school secretary expressed reluctance in letting the officers into the school.  One of the officers at one point said, "I'm here on official police business," but still, the secretary wouldn't let them past the front office.  At one point principal Natalie James, comes into the office, telling officers "I follow district protocol, and the only reason, let's be honest, I do not feel comfortable even interacting with you," James can be heard on the body-camera video telling officers the only reason she came into the office was because something was going on.  James also cited "district protocol" as a reason why she wouldn't let the officers into the school to investigate the threat.  [Video clip]

Why aren't Johnny and Suzie reading?  Contemporary education is fad-based.  The real money in education is in administration, and the key to getting those jobs is establishing, or supporting current fads.  Lower-level administrators wanting to become superintendents attend conferences where people like them present their newest, "change the face of education" innovation.  Such things are usually merely repackaging old, failed concepts with shiny materials and euphemisms.  "Details" in writing instruction become "golden bricks."  See how much better and more effective that is?  But millions are at stake, and baby administrators convince their school district to buy and implement the brilliant new concept.  With big bucks involved, everyone pretends it's the slickest thing since sliced bread until the next fad comes along, the old one is quietly abandoned and the process begins anew.

It's not widely known, but over HALF of Columba University's enrollment is now foreign students.  Some of them are people like Mahmoud Khalil, who spent all his time agitating in support of Hamas terrorists.  But if you dig deeper, the true story is even more appalling:  Columbia is using the prestige of its elite undergraduate school to bring in thousands of mediocre foreigners who want a Columbia degree in computer science, engineering, or a similar field.  Columbia admits them because they pay full-freight tuition, boosting their bottom line while glutting the American job market and lowering wages for STEM workers.  Why are we letting one of America's premier universities become overwhelmingly foreign in order to fund bloated administrator paychecks?  Don't take it from me, the internet is full of Columbia grads complaining about what's happened to their school:  [Video clip]

Universities Get Rich Off Illegal Migrants; 408,000 Currently Enrolled.  If you want to know why academia is foursquare behind illegal migration, yes, follow the ideology.  But you can also, perhaps, even more easily follow the money.  In fact, there are currently a staggering 408,000 illegal aliens enrolled in American higher-ed institutions, according to The College Fix.  And lest you think academia is doing this out of the goodness of its woke little heart, think again.  Colleges and universities cash in, collecting taxpayer money for enrolling the foreigners.  Just as outrageously, 25 states offer these aliens in-state tuition benefits while denying them to out-of-state citizens.  This practice is illegal, too, based on a 1996 law signed by then-president Bill Clinton.  But that law has never been enforced.

Study Finds No Correlation Between School Closings and Transmission.  As the COVID pandemic swept across the United States and in the years that followed, scientists, informed commentators, and journalists who questioned the origin of the virus and subsequent COVID policies were summarily dismissed, censored, blacklisted, and even canceled without serious consideration.  From ineffective masks to "social distancing," to corporate lockdowns and school closures, those among us who relied on unbiased facts and valid information have been vindicated, as one COVID canard after another has gone up in smoke.  Now, new study results published by the Journal of Infection further undermine the lies and obfuscations told by the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci — who indignantly declared in June 2021: "Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science" — the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), and others in positions of authority, including within the federal government.

[A] Florida principal [was] charged after [a] booze-filled party with 100 teens [was] thrown at her home: police.  A Florida elementary school principal who once earned teacher of the year honors was arrested Friday after a raucous house party where around 100 teens allegedly downed booze was held inside her home, according to authorities.  Roosevelt Elementary School principal Elizabeth Hill-Brodigan and another teacher, Karly Anderson, who works at the same school, were both charged days after the wild bash on Jan. 19 was reported to Cocoa Beach police.  At least some of the young partiers were drinking alcohol they got from coolers inside the home, and one youngster even suffered a medical emergency tied to the drinking, WJXT reported.

Colorado School Turns Girls' Bathroom Into 'All Gender' Bathroom.  Girls came back from Christmas break at one Denver school to an unpleasant, woke New Year's innovation: a girls' bathroom transformed into an "all-gender" bathroom. [...] Even as Congress just moved along legislation to ban biological males from female sports, radical leftists in schools across the country are doubling down on their groomer insanity.  Administrators at East High School in Denver, according to Libs of TikTok, are among these woke wackos, and they decided to convert a girls' bathroom into an all-gender restroom.  One administrator is claiming that no specific agenda drove this move, but before wokeness took over schools, there would never have been an "all-gender" restroom.  Notice how it usually seems to be girls who are expected to give up ground on the transgender bathroom debate, and that it is girls who get assaulted in the bathrooms by cross-dressing boys.  [Tweet with video clip]

Vermont Supreme Court Ruling Allows Schools to Administer COVID Vaccines Without Parents' Consent.  Numerous mainstream media outlets are deliberately lying to American parents about the law regarding COVID-19 vaccines.  In August, Vermont's Supreme Court that ruled a 6-year-old boy administered a COVID-19 vaccine against his parents' specific instructions that he not be jabbed has no state tort remedies, and that the family's sole recourse is a federal claim requiring proof of serious bodily harm or death to proceed.  All other traditional causes of action for violating these parents' rights, and fundamental constitutional informed consent protections for patients, are extinguished completely.  And yet, numerous media outlets reported the precise opposite.  This is blatant misinformation.  The Associated Press (AP) launched an utter deception titled falsely: "Fact Focus:  Vermont ruling does not say schools can vaccinate children without parental consent."  This is the opposite of the truth: [...]

Jim Crow Education Comes to New York City.  Education has long been central for African Americans in the quest for equality and historically, what blacks sought was identical to what whites received.  In the landmark case of Brown vs.  Board of Education (1954) the plaintiff — Oliver Brown — went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to enable his daughter, Linda, to attend the nearby all-white school, despite a state law prohibiting racial integration.  That the all-white school's curriculum probably offered zero about blacks was irrelevant.  Linda Brown just wanted to attend the local school even if the school ignored her "blackness."  The goal was a decent education, and mastering long division hardly required pictures of eminent black mathematicians.  The very idea of school integration rejects the separate but equal doctrine and assumes that African Americans could achieve equality via attending "white" schools.  Unfortunately, matters have now changed, and today nearly everything about education is race-based.

A Mom Asked for Public School Board Records.  They Charged Her $33 Million.  Elizabeth Clair, the mother of a seventh grader in suburban Detroit, wanted to find out whether her local school district had mended its ways after it lost a lawsuit for improperly tracking disgruntled parents.  Instead, she's the one who learned a lesson:  Prying information out of local governments can be very expensive — and state transparency laws don't always help.  Back in 2022, the Rochester Community School District settled a lawsuit for nearly $200,000 with another mom who accused the district of keeping a "dossier" on parents critical of Covid lockdowns.  Clair said she wanted to know what the district was doing to stem future retaliation against parents.  So she filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for six months' worth of emails containing the word anti-retaliation.  A few weeks later, she heard back from the district's FOIA coordinator:  Her request had been granted.  All she had to do was pay $33,103,232.56.

Report Shows 70% of Department of Education Enforcement Targeted Christians.  A scathing new report claims that the Biden administration's Department of Education's (ED) enforcement actions were focused at least 70 percent on Christian and career-based schools, even though they represent less than 10 percent of the students in the nation.  This uncovers an unseen campaign that persisted over the administration's term and can hardly be seen as impartial.

A New Operating System for K-12 Education.  It is not hyperbole to say that our societies and civilizations depend on well educated citizens.  To develop those citizens, teachers undergo training; read professional journals; attend workshops, seminars, and conventions; and pursue advanced degrees.  Having spent many years working in this field, one thing I noticed was the tendency for educators to eagerly jump onto whatever new educational bandwagon was making the rounds.  Teachers get excited when we come across a new technique or practice that we think may help our students derive more benefit and enjoyment from our classes.  Sadly, some of these practices prove to be unworkable, and the widespread incorporation of these new techniques is sometimes less than successful.

Texas School Accused Of Giving 'Sleepy Stickers' To Kids To Put Them To Sleep.  An investigation is underway after Texas school district teachers were accused of giving elementary school students special stickers that are believed to be sleeping aids.  The district said two elementary school teachers were removed from class and placed on administrative leave as police investigate the allegations.  It's not out of the ordinary for Lisa Luviano's daughter to come home from school with something to show.  On Sept. 24, it was a sticker with a starry nightlike design.  "She said, 'It is a sleeping sticker.'  I asked, 'Where did you get this?'  And she said, 'My teacher gives it to me for sleeping time,'" Luviano said.  Luviano claims her daughter told her that other kids in her class also get it.  [Video clip]

Universities secretly take billions in foreign money, report says.  American colleges and universities are accepting billions of dollars in foreign money without reporting it, according to a new report.  The National Association of Scholars released the report, which says that taking money from foreign governments and organizations without reporting it has become commonplace among American universities.  "Higher education is awash with conflicting interests," said NAS Fellow and report author Neetu Arnold, who added that universities "search for partnerships and grants abroad, sometimes from adversarial governments."

Are Fat Jokes an Existential Threat to American Universities?  [Scroll down]  These guidelines, if enforced, will undermine all campus social interaction save those among the closest friends.  Why risk forwarding an email joking about the unintelligible Indian accent of your calculus TA? Imagine surviving a life on 100% bland language?  Jokes, sarcastic comments, biting criticism, and similar unflattering comments are part of human discourse, a staple in literature and the theater.  To remove them in the name of minimizing harm is to sanitize human existence and as is true for all utopian schemes, defies human nature.  Indeed, given Shakespeare's bawdy depiction of women and characterization of usurious Jews, assigning Shakespeare to undergraduates may be defined as "hate mongering," and thus grounds for terminating the instructor.

Schoolboy [is] 'allowed to identify as a wolf' after claiming to suffer from 'species dysphoria'.  A schoolboy is understood to have been allowed to "identify" as a wolf after suffering from "species dysphoria".  According to reports, the pupil has a non-clinical condition where they feel that their body belongs to a different species.  [Advertisement]  Official documents seen by the Daily Mail are said to recognise that the boy now identifies as an animal.  [Advertisement]  It is also believed that the British secondary school is supporting the student's decision.  [Picture of a wolf]  It comes as the number of schoolchildren asking to be officially recognised as an animal is growing.  "There is no such condition in science as 'species dysphoria'," Tommy MacKay, a clinical neuropsychologist told the Mail.  "It's not surprising that we are seeing this in an age when many people want to identify as something other than they are.  "Now we have a council which appears to accept at face value that a child identifies as a wolf, rather than being told to snap out of it and get to grips with themselves, which would be the common-sense approach."

The Editor says...
[#1] Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.  (Proverbs 22:15)  That's what the kid needs — the rod of correction.  It works every time.  [#2] Until the "schoolboy" is 18 years of age, he is to do as he is told by his parents and supervising adults.  If he later decides that he is a rhinoceros or a fencepost, there should be a mental institution waiting for him; because if he doesn't know what he is, he is likely to presume that he can act like an animal in public places, and our society won't last much longer if we allow such a thing.

A new study claims that ADHD drugs are making our kids crazy.  Whenever law enforcement releases information about the drugs in a school shooter's system, and the media actually report that information, we learn that these children (usually boys) are on a cocktail of psychotropic drugs.  A new study indicates that we can now add Adderall and other "treatments" for ADHD to the list of drugs fed into young people that make them go crazy.  The problem isn't guns.  We have a prescription drug problem in our schools, one that's required because our public schools are pointless and boring places for students, especially boys. [...] This is not an inconsequential problem.  According to the same article, which relies on data from Symphony Health, since 2009, the number of Adderall prescriptions (both name brand and generic) in America has more than doubled from 15.5 million to 41 million annually.  That is a staggering number of prescriptions, most of which are stuffed into school children.  According to the Mass General Brigham study, one out of eight Americans are taking these prescriptions, allegedly to treat ADHD.

Ohio Grandfather Says His Grandson Is The Only Child Who Speaks English In His Class.  Ohio grandfather says his grandson needs an interpreter for preschool because he is the only child who speaks English.  It's crazy how much a country can change in 4 years.  "My daughter enrolls my 4-year-old grandson into preschool last week.  And they have a little meet and greet."  "I live in a small town in Ohio.  So she goes, takes him down to the meet and greet.  They tell her that she has to hire a translator with her own money in order to send him to preschool because he's the only student who doesn't speak Spanish."  "Can you believe that?  Can't go to preschool because he doesn't speak Spanish."  [Video clip]

School Can Keep Student's Transgender Status Secret From Parents, NH Supreme Court Rules.  A policy that allows school staff to keep a child's transgender status a secret does not violate a parent's fundamental rights under the New Hampshire constitution, the state's Supreme Court has held.  The policy was challenged by a New Hampshire mother who sued the Manchester school district after finding out from a teacher that her minor child (identified as M.C.) had asked school staff and students to be called by a name typically associated with the opposite sex.  According to the lawsuit, when the mother first asked the school to continue using her child's given name and sex-appropriate pronouns, two teachers wrote to her saying they were willing to comply.

Federal judge backs school:  Student cannot wear 'Let's Go Brandon' hoodie.  A federal judge has sided with a Michigan school district in that it was right to order a student to remove a hoodie with the phrase "Let's Go Brandon!" on it.  "Le's [sic] Go Brandon" (in)famously came about in October of 2022 after NASCAR driver Brandon Brown won his first race. [...] According to Jonathan Turley's blog, plaintiff "D.A.," a student at Tri County Middle School, was told last spring by Assistant Principal Andrew Buikema (pictured) and teacher Wendy Bradford to take off his "Let's Go Brandon!" hoodie as it violated school dress code.

A San Francisco program to produce black male teachers instead threw away taxpayer money.  Democrat programs always sound good but, once in operation, they're consistently disastrous, whether because of inefficiency, graft, or being easy marks for grifters.  San Francisco just added another program to that list, with taxpayers having coughed up over $700,000 to get black men as teachers in local elementary schools — and ending up with almost nothing to show for that money.  Democrats believe that they, not the taxpayers who do the work and create actual wealth, know how to spend money virtuously and wisely.  There is no indication that this is the case.  The more money that Democrats get, the more they waste.

School tried to ban all black attire over mental-health concerns.  Now it's on hold.  An El Paso, Texas, middle school is facing some criticism after officials announced a new dress code policy that bars students from wearing all-black "from head to toe," pointing to concerns over mental health.  The decision was announced by Charles Middle School Principal Nick DeSantis ahead of the school year which kicked off on Monday.  The letter mentioned the school is prohibiting all-black attire due to its association "with depression and mental health issues and/ or criminality," KFOX-TV and CBS4 reported.  The community criticized the new dress code online, questioning how the color of clothes has an impact on the children's emotional well-being.  "Making students wear a different color isn't going to magically make them a completely different person," one person, Alexis Contreras, commented, per the outlets.

California's New Law Lets Schools Keep Secrets from Parents.  Child predators follow a common playbook: target the victim, gain their trust, fill a need, and, crucially, isolate the child from her parents.  For several years, this has also been standard California state protocol with regard to schoolchildren questioning their gender identities.  On Monday, this scheme became law.  The "SAFETY Act," AB 1955, signed by California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, legally forbids schools from adopting any policy that would force them to disclose "any information related to a pupil's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil's consent."  Schools may not, as a matter of policy, inform parents of a child's new gender identity unless the child volunteers her approval.  The law also prohibits schools from punishing any school employee found to have "supported a pupil" hurtling down a path toward risky and irreversible hormones and surgeries.  The law effectively shuts down the local parents' rights movement in California by eliminating its most important tool: the ability to organize at the community level to stop schools from deceiving them.

South Carolina 'Teacher Of The Year' Allegedly Stalked, Wrote Love Letters To [an] 11-Year-Old.  Authorities arrested a South Carolina teacher previously awarded Teacher of the Year for allegedly stalking and sending over 60 love letters to an 11-year-old, WIS 10 reported.  Starr Elementary School teacher Dylan Robert Dukes, 27, faces stalking charges following allegedly inappropriate conduct towards a former student, according to WIS 10.  The Anderson County Sheriff's Office detailed that Dukes had sent over sixty love letters and other unsolicited gifts to the girl.  The gifts included cards, gift cards, ornaments, and pictures, along with "unwanted hugs," the outlet reported.  [Tweet]

The Editor says...
How many people have been named "Teacher of the Year," and have later been accused of felonies?

The Real Reason Johnny Can't Read:  Bad Parenting.  Like No Child Left Behind and Common Core before it, the "Science of Reading" is just another excuse to line the coffers of education bureaucrats and textbook publishers.  A story at AMP Reports titled "'Science of reading' movement spells financial trouble for publisher Heinemann" notes that "The educational publisher raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue during the 2010s selling reading programs based on a disproven theory [the now disfavored Common Core].  The company now faces financial fallout, as schools ditch its products."

California Teacher Sues His Local Education Association Over The Fact He Was Not Hired Because He Is White.  A history teacher in California just sued the Elk Grove Education Association over a position openly excluding Whites.  Teachers had to check a box to verify their ethnicity[.]  Whites were not allowed.  He says that he was denied a position by a school union due to his skin color & says it violates the Civil Rights Act.  [Video clip]

States Lead Title IX Revolt (Commentary).  American federalism is alive and well after all.  On April 19, the Biden Education Department announced its disastrous new Title IX rule that guts due process and imposes gender ideology in educational institutions.  Within days, however, officials from eight states publicly instructed their schools to ignore it.  Then, within a week, 16 states sued the administration alongside nonprofit groups such as Parents Defending Education and several Louisiana school districts.  Since then, the number of states suing has climbed to 26 — more than half the states in the nation.  Their court filings say the rule violates not only the United States Constitution and the federal Administrative Procedures Act but also Title IX itself.  Game on!  While feminists weaponized Title IX to their hearts' content in the Obama years, alleging a phony campus rape crisis to rationalize their kangaroo courts and to silence those questioning their power, the world is a different place under Biden.  Feminists have met their match in American parents and and in red states — especially their education officials.

School segregation surges 70 years after Brown v. Board ruling.  Racial segregation in schools across the country has increased dramatically over the last three decades, according to two new reports and an Axios review of federal data. [...] The resegregation of America's public schools coincides with the rise of charter schools and school choice options, and as civil rights groups have turned away from desegregation battles.

Fort Worth ISD to Return Potentially Inappropriate Books to Library Shelves.  After the Fort Worth Independent School District removed over 100 books for further review over concerns of inappropriate content, the district is now planning to return some books back to the library shelves.  Following months of parental outrage over sexually-explicit materials in student libraries, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 900 by State Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco).  HB 900 prohibits school libraries from housing materials that are sexually explicit, vulgar, or educationally unsuitable.  It also sets up state standards for keeping inappropriate sexual content out of all school libraries and classrooms.  As reported by The Dallas Express, Tarrant County Citizens Defending Freedom had found 76 different books to be sexually explicit and violent.  More than 500 copies of the books were available in Fort Worth ISD libraries.

Father Accuses School of Holding Son "Hostage," Claims Principal Denied Him Access and Information About His Son's Condition.  A local father's distressing ordeal has captured the attention of thousands online after he posted a video alleging that the principal at White Oak School in Parkville, Maryland, held his 11-year-old son "hostage" and refused to disclose his whereabouts or condition.  The father, with a TikTok username of theprototype88, also known as King B., detailed the incident in a video that has since gone viral with almost 8 million views.  In his emotional account, he claims that he rushed to the school after being informed by the vice principal that his son might have ingested a substance and was acting abnormally.  Upon arrival at the school, the father was reportedly met by the principal, who did not allow him to continue his phone conversation with the boy's mother and subsequently locked him out of the building without providing any information about his son's situation.

Superintendent Fired For Allegedly Threatening Students Who Didn't Clap For Her Daughter:  Report.  A school superintendent in California was reportedly fired Tuesday for allegedly threatening students who did not clap for her daughter at a sports event.  Former Poway Unified School District Superintendent Marian Kim Phelps was fired via school board vote following an investigation into her alleged graduation threats against her daughter's Del Norte High School softball teammates, NBC News reported.  Phelps allegedly accused her daughter's teammates of snubbing her by failing to clap loudly at a softball awards banquet in May 2023, NBC San Diego reported.  The students alleged that Phelps texted them about her grievance late at night after the ceremony, accusing the former superintendent of threatening to prevent them from graduating in the absence of an apology to her daughter.  [Tweet]

School Districts Slapped With Civil Rights Complaints Over Racially-Organized 'Affinity Groups'.  A parental rights organization filed civil-rights complaints against two school districts in Colorado on Friday, alleging they discriminated against parents by race.  Parents Defending Education (PDE) accused the Summit School District and the Greeley-Evans School District of racial discrimination through the creation of "affinity groups" for Hispanic and black parents, respectively, in complaints filed with the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.  PDE argued the school districts were seeking to dissuade parents who were not members of certain ethnicities from participating in the affinity groups, which provide parents the opportunity to connect with one another and give feedback to the school district.  For instance, PDE said Summit School District's superintendent expressed hostility to parental involvement in education, particularly if they were in certain ethnic groups.

Seattle closes gifted and talented schools because they had too many white and Asian students.  Seattle has shuttered its gifted and talented programs because the school board determined they had too many white and Asian students.  The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year because they found it had too many racial inequities.  School bosses said black and Hispanic students were underrepresented at the schools.  According to Seattle Public School data, of the highly capable students in the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent were white, 16 percent were Asian and 3.4 percent were black.

District Hiring 'Whiteness' Superintendent to Root Out White Supremacy.  The Saint Louis Park School District, located in the suburbs of Minneapolis, is hiring an assistant superintendent to "examine the presence of Whiteness" in the district.  It's a good gig, paying between $134,000 and $201,000.  [Tweet]  It seems that "Whiteness" is a pressing problem for the district, which no doubt explains why there has been so much learning loss in the public schools over the past few years.  Enrollment of White students has been dropping, with only 53% of the students being White, and as they have fled to other districts, the problem of White Supremacy has gotten worse, leading to horrible test scores: [...] It's a troubling thing, to see how Whiteness is harming minority students, and the district is working hard to root it out.  As the student body and staff become less White, Whiteness has become an increasing problem.

Virginia dad, pardoned by Youngkin, shreds new Loudoun County School Board members for 'trying to shut us out'.  Virginia dad Scott Smith, who was famously convicted, and then pardoned by Gov. Glenn Youngkin for standing up against the Loudoun County School Board (LCSB), says the newly elected board members have "let us down."  Smith, whose daughter was sexually assaulted by a boy in a dress in the Stone Bridge High School bathroom, appeared with Dana Perino on Fox News's "America's Newsroom" after the board stuck to party lines and voted to turn off cameras during the time allotted in the meetings for public comment, Fox5 reported.  "We have nine new school board members this year, and every one of them campaigned on transparency and less division, and this is absolutely the opposite of what they all campaigned on," Smith said.  "They've let us down."  "They haven't done what they've said, and they're just trying to shut us out," he continued.  "They're trying to shut moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas out of the public spotlight to be able to speak out against the radical policies."

Domination Through Chaos and Fear.  In the decade I served on a school board, I learned a great deal about group dynamics.  The most important lesson, I suppose, is that there are people — most often highly neurotic people — who deliberately create chaos.  They undermine every effort to rationally deal with issues that require solutions.  They violate norms like crediting the work of committees that were designated to analyze what needs to be done and offer solutions for the board to act on, dispiriting those desirous of accomplishing what must be done.  They go behind the backs of board members to undercut the systematic workings of the board, and then drag out meetings that should take a few hours into the late night.  In consequence, many just cede power to them rather than endure the endless churning of conflicts, bad decision-making and stirred-up animus.

In this regard, are the kids safer at home?  Probably not.
N.J. school district will close before solar eclipse due to 'concern' about kids looking at the sun.  Livingston schools will close early on April 8 to avoid any danger to students and families from the solar eclipse, according to a letter Superintendent Matthew J. Block sent home to families Wednesday.  The Essex County school district's four schools will dismiss at noon or 12:45 p.m., hours before the eclipse, so students are not tempted to look directly at the sun without protective eyewear during their usual dismissal time, the superintendent said.

Chicago Public Schools Will Be Even More Dangerous Without School Resource Officers.  At a bare minimum, every student attending a public school in the United States should feel safe.  Sadly, in far too many government-run schools, this is not the case.  This is particularly true for the 320,000 students who attend Chicago Public Schools (CPS), where abuse, assaults, thefts, drug dealing, and gang activity have become all too commonplace.  Unfortunately, the decision to remove school resource officers from CPS will likely result in more violence and a less conducive learning environment.  According to a recent report by the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute, "School safety is a particularly pressing issue in urban public schools; the incidence of violent episodes is almost 60 percent higher in city schools than in suburban schools, and 30 percent higher than in rural schools.  Urban schools are approximately twice as likely as other schools to report that students verbally abuse teachers and act disrespectfully (other than verbal abuse) toward teachers either daily or at least once a week."  This disturbing trend has engulfed Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

Teacher Reportedly Forced To Resign For Not Letting Boy Use Girls' Bathroom.  A New York teacher was reportedly forced into early retirement after not allowing a boy to use the girls' bathroom.  The beloved educator, known as Mr. C, had been a gym teacher and tennis coach for 37 years.  But he resigned from the Elmira Heights Central School District last week after receiving backlash for not allowing a trans-identifying male kindergartner to use the girls' restroom, according to WENY News.  When asked if the school board could confirm or deny the incident, Superintendent Michael F. Gill said, "We do not make comments about any students or staff circumstances."  However, at a school board meeting Wednesday, Feb. 28, Mr. C was the main topic of conversation.  During the meeting, more than a dozen people signed up to speak during the comment portion — some defending Mr. C and others condemning him.

Chicago Removing Police From Schools.  What Could Possibly Go Wrong?  If you've been paying any attention at all to the news for the past couple of years, you've no doubt heard about the increased levels of crime and violence in Chicago, along with so many other large, blue cities.  At the same time, we've seen a disturbing rise in school shootings and other criminal activity in our public schools, with the Windy City's public schools additionally being overrun by the children of illegal migrants.  Rushing to the rescue this week was Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.  His brilliant plan to address these concerns involves keeping a campaign promise he made while running for office.  He's going to pull the police (school resource officers, or SROs) from Chicago's schools and find a "different, comprehensive whole school safety policy."  Given the current conditions in the city, this idea is clearly far less popular than the mayor believes.

What a brilliant idea!
Chicago Education Board Moves to Pull Cops from Schools.  Dozens of Chicago high schools that continue to employ school-resource officers to protect students and staff from violence will no longer be allowed to do so under a plan coming before the far-left city's education board this week.  The "Resolution to Create a Comprehensive Whole School Safety Policy," which is on the board's Thursday meeting agenda, would prohibit the 39 city schools that continue to utilize school-resource officers from continuing to do so next school year.  If approved, the resolution would direct Chicago Public School leaders to develop "a holistic approach to school safety at every District school" that "addresses root causes" of violence, and that focuses on "restorative justice" and "healing-centered practices."  The effort to eliminate officers from schools has been a priority for progressives and racial-justice activists who contend that black students and students with disabilities are disproportionately policed and disciplined by in-school officers.  It also comes after at least four students were killed in three shootings near Chicago schools in recent weeks.

Portland Public Schools Face Civil Rights Complaint For Disciplinary Policy That Factors In Race, Gender Identity.  An education advocacy group hit Portland Public Schools (PPS) with a federal civil rights complaint Thursday over a policy that requires factoring students' race and gender identity into disciplinary decisions.  Parents Defending Education (PDE) alleges in its federal civil rights complaint that PPS is violating civil rights law and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment through its new "Student Support and Discipline" policy, which requires educators to respond to "disruptive student behavior" by developing a behavior support plan that considers characteristics like race.  The policy also requires the school district to assign educators based on race and gender identity.

Screens in schools are harming our children.  "There's clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning".  The words of a hidebound traditionalist?  On the contrary, this is the recent finding of one of the world's foremost medical universities, the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, just one of many emerging reports pointing to the shallow and inferior nature of digital learning.  Evidence that books, paper and pens are more effective learning tools than screens and tablets is reverberating globally, with several countries including China dramatically backtracking on tech in the classroom and strongly promoting traditional methods of learning such as handwriting, reading books and face to face pupil-teacher interaction.

The U.S. is going off the rails.  According to the New York Post:  ["]Students at Stamford public schools will no longer get the day off on [Veterans' Day and Columbus Day] for the next two school years after the board voted 5-3 to remove them Tuesday night, the Stamford Advocate reported.["]  The motive for the removals is obvious, however at least one board member claimed the holidays were simply axed to shorten the school year which currently extends into mid-June.  If so, why were these two days removed and no other holidays?  After all, PRIDE! month is celebrated, even if there is no single day off.  And the schools are closed on Indigenous People's Day, Martin Luther King, Jr.  Day, Yom Kippur, Election Day, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, and "Juneteenth." Incredible.  Maybe cut out a couple of them?  Of course not.

Convicted Rapist Permitted to Attend High School in Baltimore.  Baltimore City Schools might have a bigger problem, hard as it is to believe, than high-schoolers who can't do math.  Maryland law permits rapists to attend school with their victims.  And now, a juvenile rapist has been sent back to the school his victim attends.  Parents never would have known if a terrified mother hadn't spilled the beans to the local Fox News affiliate.  [Tweet]

To combat chronic absenteeism, bipartisan Ohio lawmakers propose paying kids to go to school.  In a proposed two-year pilot program, Republican state Rep. Bill Seitz and Democratic Rep. Dani Isaacsohn, both of Cincinnati, said cash transfers would be sent to kindergarteners and ninth graders to jumpstart school attendance which has long suffered in the state, but that was exacerbated by a global pandemic.

The Editor says...
No, school absenteeism was induced by the socialist control freaks' over-reaction to the pandemic; moreover, the pandemic itself might have been a farce, as some claim that Covid-19 was just another name for the flu.  The schools were shut down by the same people who now want us to bribe the kids to get back to work.  The money would be better spent on expanding the prison system, which is where these misguided weirdos will end up if the schools don't stop enabling their delusions.

New York City Principal Attacks Parents Who Opposed Closing High School to Accommodate Migrants.  The principal of a Brooklyn, New York City, high school is now attacking parents who opposed the school closing its doors to its students on Tuesday to accommodate migrants during a storm.  As Breitbart News reported, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) moved nearly 2,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the gym at James Madison High School in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn late at night.  To accommodate the border crossers and illegal aliens, James Madison High School Principal Jodie Cohen said all classes would be virtual for the following day.  In response, parents protested outside the school, accusing Cohen and Adams of putting foreign nationals ahead of students.

School Board Member Sworn In On Stack Of Gay Porn Instead Of Bible.  A school board member in Virginia took his oath of office with his hand not on a Bible, but on a stack of books containing graphic depictions of gay sex.  Karl Frisch, who will become chairman of the Fairfax County School Board, swapped the Bible for books including "Lawn Boy," "Gender Queer," and "Flamer."  His male partner held the books as he placed his left hand on them and his right hand in the air.  "He was sworn in on a stack of the five LGBTQ-themed books most frequently banned by other school systems," Frisch's campaign said on his website.

The legitimization of Ebonics, slang, and mumbling:
Denver public schools bring back the Tower of Babel, but call it 'language justice'.  What is "language justice" you might ask?  Well I'd never heard of the term until today, but since the English language is "oppressive" and "rooted in racism," the left has led a focused effort that has now been enacted into policy, and the idea is to permit foreign students to forgo learning English, and instead allowing them to retain their native languages in the classroom.  An excerpt from the "equity document" released by the school board defined "language justice" as this:  ["]The notion of respecting every individual's fundamental language rights — to be able to communicate, understand, and be understood in the language in which they prefer and feel most articulate and powerful.["]  As the report also notes, of the roughly 90,000 students, around 35,000 are "multilingual learners" with a non-English language home; in those non-English homes, there are "200" other languages spoken.  We tried telling them, all that "diversity is our strength" talk was really just a utopic pipe dream or a wishful sentiment, but nowhere is that more obvious than with language — when people can't understand each other nobody can communicate effectively — but again, they'd know this if they knew their history and literature.

Texas School District Backs Off Effort To Seize a 79-Year-Old Man's Home for Stadium Parking.  A Texas school district has dropped its efforts to seize a 79-year-old man's home for an expanded parking lot.  After minimal discussion during a Thursday night meeting, the Aldine Independent School District (ISD) board voted unanimously to end its efforts to acquire a one-acre parcel and home owned by Travis Upchurch.  "We are as a family completely relieved.  We can go back to our normal lives.  We don't have to worry about what's going to happen to our dad or where dad's going to go," says Tara Upchurch, Travis Upchurch's daughter.  For the past several months, her family has been frantically trying to fend off the Aldine ISD's efforts to acquire Upchurch's property for a high school football stadium's parking lot — part of a $50 million rebuild of the stadium.

Black and Hispanic students do worse, especially in math, when their school district has a 'chief diversity officer'.  Billions of dollars in federal COVID relief money made the problem worse.  As the Heritage Foundation study notes, "Federal COVID-19 money has facilitated the spread of this idea from universities into school districts."  Diversity staff sometimes view basic educational requirements as racist — for example, they don't think students should have to do their homework.  As Jacobs observes, "If students are told that turning in work on time, respecting teachers and taking responsibility for their actions are 'white supremacist' expectations, that success in school won't pay off due to 'systematic racism' ... Why bother with the math homework?"

'Diversity' officials widen racial gaps, harm minority students.  Hiring a "chief diversity officer" doesn't close achievement gaps, concludes an analysis by Jay P. Greene and Madison Marino of the Heritage Foundation's Center on Education Policy.  Black and Hispanic students had "significantly greater learning loss during the pandemic in school districts that had hired chief diversity officers than in districts without one."  Even controlling for pre-pandemic achievement gaps, minority students lost more than their white classmates, especially in math, they found.  "Racial achievement gaps went from bad to worse in these districts."  Why?  ["]Hiring a senior district official who insists that Black and Hispanic students not be held to the same standards of behavior or academic achievement as other students because of structural racism obviously undermined minority student success.["]  Nearly half of districts with at least 15,000 students employ a chief diversity or equity officer, and that rises to 89 percent for districts with more than 100,000 students, the study found.

Surveillance at School Expands Through Alliance of Administrators and Tech Companies.  Millions of American children are being insensibly softened to the boundless scope of a federal surveillance state.  From hallway cameras to cameras in classrooms, American children from age 4 or 5 to 18 grow up under the never-blinking eye of the federal government.  Additionally, they are told that but for this monitoring they would be at greater risk of violence at school.  This will result in Generation Z regarding federal surveillance as no more noticeable than a cloud on a rainy day.  It is this desensitization that has drawn the attention of a new report on the growth of the schoolhouse surveillance state and the effect such an atmosphere will have on this generation.

Red state opens investigation into drag queen principal previously arrested on child porn charges.  Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters announced Tuesday that he is opening an investigation into Western Heights Public Schools after it hired a drag queen, who had previously been charged with possession of child pornography, as a principal for one of its elementary schools.  Dr. Shane Brent Murnan was hired by John Glenn Elementary School ahead of the fall 2023 semester to be its principal but the decision was quickly met with backlash after parents discovered that he openly performs as a drag queen and had been arrested on child pornography charges in 2001, which were later dismissed in 2002.  Walters said that his investigation concerned the use of taxpayer funding to hire a drag queen as staff and would be reviewing Murnan's teaching certificate as well, according to the announcement.

Under Biden, America Is becoming a police state.  In 2021, Biden's Department of Justice used the FBI to surveil and investigate parents in what Attorney General Merrick Garland called "a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff." In reality, these ordinary parents were simply expressing their opposition to pandemic-era education policies and the insertion of critical race theory into the curriculum. [...] As mentioned above, the Biden administration, and Democrats in general, have gone to great lengths to cement their iron grip on the nation's public schools.  Apart from targeting parents who disagree with what is happening in public school classrooms, the Biden administration has also been caught red-handed pushing an ideological agenda, namely the implementation of critical race theory and transgenderism, throughout the nation's public schools.  As Biden put it, "They are all our children.  They are not somebody else's children.  They're like yours when they're in the classroom."

Education Secretary says he doesn't 'respect' parents thinking 'they know what's right for kids'.  Education Secretary Miguel Cardona took a jab at certain parents who are standing up for their children's education by stating that he does not "respect" people who are "misbehaving in public and acting as if they know what's right for kids."  Speaking about what he views as attacks on education during an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Cardona said, "I've never seen it where it is now," and that we used to be able to "have healthy conversations around what's best for kids."  Parents are increasingly expressing concerns regarding their children's education and attending school board meetings to voice their opinions, but Cardona said he does not think highly of such people.

Greenwich High School Surprises With New Digital ID And Surveillance App, Parents Not Informed Until After Students Told To Download App On Personal Phone.  On September 14, 2023, Greenwich High School (GHS) students received a notification from Karen Foster, the Director of Student Activities, immediately requiring them to download the Minga app onto their phones because the school had decided to implement digital IDs in order to track them and to provide important announcements.  Physical IDs will not be provided to students with phones. [...] Parents were not notified about this sweeping invasion of privacy until Friday evening — well after many students had already complied with this latest intrusion by Superintendent Toni Jones.

Alabama school suspends 1st-grader for making finger gun while playing cops and robbers, says outraged parent.  An outraged parent and gun rights groups are speaking out against an Alabama elementary school that suspended a first-grader, reportedly for making a finger gun.  Jerrod Belcher, whose six-year-old son J.B. attends Bagley Elementary School in Jefferson County, Alabama, says the school over-reacted to a game of "cops and robbers."  A notice of suspension shared with Fox News Digital states that Belcher's son committed a "Class III" infraction on September 1 by "using his fingers to shoot at another student."

Oklahoma district who hired drag queen to be elementary school principal faces backlash.  The superintendent of the State of Oklahoma, Ryan Walters, called for Western Heights School District to "immediately" terminate a drag queen they hired to be an elementary school principal.  "It's outrageous to have a drag queen running a school, you know, here in Oklahoma that doesn't line up with Oklahoma values," Walters told Fox News Digital.  "I hear from parents every day that are concerned with this woke left-wing indoctrination or schools, this gender theory that continues to be thrust upon our kids.  It's completely inappropriate."  The principal of John Glenn Elementary School, Shane Murnan, is a drag queen who goes by the name "Shantel Mandalay," Fox News Digital can confirm.  Murnan maintained a separate Facebook page from another called "Shantel Mandalay."  According to the page, Murnan was employed as a drag queen at a venue called "The Boom."  "This individual is not fit to lead a school district," Walters said.  "It has to stop."

In Oklahoma, the 'usual hiring practices' led to a drag queen elementary school principal.  A school district in Oklahoma is standing by its decision to hire a drag queen as one of its elementary school principals.  The story of Shane Brent Murnan is more shocking than that sentence indicates.  In 2001, when Murnan was teaching fifth graders in Stillwater, Oklahoma, he was arrested and charged with having images of children under 18 on his computer.  There was no doubt, as a state appellate court judge said, that the pictures "do represent child pornography."  However, Murnan offered in his defense the fact that the pictures, which he had deleted, came to him by accident.  The appellate court therefore ordered that his conviction should be reversed.  One can't help wondering what led to the raid on his computer in the first place, of course.  With his conviction on child porn reversed, Murnan pled guilty to a misdemeanor for pot possession, while keeping his teaching certificate.  In October 2003, even that charge was expunged.  By 2004, with a clean record, Murnan launched his new career as a drag queen named Shantel Mandalay and entered the world of drag pageants.

NYC Schools Enroll 20K Migrants, None Required to Show Proof of Vaccination.  Close to 20,000 migrant children will have been absorbed by New York City's public schools when the school year starts on Sept. 7.  None will be required to show proof of vaccinations when they enroll, as is required for the children of New Yorkers.  On Thursday, New York City officials held a press conference regarding the state of the more than 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens that have arrived in the sanctuary city since the spring of last year.

James O'Keefe exposes Jersey school board officials admitting 'Trumpish' looking parents targeted.  Investigative journalist James O'Keefe has released bombshell police bodycam footage showing New Jersey school board officials colluding with the police to target "Trumpish" school board hearing attendees.  According to O'Keefe, head of O'Keefe Media Group (OMG), the footage offers "the most riveting and fascinating psychological case studies into what school board officials, superintendents, and cops are saying, thinking, and believing about you."

Gadsden flag:  How ignorant are the folks running the schools?  One of the biggest takeaways from the viral Colorado story of the school booting a 12-year-old out of class for having a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack is that the folks in charge are ignorant not just of free-speech basics, but fundamentals of US history.  How can they teach when they're wrong about simple facts?  A top administrator at the Vanguard charter school is on tape lecturing that the flag has "slavery and the slave trade" origins, making the palm-sized patch was "disruptive to the classroom environment."  A 10-second Google reveals the truth; the flag's not about slavery at all.  Known for its rattlesnake and "Don't tread on me" slogan, it originated during the American Revolution — a topic the school spends a year on in history class.

The utter ignorance of modern educators on proud display the last two days in Colorado.  In the last few days a story about a 12-year-old boy who was banned from classes because he had a Gadsden flag sticker on his backpack has gone viral, with the school, The Vanguard School, forced to cancel its parents night because of the outrage.  School officials had claimed that the Gadsden flag was not allowed at the school because it had "its origins in slavery and the slave trade," a false statement of such utter ignorance of American history it leaves anyone with any education breathless with astonishment.  The picture to the right shows the student Jaiden reacting in bemused disbelief at the moment that school official (in the background) made this absurd claim.  He clearly knows more about American history than this brainless school official.

The Gadsden Flag Kid Just Secured Total Victory.  On Monday, the story of a Colorado child being booted from school for having a Gadsden Flag patch on his backpack went viral.  As RedState reported, school officials claimed the flag was prohibited because it had its "origins in slavery." [...] On Monday, the story of a Colorado child being booted from school for having a Gadsden Flag patch on his backpack went viral.  As RedState reported, school officials claimed the flag was prohibited because it had its "origins in slavery."  [Tweet with video clip]

Survey: Teachers at 1,000 Districts Hide Kids' Sexual Display from Parents.  More than 1,000 school districts across the United States have policies openly stating that district personnel can or should keep students' transgender status hidden from their parents.  This figure includes 18,335 schools and 10,712,558 students, according to the organization Parents Defending Education.  [Tweet]  The expansion shows the growing reach of advocates for the transgender ideology.  They claim that the government must treat each person's self-described "gender" as more important than their male or female sex.  As Breitbart News previously reported, a recent study strongly suggests that social contagion is a factor in teenagers and young adults identifying as transgender.

Parents as Obstacles to Education?  [Scroll down]  Indeed, some teachers and schools go to great lengths for parental engagement, providing online access to student grades, attendance, and behavior reports as well as resources and assignments.  Regular email, voicemail, and text notifications keep parents informed while smartphone apps permit ongoing conversations.  But that is not always the case.  Some teachers, unions, school boards, and government actors deliberately exclude parents, dissolving the communal "glue" essential to educating kids.  Why?  In 2013, the NEA proposed ejecting "right-wingers" from school boards, while today an overtly partisan NEA supports parent-derisive politicians while declaring opposition to "anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) rhetoric."  The NEA demands parents embrace one political view or be banished.  Such partisanship formed the Biden administration's now-defunct National Parents and Families Engagement Council.  Lamenting that conservative groups "attacked" efforts at parental engagement, partisan educators ironically called for "depoliticization" while pushing intrinsically political CRT-inspired diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) and LGBT activist curricula.

California State Official Escorted Out Of Heated School Board Meeting On Gender Policy.  California's superintendent of public instruction was escorted out of a heated school board meeting on Thursday after he argued against a new policy requiring schools to tell parents about student gender transitions.  The Chino Valley Unified School District just east of Los Angeles approved the gender policy on Thursday after several hours of debate.  The new policy requires teachers to inform parents if their children begin using names and pronouns that do not match the ones on their birth certificate or if a student requests to use the school bathroom of the opposite gender.  California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond showed up at Thursday's packed meeting and addressed the school board.  [Tweet]

California school superintendent is thrown out of meeting after opposing new rule.  Parents reacted with cheers of 'leave our kids alone' as a California superintendent was thrown out of a school board hearing for aggressively opposing a policy forcing teachers to notify parents if their child is transgender.  Tony Thurmond, the California State Superintendent of Schools, was booted from the Chino Valley Unified school board meeting on Thursday after going over his allotted time to vigorously attack the policy.  Over 300 people filled the main hall at Don Lugo High School in Chino, California to weigh in at the hearing, which was marked with hostility as Thurmond clashed with the school board's president, Sonja Shaw.

School District Bans Parents From Board Meeting on Policy Restricting Parental Rights.  The largest school district in Maryland will limit access for parents at an upcoming meeting where it will discuss a policy that bars parents from opting their children out of lessons on gender identity and sexuality.  Montgomery County Public Schools is set to hold a meeting Tuesday evening, and instead of its usual policy of opening the meeting to the public, the district said in a statement it is limiting it to "scheduled speakers, invited attendees, and other guests."  The district cited concerns over "safety" as reason for the limitation.

Can America Survive as a Self-Governing People?  [Scroll down]  But the downward spiral of student achievement began well before school shutdowns.  Math and reading scores began declining in 2012 with the implementation of left-leaning Common Core Curriculum Standards.  Traditional math has been replaced by Common Core math, which requires a series of mind-boggling processes to do even simple calculations.  Memorizing basic math facts is discouraged now.  The impact of Common Core math was evident in the 2015 NAEP results.  For the first time since the test was administered in the early 1990s, math scores of fourth- and eighth-graders dropped.  It is not surprising that fewer students are reading for fun.  Common Core threw out great classical books that teach children morals and patriotism.  They were replaced with books such as The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which depicts the "oppression of women" and the "tyranny and violation brought upon them by the men in their lives."

Ohio moms react to 'vicious' school reporting them to FBI after exposing critical race theory: complaint.  An Ohio school allegedly launched a bullying campaign against two moms, accusing them of being "threats" after they exposed left-wing bias in the school, according to a complaint.  Amy Gonzalez and Andrea Gross said Columbus Academy denied re-enrollment to their children after the parents started asking questions about the school's curriculum and fiduciary compliance matters, according to the complaint filed on June 12.  Their requests for transparency were met with an "overreaction" from the administration, the moms said.  "And so when I say an overreaction, I mean an overreaction of calling the police on us, alerting almost 900 faculty members that they had alerted the FBI that we were dangerous.  Just things that were so far beyond the pale that it would lead one to ask why?  Why is the reaction so extreme?" Gross said.

Female Student Is Denied Diploma At Philly Graduation For Doing A Little Dance, Applause Was BANNED At Ceremony.  A high school graduate in Philadelphia has spoken out after the principal allegedly refused to give her a graduation certificate because she danced across the stage in celebration.  Hafsah Abdur-Rahman, 17, was excited to take part in the ceremony with her classmates at Philadelphia High School for Girls on June 9.  Her name was called out and she did a viral dance move called the 'Griddy' on her way to collecting her high school diploma.  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
This is what eventually happens in a society whose citizens have no self-control and no sense of decorum:  Apparently the celebratory dancing in previous years got so wild that the school had to ban celebrations entirely.  The occasion isn't all that sacred — the faculty is only present so you can heap praise on them!  Just put my diploma in the mail, and dispense with the ceremony.

School requires young children to create pagan idols!  A school in Ohio has been warned that its kachina doll worship lessons are illegal.  The fight is over a classroom demand that students make a kachina doll, which "were used by native Americans as sacred idols," because it fails to follow the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.  "The law does not support the school's compulsion of student's speech under these circumstances," explained John Monaghan, a lawyer with the American Center for Law & Justice.  "Accordingly, the school's decision presents a matter of great constitutional concern for the ACLJ.  The instruction to make the doll interferes with the Mutti son's First Amendment rights as a student."  According to Front Lines Ohio, the letter went to the Lexington school after Amie Mutti explained, "On the week of February 13th, 2023, our eleven-year-old son was instructed by his fifth-grade teacher during Social Studies class to make a kachina doll.  This is no ordinary doll.  These dolls were used by native Americans as sacred idols."

University of California plans to hire illegal immigrants.  The University of California Board of Regents recently voted to move forward with plans to hire illegal immigrant students for campus jobs, despite federal law seeming to prohibit it.  The new policy directs a "working group" to come up with implementation plans by the end of 2023.  The change comes after scholars with the UCLA Center for Law and Immigration Policy, Hiroshi Motmura and Ahilan Arulanaltham, published a letter that argued the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 does not apply to states.  Arulanaltham told The College Fix via email that he hopes to be involved in implementation of the new "Equitable Student Employment Opportunities" policy.

Can we forgive these "mistakes?".  At issue is yet another example of failed liberal policies that have resulted in the loss of life and the dramatic reduction of safety in public schools.  This National Review article focuses on Denver's schools, but this is part of a pattern that shows up across the nation.  After the George Floyd riots, there was a nationwide movement to kick police or "school resource officers" out of public schools.  There were lots of warnings that this was a terrible idea and that it would be a disaster, but activists assured everybody that the presence, not absence of police was the real safety problem in public schools.  They were, of course, very wrong. [...] Police wound up roaming the halls of the public schools in the first place for a serious reason; it wasn't because the White power structure was determined to seek out and oppress Black and Brown students.  It was because Black, Brown, White, and every other color student was being put at risk by some very bad apples going to those schools.

Biden's Education Department Tells Nation's Schools to Go Back to Race-Based Discipline.  The school year is over, but a new race-based missive from Washington will loom over teachers and students all summer.  Just before Memorial Day, federal education officials issued a "Dear Colleague" letter telling the nation's educators that the Biden administration is resurrecting a policy of investigating and coercing schools to adopt more lenient discipline policies.  This policy originated under President Barack Obama's administration but was rescinded in 2018 by a commission led by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.  The Federal Commission on School Safety found that parents and local educators are better at deciding when a student's disruptive actions warrant suspension or expulsion than are quotas handed down from Washington.

College Is Now Free For Illegals In Minnesota.  In an unprecedented move, the state of Minnesota has unveiled its "North Star Promise" program, offering free college tuition to all residents whose families earn less than $80,000 annually, irrespective of their immigration status.  While some celebrate this as an inclusive initiative, it raises pertinent questions about the fairness, fiscal responsibility, and potential long-term consequences of such a policy.  The program's eligibility criteria offer another point of contention.  To qualify, students must graduate from a Minnesota high school, live in the state for at least 12 months without being enrolled in college more than half-time, and maintain good academic standing.

The Editor says...
That's how it starts, anyway.  Pretty soon, the part about "good academic standing" will be long forgotten, and the $80,000 annual income ceiling will be raised.

The University of Minnesota is offering a summer internship program to students, but only if they're not white.  I couldn't care less that a woke university is being openly racist by excluding white students from their Multicultural Summer Research Opportunities Program.  It's what we've come to expect from the left, and I'm just here to show it to you.  [Tweet]  Yup, just openly excluding an entire race from the summer internship program. [...] They think this exclusion of whites somehow makes it more fair for the other races.  They actually think that.  It's dumb, but I'm smart enough to sit here and try to understand these people instead of getting upset.  They honestly think excluding whites is progressive.

Social Emotional Learning: Don't Be Fooled By The Title.  The ultimate goal of SEL is to shift the values, beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews of students.  The goal is to psychologically manipulate students to accept the progressive ideology that supports gender fluidity, sexual preference exploration, and systemic oppression.  SEL uses a framework that addresses five competencies: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness.  These seemingly innocuous skills are very deceptive to most people.  The problem is these skills are delivered to students through an "equity lens" aka the viewpoint of someone who believes America is systemically racist and oppressive.

California Democrats want gender-neutral bathrooms mandatory in all K-12 schools.  A California state lawmaker has introduced legislation that would make the Golden State the first in the nation to require schools to have at least one gender-neutral bathroom on campus.  State Sen. Josh Newman (D) introduced SB 760 last week, which would require all K-12 public and charter schools to have at least one genderless bathroom for student use amid ever-increasing controversy over the place of public schools when a student claims to identify with a gender different from their biological sex.

Colorado Mom Sues School After Secret Trans Group Recruits Her Daughter and Does 'Unthinkable Things'.  A Colorado momma bear is suing Wellington Middle School in Fort Collins, Colo., after learning they pulled her sixth-grade daughter into a secret transgender recruiting meeting disguised as an "art club."  "When she got there, she very quickly learned it was actually a gender and sexuality awareness club," Erin Lee told Fox News.  "The art teacher had invited in an outside presenter into the classroom that day," Lee continued.  "And this woman did absolutely unthinkable things with the kids."  "What you hear in here, stays in here," the mystery groomer allegedly told the kids, suggesting that telling their parents wasn't "safe."  Lee further disclosed that the guest presenter informed the kids they were transgender if they didn't feel totally comfy with their gender.  "She explained to my daughter that if she is not 100 percent comfortable in her female body, then she's transgender," Lee stated.

First Grade Girl Was Forced To Perform Sex Act In Class, Was Recorded On iPad, School Tries To Cover It Up.  "The school is CLOSED today, May 8, because of the protests.  The school has also disabled all of its social media accounts and is completely locked down.  According to the story from Fox News, a 6-year-old girl was forced by a six-year-old boy to go under his desk and perform an unnamed sex act on him, in the middle of class, while the teacher was in the room and supposedly "distracted" teaching another student.  Another little boy used a school-issued iPad to RECORD the assault and the school only found out when they discovered the kids put a lock on the iPad, forcing their tech guys to hack back into it.  According to the school, they notified CPS and the police, and since that's all that was required of them legally, they didn't inform the parents.  [Video clip]

Texas school district hid sexual assault of 6-year-old.  Students at a Plainview, TX Elementary School won't be going to class on Monday.  The South Elementary School is being closed temporarily due to teachers claiming to feel threatened.  Why, you might wonder, would they feel that way?  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the School administrators, teachers, and School District officials were covering up the fact that a first-grade student was forced to perform a sexual act on another student IN CLASS and the act was recorded on an iPad.  The iPad was seized, the "inappropriate" recording was viewed by the adults, child services investigated, and the incident was swept under the rug.  It wasn't until the little girl had recurring nightmares and refused to go to school that her parents got involved and began protesting the school.

The Editor says...
Plainview makes Lubbock look like Dallas.  Parents in Plainview aren't gonna sit still for this, especially if the teacher has some perverse "gender confusion" agenda at work.

Over 25 school employees arrested for sexual misconduct with minors in just one week.  More than 25 school employees were arrested for sexual misconduct with students over the past week alone — including a teacher who bombarded a boy with 600 text messages and another who performed oral sex in a classroom.  In what has become a surging nationwide epidemic, teachers, counselors, and other staffers — both men and an increasing number of women — are targeting students for sexual gratification.  Indiana high school teacher Paige Simon, 28, was arrested last week for allegedly touching a male student's groin in front of classmates and sending him 600 text messages — including some that contained explicit language and discussion of sex toys.  When the 15-year-old stopped corresponding with her, authorities said Simon showed up to one of his baseball games to continue her pursuit.  The victim's parents discovered the trove of messages between the two and contacted authorities.

Pitt diversity office hosts 'students of color' graduation ceremony.  Racial minority students at the University of Pittsburgh recently had the opportunity to participate in a separate graduation ceremony to celebrate "students of color."  The event, titled "The Gathering," is a "special graduation ceremony to acknowledge and celebrate graduating students of color," according to The Pitt News.  The College Fix could not find a public listing of this commencement ceremony on the university's event calendar.  University officials said the event, which did not include white participants, is a "chance to build unity."  "It's a chance to build unity and community with one another," Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Vice Chancellor Clyde Pickett told the student newspaper.

The Editor says...
If racial segregation can "build unity and community with one another," why was there such a battle over it in the 1960's?

Chicago Area High School Slammed Over Segregated Math Courses for 'Black' and 'Latinx' Students Only.  A Chicago area high school has come under fire after it was discovered the school is offering segregated mathematics classes for "Black" and "Latinx" students only.  Evanston Township High School District 202 (ETHS) is providing the racially segregated courses in calculus, pre-calculus, and algebra.  ETHS's math curriculum for the next school year suggests that the segregated classes will continue.  One of ETHS's pre-calculus courses describes, "[t]he course is restricted to students who identify as Black male students."  While another pre-calculus course mentions that it is only for "Latinx" students, and a third course does not have any restrictions based on gender or race.

America's Transgender Craze.  [Scroll down]  Women now dominate the presidencies in the Ivy League and, more generally, women make up about 30% of college presidents.  No doubt, the feminization of higher education administration will only continue as women increasingly dominate the campus.  Today college women outnumber men by 14%, and while college enrollment is dropping in general, this decline is sharpest among men.  Indeed, men are now merely 41% of those enrolled in higher education, and if one subtracts international students who are disproportionately male, the American male college student faces extinction.  Women are now even a majority of students in medical school, long a bastion of maleness.

A Colorado School District Is Concealing Student Gender Transitions From Parents.  In recent years, several school districts have been ousted for keeping parents in the dark about their child's gender transitions at school.  As Townhall has covered, school districts in Virginia, Kansas, and California were exposed for concealing this information from parents.  And last year, Republican Sen. Tim Scott (SC) introduced legislation that would prevent schools from hiding information about a student's gender identity from their parents.  Documents obtained from parental rights organization Parents Defending Education and reviewed by Townhall show that Pueblo School District 60 in Colorado has guidelines to keep students' "gender identity" secret from their parents.

Pharaoh on the Potomac.  For too long we have assumed that we can live with the "public/private partnership," as it is called.  That pairing of public and private is never a partnership — it is only dictatorship.  Once government has wormed its way into our affairs — as it has done in education, business, and now energy production — it becomes the dominant player.  Few can now recall the heated struggle of the early 1960s to keep the federal government out of public education.  At that time, it was still understood that government aid to education came with menacing strings — the right to determine what is taught and how, and by whom.  Most now assume that the federal government has a rightful or "natural" role in determining curricula, setting standards, testing, and other matters, when in fact it was only 60 years ago when D.C. had no role at all and the Department of Education did not exist.  (It was created in 1979 under President Carter.)  What, after all, is the proper role of a federal "department" of education?  Of all federal departments, it is the one most needful of being abolished.

New Mexico School Boards Association Administrator: Parents Have No Rights In Public Education.  A New Mexico School Boards Association instructor sees no role for parents in guiding their children's public school education.  On Tuesday, the parental rights group "Freedom Families United" published audio tape of a New Mexican school board administrator speaking to members of local school boards.  "Parents do not have a fundamental right to tell you how public school teaches their child," New Mexico School Boards Association Trainer Andrew Sanchez said in December.  "Parental rights end when you decide to send your kids to public school.  What you teach this generation that will soon be voting are going to be instrumental to the future of us as a democracy and as society goes forward."

For their personal feel-goodery, the Denver School Board shoots three, kills one, and endangers thousands at East High.  Like many school boards, the Denver School Board years ago asked the police for help in quelling violence in the schools.  The police succeeded to some extent.  So far, so good, though it's a poor reflection on our society, our schools, our students, and their parents.  In 1975, about 1% of schools had cops onsite.  By a few years ago, it was over 50%.  The presence of cops did help.  But the Denver School Board was disappointed that the encounters by the school police involved a disproportionate number of students of color.  That was no surprise to anyone paying attention to crime statistics.  A disproportionate number of police encounters in society at large involve people of color, and so it's natural that it would be the same in the schools.  All serious observers know that's because a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by people of color. [...] For example, it has been well documented that Black people commit murder at roughly seven times the rate of white people.  Most people murdered by Blacks are themselves Black.  The response of the Denver School Board was not to focus on the message that a disproportionate number of violent crimes are by students of color, but to shoot the messenger — the police.

How 'Progressive Discipline' Turned Ontario Schools into a Battleground.  A 200-pound Ontario middle schooler was getting ready to pummel his classmate when a group of teachers escorted him to an office where they hoped to calm him down — instead, he proceeded to ram into the two adults, a man and a woman, for the better part of an hour, leaving them shaken and bruised.  He never faced any consequences.  "You should have seen their bruises.  The guy's back is totally messed up.  The girl still has arm issues," Margaret, a teacher with over a decade of experience in Ontario's public schools, told National Review.  Worried about the potential repercussions, the teachers who were assaulted were not able to physically restrain the student, nor did senior school administrators expel him.  "All he got was an in-school suspension.  His mom came to pick him up, asked if he wanted dumplings, and they left.  There were no consequences," Margaret said.

A teacher tells students to call her 'mom' to encourage their sharing secrets.  Up until quite recently, the teacher's job was to pass on concrete knowledge to equip children to be productive adults and good citizens.  That was the beginning and end of a teacher's job.  Then, states passed laws that imposed on teachers the obligation to file a report if they thought a parent was abusing a child.  That was a reasonable thing to do, given that a teacher might be the only other adult in a child's life and, therefore, would be the one who noticed bruises or malnutrition.  Somehow, though, this responsibility morphed into a cadre of teachers deciding that all parents are potential abusers — not physical abusers, but potential mental abusers.  And what constitutes mental abuse?  Parents who challenge those teachers who deviate from the hard work of teaching concrete information (math, reading competency, etc.) and slide effortlessly into celebrating their own life choices in the classroom — and the more deviant, the better.

School district forced to pay over 100K in legal fees after banning moms from exposing pornographic materials.  A school district was forced to pay over $100,000 in legal fees after banning moms from exposing pornographic material at school board meetings.  Forsyth County School District [FSC] agreed to pay attorney's fees in a federal lawsuit brought by a group of parents who were censored at school board meetings.  The group, called the Mama Bears, claimed in the federal lawsuit that their First Amendment rights were violated and won the case due to the legal representation of the Institute for Free Speech.  The Mama Bears settled a federal lawsuit against the Georgia school district after one of the group's members was barred from reading sexually explicit excerpts at school board meetings.  FCS will pay the Mama Bears nominal damages of $17.91 and their attorneys $107,500.

California Democrats want gender-neutral bathrooms mandatory in all K-12 schools.  A California state lawmaker has introduced legislation that would make the Golden State the first in the nation to require schools to have at least one gender-neutral bathroom on campus.  State Sen. Josh Newman (D) introduced SB 760 last week, which would require all K-12 public and charter schools to have at least one genderless bathroom for student use amid ever-increasing controversy over the place of public schools when a student claims to identify with a gender different from their biological sex.

Third grader victorious after battle with school over 'Jesus Loves Me' mask.  Third grader Lydia Booth said it was "sad" and "confusing" when her Mississippi school district told her she couldn't wear a face mask with the words "Jesus Loves Me" on it.  Lydia's mom, Jennifer, said she was equally confused when Lydia told her what had happened.  "I was looking around, and all these kids had words all over their masks," she told Fox News Digital.

Iowa School Board Member Says [It's] 'Not the school's job to teach what parents want'.  An Iowa school board member posted on Facebook on Tuesday that public education is not to teach kids what parents want, but rather what the community needs.  "The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want.  It is to teach them what society needs them to know.  The client is not the parent, but the community," Linn-Mar school board member Rachel Wall posted.  The Facebook post garnered much pushback in the comment section.  The post received over 100 comments.

Texas Medical School Removes Pictures Of White Graduating Students.  On the heels of a lawsuit brought against Texas medical schools for violating civil rights law through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, another Texas medical school reportedly targeted white medical students by taking down their graduation photos.  Texas A&M Medical School removed a picture that was 'prominently displayed' at the entrance of the school that had white males graduating from the institution.  Texas A&M's medical school ranks 80th in the nation, according to U.S News & World Report.  The decision to take down pictures of white male students follows other concerning developments at America's medical schools.

UNC Chapel Hill Art Club Welcomes All Students but White Ones.  Attendees of a southern college are invited to join a creative club — unless they're Caucasian.  At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an art organization has been formed. [...] More from the school paper:  ["]The all-BIPOC art collective, which officially started last fall, hosts ... community meetings and 'paint-and-sips' ...["]  Cutting out one color is curious.  Art might be said to be the ultimate realm of free expression, but the group's still trying to stick to a color scheme.  Chapel Hill is far from alone:  [Numerous links]

Obsessing over Racism.  Consider, for example, how Williams College recently ended its policy of requiring all graduates to pass a swim test, or if they failed the test, take a swimming course.  The reason for the cancellation: being able to swim was deemed racist and thus ill-suited to the college's commitment to racial diversity.  Specifically, D. Clinton Williams, director of the college's Pathways for Inclusive Excellence condemned such tests as a vestige of American's horrific racism since those unable to swim. and thereby required to take swimming instruction, were disproportionately Black.  This equity may turn deadly.  According to CDC data, Blacks are 1.5 times more likely to drown than Whites.  This is particularly true for youngsters.  For children aged 5 to 9, the drowning ratio is 2.6; for children aged 10-14, it is 3.6 times higher.  Most shockingly, among those aged 10-14, the ratio in public swimming pools is 7.6 times higher for Blacks.  Hardly surprisingly, the CDC advises that swimming lessons can help prevent death by drowning.

State University Hosts DEI Seminar, Consigns Caucasians to the 'White' Table.  Not long ago, America was headed for unprecedented unity.  But the tables have turned — into segregated ones.  Case in point:  Portland State University's recent symposium on diversity, equity and inclusion.  Per a slideshow posted online by the school, everyone was welcome — at their correspondent, color-coded tables.

ASU Wokes Itself in the Foot with 'Black Male Privilege'.  I have, on several occasions, warned the younger, woke, angry generation that one day, the machine would come for them.  And lo and behold, it has.  Although I have to admit, I didn't think it would be this soon. [...] Because intersectionality works best with a complicated field of eligible candidates with a broad range of grievances, it must also have a steady diet of people to find guilty of the insult du jour.  And black men are now on the list of potential offenders.  Arizona State University has issued a checklist dealing with Black Male Privilege.  No, your eyes do not deceive you.  Black men at ASU must now find ways to address their privilege.  If you are a black male reading this and thinking, "Wait privilege only applies to white people," well, no, sir.  Not anymore, at least at ASU.  Wokeism and Equity are like the Island of Dr. Moreau:  none escape.

Mother Files Lawsuit Against Ohio School District, Alleging Her 8th-Grade Daughter Was Strip Searched.  A mother has filed a lawsuit against an Ohio school district after the school nurse's aide allegedly strip-searched her 8th-grade daughter.  The mother filed a federal lawsuit against the Willoughby-Eastlake Schools Board of Education and three Eastlake School Middle School employees on December 28.  The incident allegedly took place on September 27, when the Eastlake Middle student was asked by another student to put a vape pen in her gym locker.  The lawsuit says that the student "begrudgingly agreed."

School hides National Merit awards for students to promote "equity".  Located in Fairfax County, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has long been ranked as one of the premiere high schools in the nation.  It's a "magnet" charter school that focuses on the sciences and STEM curricula.  But for several years now you wouldn't have guessed that based on the school's record of students receiving National Merit awards.  That's because none of the students reportedly received those honors.  Except that's not true at all.  The top students in the school did indeed receive National Merit awards, but two administrators at TJ have been withholding notifications of the awards from students.  They reportedly did this as part of their "equitable grading policy."  And the parents of students who were not credited with those achievements are seeing red.

Former New York Teacher Sentenced to Community Service for Illegally Vaccinating Teen.  The former New York teacher who was accused of illegally injecting her son's 17-year-old friend with a COVID-19 vaccine on New Year's Eve has avoided jail time, according to reports.  Laura Russo, then a science teacher at Herricks High School, was arrested on Jan. 1 at her Sea Cliff home, where the illegal injection took place.  Nassau County police said they were notified after the boy left Russo's home and told his mother what had happened.

Bad Words: California Colleges Push Students To Purge 'Harmful' Phrases Like 'Brown Bag Lunch'.  If you've ever used the phrases "brown bag lunch" or "long time, no see," congratulations: You're a racist, according to Stanford University.  That's the judgment of the university's IT Department, which is rolling out its "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative," an effort to purge "potentially harmful terms" from the university's websites.  The guide cautions that the phrase "blind study" is "ableist" and that saying "balls to the wall" inappropriately "attributes personality traits to anatomy."  Stanford isn't alone in its linguistic purge.  Down the coast, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo warns incoming students against saying "father and mother" or "boyfriend and girlfriend," according to a set of instruction slides for student orientation leaders obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.  Suggested alternatives to mother and father include "supporter," while the university prefers "partner, beloved or lover" to boyfriend and girlfriend.  Universities and other elite institutions have increasingly embraced "woke" language in a bid to appear progressive.

Welcome to Stanford Kindergarten.  Perhaps you've seen the story on the Wall Street Journal editorial page today (or in some other outlet where it is booming this morning) about Stanford University's "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative," which reads like a parody of our idiotic woke university culture today.  But no — Stanford employed a task force that worked for months to advocate that no one on campus use the word "American" because "This term often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas..."

White Students Are Prohibited From Applying to This UNC Fellowship.  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — whose affirmative action program, along with that of Harvard University, is under review by the Supreme Court — sponsors the Fellowship for Exploring Research in Nutrition, which accepts applications exclusively from students who are "Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC)," according to the program's website.  Fellows earn thousands of dollars, live in on-campus apartments paid for by the university, and receive generous mentorship opportunities, including letters of recommendation.  "The field of nutrition is overwhelmingly comprised of white researchers," an ad for the fellowship states.  "Increased BIPOC representation in food policy research is critical for developing effective, equitable, comprehensive, and culturally competent policies that address nutrition-related health disparities."

Students of color allowed 'safe space' without white males at Pomona College.  A Students of Color Alliance lounge that requires students fill out a form listing what identity-based group they belong to before being granted electronic ID card swipe access to the venue has been established at an elite private college in Southern California.  Pomona College administrators approved the swipe-access decision in November to address student protests after easy access to the lounge had been somewhat restricted for a few years due to COVID-related occupancy rules, The Student Life reported Dec. 2.

Texas Public School District Mocks Concerned Mother, Then Charges Her $7,000.  A mother of a middle school student was shocked when the Joshua Independent School District in Joshua, Texas, charged her over $7,000 in public records fees to disclose how many bullying reports the district had received since 2015.  The Goldwater Institute first reported this outrageous demand for a simple sum of documents.  The mother is combatting the exorbitant fee via an appeal to the Texas Attorney General's Office.  The mother, Terrie Chumchal, filed the request following the district's lack of aid over a two-year period of vicious bullying in which her son repeatedly tried to obtain help from his school, Loflin Middle School.  Chumchal told The Daily Signal that her son suffered several severe instances of bullying, often regarding his Korean heritage, over his sixth and seventh grade years — including a violent choking and sustaining a ruptured eardrum.  After receiving word of these incidents, Chumchal learned that the school's closed-circuit television cameras had recorded some of these instances.

Former Loudoun County Superintendent Indicted over Handling of Sexual-Assault Cases.  Loudoun County Public Schools former superintendent Scott Ziegler and public information officer Wayde Byard were indicted by a special grand jury amid an eight-month investigation into the district's mishandling of two sexual assault cases.  A Loudoun County judge unsealed the indictments on Monday [12/12/2022].  Ziegler was charged with one count of false publication, one count of prohibited conduct, and one count of penalizing an employee for a court appearance.

Loudoun County School Board Fires Superintendent Over What Grand Jury Says Is 'Stunning Lack Of Openness'.  Loudoun County School Board members voted to fire embattled superintendent Scott Ziegler after a special grand jury report said he lied about a rape committed by a transgender student.  The board voted unanimously on Dec. 6 to fire Ziegler without cause, the Virginia school district's spokesman, Wayde Byard, told The Epoch Times.  The move came after a special grand jury in Loudoun County released a 91-page report on Dec. 5 condemning Ziegler and other school officials for displaying a "stunning lack of openness" about the incidents.

Extreme Danger: "Boring" Election Issues.  Public Interest Legal Foundation, is representing two parents in Maryland challenging a school board that is allowing children to vote.  Maryland allows children to vote as young as sixth grade for a government seat on the school board that gets to vote.  The seat is held by a child from the school who gets to vote on all the school board issues.  It is part of this broader architecture to normalize things like that, to infantilize elections, and to shift power away from adults and Americans.  It is not an accident.

The Loudoun County, VA Grand Jury Has Unsealed Its Findings.  On Monday, the grand jury that had been investigating the incidents involving a student in the Loudoun County School District who had committed acts of sexual abuse in two schools and against different students made its findings available to the public.  The website Loudoun Now reports that the jury had been empaneled since April as requested by Attorney General Jason Miyares.  Miyares was acting on a request from Governor Glenn Youngkin, who made it an executive order on his first day in office.  At issue was the way the district handled a situation in which a student sexually assaulted a girl at Stonebridge High School in May of 2021.  After being transferred to Broad Run High School, he assaulted another girl in October of that year.

Oregon school board takes meetings online to hide from angry parents.  The North Clackamas School District in Oregon is only the latest in a long string of districts where parents have grown fed up with the school's woke leftist policies being approved by the school board.  Parents have been showing up for school board meetings with a list of grievances over inappropriate, sexualized material in the schools, gender-bending indoctrination, and policies intended to keep secrets from parents regarding their children's development.  After one recent meeting, the board decided to respond, but not by addressing the parents' concerns.  They instead announced that all future meetings would be held "online," depriving the parents of the opportunity to be heard.  As a result, the school is now losing more students and the board members may face the possibility of being removed from their positions.

All New York Schools Must Ditch Their Native American Mascots by the End of the Academic Year.  The New York Department of Education has given an ultimatum to schools in the state:  get rid of your Native American team names, mascots, and logos by the end of the school year or face severe penalties, including the loss of state aid.  "Arguments that community members support the use of such imagery or that it is 'respectful' to Native Americans are no longer tenable," the department said in the memo, issued Thursday.  Why not?  Who says it's not "tenable"?  And why dismiss the usual overwhelming community support for a Native American mascot so cavalierly?

University of California announces flu vaccine mandate for all campuses.  The University of California has announced that it is instituting an annual flu vaccine mandate on top of its existing COVID-19 vaccine mandate, forcing students, faculty, staff and other academic appointees to open themselves up to the many dangerous side effects of the jab.  The new mandate applies to all nine of its campuses, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Francisco.  Although the deadline set by the university system for compliance is not until December 1, UC San Diego (UCSD) moved its deadline to November 18.  Students were notified of the mandate on November 8, giving them just 10 days to comply.  Those who fail to get the flu shot must join those who were unwilling to get the COVID-19 vaccine in wearing masks and submitting to routine resting.

New conservative school board in South Carolina bans CRT, fires superintendent.  Accountability arrived in Berkeley County, South Carolina — or was it a "political witch hunt"?  It depends on whether one talks to the former board chair who got pushed out in last week's elections, or to the new members elected by angry parents in the district.  In two hours, the new board fired the district's superintendent, their attorney, and banned critical-race theory in the schools. [...] People in the community decided that they didn't like the direction the school board and education system had taken.  They organized on that basis to redirect policy significantly in another direction, and it turns out that their ideas were pretty popular with local voters.  And honestly, the speed in which they made those changes makes democracy look [very] effective, especially at the local level.

Washington state school district appoints board director who once labeled cops 'pigs,' encouraged riots.  A Washington state woman who has a history of anti-police statements and once seemed to be encouraging people to riot has been appointed to fill a director vacancy on a city school board.  Talauna Reed was sworn in during an Olympia School Board meeting on Thursday, October 27, according to a press release.

University of York gives students a random code instead of a name-based email to be "inclusive," avoid "offense".  The University of York in England traditionally used the first letters of students' and staff's first name and last name to generate official emails and usernames.  It has changed the practice and is now using random letters and numbers to identify students to be "more inclusive."  The move has been criticized by Free Speech Union founder Toby Young: "This seems like a parody of political correctness gone mad; the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a Netflix series satirizing the ideological capture of universities by woke cultists." [...] The new system will not use vowels or the letter "y" to avoid offensive words.  The university has asked students to report combinations they feel should not be used.

Assistant principals reportedly let four armed teens INTO locked school because police were outside.  In a scene that would not have even made the final cut for "Idiocracy," four masked teenagers with guns were allegedly given access to a high school by two of its administrators who believed it was unsafe for them to stay outside because — wait for it — there were police officers nearby.  On September 14, security officers at Garret Morgan High School in Cleveland, Ohio, spotted the four teens approaching the school and proceeded to call 911.  During the call, multiple people could be heard yelling to keep the school locked down and prohibit the gang from entering.  "Do not let them, do not let anybody through that door, people," one man can be heard saying in the call recording obtained by Fox8. [...] Despite performing what should have been the obvious action by normally thinking people, two school administrators, Christopher Kane and Carolyn Elias, reportedly allowed the four teens to enter the school via the gymnasium and dining area.  "Two assistant principals from leadership let the males into the building," one witness wrote in a statement.

No! Boston University creates a new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate.  Researchers at Boston University have performed gain-of-function research using recombinant DNA.  They combined the spike protein from the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus with the original strain of the virus and came up with an artificially created variant with an 80% mortality rate in mice.  In mice the Omicron variant causes mild illness, not vast mortality.  When I first read the article I literally could not believe it.  And I mean that seriously.  It was too insane to believe.  But the Daily Mail has the goods, linking to the research itself, which indeed does say that scientists have developed such a virus.  With an 80% mortality rate.  Ugh!  The virus does not limit itself to infecting mice, either.  It is 5 times more infectious in humans than the Omicron virus from which it was derived.  Are they insane?

Celebrity Drag Queen Serves As Crossing Guard For Denver Students To Promote Safety.  A Denver school featured a drag queen as a crossing guard in celebration of National Walk and Bike to School Day, according to school social media posts.  Drag entertainer Dixie Krystals helped students cross the street at Denver Public School on Oct. 12 as a part of the school's Walk & Roll to School Day, according to social media posts.  Krystals was included as one of the school's "celebrity crossing guards" in honor of Pedestrian Safety Month.  While at the event, Krystal is seen in a Twitter video donning a yellow safety vest, blowing a whistle and waving several students across the street.  "Drag queens are known for their lewd and sexualized performances, and they have no place in or around schools," Parents Defending Education Investigative Fellow Alex Nester told the Daily Caller News Foundation.  "Yet, for whatever reason, schools have been insistent on giving children access to these performers.  It's immoral, distracting and confusing for children."

Biden administration demands Alabama embrace genderless schools or else, but we aren't giving in.  Undeterred by repeated losses, the Biden administration's war on red states and our "Neanderthal thinking" rages on.  This month, my colleagues and I are fighting Biden and his comrades at the United States Department of Agriculture in court to protect the right of states to run their public schools as they see fit.  This time, the fight isn't over curriculum or masking — it's whether states still possess the paltry authority to require boys to use the boys' bathroom at school.  The United States Constitution leaves no doubt as to the states' broad authority over their own public schools, but the Biden administration supposes that everything — even schoolchildren — has a price.

Woke Amherst College introduces dystopian anonymous survey that will force all students to wear masks in class if SINGLE person requests them.  A woke liberal arts college has introduced a new masking policy that would require all students in a class to wear face masks if a single person requests them using an anonymous survey.  Under the new policy at Amherst College in Massachusetts, each student and teacher would be provided an anonymous survey in which they could express their views on whether they want a mask mandate in their classroom.  The new guidance was created by Catherine Epstein, provost and dean of faculty at the Massachusetts school, who wrote to her colleagues on September 29 that the new policy will go into effect on October 17.

A Danish City Built Google Into Its Schools, Then Banned It.  The small Danish city of Helsingør is not a place usually in national news headlines.  Until now, most visitors come here to catch the ferry to nearby Sweden or to visit the castle where Shakespeare's famous tragedy Hamlet was set.  But the news crews arrived with the start of the new school term in August, to capture the chaos caused when local schools banned Google.  Google's education products — its Chromebook laptops and school software — are deeply embedded in Denmark's education system.  Around half of the country's schools use Google, and some students in Helsingør get their first Chromebook at the age of 6.  So when Helsingør banned those products on July 14, the result was widespread disruption when schools reopened the following month.  Some local children complained they were so unused to pen and paper they couldn't read their own handwriting.  Denmark's data protection regulator found that local schools did not really understand what Google was doing with students' data and as a result blocked around 8,000 students from using the Chromebooks that had become a central part of their daily education.

Sixth Graders Protect Their Fellow Students From a Creepy Teacher.  What do you do when your teacher is a pervert and no one will listen?  You take matters into your own hands.  According to a report in The Boston Globe, sixth-graders, no less, at Davisville Middle School in Rhode Island had had enough of their teacher not only being cruel to the boys but also with the way he treated the girls.  He leered at them, gave them pet names, and asked them to dance.  He even allegedly asked one girl to take off her shoes and show him her toes.  The unnamed teacher, who was also a coach, told the kids he had dealt with parents' complaints before and was not worried.

Dismantling the Transgender Establishment.  The kids may be back in school, but this year parents are more fearful thanks in part to the courageous parents in Loudoun County Virginia who nearly two years ago brought to national attention the transgender policy, pro-LGBT Sex Ed, and divisive CRT indoctrination in public schools.  Although their exercise of free speech earned them threats from Biden's increasingly militarized DoJ, more parents nationwide learned that their kids, from K-12 and college, are likely to be indoctrinated with radical leftist woke ideology, including the absurd idea that sexual identity is a personal choice.  In Virginia, the top issue remains transgender bathroom policy.  A clear majority of parents showing up at school board meetings the last two years don't want biological males who identify as female in girl's private areas and vice-versa.  All legislators should take heed of the lesson learned by Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe (D Va.) who lost a seemingly shoo-in governor's race to novice politician Glenn Youngkin (R) after telling concerned parents they have no say in their kid's education!

Pennsylvania mom rips school district's 'double standard' for allowing 'Satanic Club' event.  [Scroll down] "It doesn't matter what any child believes, or their family believes... this is public school," she continued.  "We send our children to school to get an education, not for all this other stuff that is meant for outside of school."  Crider said many students are "not okay" with the district allowing the Satanic Temple event, and those advocating for the event are not members of the school district.  She also mentioned she was even silenced when trying to sound the alarm during a school board meeting.  "They cut my mic off, I was mad," Crider said.

DC Mayor Says No Virtual Learning, Giving Unvaccinated Black Teens Zero Alternative Options.  The District of Columbia does not appear to have a contingency plan for unvaccinated students, who are banned from attending schools in person this fall after the first 20 days, according to comments made by Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser Thursday.  During a press conference, Bowser, a Democrat, admitted there are no alternative options, including virtual learning, for students who cannot attend school due to the District's vaccine mandate, meaning unvaccinated children will effectively be left without an education.  Over 40% of blacks ages 12-17 are not vaccinated, according to city data.

DC School District's CV-19 Vaccine Mandate Targets Black Students.  The District of Columbia Public School District is an outlier among US schools by mandating COVID-19 vaccines for school attendance.  The policy is a vaccine requirement for students age 12 and up in order to attend school.  DCPS has refused to accommodate non-vaccinated students by disallowing them access to remote learning.  The students must have proof of vaccination on file within the first 20 days of the school year to continue attendance.  The policy of excluding students even from remote, in-home education has been seen in California where students missing any number of the state-mandated drug products are refused enrollment.  California barred students who didn't have every mandated vaccine from schools, both public and private, beginning in 2015 by first removing the religious exemption, known as the personal belief exemption.  During the 2015 session, proponents of the bill specifically testified that a doctor's professional judgment would remain. Oops, they lied.

It wouldn't have been an education anyway — you're better off with home schooling.
Democrat DC Mayor Bowser Announces Unvaccinated Students will Be Denied an Education — No Option For Virtual Learning.  Democrat DC Mayor Muriel Bowser is denying unvaccinated students an education.  Unvaccinated students will not be allowed in school and there will not be an option for virtual learning.  Over 40% of blacks ages 12 to 17 are not vaccinated for Covid, the Daily Signal reported.  A reporter for The Daily Signal asked Bowser if unvaccinated students would have to learn remotely, she replied, "We're not offering remote learning for children, and families will need to comply with what is necessary to come to school."  Students will have 20 days to prove they are up-to-date on their Covid vaccination or they will be removed from school.

The Shortage Is Not Just For The Reasons Said.  I have two good friends who are honored educators, both at the secondary level.  One in New Orleans and the other in Kansas City.  Helping a young person grow under their tutelage was all they ever wanted to do.  But now, like many others of their profession, they have chosen not to return to teach this year.  And not just because of reasons the media have you believe is causing a shortage.  Both teachers have concerns about the present nature of the education system, the dumbing down of curriculum, a union that is nothing now but an extortion racket and a money bag for the democrat party.  Not to mention the exorbitant funding of councilors for the easily triggered snowflakes and the teenage gender confused and those with trendy queer allusions, all at the expense of the needs of teachers.  But both firmly agreed the one real pressing reason they and others nation wide are leaving the profession early can't be solved in today's academic atmosphere.

If I were trying to destroy America...  I would give teachers' unions unprecedented power.  I would allow basic academics to be superseded by woke theology and social justice mandates.  I would also eliminate school choice and make it as difficult as possible for parents to educate their children outside the government-run school system.  This would produce a nation of surly Bolsheviks who are unable to do simple math, write a coherent paragraph, or read at grade level.  But they will be able to protest and burn down entire swaths of once great cities.

Fairfax teachers [are being] trained to transition children's genders without parental approval.  Fairfax County Public Schools in northern Virginia are requiring all teachers to complete a training program that says parental permission is not required for students who seek to be addressed by different names or pronouns.  According to materials obtained by the Washington Examiner, the district assigned the training program "Supporting Gender Expansive and Transgender Youth" on July 22 for teachers in all grades, including preschool.  Two sources within Fairfax County Public Schools confirmed that the training was required for all teachers.

North Dakota School Board Reinstates Pledge of Allegiance After Week-Long Backlash.  North Dakota's Fargo School Board reinstated the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of its board meetings after one week's worth of backlash following the Board's decision to ban the Pledge.  Since April, the Fargo School Board has been starting every meeting by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  However, the school board determined its Pledge of Allegiance policy violated the Board's diversity, equity, and inclusion policies during an August 9 meeting.

Minneapolis schools will lay off white teachers first, violating the Constitution and Title VII.  The Minneapolis Public Schools have adopted a race-based layoff provision that violates the Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. [...] This violates a well-known Supreme Court decision overturning the race-based layoff of a white teacher, and contradicts a well-known federal appeals court decision, which ruled that race-based layoffs of white teachers violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  It is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  When it comes to termination (as opposed to hiring or promotion under an affirmative-action plan), an employer can't racially discriminate even against whites.

Pennsylvania Department Of Education says three-year-olds should have their preferred pronouns honored.  According to a guide on the Pennsylvania Department of Education's website, children as young as three years old can identify themselves as transgender, and the department recognizes the pronouns "ne, ve, ze/zie, and xe" as valid options for the kiddies to use.  Additionally, in the section titled "Creating Gender-Inclusive Schools and Classrooms," teachers are urged to inquire as to their students' preferred pronouns to prevent making inaccurate assumptions about their gender identities.

The Editor says...
Why does the Department Of Education have any contact with three-year-old kids?

Biden's Title IX rule could mean your daughter's college roommate will be a man.  Of all the uncertainties that college freshmen must face, none is more sensitive than the issue of roommates.  You might become best friends.  You might go to war over who ate the leftover pizza in the fridge.  There's nothing to be taken for granted when it comes to living with a virtual stranger, except that men room with men and women room with women.  At least, for now.  If the Biden administration gets its way, schools could force biological female students to live with biological men who identify as women and vice versa.  The Department of Education has proposed a new Title IX rule that demands that colleges treat students in line with their gender identity, not their biological sex.  That means that people who identify as women would live with people who identify as women, and people who identify as men would live with people who identify as men.

Mother Sues LAUSD After Son Received COVID-19 Vaccine Without Her Consent.  A California mother is suing the LAUSD after she says her 13-year-old son was given the COVID-19 vaccine in exchange for pizza without the mother's consent.  As RedState's Mike Miller reported, the 13-year-old attended the Barack Obama Global Prep Academy in South Los Angeles.  The teenager went home with a vaccine card after he was given the COVID-19 vaccine at school.

Maryland School's Guidelines Claim Kids Have A 'Right' To Keep In-School Gender Identities Private.  A Maryland public school district asserts kids have the "right" to keep their in-school gender identities private from parents, according to Montgomery County Public School's "Guidelines for Student" Gender Identity.  The guidelines vow to "respect the right of students to keep their gender identity or transgender status private and confidential," including parents who do not affirm the child's perceived gender identity.  When building a "Gender Support Plan," educators are told to work with the student's family only "if the family is supportive of the student" and their perceived identity, according to the district's guidance.  Educators are told not to contact a student's parent or guardian until they speak with the student to "ascertain the level of support the student either receives or anticipates receiving from home."

DA Declines to File Battery Charge Against Teacher Who Physically Forced [a] 9-Year-Old to [wear a] Mask.  Many RedState readers will recall our exclusive series covering the bullying and harassment Kamdin Hernandez, a 4th grader in Simi Valley, California was subjected to by teachers and school administrators because he was unable to wear a face mask fully over-the-nose throughout the school day.  Due to Kamdin's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), wearing a face mask so distracted him that he was unable to concentrate on his school work, yet teachers and administrators berated him in front of classmates, physically blocked him from entering the door into the school, locked him out of his classroom, physically pulled the mask up over his nose against his wishes, and more.

Loudoun County School District Fails to Halt AG's Probe into Bathroom Sex Assault.  An attorney representing Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) appeared before the court Monday in an effort to shut down Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares' grand jury investigation into the Virginia school district.  Within hours after appearing in court, the motion for an injunction failed and the investigation will continue, 7News reporter Nick Minock tweeted Monday afternoon.  The hearing was closed to the public and the transcript was sealed.

Rhode Island mother billed $74K for trying to review school curriculum:  They're 'stonewalling parents'.  A Rhode Island mother who was billed $74,000 for trying to review a school curriculum told "America's Newsroom" on Tuesday that schools are "stonewalling parents with exorbitant prices" for public information that taxpayers already paid for.  "I received an estimate for, say, $80 for information that I requested," Nicole Solas said.  "And then when I requested similar information, a month later, the price skyrocketed to $2,600.  So schools will charge you whatever price they want to charge you.  So that way you're not going to know what your kids are learning in school."  Solas argued that public information is not public if it cost money to obtain it and that schools are trying to create "barriers" to make it accessible.

NSBA 'imploding,' 'getting everything it deserves,' following mass state exodus:  Education activists.  With the Wisconsin Association of School Boards' (WASB) decision to cut ties with the National School Boards Association (NSBA), more than half of the nation's state school board associations have withdrawn from the group since it sent a letter to the Justice Department to investigate parents for "domestic terrorism."  "Parents have seen the inside of the public school beast and understand better than ever who is feeding this beast, and are responding with a loud voice of not my child, not on my watch," Moms for America Senior Director Quisha King told Fox News Digital.  "US State school boards associations are seeing the reactions of parents in many ways, from speaking up at school board meetings to getting their children out of these classrooms and state school boards know they do not want more problems with parents across America."  The NSBA's infamous letter to the Justice Department in September 2021 asked for parents protesting at school board meetings to be federally looked into, saying school officials were facing threats and violence at meetings.  The letter requested that actions should be examined under the Patriot Act as domestic terrorism.  The NSBA later apologized for the letter's language.

Michigan Democrats want parents to have less say in their children's education.  Michigan Democrats fought to keep students out of classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Now, they are fighting to prevent families from being able to choose which school their students attend.  Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state's Board of Education are opposing a ballot initiative that would allow more than 1 million students to attend a school of their choice.  Whitmer previously vetoed the proposal after it had been passed by the state legislature.  Children should be stuck in failing schools based on their ZIP code, according to Michigan's Democratic administration, because otherwise, the state would lose government revenue.

Get an Apple iPad or drop out of school.  Italy is pushing ahead with the digitization of schools — and the public institute Mazzini-Modugno in the Italian city of Bari is breaking new ground.  The institute obliges the students to buy an iPad from Apple.  If they do not comply, they have to change schools.  Italian weekly l'Antidiplomatico, reported that the school itself offers the devices for sale, with various options.  Prices range from 469 euros to 729 euros.  "This is an unacceptable impertinence that strictly excludes the use of equivalent devices (the much cheaper Android) and forces families to bear very expensive costs [...] Children of families who do not comply are obliged to pay to change schools (and classmates)."

If you see something, say nothing!
California State Senate Passes Bill to Allow Schools Not to Report Threats.  The California State Senate has passed a bill that would allow schools not to report threats or attacks against employees or officials to law enforcement, despite the ongoing national shock and outrage over the Uvalde, Texas, mass school shooting.  The bill, SB 1273, introduced by State Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Los Angeles), passed easily last Thursday — just two days after the Uvalde shooting, in which an 18-year-old gunman murdered 19 children and two teachers in an elementary school.  The bill repeals a provision of existing law that requires that "whenever any employee of a school district or county superintendent of schools is attacked, assaulted, or physically threatened by any pupil, the employee and any person under whose direction or supervision the employee is employed who has knowledge of the incident are required to promptly report the incident to specified law enforcement authorities."  SB 1273 would make such reports to law enforcement voluntary.

San Francisco drops 'chief' from school job titles over cultural sensitivities.  The San Francisco Unified School District announced Wednesday that it would no longer use the word "chief" in employee job titles due to its connection to Native American culture.  The change applies to all 10,000 current employees in the California school district, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.  "While there are many opinions on the matter, our leadership team agreed that, given that Native American members of our community have expressed concerns over the use of the title, we are no longer going to use it," district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe said in a statement.  The school district has not yet announced what term will replace "chief" in its employee title lexicon, but Blythe noted that the change did not reflect a demotion for those affected.

San Francisco School District Bans 'Chief' from Job Titles over Native American Links.  The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has banned the word "chief" from job titles because of its connotations with Native American leadership and a fear of offending indigenous people. [...] The origin of the word "chief" is actually French, not Native American, and entered English in the Middle Ages.  The SFUSD has a recent history of renaming things for reasons of left-wing ideology and political correctness.  Last year, the board removed the names of the country's founders from 44 schools, casting George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as racist villains.

The Editor says...
Notice that they're doing this because of "a fear of offending indigenous people."  Nobody's offended yet, but they say they're afraid of offending somebody.  Here's a word of advice:  Elect leaders to the school board who are not afraid of every little thing.

We Aren't Raising Adults.  We Are Breeding Very Excellent Sheep.  I taught English at Yale University for ten years.  I had some vivid, idiosyncratic students — people who went on to write novels, devote themselves to their church, or just wander the world for a few years.  But mostly I taught what one of them herself called "excellent sheep."  These students were excellent, technically speaking.  They were smart, focused, and ferociously hard-working.  But they were also sheep: stunted in their sense of purpose, waiting meekly for direction, frequently anxious and lost.  I was so struck by this — that our "best and brightest" students are so often as helpless as children — that I wrote a book about it.  It came out in 2014, not long before my former colleague Nicholas Christakis was surrounded and browbeaten by a crowd of undergraduates for failing to make them feel coddled and safe — an early indication of the rise of what we now call wokeness.

The word no one mentions when discussing school shootings.  [Scroll down]  No one asks the central question; why are kids shooting up schools?  Schools are the target.  Schools are the objective.  Schools are the focal point.  What are schools doing that makes them so hated?  You can go to any website and see the open and growing craziness within the teaching profession.  There are too many cotton-candy haired narcissists who only preach a cause to their captive audience.  They might preach about homosexuality.  They might preach about Critical Race Theory.  But it's all about their personal cause.  These spokesmen for the Cause are creepy because the Cause trumps all other knowledge.  Look for reading scores on the bottom shelf, just below basic math.  Narcissists' teaching budding narcissists' is not a healthy diet for the soul of our country.  Even the books students read are self-centered, crafted so that the reader "can relate" to the subject.  So they learn not to relate to others.

Never Forget Democrats Want to Remove Cops from Schools.  The Democrat party can never be allowed to forget how hard it has worked to expel police officers from schools.  At the state and local level, Democrats have and continue to push and push and push to remove police and leave schoolchildren defenseless. [...] Here's what we know for a fact:  We know Evil is going to shoot up schools.  We know the corporate media will never stop incentivizing shooting up schools.  Thanks to our pro-school shooting media, every school shooter knows that shooting up a school will give him exactly what he wants: the power to shake up the country.  We know the only thing that will stop a maniac with a gun is a good guy with a gun.  We know all this, and yet Democrats still want to remove cops from schools.  So the question is why?  And the answer is simple.  There is no greater propaganda tool to push to disarm the American people than school shootings.  Police in schools stop and discourage school shootings.  If school shootings stop, Democrats lose their best propaganda tool.

Texas Leaves National School Boards Association After White House Collusion Revealed.  The Texas affiliate of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) cut ties with the national organization Monday after an investigation showed the group colluded with the Biden administration to investigate concerned parents as "domestic terrorists."  The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) is the twenty-third state school board association to sever its affiliation with the NSBA after it sent a letter to Biden asking the administration to treat parents speaking at school board meetings as "domestic terrorists."

"Whose Children Are They?" Exposes Public Schools, Falls Short on Solutions.  Over the past two years, millions of parents willingly sent their children to public schools, where their kids endured forced masking, social distancing, and remote learning; practices that would become as commonplace as once were tetherball, pop quizzes, and story time.  But were these same parents also aware of the other truly shocking and at times horrifically graphic teachings taking place in the schools?  The new documentary Whose Children Are They?  Exposing the Hidden Agenda in America's Schools lays bare these horrors, and the war, or "clash of worldviews," raging in schools and beyond between cultural Marxism and Western beliefs based on Judeo/Christian values on which America was founded.  Yet while excelling in bringing to light the issues dividing not only students in the classroom but citizens throughout the country, Whose Children Are They? ultimately disappoints for its failure to address the need for parents to rescue their kids from the state institutions and find an alternative form of education, such as homeschooling.  [Video clip:  Trailer]

Civil rights official warns colleges to cancel 'segregated graduations'.  A U.S. civil rights official has warned two colleges that their segregated graduation ceremonies for Black, LGBTQ and other minority students are illegal under federal anti-discrimination laws.  Attorney Peter Kirsanow, a Black member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, admonished California Polytechnic State University and Oakton Community College in Illinois that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars them as government-funded schools from offering programs that exclude White, male students.  In two separate letters shared with The Washington Times, he cites the act's Title VI provision that "no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Exposing the Left's Destructive Education Agenda:  They're 'Coming for Your Children'.  Beginning with the 2021 gubernatorial election in Virginia — in which Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe for all practical purposes vowed to keep parents out of the classroom, saying, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach" — parents began to realize the Democratic Party wanted to leave them behind.  President Joe Biden echoed that sentiment April 27 while speaking to a group of Teachers of the Year, when he told them:  "They're all our children. ... They're not somebody else's children.  They're like yours when they're in the classroom."  Politics aside, the issue at hand is protecting our children from radical ideologies and preserving a parent's right to be a parent.  But the left wants to have a stranglehold on education, to keep parents on the sidelines, and to force them to co-parent with the government, while driving a wedge between parent and child.

Conservative Parents Sweep Texas School Board Elections on a Theme of Transparency, No Masks, and No CRT in the Classroom.  Saturday, school board elections were held for four suburban Fort Worth, Texas, school districts.  Candidates backed by a conservative parents' organization won all 10 seats they contested and unseated at least three incumbents.  Usually, school board elections are low-key affairs that draw scant interest.  But ever since COVID, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and mainstreaming of sexual grooming in our classrooms brought the stupidity and cruelty of many school board members to public view, they have become a battleground.

Scottsdale parents who discovered secret dossier compiled to silence their speech announce lawsuit.  Three parents in the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) sued the district, former SUSD governing board President Jann-Michael Greenburg, his father and his father's wife over the maintenance of a "dossier" allegedly aimed at intimidating them into silence after they had criticized Greenburg.  The parents — Amanda Wray, Kimberly Stafford, and Edmond Richard — allege in the Marciopa County Superior Court complaint that the Greenburgs and the district conspired "to silence and punish dissenting voices and frighten away other potential speakers who might dare express an opposing point of view."  Greenburg and his father reportedly kept a dossier on 47 parents who dared to speak out against his policies at school board meetings — a dossier complete with Social Security numbers, background checks, a divorce paper, mortgage documents, trade certifications, and screenshots of Facebook posts.  The lawsuit claims that the defendants "misused District resources and what should have been private, protected parent communications to the District to retaliate against Plaintiffs for their protected speech."

Don't Buy into SEL!  As a longtime teacher, I have seen firsthand that education is a fad-filled field.  Culturally responsive education, inventive spelling, new math, experiential learning, balanced literacy, etc. are educational styles that have come and gone and come and gone and . . .  One of the more enduring educational whims is Social Emotional Learning (SEL) which took off in the 1990s when the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) came into being, and hosted a conference with researchers, educators, child advocates, and others in the field.

Snitch Nation:  DC public schools command 4-year-olds to identify the 'racists' in their families.  [Scroll down]  This is no conspiracy theory from the right wing; this is what's going on now in public schools.  Not only does the book undercut the authority of the parents under the all-encompassing rubric of ending racism, but it demands that children as young as four identify family members as "racists" for their teachers.  No racists?  Better make up one, because for this crowd, the kid is already guilty and therefore hidebound to produce something or else.  It's downright child abuse, given its potential to tear apart families, an evil effect that has been within the leftist ideal-house since the days of the Bolsheviks.  Meanwhile, where that reported information from the newly minted child snitches goes is anyone's guess, but don't think this isn't the age of data science and its monetization.

Missouri AG will investigate school district for giving students surveys that quiz them on race, sexual orientation and their parents' political beliefs.  The Webster Groves School District in Missouri is under fire for violating state and federal privacy laws by subjecting students to probing surveys asking about political beliefs and affiliation, gender, sexual orientation and mental health status.  Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Monday [5/2/2022] agreed to investigate the issue after being alerted to the practice by the Southeast Legal Foundation, which was retained by Webster Groves parents after they learned of the practice.  'We appreciate the Southeast Legal Foundation for bringing their concerns to the office, and have received similar allegations in districts across the state,' Missouri Attorney General spokesman Chris Nuelle said in an email.

Parents Rally Against After School Satan Club.  Dozens of protesters joined forces in Greensboro, North Carolina, to pray against an after school Satan club scheduled to meet inside a local elementary school Friday.  Police were stationed near Joyner Elementary School as 50 citizens gathered, carrying signs.  Some participants knelt down to pray, Fox 8 reported.  "Kind of a rallying thing to say 'we here in Greensboro does not want this in our schools,'" explained Tempe Moore, who organized the event.

What Biden Said About Kids in School Will Make Parents Shiver.  Joe and Jill Biden on Wednesday [4/27/2022] hosted the Council of Chief State School Officers' 2022 National and State Teachers of the Year in the East Room of the White House.  As usual, Joe Biden's speech was full of gaffes as he struggled to read his teleprompter.  At one point Biden called his Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, "Senator Cardona."  Then Biden told the room of teachers that the children they are teaching are "not somebody else's children."  Biden just blurted it out and said the quiet part out loud.  "They're not somebody else's children.  They're yours when you're in the classroom," Biden said.  [Video clip]

'They are all our children': Biden sparks fury from parents by telling teachers that kids are 'yours when they're in the classroom'.  President Joe Biden has reignited the fire among already outraged parents after claiming their children don't belong to them 'when they're in the classroom.'  'They're all our children,' he said Wednesday, addressing educators at the 2022 Teacher of the Year ceremony hosted by the White House.  'They are not somebody's else children.  They're like yours when they're in the classroom.'  Biden also took aim at parents and Republican legislators who have spearheaded efforts to ban books and bar sexually explicit or overly politically correct curriculum.

The Editor says...
Single quotation marks are usually reserved for setting off a quotation within another quotation.^*

Canadian university advertises for tenure track research chair in its Faculty of Environment.  The University of Waterloo has an opening for a tenure track assistant professor specializing in science and engineering — but white men need not apply.  According to a listing from the Canadian university last month, the position is available only to women, or 'qualified individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, non-binary, or two-spirit' — a gender-variant derived from Native American culture.  Men, meanwhile, will not be considered, the school says — especially if they are white.

Report: More universities [are] holding segregated graduation events.  Universities are increasingly offering graduation events focused on participants' identities and segregated by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and even income, according to a report by a conservative education publication.  Campus Reform, which is published by the Leadership Institute in Arlington, Virginia, reported last week that more than three dozen colleges and universities are holding graduation events this summer to recognize groups based on race, gender and sexual orientation.  Columbia University, Harvard University, Ohio State University, Illinois State University and the University of Texas at Austin are among those offering special ceremonies for Black graduates.

Yale's Student Orchestra Wears Masks While Playing Instruments.  Yale's student orchestra appears to be continuing on with masking despite the university relaxing its campus wide mandate late last month.  Since the pandemic began, even Yale's brass and woodwind musicians have been seen wearing masks equipped with a hole while playing instruments.  Yale announced that it would be lifting its indoor mask mandate, which had been in place for just about two years, on March 10.  Calls to reimpose a mandate have grown as students and faculty point to rising case rates[.]

California school enrollment drops even more — and somehow, 'experts' don't know why.  They think it's a COVID problem.  They call it a 'gentrification' issue.  They say it's housing costs.  They say it's 'demographics.'  That's the response from the 'experts' to the [bad] news about California's school enrollment. [...] What they don't say is that mask mandates, vaccine mandates, Zoom classes, wokester critical race theory in the classrooms, drag queen story hour, school officials working behind parents' backs to promote transgenderism among kids and treat their parents as enemies, state-encouraged abortion on demand, ending advanced and honors classes in the name of 'equity,' and massive numbers of Californians fleeing the state for economic and tax reasons have all taken their toll on enrollment.  Chase the locals out, don't be surprised to see fewer kids in school.

Will Mandatory Covid Theater Ever End For College Students?  Universities across the country have increasingly rolled back Covid restrictions in recent weeks, giving many high school seniors hope their college experience will not be marred by the policies that, for more than two years, ruined that of their older siblings and peers.  Most commonly, this rollback has entailed quietly dropping policies pertaining to forced isolation and social asceticism, as well as lifting mask mandates in near lock-step with local and state political shifts on mask policy.  Some schools, such as the University of Iowa, largely operate as if it were 2019, without any broad requirements for masking, social distancing, regular Covid testing, or Covid vaccination.

A new gladiatorial sport: school board meetings.  Ms. Danielle Green introduced a new low of outrageous conduct by school administrators at a recent Flint School District Board meeting.  She launched an attack in her position as president when her idea of adding schools to the nearly insolvent district was flatly rejected by Treasurer Laura McIntyre.  While Ms. McIntyre was attempting to offer a fiscal overview, Ms. Green proceeded to grab her by the throat and use her head as a battering ram against a tabletop.  McIntyre alleges the altercation "escalated out of nothing and very quickly it was an attack."  The treasurer called for an emergency meeting, saying the assault "will not be tolerated and we are taking action."  The president was voted off the board in a unanimous vote:  6 to 0.  Egregious conduct is nothing new at school board meetings, but now the public is witnessing new trends in the degeneration of our educational system.

Race-based favoritism is back in style:
Washington state school district will encourage teachers to consider a student's race when dishing out punishments.  A school district in Washington state has passed a new policy that critics say encourages administrators to factor in race when disciplining students.  The Clover Park School District board approved the new policy on a 3-2 vote on March 14, over the objections of board members who expressed concerns that it was ill-conceived.  The district in the suburbs of Tacoma will now use 'culturally responsive discipline' that encourages school staff to impose disciplinary policies that 'may be adapted to individual student needs in a culturally responsive manner.'

Boston shocked to find more crime in schools after they ditched their police.  In December of 2020, Massachusetts passed its "Police Reform Law" in response to BLM protests and calls to "abolish the police."  The law would have required school police officers to undergo 350 hours of very expensive, specialized training in order to keep their positions in their school districts.  Almost all of the schools in the Boston School District chose to instead cut their cops loose and replace them with "school safety specialists" who don't carry handcuffs or firearms and who do not have the authority to arrest students.  This left teachers and administrators with no choice other than calling 911 when trouble broke out.  To the great surprise of many of the activists pushing for "police reform" (but really not to anyone else with an IQ above room temperature) incidents of many sorts of crime in the city's public schools began to rise almost immediately.

How the pandemic and remote learning has destroyed education.  Children at every grade level are still performing worse in math and reading than they were before start of COVID, data from 7.3 million standardized tests across the US reveals.  The study, released this week by standardized test provider Renaissance Learning Inc., revealed that a return to in-person learning in the latter half of the last school year has seen standardized test scores improve across the county.  However, students are still lagging well behind pre-pandemic levels.

Washington School System Adopts A Discipline Plan That Punishes White More Than Blacks For The Same Offenses.  A Washington school board butted heads over a new student discipline policy that considers a student's race before deciding on a punishment.  The Clover Park School District debated its new "culturally responsive" student discipline policy.  It means student discipline would not be consistent based on conduct.  Instead, a school considers a student's race and background.  It would likely offer harsher punishments to white students, even if the conduct is identical to that of a black or Hispanic student.  The disparate treatment is championed in the name of inclusion.  But it's not just a Clover Park School District controversy.  [Video clip]

WA students, teachers wrestle with wearing masks in schools after mandate drops.  Kindergarten teacher Betzabeth Alvarado-Jurista counted just four bare faces in her class of 18 kids on Monday morning, not including her own.  It was a slightly surprising outcome on the first day masks were optional in Washington state schools, she said.  But she and her colleagues at Bellevue's Lake Hills Elementary School had prepared for it.  A few minutes after school began, she gathered the tots on a rainbow carpet and gave them a 5-year-old's version of a public health keynote in both English and Spanish:  "Neither choice is wrong," said one slide, featuring a photo of kids smiling with and without face masks.  "Negative comments about wearing a mask or not wearing a mask can be bullying and is not allowed."  She asked the masked and unmasked to stand and applaud for each other.

The Editor says...
[#1] It is almost never the case, in any argument, or in the face of any choice, that "neither choice is wrong."  [#2] These little kids are the least likely people in town to be affected by Covid-19, which is long gone by now.  But they're the most likely to be affected by indoctrination and brainwashing.  [#3] You live in the state of Washington, not Arizona.  Learn to speak English, pronto.

North Carolina School Under Fire For Having Mock Slave Auction.  A North Carolina schools superintendent has apologized for a mock "slave auction" in which white middle-schoolers pretended to sell their Black classmates.  "Actions such as these, they just do not reflect who we are as a school system," Chatham County Schools Superintendent Anthony Jackson said after parents raised an outcry.  "And I say, unapologetically, will not be tolerated in the school system."  The school board adopted some policy changes and will also review the student code of conduct and discipline policies involving acts of racism, Jackson said.  Some parents complained that several students involved were given just a one-day suspension.  [Video clip]

Kids in Fresno are still Forced to Eat Outside on the Ground Wearing Masks while six feet Apart.  Yet another example showing that teachers and school boards [don't care] about the kids they're supposed to be looking out for.  Thankfully this woman caught the child abuse on camera showing kids being forced to eat their lunch while sitting on the ground and wearing masks.  They're supposed to lift the mask up to take bites of their food.  They must all stay 6 ft apart as well, despite the Democrat governor lifting most restrictions for adults so people could attend the Superbowl, they left all of the ridiculous rules in place for children.  [Video clip]

States sue Biden admin over FBI surveillance of parents protesting school boards.  Thirteen states have signed on to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking Biden administration records on any FBI surveillance of parents protesting school boards.  Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a former member of Congress, has taken the lead in the lawsuit against President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, citing a failure of U.S. officials to honor FOIA requests.  The Indiana attorney general previously demanded all communications and records relating to the FBI's decision to investigate violent threats against local education officials.  "We just want the facts," Rokita told Fox News Digital.

A School District Spied on Parents and Reported Social Media Activity to Their Employers.  Apparently, we have a school district that spied on parents, compiled a dossier of their social media activity, and reported such activity to the employers of these problematic parents.  And by 'problematic', I mean, they were politically conservative.  This little spy game was conducted by Rochester Schools, which is located outside Detroit.  Elena Dinverno, a parent, filed a lawsuit in 2021.  The Center Square has more, but this operation is straight-up insane.  Dinverno alleges that the school district's harassment led to her employment being terminated.

Rochester Schools collect dossier, call employers on critical parents.  Rochester Community School (RCS) officials were sued for compiling a dossier on parents who commented negatively on the school's virtual learning policy.  One official even called a parent's employer, which possibly resulted in the parent's termination.  Parent Elena Dinverno sued the district in 2021, claiming school officials called her place of work in the fall of 2020, and told her employer Dinverno was part of a group threatening the school district.  She was fired in December 2020.  The Detroit News first reported the story.  A lawsuit filed on May 3, 2021, claims Dinverno advocated on two separate Facebook groups to reopen schools in-person:  "RCS Parents for In-Person Education" and "Conservative Parents for Rochester."  Dinverno asked other parents for video testimony of how virtual school was hurting kids.

Indiana High School Teacher Caught On Camera Assaulting A Student For Not Wearing His Mask In The Hallway.  An Indiana high school teacher has been fired after a video shows him slapping a student in a hallway, WBND reported.  Jimtown High School teacher Mike Hosinski hit the student during a confrontation on Feb. 25 about a hooded sweatshirt the student was wearing in class, according to a release from Baugo Community Schools in Elkhart.  The district released surveillance video that shows the teacher grabbing the student by the backpack and pushing the student against the wall.  [Video clip]

Dr. Ben Carson:  Leftist Schools are Creating "A Whole Generation of Pathological People".  Dr. Fauci and the CDC can say whatever they want about the effectiveness of masks in stopping Covid.  This isn't about them, their claims, or the accuracy of those claims, nor was Dr. Ben Carson's speech on CPAC.  Rather, his speech hit on a different aspect of the masks, one that the left is loath to bring up: how forcing kids to stay masked at school is affecting their mental and emotional development.  Speaking on that issue, one that's quite the hot topic considering how schools are tenaciously defending their masking policies, Carson had this to say about the development of children and how facial expressions play into that development:  "You look at the mask-wearing, particularly at a young age when you're trying to develop your sociological image of yourself.  And a lot of that is because of positive feedback that you get by looking at people's facial expressions."

9 Year Old Gets Locked Out In The Cold For Not Wearing A Mask.  A 9-year-old girl was locked out and prevented from entering her classroom in below-freezing weather this morning at Summerville Elementary in Tuolumne, California for not wearing a mask.  When the VP was questioned on these tactics, she responded "I'm just doing my job."  [Video clip]

The Left's COVID Insanity Is Creating A Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity For Conservatives.  Last week, San Franciscans voted overwhelmingly — and we're talking an average margin of 75-25 — to recall three school board members for, as the Washington Post put it, being "too focused on racial justice."  Actually, the last straw for parents was the fact that, instead of reopening schools, the board was fixated on renaming 44 of them that carry names of those currently disfavored by leftists.  You know, deplorables such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere, and ... California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  Feinstein?  She was the first female mayor of that city, and her voting record in 2019 and 2020 was more liberal than Sen. Kamala Harris', according to Americans for Democratic Action.  Not good enough, apparently.

Seattle school board to hold segregated meetings to pick new school superintendent.  Issaquah School District, located in the Seattle suburbs, has decided to hold segregated-by-race meetings to pick its new school superintendent. [...] In many other places in America this school would either face a quick recall or be voted out in the next election.  Don't bet on it, as it is located in the Seattle suburbs where the leftist big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft have offices.  The population in this region is all-in on this bigoted policy, being generally white, upper-middle class, and leftist, with a generally contemptuous view of others, either because they are not Democrats or because they aren't white, upper-middle class, and leftist.  As such, they are eagerly returning the Democratic Party to its KKK roots, instituting segregation and Jim Crow laws.  That those laws might be aimed at oppressing whites, not minorities, makes no difference.  In the end the laws will oppress everyone while making minorities look like fools.

Fifth-Grade Parents at California School Discover Men Using 'Non-Male' Pronouns Allowed to Sleep in Girls' Cabins on 3-Night School Trip.  Parents of a California elementary school were shocked to discover recently that their daughters had male counselors sleeping in their cabin for three nights at an annual science camp organized by the school.  One parent of a student at Weaver Elementary School in Los Alamitos, said she couldn't believe it when her daughter returned from the trip and said the girls cabins were staffed with adult males who shared their sleeping area for the three-night trip.  She contacted the school to ask if men were actually sleeping in the same room as the young girls, but they could not confirm.  The camp, however, did not hesitate to confirm that men employed with the camp are allowed to stay in the cabins that suit their preferred pronouns.  Men who used "they/them" pronouns are allowed to choose.  Apparently these particular men chose to stay with the girls.  That's not creepy at all.

Wyoming County Library Board passes hostile (and illegal) public comments policy, then uses it to terminate meeting.  These days, radical public library officials will do almost anything — even break the law — to intimidate and discourage citizens from attempting to stop their abuses against children.  In Campbell County, Wyoming, MassResistance community activists have been relentlessly taking a stand to stop their public library officials from foisting LGBT pornography and other inappropriate books on young children and teens.

State University Hosts a Cabaret Showcase for All Students but White Ones.  Can you sing, dance, or act?  If so — and if you're the right sort of major — you can take partake in Arizona State University's cabaret extravaganza.  Excepted from the opportunity:  any students who are white.  Such was the message recently, as the college put together its "The Color of Cabaret" show.

School District Banned 'Disruptive' Dad From Campus After He Dared to Advocate for His Son Over Mask Mandate.  Over the last week numerous school districts have been in the news due to reports that administrators have left children who refused to wear a mask outside and alone, or are planning to label students protesting mask mandates as a "clear and present danger" to school safety so they can be excluded from campus, or count the protesters as truant, or charge the protesting students with trespassing, or deem the child "abandoned" and call Child Protective Services if parents take them to school without a mask.  What happened to schools excitedly embracing a student's right to protest and giving them time during the school day to do so?

Virginia Dems Fight Repeal Of Bill That Said Sex Crimes In Schools Needn't Be Referred To Police.  When Democrats regained control of the Virginia House of Delegates in November 2019, one of the first things they did was pass a law that says school officials do not have to report misdemeanor crimes — specifically singling out "sexual assaults" — to law enforcement.  Two years later, with Republicans back in control of that chamber, Democrats do not support its repeal.  Former Democratic Governor Ralph Northam signed off on the law in February 2020.  Schools are currently not required to report to police misdemeanors related to instances of sexual battery, assault, violent threats, stalking, drug and alcohol violations, and more.

Report: School Allegedly Makes List of 'Insubordinate' Parents to 'Watch'.  On Tuesday night, radio host Monica Matthews of Clear Talk Media tweeted a communication allegedly between two officials at The Lovett School — a prestigious private K-12 school in Atlanta.  It immediately got a lot of attention on Twitter and raised a lot of eyebrows.  It's easy to see why.  The communication purports to be between two officials at the school and says it is a "preliminary list" of many parents who have been deemed "insubordinate."  One staffer wrote that she was "disgusted by some of these parents" and talked about the "need to prioritize our efforts as some have too much influence."

Bombshell Email Reveals Plan to Arrest Maskless Students in Loudoun County.  School mask mandates have recently been lifted in New Jersey and in Delaware.  Massachusetts is also considering lifting its mandate.  But in Loudoun County, Va., students who attempt to enter school maskless could face arrest.  According to a leaked email, a security official for Loudoun County Public Schools coached principals on obtaining a warrant to arrest students who attempted to enter school maskless.  The email was sent on Feb. 1, by John Clark, the Director of Safety and Security for Loudoun County Public Schools to the district's principals.  "If you determine that an individual should be trespassed then a school admin representative, in conjunction with S&S Coordinator Rich Thomas, will proceed to the magistrate to swear out a trespass summons/warrant," the email says.  "School admin will meet Rich Thomas at the Safety & Security office and then proceed to the magistrate, which is located next to our office."  Clark's directive blatantly defies Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order empowering parents to opt their kids out of school mask mandates.

BIPOC only charter school to open in Portland.  Out in Portland, families in minority communities have been struggling with educational challenges for their children the same as has been seen in most large cities.  These problems have been further exacerbated by school shutdowns and remote learning, though families of all races have been hit in that fashion.  But one group in Portland has now taken action in a questionable way to address these issues.  In the fall of this year, they will open HOLLA Public Charter School.  It will be a quasi-private but somewhat public school operating in conjunction with one of the local school districts.  But here's the twist.  They will only be accepting BIPOC students (Black, Indigenous, people of color).  No children from Asian, white or Jewish families need apply.

School masking advocates trying to make an end run around the law in PA.  Almost two months ago, the Pennsylvania state supreme court ruled that the state's face mask mandate for schools was unconstitutional and struck it down.  While this was met with mixed reactions among families in some areas, obviously there were still people who felt that leaving the choice up to the parents (or even the school districts) was unacceptable.  In their view, everyone must be forced to mask their children.  But what could be done about it?  One possibility has been suggested and it involves a suspicious number of lawsuits that have been filed against school districts that make masking optional.  The "suspicious" part of this, as National Review explains it, is the fact that all of the lawsuits contain nearly identical wording and reasons for the complaint.  It's almost as if someone is out there generating these suits as part of a campaign.

School Board Demeans Parents Over Controversial Books.  On January 31, 2022, the Orange County NC School Board held a special meeting, reviewing the books Out of Darkness, Gender Queer, and Lawn Boy.  The board voted unanimously to keep these books in the public school libraries.  The board then waived the procedure stating the status of the material as indefinitely approved, unable to be challenged after two years per the stated policy.  Parents needed to be punished for raising concerns!  Towards the end of the meeting, board member Sarah Smylie implied that parental concern is a "distraction" from real work.  To imply that parents are only doing this for the sake of "distraction" is incorrect.  Trust me, there are better things I could be doing with my time than reading and researching these books.  Parents, like myself, participate in this conversation because public school students deserve the highest quality academic and creative materials and resources available.  These books do not meet that standard.  This has nothing to do with the ethnicity or sexuality of the characters.  This has to do with the level of discourse and gratuitous nature of the sexual and violent passages in these books.

A School Shooting You Won't Be Hearing About.  Liberals love to use school shootings as springboards for their favored hobby horses, usually more gun control.  But what happened yesterday at the South Education Center in Richfield, Minnesota doesn't fit the narrative.  This high school is part of a school district that focuses on special education, alternative learning and transitional services.  As I understand it, many of its students come from other high schools where they have gotten into trouble, so that the South Education Center represents a second chance.  It also embodies, perhaps, the ultimate in high school wokeness. [...] But far leftists and the teachers' union are driving Resource Officers out of the public schools.  ["]Superintendent Lewandowski also ordered the removal of all metal detectors for the 2021-2022 school year 'after serious concerns about the racial equity impacts of using metal detectors.'["]  Contemplate that idea for a moment!  Everyone has to go through the metal detector, not just members of one race, so how can it represent racial inequity?  The only possible answer is that "students of color" are presumed to be most likely to bring guns to school.

Obviously a fire code violation.  These kids have never heard of the Cocoanut Grove.
High School Claims They Didn't Barricade Unmasked Students in Gym; Tables Were Just Accidentally Placed in Front of Each Exit.  As we reported Thursday night, a high school in Oakdale, California barricaded students who came to school without a mask in the school gym and wouldn't turn the heat on.  Eventually police were called to the scene to turn on the heat, but we've now learned that by that time many of the students had moved the barricades — which were folding tables strategically placed in front of all of the exits — and marched up to the district office, where they joined a group of parents already protesting mask mandates.

Left Barely Masks Its Contempt for Parents' Involvement in Education.  [Scroll down]  Parents, however, are getting better at sifting through the education establishment's lies.  That's a good thing, because they're more brazen than ever.  The insistence, for example, by radical leftist teachers unions that students be force-fed toxic critical race theory nostrums over parents' objections illustrates how much credence liberals give to dissenting voices far more vividly than phony posts from party hacks.  Just one year ago, educational leaders, media elites, and leftist politicians were assuring parents that critical race theory was a complicated area of study only taught in law schools.  But with students banned from the classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic, parents got to observe firsthand the propaganda streaming into their living rooms via remote-learning lessons.  Immediately, the narrative changed from "There is no critical race theory in K-12 classrooms" to "If you don't like it, you're a racist."

Judge Who Was Terrified by the Loudoun County High School Rapist History Suddenly Decides He's No Longer a Sex Offender.  Back in June, a father attending a meeting of the Loudoun County School Board was forcibly removed from the meeting by uniformed officers and subsequently charged with an offense (Loudoun County Father Who Was Slandered, Beaten, and Arrested Speaks Out).  His crime was attempting to speak out on the forcible rape of his daughter by a skirt-wearing "transgender" student in the girl's bathroom.  As it turned out, the school board seems to have violated state law (Loudoun County Officials Likely Lied About Knowledge of Sexual Assault in Restroom) regarding reporting requirements for sexual assaults on school grounds.  Deciding they hadn't dug the hole quite deep enough, the school system decided to move Skirty to another school where "she" promptly sexually assaulted yet another classmate.

COVID Mandates are Devastating Our Schools.  Masking, testing, and vaccination mandates are devastating our schools.  Two-thirds of the United States have shown that these mandates are not necessary for safe operation of schools, yet children and teachers are continuing to suffer in over a dozen states.  Here in New Mexico, a state already known for its failing educational system, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham's COVID mandates are physically, emotionally, and mentally damaging to our children, teachers, and school personnel.  This damage is not isolated to one particular school or district; it is happening all over the state to New Mexicans young and old, Latino and white, wealthy and poor.  And there are no obvious benefits.  New Mexico has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country and has been under a statewide mask mandate for nearly two years.  Even though many already have natural immunity, our teachers are mandated to receive COVID shots and booster shots, or else face unfair testing and quarantine requirements.  Students and teachers are forced to wear masks in school, and even outdoors in some districts.  Nonetheless, we are currently experiencing one of the worst COVID surges in the country, with high hospitalization and death rates.

Woke School Forced A Young Girl To Sit In A Cold Vestibule For Hours Without Access To Food Or Water Because She Didn't Wear A Mask.  More than a dozen county officials across New York, including in Saratoga County, have said they will not enforce an indoor mask mandate that went into effect last month after some county executives said they were told by Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration to avoid diverting resources to crack down on violations of the order.  But it seems that some woke schools decided to go hard on students that don't want to wear masks!  They used some soviet style education!  At Colonie Central High School, a student was allegedly asked to leave school Tuesday because she wouldn't wear a mask.  A video taken by the student's father shows a high school administrator explaining in a vestibule outside the school doors that masks are required and that "we are doing the best we can to enforce school policy for the safety of students."

Woodgrove High School in Virginia is Giving Masked Students 15 More Minutes of Lunch Time.  If you thought teachers around the country couldn't get any more pathetic in their attempts to control their students, look at this Virginia school that is possibly violating the Governors new anti-Mask executive order.  Listen as the teacher on the microphone tells unmasked students they will only receive 15 minutes for lunch, while masked students will get 30 minutes for lunch time.  [Video clip]

School boards sue to keep masks on kids after Republican Governor makes it optional.  Seven Virginia school boards are taking legal action over Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order that made masks optional in the state's schools starting Monday [1/24/2022].  Youngkin issued an executive order upon taking office Jan. 15 which seeks to "empower Virginia parents in their children's education and upbringing by allowing parents to make decisions on whether their child wears a mask in school." [...] School districts across Virginia plan to defy the governor's executive order that allows parents to decide whether or not their children should wear masks at school.

Pennsylvania School Board Member to Parents: 'I Don't Work for You'.  A school board member in the York Suburban School District in Pennsylvania said that he does not work for the parents whose children attend school in the district and that parents do not always know what is best for their children.  Richard Robinson wrote an op-ed in the York Dispatch on Thursday in which he said that school boards are required to offer an opportunity for public comment and, until recently, hardly anyone elected to show up to the meetings.  But now, school board meetings have an increased level of participation, he explains.  "This provision gives residents of a school district the chance to vent their spleens about exorbitant taxes or demand subjects be taught properly the way they were during the most frigid period of the Cold War.  In the past, more often than not, nobody showed up," Robinson wrote.  "Not these days.  As social media outlets, national news broadcasts and our local newspapers tell us, school boards are now the new battleground in the fight for America's future."

Outraged mom claims school kids are being encouraged to identify as cats and dogs.  A Michigan school district is denying that litter boxes were provided to students who identify as 'furries' after a woman made the claim in a school board meeting last month.  Video of the woman, Lisa Hansen, has since gone viral, racking up hundreds of thousands of views on conservative social media pages and even being shared by a state Republican Party official.  'So yesterday, I heard that a least one of our schools has — in one of the unisex bathrooms — a litter box for the kids that identify as cats, and I am really disturbed by that.  And I will do some more investigation on that,' she told the the Midland Public Schools Board of Education during a meeting on December 20.

9-Year-Old Disabled Boy Forced to Take Exam Outside in Freezing Weather Because He Didn't Wear a Mask.  A 9-year-old disabled boy in Austria was forced to take an exam outside in freezing cold weather as punishment for not wearing a mask.  An investigation is now underway as to ascertain why the student in Voitsberg was treated in such a manner despite having a valid mask exemption.  A photo shows the boy, Jason, sat outside up against the window of the classroom in temperatures of -1 Celsius.  The boy's parents have hired a lawyer and are now considering moving their son to a different school.  Markus Leinfellner of the Freedom Party of Austria described the incident as an "odd class scandal" after he brought the case to the attention of the Austrian Ministry of Education.

Teacher Caught Taping a Mask to the Face of a Young Student.  A northern Pennsylvania school teacher was photographed taping a mask to a male student to force the child to comply with the school district's mask mandate.  The photograph appeared on the Facebook page of North Penn Stronger Together, a community group whose "mission is to bring parent & community concerns to NPSD (Northern Pennsylvania School District) leaders with respect and impact."  The North Penn School District confirmed that the picture is genuine.

Michigan Democrats tell parents they are NOT 'clients' of public schools, that children should be taught 'what society needs them to know'.  Michigan Democrats were heavily criticized over the weekend for telling parents that they are not 'clients' of public schools and that public education teaches kids what society 'needs them to know.'  A Facebook post on Saturday shared by the state's Democrats on their official page blasted the idea that parents should be involved in what public school teach their children.  The post was taken down on Monday morning following heavy disapproval.  'Not sure where this "parents-should-control-what-is-taught-in-schools-because-they-are-our-kids" is originating, but parents do have the option to send their kids to a hand-selected private school at their own expense if this is what they desire,' the post read.

School Closures Were a Catastrophic Error.  It is now indisputable, and almost undisputed, that the year and a quarter of virtual school imposed devastating consequences on the students who endured it.  Studies have found that virtual school left students nearly half a year behind pace, on average, with the learning loss falling disproportionately on low-income, Latino, and Black students.  Perhaps a million students functionally dropped out of school altogether.  The social isolation imposed on kids caused a mental health "state of emergency," according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.  The damage to a generation of children's social development and educational attainment, and particularly to the social mobility prospects of its most marginalized members, will be irrecoverable.  It is nearly as clear that these measures did little to contain the pandemic.  Children face little risk of adverse health effects from contracting COVID, and there's almost no evidence that towns that kept schools open had more community spread.

Loudoun County won't release report on high school sexual assaults, but Smith family wants it made public.  Earlier this week the unnamed teenager who assaulted two teen girls in Loudoun County, Virginia high school bathrooms was found guilty and sentenced to register as a sex offender for life. [...] What was it that scared the judge so much?  Parents in Loudoun County won't find out because the county has decided the final investigative report (which county residents paid for) won't be made public.  According to the school board, they are doing this for the sake of the families involved. [...] So the investigation which might reveal what happened and what various board members knew about what happened and what they did about it can't be shown to parents... for the sake of the families.  That's what they're going with.

Boston students freezing in classrooms due to COVID requirements.  A quick check with the National Weather Service indicates that it was four degrees in Boston at the time of this writing.  Students in Boston's public schools had better cross their fingers and hope that it warms up significantly before they return to class on Tuesday, or they're going to be in for a very uncomfortable day of learning.  (At least for those whose schools are actually open for in-person learning, that is.)  The reason is that all of the public schools in Boston are required by a school board mandate to leave the windows in the classrooms cracked open.  In January.  Parents are already complaining that they're having to bundle their kids up in multiple layers of clothing just to get them through the day.

Student Leaders Petition University to Evict 'Wealthy and White' Attendees, Give Their Houses to LGBT and Others.  For an idea of the societal distance we've since traveled, take a look at St.  Louis's Washington University.  As posted via an op-ed in independent school newspaper Student Life, a group of prominent attendees is ready to take housing equilibrium to the next level.  Ranen Miao — president of WU's student body — lays out the feelings of nearly 50 co-signed enrolees.  Per the piece, nine houses on campus are occupied by "fraternity men, who are disproportionately wealthy and white."  Meanwhile, "Marginalized communities have little to no space to build community."  Therefore, the bunch is "calling on WashU to terminate their housing contracts with fraternities and designate current fraternity houses as affinity houses instead."  The "affinity" concept has really caught on as of late.

The Real Battle Over Education.  When Democrat Terry McAuliffe said he didn't want parents to have influence over their children's education, it wasn't a gaffe; he meant it.  The new totalitarians cannot abide by freedom, especially freedom of education which ensures parents have influence over their children's education and, therefore, future.  The allies of the new totalitarians, however, agree with McAuliffe and other Bolsheviks.  The real reason is because education shapes and molds people; if the educational juggernaut has complete control over education, they have complete control over the next generation, and, therefore, complete control over the future of American society.  Education, as envisioned by leftists, is about control.  It's about power.  It's about propaganda.  It's about ensuring their vision of remaking society is safe and secure.

The Origin of the Infamous NSBA 'Domestic Terrorism' Letter Is Revealed, and It Implicates the Biden Administration.  While the battle over education has settled back into the trenches over the last few months following Glenn Youngkin's big win in Virginia, we are beginning to learn more about how parents became so demonized.  As RedState reported at the time, the NSBA sent a letter to the DOJ that urged action against parents speaking out at school board meetings under the guise of the Patriot Act.  The DOJ then used that letter as justification to use its counter-terrorism division to add "threat tags" to parents.  But as bad as that was, today's news makes it all the worse.  While we knew that the White House "consulted" on the letter, that was apparently completely underselling the government's involvement.  In reality, the NSBA did not send that letter organically out of its own concern.  Rather, Joe Biden's Department of Education solicited the letter.

Biden's Education Secretary Solicited the Infamous Letter Likening Angry Parents to Domestic Terrorists.  The facts of this shameful case are generally well known: the National School Boards Association (NSBA) wrote to the FBI, asking it to investigate as "domestic terrorism"protests at school board meetings against the introduction of Critical Race Theory into public school curricula.  That was bad enough, but now the story has gotten even worse.  On Tuesday, Fox News revealed that "Education Secretary Miguel Cardona solicited the much-criticized letter from the National School Boards Association that compared protesting parents to domestic terrorists," according to an email exchange it had reviewed.

Savage Dad Berates 'Beta' School Board With Perfect Comedic Timing.  This might be the best school board video you've seen yet.  There's no information on where this took place but it really doesn't matter.  It could be Anytown USA, with the growing frustration parents feel with school boards locking them out of meetings or having them arrested falsely or claiming that parents are "terrorists" who need FBI investigations.  This man has had enough and his speech is so good, I'll even transcribe it for those of you who can't listen. [...] The whole audience is responding to this like a stand-up act and they're not laughing at the dad, they're laughing at the board.  It's a riot.  It's also worth noting that ridicule is a potent weapon against these boards that are puffed up with their own importance.

Schools are Now Vaccinating Children without Their Parents' Consent.  Schools in blue states are making it clear to parents that they will use every dirty trick at their disposal to vaccinate children — with or without explicit parental consent.  Dr. Aaron Kheriarty, who is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, shred the harrowing news on Twitter.  "LA Unified School District is vaccinating children without parental consent," Kheriarty said.  "They send your kid home with a form, and when the kid comes back to school — whether or not the form is signed — they consider the child's presence at school 'consent'."  "This is a gross abuse and a violation of state law and basic principles of medical ethics, disproportionately impacting ethnic minorities," he added.  "School authorities who are pulling these stunts are now on notice.  The public is aware."

Minnesota School Board Votes to Reinstate Segregation - Proving Liberals are Racists.  The Mankato School Board in Minnesota decided to take their racism public by voting to pay non-white teachers "additional stipends," essentially paying people more based on the color of their skin.  Whites are not included in those bonuses.  They also voted for colored and non-colored staff members to stay segregated.  This is exactly why Malcolm X warned blacks that white liberals were who the black communitty should look out for.  [Video clip]

Hannah-Jones: Parents Shouldn't Decide what's Being Taught In Schools — 'Leave That to the Educators'.  Nikole Hannah-Jones, 1619 Project creator and professor, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that parents should not be in charge of deciding what is taught in schools.  Hannah-Jones said, "I don't really understand this idea that parents should decide what's being taught.  I'm not a professional educator.  I don't have a degree in social studies or science.  We send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have expertise in the subject area.  And that is not my job."

The Editor says...
Thousands of home-schooling families have demonstrated that teaching K-12 curriculum does not require a college degree.  It requires a lot of work and consistent discipline, and usually a lot of cooperation with other home-schooling families, but it does not require professional teachers.

Minn school board unanimously votes to pay non-white teachers more, segregate staff.  The Mankato School Board in Minnesota in a blatantly racist move has unanimously voted to pay non-white teachers "additional stipends," not on their merit or content of character, but solely based on the color of their skin, and for teaching staff to be segregated by race.  Board members hotly defended the policy vote earlier this month claiming it wasn't "segregation," according to AlphaNews on Tuesday.  "When you're one [minority] of a [white] majority it can be very isolating and lonely," declared board member Erin Roberts.  "To have a support system in place for them is not to segregate them, it is absolutely to support them ... It's not about trying to throw the few [BIPOC] individuals we have into one building.  It's about showing them they aren't alone."

The Editor says...
Wow!  Why didn't they come up with this rhetoric in 1964, to justify segregation?  (Answer:  Because they would have been laughed out of town.)

COVID Is the Virus.  Wokeness Is the Disease.  If wokeness is the new religion, then academics are its high priests.  Not coincidentally, universities are the most hyper-COVID-vigilant of institutions.  Their faculty tend to be irrationally germophobic and to support the most extreme COVID measures.  As the anonymous Substack writer Eugyppius puts it, universities "aren't just eager sponsors of racial hysteria.  They have also emerged as some of the most radical centres of Corona containment in the world.  Their students endure all manner of unreasonable hygiene measures.  Constant testing, quarantining, mask rules, enforced isolation, officially encouraged snitching, movement restrictions, vaccine mandates — all of this and more are routine for millions of students. ... The culprit is a broad, distributed adherence to the dictates of containment ideology, probably driven in no small part by emotional and ideological exhaustion with the prior tyranny of Wokeness."

DC teacher is put on leave after making kids aged 8 and 9 re-enact the Holocaust.  A Washington DC school teacher is on leave after she allegedly told third graders in the school library to reenact scenes from the Holocaust.  The teacher at DC's Watkins Elementary School assigned specific roles to the pre-teens in an attempt to teach the horrors.  The instructor, who has not been identified, was placed on leave Friday.  A Jewish student was even cast in the role of Adolf Hitler in the bizarre reenactment, according to another student's parent.

Denver elementary school under fire for planning 'families of color playground night'.  A Denver, Colorado,-area public elementary school is taking criticism for planning a "families of color playground night."  Centennial Elementary School's website describes the event as taking place "2nd Wed. of the month (Nov 10, Dec 8), at school, outside, as long as weather permits."  "At that point it will be virtual, and probably later in the evening," an event notification reads.  Denver Public schools did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment, but the incident touched on a broader debate playing out across the country.

St. Cloud schools add Somali, Ojibwe to world language program.  Move over, Spanish and French.  St.  Cloud public schools next year will be offering Somali and Ojibwe to all students as elective languages.  "It just makes sense for us to have it," said Lori Posch, executive director of learning and teaching for St. Cloud schools.  "We want to see our students represented in our courses."  The move comes after the St. Cloud school district this fall introduced what is thought to be the first native Somali language course in the state — and possibly the nation — for secondary students.  Some students who are immigrants or refugees have limited or interrupted formal education.  The native Somali course is meant to bolster writing skills in those students' native language and, at the same time, build school skills and other language skills.

Biden's Education Department Wants to Roll Back Effort to Catalog Teacher Sex Crimes.  The Department of Education wants to roll back a Trump-era effort to collect data on teacher-on-student sex crimes.  The department's Office for Civil Rights will not ask school districts questions regarding teacher-on-student sexual assault allegations as part of its 2021-2022 Civil Rights Data Collection, proposed Thursday.  The change is designed to "reduce burden and duplication of data," an Education Department spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon.  But critics say eliminating the question is the Biden administration's attempt to appease teachers' unions.

Portland Kindergarten Forces Children To Eat Lunch Outside In Cold Weather While Sitting On Buckets.  Kindergartners are forced to eat lunch outside in 40-degree weather at Capitol Hill Elementary School in Portland, Oregon.  They sit on buckets to social distance from their classmates.  [Video clip]

Teacher Threatens to 'Kill the Dog' if his Students Fail to win the Vocabulary Competition.  A video showing a teacher threatening to 'kill the dog' if his students failed a vocabulary competition has surfaced online and has parents voicing their outrage.  The teacher, who substitutes the letter F with a B while encouraging students to 'do your bucking vocabulary' is currently being investigated by the school.  [Video clip]

Meanwhile, colleges and universities are now requiring Covid vaccine boosters.  The insanity in higher education continues.  Bowdoin College and Syracuse University are just two of the institutions of higher education now telling students to get boosted or get lost.  Here's Bowdoin's email from yesterday:  "effective January 21, 2022, Bowdoin is requiring all students, faculty, and staff to receive a COVID-19 booster shot within thirty (30) days of becoming eligible."  Keep in mind:
  [#1]   The risk of severe disease or death from Covid to healthy college-age adults is too low to measure accurately.  The data from Europe suggests that a healthy 18 year-old has a risk of death lower than 1 in 1 million.
  [#2]   The risk of dangerous heart inflammation is NOT too low to measure.  A new study from Hong Kong found that for 1 out of 2,300 12-17 year-old boys who received both Pfizer doses suffered acute myocarditis or pericarditis.
Most of the risk came after the second dose.  The risk is very similar in college-age men.

California school district reportedly encourages using witchcraft on people who say 'all lives matter'.  A California school district reportedly removed a link to resources that, among other things, outlined how to cast a spell on people who said things like "all lives matter."  That content was included as part of a Google Drive for a "Black Lives Matter Resource Guide."  A document on "Writing Prompts on Police Brutality and Racist Violence" encourages high school students to write a "curse" for police and others.  "Hexing people is an important way to get out anger and frustration.  Make a list of specific people who have been agents of police terror or global brutality," it reads.

In at least one school, parents aren't included in vaccination decisions.  Although children are at minimal risk from COVID but seem to be at a higher risk of vaccination side effects (especially if they're teenage boys), Democrats are determined to stick needles into children's arms.  Indeed, they're so determined that, at one school in the Los Angeles Unified School District ("LAUSD"), they bribed a 13-year-old to get a vaccination in exchange for pizza.  His mother, who supports vaccinations, is not happy.

Oxford High School Appears To Have Used Controversial 'Restorative' Discipline Practices Prior To School Shooting.  On Tuesday, November 30, a 15-year-old boy allegedly used a firearm belonging to his father to open fire on classmates, killing four students.  The morning of the attack, school administrators met with the boy's parents and showed them disturbing notes found that day indicating the boy was willing to do harm to himself and others.  The boy also was caught searching for ammo on his phone just days before the shooting.  But, rather than disciplining the child, the school simply gave the parents the option of pulling him out of class or leaving him in school following a meeting with school officials.  The description of events seems to be in line with the school's 'restorative' policy which uses principles based on a controversial disciplinarian approach called "restorative justice" that has been blamed for allowing other school shootings to happen.

The Signs Weren't Missed, They Were Ignored.  As has been the case with so many other school shootings over several years, last week's murder spree at Oakland High School in suburban Detroit might have been avoided if actions had been taken in the face of several obvious warning signs.  Ethan Crumbley, 15, is charged with murdering four of his fellow students and wounding with intent to kill seven others.  He has also been charged with terrorism.  There were a series of signs leading up to this tragedy — as there usually are — that should have alerted people that Crumbley was a serious threat.  He had displayed disciplinary problems for some time.  On the day of the shooting, he was summoned to the school office after misbehaving.  His parents were also called in, an indication that officials were taking this latest incident more seriously than previous ones.  Oakland prosecutor Karen McDonald told CNN there is a "strong possibility" Crumbley had the gun used in the killings in his backpack when he met with school officials and his parents.  Did no one think it unusual, if not suspicious, that Crumbley would bring the backpack with him, instead of leaving it in his locker or the classroom?  Why didn't someone ask him to open the backpack and check its contents?

Chicago Elminates Gender Specific Bathrooms In Public Schools For 'Equity' Reasons.  Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is requiring all schools in the district to adopt new signage in an effort to make restrooms gender-neutral.  The initiative, which CPS is referring to as a "big step forward for gender equity," requires the schools to display language outside of restrooms informing students, whether they are male or female, that they may use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity.  "We're requiring all schools to adopt new signage to make our restrooms more inclusive," CPS wrote in a tweet announcing the change.  "This is a big step forward for gender equity for our students and staff."  [Video clip]

It's Time for Parents to Reclaim Authority Over Their Children.  The results of the Virginia gubernatorial race made two things clear.  First, Democrat leaders, in lockstep with teachers unions, want unbridled control of children through public schools.  Second, growing numbers of increasingly passionate parents are standing up to the threats to their parental authority over their children.  In turning down former governor Terry McAuliffe, Virginians sent a resounding message to the entire country — parents will fight for their rights and for their children.  McAuliffe's candor during a September 29 debate against Glenn Youngkin set parents on fire, and likely cost him the election.  Referring to books with sexually explicit material, he vowed that he would not "let parents come into schools and take books off the shelves."  He doubled down a few seconds later with this indicative statement:  "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."  But his loss was not just a matter of some ill-advised comments.  Disturbing as they were to many parents, McAuliffe's actions while Virginia governor in 2016 revealed that, in his mind, parental consent is not applicable when it comes to what is taught in the classroom.

Chicago Public Schools eliminating sex-specific restrooms to 'increase gender equity'.  Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is requiring all schools in the district to adopt new signage in an effort to make restrooms gender-neutral.  The initiative, which CPS is referring to as a "big step forward for gender equity," requires the schools to display language outside of restrooms informing students, whether they are male or female, that they may use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity.  "We're requiring all schools to adopt new signage to make our restrooms more inclusive," CPS wrote in a tweet announcing the change.  "This is a big step forward for gender equity for our students and staff."

California School Presses Kidnapping, Burglary Charges Against a Mom Who Legally Signed Her Child Out of School.  Brittany Sheehan escaped an abusive relationship and played by the rules regarding custody of her daughter and for protection against domestic violence and abuse.  For that, she's being rewarded with criminal charges for kidnapping and burglary after signing her daughter out of school.

Biden Education Department to Curtail Trump-Era Effort to Track Teacher Sex Crimes.  President Joe Biden's Department of Education will no longer ask school districts for data pertaining to teacher-on-student sexual assault allegations, according to Fox News.  As part of its 2021-2022 Civil Rights Data Collection, the department's Office for Civil Rights is set to terminate questions put in place by former President Donald Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that sought to provide a fuller understanding of sexual violence perpetrated by teachers and staff against students.

Long Island school district to separate parents by COVID vaccine status for student shows.  A Long Island school district has sparked an uproar after announcing plans to separate parents by vaccination status during upcoming student concerts, The [New York] Post has learned.  The Rockville Centre School District will have a non-socially distanced section for parents who show vaccination proof upon arrival.  They will also reserve a separate, socially-distanced area for those who are unvaccinated and others who have gotten the shot but still want some additional elbow room.  Acting District Superintendent Robert Bartels told The Post that the measure will enable administrators to effectively contact trace parents in the event of an outbreak.

The Left's Bungled Revolution.  [Scroll down]  But nothing beats the government campaign against those enemies of the people and vile counterrevolutionary saboteurs — parents of school-age children.  This is, evidently, a product of the mind of Merrick Garland. [...] Garland was triggered by an incident in Loudoun County, Virginia, in which a member of a government protected class — a male transexual — followed a young girl into a high-school bathroom and raped her in a particularly repellent fashion.  Cops looked the other way, the school and school board initiated a coverup, and it looked as if Tootsie, Jr. was going to walk until the girl's father, Steven Smith, showed up at the next school board meeting.  When Smith attempted to speak, the board declared the meeting a "public disturbance" and sicced the cops on him.  The cops put Smith under arrest, attempting to humiliate him by tearing his pants off.  Smith was booked on a series of specious charges.  A short time later the transexual rapist was also "arrested" — picked up and almost instantly released.  Shortly after the start of the next school year, he attacked another child under similar circumstances.

School Board Memo Reveals Timeline of White House 'Domestic Terrorism' Letter.  Newly publicized documents revealed more details about how the National School Boards Association (NSBA) communicated with the White House before sending out a letter likening concerned parents to domestic terrorists.  In the widely criticized Sept. 29 letter to President Joe Biden, the NSBA characterized disruptions at school board meetings across the nation as "a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime."  It also urged the federal government to invoke counter-terrorism laws to handle "angry mobs" of parents seeking to hold school officials accountable for teaching the Marxist-inspired critical race theory and for imposing COVID-19 restrictions such as mask mandates on their children.  Just five days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing federal law enforcement to help address the alleged "disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence" against teachers and school leaders.  Garland's rather swift response has raised suspicions among some Republican members of Congress, who are looking into the role the Biden administration played in the crafting and release of the NSBA letter.

More comes out about role White House played in NSBA 'domestic terror' letter.  A memo made public Thursday by Parents Defending Education raises new questions about whether or not the White House ordered Attorney General Merrick Garland to have the FBI investigate reported confrontations and incidents at local school board meetings across the country — directly contradicting what the AG previously told Congress.  The National School Boards Association memo from NSBA President Viola Garcia on October 12 proves that the White House was working with the NSBA before it sent its now-infamous letter to the Biden administration requesting federal law enforcement to investigate parents who have been vocal at local meetings, alleging that their actions may constitute "a form of domestic terrorism."

NSBA coordinated with White House, DOJ before sending notorious 'domestic terrorists' letter: emails.  Newly released internal emails reveal that the National School Boards Association coordinated with the White House and the Department of Justice before sending President Biden the notorious letter that compared concerned parents to domestic terrorists.  Emails provided to Fox News show that NSBA had coordinated with the White House for weeks beforehand.  Viola Garcia, the NSBA president whom the Department of Education later named to a federal board, sent a memo to NSBA members on Oct. 11 (but dated Oct. 12), providing a timeline of the NSBA's interaction with the White House ahead of the letter to Biden, which the NSBA sent on Sept. 29.  Five days later, on Oct. 4, the DOJ issued a memo directing law enforcement to investigate threats to school boards.  On Oct. 22, the NSBA issued an apology for the letter.

Arizona School Board Officials Kept Secret Dossier on Dissident Parents and Employed a Private Investigator to Gather Oppo Research on Them.  Over the last six months or so, it has become more and more common to read stories about school boards that have essentially gone to war with the parents of the children in the school system they oversee.  Ground zero of the war zone was Loudoun County, Virginia.  Loudoun County is one of those Virginia counties that used to be reliably Republican but now has been overrun by leftist scum working for federal contractors and the federal government and has turned hard left.  I hope Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott keep this in mind when trying to entice Silicon Valley and Wall Street companies to relocate to their states.  The flashpoint was the efforts by the Loudoun County school board, without any debate or input from parents, to mainstream transgenderism.  Along with this dangerous nonsense, the school board adopted outright racism tarted up in pseudo-academic language, obscured from view as "critical race theory," and imposed by "diversity, inclusion, and equity" mandates, the standard operating philosophy for the county schools.

Arizona school board member had 'dossier' of private information on 'wacko' parents.  The president of the Scottsdale, Arizona, school board had a Google Drive full of private information, including Social Security numbers, of parents who had expressed their opposition to school mask mandates.  The drive, which the Washington Examiner reviewed, contains numerous financial records from several of the parents involved in the group, including mortgage statements, bankruptcy filings, and divorce filings.  Included on those forms are portions of Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers of parents who had expressed opposition to school mask mandates and critical race theory.

Scottsdale Unified Assures Parents Of Privacy In Aftermath Of Secret Dossier Discovery, Parents Call For Greenburg Resignation.  The Scottsdale Unified School District's administration is scrambling to do damage control after a group of mothers discovered Governing Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg had access to a Google Drive full of personal information, documents, and photos of about 47 people, including children.  An email sent out Wednesday evening by the SUSD's Communications Office sought to assure families that their personal and educational data is safe.  However, the district also solely blamed the discovered digital dossier* site on Mark Greenburg, the father of Jann-Michael Greenburg.  The damage control appears to be too little too late for many parents in the Scottsdale Unified School District, including Amy Carney, a mother of six, who is among those calling for Greenburg to step down.

Richmond school board vaccine mandate:  On second thought...  Back on October 1st, Richmond, Virginia public schools superintendent Jason Kamras followed President Joe Biden's lead and announced a vaccine mandate for all teachers and staff in his district.  Those failing to comply would have their pay withheld and could potentially face the loss of their jobs if they didn't come into line with the policy.  But that was then and this is now.  The schools were already struggling to fill more than 100 vacancies, almost all of which were driven by the mandate.  This week, on Monday night, the School Board was forced to approve 29 more resignations, so at the same meeting, they voted by a two-to-one margin to dial back Kamras' mandate and allow those opposed to being vaccinated the options of submitting weekly negative COVID tests instead.

Virginia Must Clean House at Its Dept. of Education.  There's been much talk about the lunacy of school policies supporting so-called "transgender" or "gender fluid" students.  What happened in the girls' restroom at a Loudoun County, Virginia high school — a girl raped by a "transgender" male student and the later public abuse of the girl's father — rightly became a flashpoint in the recent election.  Will anything really be done under the new Republican administration to curb the dangerous policies that enabled this tragedy?  What can the newly elected governor and Legislature do to end this insanity?  It will be difficult.  The radicals are well entrenched in the state bureaucracy and schools.

The Editor says...
It's safe to say that each of the 50 states has its own Department of Education.  There is no need for a federal Department of Education, with an annual budget of $57 billion (last time I checked).

Cornell Prof Vows To Fail Students Who Improperly Wore Masks During Class.  A Cornell University professor promised to fail two students who he alleges were improperly wearing their face masks during his lecture.  Bruce Monger, the director of undergraduate studies for Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell, sent an email to his students requesting that they help identify two students who were improperly wearing their masks.  One of the students was eating at the time, according to Monger's email.  "I wanted to ask for your help in identifying two ocean students who were photographed with their masks off during the ocean class last Friday," Monger said to his "Introductory to Oceanography" class.  Monger described each student in detail, stating that one had a "prominent hooked nose."

Taxpayers Take School Board to Court for Trying to Silence Parents' Criticism.  Four taxpayers in Pennsylvania have decided enough is enough after footing the bill for a school board attorney who told them that the school system could limit their First Amendment rights.  The taxpayers filed a free speech lawsuit in federal court that could set a precedent for invalidating policies that shield both school administrators and elected officials from public criticism.  "Our lawsuit seeks case precedent to establish that citizens cannot be censored or intimidated by government officials for exercising their First Amendment rights at a school board meeting," Simon Campbell, a former member of the Pennsbury School Board, told The Daily Signal.

New Hampshire and Pennsylvania Join Ohio, Missouri and Withdraw from the National School Boards Association.  Four states have decided to terminate their National School Boards Association membership over a letter comparing the parents to domestic terrorists.  The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Ohio and Missouri School Board Associations terminated their membership with the NSBA.  The New Hampshire School Boards Association is the latest to leave the NSBA after it sent a letter to Biden that begs him to use federal law enforcement agencies against parents and investigate them for "domestic terrorism and hate crime threats."  The National School Board was so outraged that parents were speaking out in defense of their children that they shamelessly urged the DOJ to use the Patriot Act, among other "enforceable actions" against them.

Minnesota school board forces parents to say their address in order to speak, bans criticism of officials.  The Mankato, Minnesota school board is outrageously requiring parents to doxx themselves by stating their home address before they can speak at a meeting and they have, in essence, banned all criticism of school board officials as well.  The chair of the board for Mankato Area Public Schools Jodi Sapp made the new rules crystal clear before calling on parents at an Oct. 18 forum.  Parents were told they could speak for three minutes only if they gave their name and full address.  They were also advised that they were prohibited from addressing individual school board members.  "I just want to remind everybody this is a business meeting of the school board, it is not a meeting that belongs to the public," she began.  "Before the open forum, I would like to review a couple of things," Sapp stated.  "Each speaker is asked to state his or her name and address for the record.  Failure to do so will result in an individual not being allowed to speak."

Minnesota suburb residents required to disclose home address to speak at school board meeting.  The chairwoman of the Mankato, Minn., school board went viral earlier this week for a video in which she is seen telling parents who wish to speak that they are required to first announce their home address.  The chairwoman, Jodi Sapp, is seen at an Oct. 18 meeting telling a man he will not be allowed to speak unless he discloses his home address.  The man first objects, citing security concerns, but ultimately agrees to the demand.  The address cannot be heard in the video, but Sapp notably repeats the address to be sure that it is heard by the entire room.  Earlier in the evening, Sapp announced that the gathering was "not a meeting that belongs to the public" and that anyone who spoke during the open forum was not permitted to criticize members of the board or address them individually.  If a speaker violated that rule, the open forum would be closed immediately and the individual culprit would be barred from speaking at future school board meetings.  Sapp added that audience reactions to forum commentary were banned.

'The truth is out': inside a Loudoun County school board meeting.  Attend a Loudoun County school board meeting in Virginia, and you will find it almost as locked down as the US Capitol post-January 6. Police cars line the streets and dozens of security personnel post up inside the building.  I attended the most recent meeting on Tuesday as media and was subject to a thorough bag check and extensive metal scanning.  Residents who wish to speak at meetings are not even allowed in the building until they are in the next group of ten scheduled to appear, and they are not allowed to bring in bags or purses.  Chairs for the public are socially distanced, limiting the number of people who can even sit inside.  The Loudoun website claims that this is "to ensure physical distancing for those attending the business portion of the School Board meeting, which follows public comment."  "This will result in limited public seating in the School Board Meeting Room," Loudoun admits.

Outrageous Minnesota School Board Requires Parents To Say Their Addresses Outloud In Order To Speak.  Chris Rufo posted a video tonight from a school board meeting in Manako, Minnesota where the school board is requiring parents to reveal their addresses in order to address the school board:  The father in the video clearly doesn't want to give his address, but school board member Jodi Sapp compels him to reveal his house number and street, or says he can't speak.  Reluctantly, the father reveals it and Sapp repeats over the microphone for everyone to hear.  Mission accomplished.  [Video clip]

The Data Mining of America's Kids Should Be a National Scandal.  On a recent Saturday night, Caroline Licwinko, a mother of three, a law school student and the coach to her daughter's cheerleading squad, sat in front of her laptop and tapped three words into an internet search engine:  "Panorama.  Survey.  Results."  Within three clicks, Licwinko was in an online "dashboard" created by Panorama Education Inc., a government contractor hired by school districts to gauge their students' "social and emotional learning."  However, Panorama digs far deeper than whether students might feel depressed or lonely, raising serious public policy questions.  It asks all kinds of prying questions, including gender and sexual orientation and views on racial issues.  Licwinko and her husband, Eric, became concerned in September when their sons' school, North Hunterdon High School, told parents they were sending students a Panorama survey.  Although they opted their sons out, as parents are ostensibly allowed to do, their sons were sent the survey anyway.  What's more, a school official confirmed to them, the private information of all students — including whether they receive special education services and free and reduced meals — was sent across four state lines to Panorama, based in Boston.  Last week, Panorama refused to give the Licwinkos the data the company received on their children.  "They are data mining and psychologically profiling our kids.  The questions they are asking are absolutely inappropriate in a school setting," says Licwinko.  "Schools have sold our children's privacy to a data analytics company that is tracking attendance, behavior, and family's financial status."

What other county in the U.S. has a secret curriculum in the public schools?
Loudoun County Forces Parents To Sign NDA-Style Form To View CRT-Inspired Curriculum.  Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) is requiring parents to sign a form comparable to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to view a portion of the district's new curriculum inspired by critical race theory, according to documents reviewed by the Daily Caller.  As part of LCPS' broader equity agenda, the district spent approximately $7,700 to become a "licensed user" of Second Step Programs, a branch of the left-leaning non-profit organization Committee for Children.  According to a copy of the NDA-style form reviewed by the Daily Caller, "eligible parents" at LCPS must sign the document to view the Second Step curriculum.  Curriculum presentations can only be given in person and parents cannot broadcast, download, photograph, or record "in any mannern whatsoever."

Pure Marxism:  McAuliffe Supporters Are Posting Signs Promising to "Keep Parents Out of Classrooms" as Campaign Winds Down.  Democrat Terry McAuliffe is currently in a tight race against Republican Glenn Youngkn in the Virginia gubernatorial race.  McAuliffe believes parents shouldn't be telling schools what to teach their children in the classroom.  And now as the campaign winds down McAuliffe supporters are allegedly putting out signs to "keep parents out of classrooms."  It's so over the top that it is almost unbelievable.  This would be something you'd expect to see in the former Soviet Union, not in Virginia!

Public School District Wants to Teach 8-Year-Olds about the 'Birds and the Bees'.  As school board races across Colorado are down to the wire, the thirteen-page Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) for middle school students in Colorado's 9-R District surfaced, to the panic of many unsuspecting parents.  Those parents were already questioning the district's previously unknown policy on diversity, which was adopted in January with no public hearing.  There is also a comparable survey for high school students.  Widely administered by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) every other year, the survey targets 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade students (ages 11-14) as voluntary and promises to be "completely anonymous" with its answers "kept private."  There appears to be no requirement for parental permission, so presumably, the parents may remain unaware that the student has taken the survey, with no knowledge of the invasion of their child's privacy (and constitutional) rights that have been violated.

School district racially segregates students, threatens them for 'biased' statements: lawsuit.  A Massachusetts school district is racially segregating students and threatening to punish them for subjectively "offensive" statements they make, violating their civil and constitutional rights at both the state and federal level, according to a new lawsuit seeking permanent injunctions.  Parents Defending Education is challenging the "affinity groups" and associated spaces created by Wellesley Public Schools' diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) plan for 2020-2025.  Not only does the policy violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, but it was applied in a discriminatory fashion, the D.C.-area group alleged.  The district refused requests from parents to create an affinity group for Jewish students, who are also "historically marginalized," following "public acts of antisemitic violence and discrimination."  The suit also seeks to block a "biased incidents" policy that lets anyone anonymously report students to school authorities for "conscious or unconscious bias" against a protected class that "has an impact but may not involve criminal action."

Parents aren't Terrorists, Mr. President.  They're Americans with Something to Say.  [Scroll down]  They are not insurrectionists.  They are not terrorists.  They are parents.  All of this, CRT and its offshoots, the sheer racism of it, the arrogance of the educrats and the White House putting the federal squeeze on dissenting parents, would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.  If you had prophesized the things I'm writing about now, you'd have been considered a madman with a tin-foil hat.  But all this is certainly thinkable now, isn't it?  Because it's happening now.  And there is an effort by legacy, corporate media — which tells itself it speaks truth to power but serves as the thought guardians of the regime — to downplay what's going on at school boards.

School Boards and Idiots.  The heroes in this story are Scott Smith, father of a young girl who had been sexually assaulted in a Loudoun County school bathroom by a "gender fluid" boy wearing a skirt, with an assist from the America First Legal Foundation (AFL), and the thousands of concerned parents of public school children around the country.  We were puzzled by Garland's preposterous memorandum ordering the FBI to investigate angry parents showing up at school board meetings as "domestic terrorists," but AFL, in a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, makes a credible series of factual assertions about the genesis of this outrageous order.  The AFL correctly reminds that the "Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized "parents' right to control and direct the education of their own children."  They note the large, ongoing protests by parents against Critical Race Theory indoctrination, "anti-religious and anti-family gender ideology," and forced masking and online education mandates.

After National School Boards Association Waged War On Parents, Pennsylvania Chapter Withdraws.  The Pennsylvania School Boards Association voted unanimously on Thursday to withdraw from its parent organization, the National School Boards Association, after the national group demanded that the Biden administration use domestic terrorism laws to target parents who want to hold districts accountable for teaching racist curriculum and ignoring the science on masking for children.  "The Pennsylvania School Boards Association was not consulted prior to the letter being sent by the National School Boards Association to President Biden.  We were not asked for input nor discussion on its content," Annette Stevenson, PSBA's chief communications officer, said in a statement to the Delaware Valley Journal.

Virginia Democrats Voted to Allow Schools to Refrain from Reporting Sexual Battery in 2020.  Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly voted for — and Governor Ralph Northam signed — a law allowing schools to refrain from reporting instances of sexual battery, stalking, violation of a protective order, and violent threats occurring on school property in 2020.  § 22.1-279.3:1 of Virginia code had required that these, among a number of other major crimes, be reported to law enforcement if they occurred on campus.  Democrats insisted that misdemeanors be extirpated from reporting requirements in House Bill 257, replacing the word "criminal" with "felony" in the code.

Schools Group That Urged Attorney General's Anti-Parent Initiative Has Ties to Democrats, Unions.  The National School Boards Association, which urged the Biden administration to use federal law enforcement to investigate parents who speak out on local education matters as potential domestic terrorists, has political ties to the Democratic Party and labor unions.  The national association represents members of locally elected school boards, which usually are officially nonpartisan, and is a federation of state school board associations.  Although most funding for the National School Boards Association comes from state school boards, the National Education Association — the nation's largest teachers union and a major donor to Democrat candidates — contributed in the past two years.  The teachers union contributed $68,000 to the national association in 2020 and $50,000 in 2019, according to union reports to the Labor Department.

Revolt of the masses:  The left has overplayed its hand.  I think the left is realizing it has a tiger by the tail.  The people are getting uppity.  Parents are assailing school boards over critical race theory and transgender madness.  So much so that the Biden Justice Department is sending out the FBI to investigate whether, as the National School Boards Association bombastically charges, some parents are guilty of "domestic terrorism and hate crimes."  Boy, it's lucky for those BLM/Antifa rioters in 2020 that they refrained from badmouthing teachers and school officials while torching the cities.  Their "peaceful protests" might have been investigated.  Meanwhile, former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton bag man who is running again for his old job, stated, "I'm not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions."  He added, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."  This stuff ticks off parents, and GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin is taking full advantage.  He is running ads accurately depicting Mr. McAuliffe as an authoritarian, anti-parent elitist.

Loudoun County schools are worse even than you imagined.  We've written before about the madness in the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS), most recently when it comes to parents protesting LGBTQ pornography in the school system's libraries.  There've also been newsworthy moments when parents spoke out about Critical Race Theory in the school district.  One of the most explosive moments occurred when the school board, tired of having angry parents (i.e., voters) yell at them, called the cops, with several arrests, including that of one man getting physically dragged out.  It now turns out that the man was protesting the fact that the school's policies led to a boy in a skirt sexually assaulting his daughter in a girl's bathroom. [...] On June 22, Scott Smith, a White plumber was filmed as the police arrested him and dragged him out of an LCPS board meeting.  It was his arrest, writes Rosiak, that the National School Boards Association cited when it sought the federal help that AG Merrick Garland so willingly gave, referred to as a possible form of "domestic terrorism."

New Jersey Teacher Says Her Stomach Was 'Churning' Following Union Demand To Log Students' Vaccination Status.  Jennifer Mess, a New Jersey public school teacher, said Sunday on 'Fox & Friends Weekend' that her stomach was "churning" after watching a teachers union training video enticing her and her colleagues to log the vaccination status of students and parents into a progressive app.  The video, produced by the vaccine equity nonprofit Made to Save as well as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Educators Association (NEA), reportedly instructs teachers to upload their conversations with students and parents into the campaign app Reach, in exchange for rewards like gift cards.  Mess, a drama teacher for the Middletown Township Public Schools, argued that the training talked them through scenes where they would be "manipulating parents and students and as educators," saying the instructions were "completely against what we do."

Furious School Parents Will Not Be Silenced.  It's tempting to see the new directive by Attorney General Merrick Garland as merely a transparent attempt to intimidate parents into silence on opinions that the Biden Administrations doesn't like.  But it's worse than that.  It's worth going though the reasons why this misconduct by federal law enforcement is so appalling, and to remind parents why they should not be deterred.  Many parents in Illinois and across the country have spoken out recently with unprecedented anger in unprecedented numbers at school board meetings and beyond.  Their complaints have been about Critical Race Theory in classrooms, mask mandates and explicit materials for minors about sexuality and gender. [...] But on Monday, Garland issued a directive to the FBI and federal law enforcement officials across the nation to focus on alleged criminal conduct in protests by parents.  Outrage ensued immediately, and appropriately, from parents, their organizations and commentators who are infuriated that a threat of federal law enforcement is being used to try to scare them out of constitutionally protected speech.

Teachers blast union for telling them to upload vaccination status of student's parents, their names and addresses.  A national teachers union training session that asks educators to log conversations with parents about the COVID-19 vaccine — into a campaign app built for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign — was blasted as a 'blatant effort to coerce, manipulate, and even track information on students and their parents.'  The recurring virtual training is hosted by vaccine equity group Made to Save and is sponsored by the National Educators Association (NEA), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).  'Having the audacity to back this type of presentation shows that the NJEA, NEA, AFT, and any other organization involved clearly does not regard educators as professionals or critical thinkers,' Jennifer Mess, a drama teacher for the Middletown Township Public Schools in New Jersey, told Fox News.

Virginia Judge Hands Victory to Parents, Sides Against Prosecutor on School Board Recall.  A Virginia-based parent group attempting to oust five Loudoun County School Board members was given a small win after a Loudoun County Circuit Court judge ruled Tuesday [10/5/2021] in favor of the organization's recall petition against a board member who sought to dismiss it.  On Tuesday, a judge denied Loudoun County school board member Beth Barts' motion to dismiss the case and also removed Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney Buta Biberaj from the case.  The group Fight For Schools and others have alleged that Barts was involved in a private Facebook group that violated the School Board's Code of Conduct and other laws after members allegedly tried to attempt to reveal private information about parents and opponents.  Judge Jeanette Irby, meanwhile, ruled that Biberaj should be removed from the case due to a public perception issue, arguing the public may not trust the prosecutor to be impartial.

Schools boards, bastions of local democracy, persecute dissident parents.  American parents are organizing to fight racist critical race theories being taught in their kids' schools.  Attorney General Merrick Garland, once touted as a moderate, has responded by asking the FBI to treat them as domestic terrorists.  As befits the Biden administration, this over-the-top authoritarianism is accompanied by the stench of corruption, as it turns out that Garland's son-in-law is in the business of selling educational materials on CRT.  Garland's self-dealing and thuggery are grounds for resignation.  But that isn't the worst thing that's happened.  Bad as it is, the Biden administration's poisonous combination of graft and authoritarianism can be remedied by getting rid of the administration — something that, if polls are any indication, is eminently doable.

Critics question Garland's school board crackdown after son-in-law revealed as social justice education kingpin.  Attorney General Merrick Garland, who earlier this week injected the FBI into the nationwide debate over far-left local school curriculums, has a son-in-law whose company has gotten rich peddling K-12 educational materials obsessed with "systemic racism," "intersectionality," and white supremacy.  Alexander "Xan" Tanner, who married Garland's daughter Rebecca in 2018, is the co-founder and president of Panorama Education, a major player in the teacher training and curriculum industry.  Panorama pushes race-focused surveys and conducts trainings on systemic oppression, white supremacy, unconscious bias, and intersectionality — all under the rubric of "Social-Emotional Learning."

AG Linked To Firm That Stores 'Psychological Profiles' Of Students, Avoids Parental Consent.  More than one-fifth of the nation's largest 100 school districts have contracts with a Critical Race Theory-tinged firm cofounded by the son-in-law of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who recently raised the specter of involving the FBI against parents who express anger over CRT and other issues at school board meetings.  Garland's daughter is married to Xan Tanner, a cofounder of Panorama Education, which issues surveys to students asking if they are feeling "genderfluid," and asks, "How confident are you that students at your school can have honest conversations with each other about race?"  At least one district's contract says all of the personal student data is sent to the company — which is funded by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg — under a loophole that circumvents a requirement for parental consent by counting the for-profit company as a "school official," not an outside vendor.  Panorama, which focuses on "social-emotional learning" and surveys that gauge the feelings of parents, students, and staff, has among the broadest tentacles of any educational consultant.

California's Children Are Property Of The State.  For starters, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a vaccine mandate last week for students age 12 and older, making California the first state in the nation to require public and private school students to be fully vaccinated for in-person instruction. (Unvaccinated students will have the option of enrolling in an online school or attending independent-study programs offered by districts.)  The ruling will go into effect once the Food and Drug Administration approves vaccines for kids over the age of 12.  Depending on when the FDA decision comes down, students will have to get the jab by either January 1, 2022 or July 1, 2022.  On deck are school children ages 5 to 11, who will be forced to join the vax club as soon as the FDA green lights it for them.  Vaccine proponents are quick to explain that the COVID vaccine is just an addition to a list that includes mumps, measles, and rubella — but there is a big difference.  While children are directly impacted by mumps, etc., they do not have a significant risk from COVID, nor are they "super spreaders."  Teachers are far more likely to catch the disease in the teachers' lounge than in the classroom.

Another University Capitulates to the Mob.  Dorian Abbot, an associate professor of geophysics from the University of Chicago, was scheduled deliver the prestigious Carlson Lecture at MIT on climate and the potential for life on other planets[.]  Everything seemed in order until an insane mob began banging at the door.  The mob had discovered a Newsweek piece that Abbot co-wrote back in August where he argued that diversity efforts at universities violated equal treatment.  The article proposed that "university applicants be treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone."

Virginia Parents Say School Board Gag Rule Stifles Criticism.  Parents are criticizing Virginia's Prince William County School Board over a rule limiting public comment, a move community members say is an attempt to stifle debate around hot-button issues.  The school board approved changes to its "Citizen Participation" rule during a tumultuous Sept. 15 meeting.  The updated rule limits time for public comment to one hour and prohibits attendees from bringing posters or signs into meetings without prior approval from the board.  The rule comes as Prince William County parents and teachers debate COVID-19 policies and "woke" curricula.  The changes demonstrate the board's apathy toward concerned parents and taxpayers, several attendees and concerned community members told the Washington Free Beacon.

Dallas public schools will no longer suspend students because too few white students are suspended.  Dallas Independent School District is making some changes in how it addresses student disciplinary issues across middle and high school campuses.  The school district is doing away with in-school and out-of-school suspensions as disciplinary practices.  The district, instead, will address student behavior issues by incorporating "reset centers" in its 52 middle and high schools.  "We're just trying to address something that has been going on for a long time," said Pierre Fleurinor, a reset coordinator for Dallas ISD.  Fleurinor, or Coach Flo, as the students call him, works at Stockard Middle School.  He said the reset center gives the students a place to refocus, cool down, connect and form relationships.

Washington university creates segregated housing specifically for Black students.  A university in Washington has created segregated housing specifically for Black students.  Western Washington University has designated the fourth floor of Alma Clark Glass Hall as housing reserved for its "Black Affinity Housing program," becoming the latest school to adopt such a program.  "The program will explore and celebrate the diversity of Black and African American people and culture, with historical and contemporary context," the program website reads, also saying that all "Western students residing in the program help foster a warm and vibrant community supporting social, personal and academic success."

Academia Is Establishing A Permanent Surveillance Bureaucracy That Will Soon Govern The Rest Of The Country.  Having now received a tsunami of messages from people across the US (and a few internationally) about the surveillance regimes being permanently installed at their educational institutions — in contravention of earlier assurances that the current academic year would mark a long-awaited "return to normalcy," thanks to the onset of mass vaccination — there are a few conclusions to draw.  First:  unless and until COVID "cases" are abandoned as a metric by which policy action is presumptively dictated, these institutions are destined to continue flailing from irrational measure to irrational measure for the foreseeable future.  Just turn your gaze over to one of America's most hallowed pedagogical grounds:  As of September 17, Columbia University has newly forbidden students from hosting guests, visiting residence halls other than their own, and gathering with more than ten people.  The stated rationale for these restrictions?  Administrators have extrapolated from the "contact tracing" data they've compulsorily seized that a recent increase in viral transmission is attributable to "students socializing unmasked at gatherings in residence halls and at off-campus apartments, bars, and restaurants."

Oakland School District passes vaccine mandate for students 12 and up despite a lack of full FDA approval for kids.  The Oakland Unified School District passed a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for students 12 and older Wednesday [9/22/2021], despite a lack of full approval from the FDA that it is safe for children.  The measure makes it one of the first districts, with its student population of nearly 50,000, in Northern California to pass such a vaccine requirement and follows a similar decision made by the Los Angeles school district — the second largest in the US — earlier this month.  The Piedmont and Hayward districts also passed similar measures Wednesday.

Consume and cover!  Harvard instructs students on how to eat and drink with masks.  Harvard University, the home of people with high SAT scores, seems to think its elite students need some tutelage in table manners especially since everyone there must mask up even in the cafeteria/dining hall.  Face masks are required within indoor settings on campus, the "safe-behavior" recommendations from Dr. Giang T. Nguyen, Harvard's health services executive director, include the quick-sip rule and consume and cover, which could give a new meaning to dine and dash.  Eating slowly, which is often good for digestion, seemingly means that students have to fiddle with their masks the entire time, pursuant to Harvard's protocol.

My university forced students to get vaccinated, then moved some classes online.  After a year of online learning, I, like many other students, thought there would finally be a full return to in-person learning.  My university, DePaul, told students that everyone would have to be vaccinated to attend in-person classes.  Though I chose to take the vaccine before the mandate, many of my peers followed what the university said, despite any misgivings they might have had about getting vaccinated.  People who have chosen not to get vaccinated were warned they could lose financial aid and would be dropped from classes.  But even people who did take the vaccine are finding their classes moved online — and the return to normal seems still so far away.  This despite the low rate of COVID infections in the past month — the highest number of weekly infections of students is 18 cases.

Dumbing Down K-12 Education.  At a time in history when more learning and skill development are needed, the opposite has occurred.  As witnessed throughout the 2020-2021 school year, teacher unions led the charge in our government-funded and run K-12 public education system to make things worse.  Putting partisan politics and self-promotion ahead of student learning, they refused to allow teachers to return to their classrooms until outlandish demands are met — including moratoriums on charter schools, defunding the police, and Medicare for all.  Furthermore, the school week was reduced from five days to four days a week, with instruction only provided a few hours a day remotely.  When in-person school finally resumed after an entire calendar year, the low norm accepted by multiple governors was a mere 30 percent of pre-pandemic instruction hours — e.g., two-and-a-half-hour school days, four days a week.

Public Schools — Stop Experimenting on People's Children.  A few years back, public schools in my hometown of Littleton, Colorado began using laptop computers in the classroom.  With great fanfare, every student was given his or her own computer.  Classroom instruction quickly moved away from traditional teaching materials to primarily computer-based learning.  This trend occurred throughout the country.  We were told this would usher in a grand new world where student's educational achievements would take off through the stratosphere.  In a normal world, a major undertaking like this would only have been done after extensive research, testing, and actual results. [...] Years after this transformation, what has been the actual educational impact on student learning?  We will never know since they have never tested to see its effect.  Can you imagine any for-profit business doing the same?  Or medicine?  Or technology?  Or agriculture?  Of course not.

Seattle Public Schools withheld COVID vaccine exemption forms in rigged process.  Seattle Public Schools (SPS) withheld the religious and medical exemption forms for the COVID-19 vaccination mandate until after the first deadline to get the Moderna vaccine passed.  This entire process seems rigged against using exemptions.  School staff in Washington must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18, or they will be terminated.  Medical and religious exemptions are supposed to be offered for employees who wish to seek them.  But a spokesperson for SPS confirmed that the district hadn't sent out the forms yet.  They are expected to go out this week.  By the time staff receive the exemptions, it may be too late to use them.

Unhinged Teacher In Illinois Threatens To Call Cops On Student For Pulling Mask Down.  Illinois Teacher Warns To Call Police On Unmasked Student A video from Glenbard North High School in Carol Stream, Illinois appears to show an unhinged teacher warning to call the police on a student for not wearing his mask.  [Video clip]

Las Vegas Mother Wants To Remove Her Son From Public School After Crazy Liberal Teacher Uses Tape On His Face To Secure Mask.  An anonymous Las Vegas mother alleges that in a fourth-grade classroom, a substitute teacher reportedly attached her child's mask to their face with tape.  After an alleged incident inside a classroom involving face coverings, the mother of a 9-year-old child is asking for the dismissal of a substitute teacher from the Clark County School District in Nevada.  The mother talked to FOX5 on the understanding that her identity and face not be revealed.  She was concerned that her son's anguish might be exacerbated at school, but she also wanted other parents to be aware of what is taking place at Reedom Elementary School in Mountain's Edge.  According to the mother, she saw another kid who she mistakenly identified as her son who also had tape over their faces to attach their mask.

Masking young children in school harms language acquisition.  My county recently re-instituted an indoor mask mandate.  In reading through the exemptions in the public health order I found this exception to mandated face coverings:  "Exceptions.  Individuals performing any of the following activities are exempt from the Face Covering requirements of this Order while the activity is being performed:  a. Individuals who are hearing impaired or otherwise disabled or who are communicating with someone who is hearing impaired or otherwise disabled and where the ability to see the mouth is essential to communication[.]"  This is important because children and/or students do not have the speech or language ability that adults have — they are not equally able and the ability to see the face and especially the mouth is critical to language acquisition which children and/or students are engaged in at all times.  Furthermore, the ability to see the mouth is not only essential to communication but also essential to brain development.

California's State Pension Invests Millions in Chinese State-Owned Companies.  California's state pension invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese state-owned enterprises linked to the People's Liberation Army, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.  The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) had more than $3 billion invested in Chinese companies, including 14 state-controlled enterprises blacklisted by the Trump administration, as of June 2020.  Many of these companies are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project Beijing is using to expand its geopolitical and military influence.

Amherst College's insane COVID rules are all about upper-class virtue-signaling.  Last week, Amherst College announced that its students will be subject to double-masking and to COVID tests every other week throughout the fall semester.  Indoor dining services will be shut down, and the size of gatherings severely restricted.  Students, all of whom were already required to be vaccinated, will spend non-class time in their dorm rooms and may leave campus only in a handful of defined emergency situations.  One of these is apparently going to the bank, though what a bunch of would-be rowdy undergraduates who can't hit up the local dive bars or have a coffee will need money for is a mystery.  This is sheer lunacy:  the lunacy of America's overeducated upper castes.

CDC Should Revise Its Guidance Mandating Masks at School.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends "universal indoor masking of all students age 2 and older."  There's just one problem:  The leading study on which the CDC bases this recommendation found that the COVID-19 infection rate in schools requiring students to wear masks "was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional."  This gap between science and CDC recommendations is hardly unique.  The health agency's policy notices often rest on shaky foundations.  That is especially true when it comes to schools.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should revise its guidance on the masking of schoolchildren and clearly communicate that its current guidance isn't backed by sound evidence.

The Editor says...
If unelected bureaucrats publish "guidance," their decrees are as toothless as a bumper sticker.  The CDC does not write laws.

Biden Weaponizes Dept. of Education to Become the COVID Mask Gestapo.  They get creepier by the hour.  Seriously, these people need to be rounded up and put in some sort of leper colony for fascists.  They will be free to keep the masks on their enraged faces all they want.  They're empowered by a government that is now in the hands of people who are all too casual about using its might against any citizens who don't agree with them.  I'm not talking about criminals, I'm talking about law-abiding Americans who are merely running afoul of the liberal narrative du jour.  We saw it happen when Barack Obama was president and he sent the IRS after conservative tea party groups.  Now, President Sniffsakid has directed the Dept. of Education — the most useless of all the Cabinet agencies — to legally harass the states that aren't trying to suffocate school children with masks.

Biden officials step up pressure to use infection control measures in schools.  Federal health officials stepped up calls for parents and officials to implement safety measures such as universal masking in schools as students return to in-person classes, citing outbreaks that forced many children back to temporary remote learning.  "In our outbreak investigations, large scale quarantines or a large number of cases are generally occurring in schools because schools are not following our guidance, particularly our recommendations for teachers as well as students aged 12 and over to be vaccinated and for everyone right now to be masked," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday [8/27/2021].

The Editor says...
What's the difference between "guidance" and coercion?

Washington public school forces unvaccinated student athletes to wear ankle monitors: parents.  A 15-year-old girl was allegedly forced to wear an ankle tracking monitor for volleyball practice at Eatonville High School in Washington state as a condition of participating in team sports.  This was required of both vaccinated and unvaccinated students.  According to her mother who spoke anonymously to The Post Millennial, her daughter was at a practice for the public school's volleyball team and texted her that she was being asked to put on an ankle monitor.

NIH Director Admits School Mask Mandates Enforced on Children Are Not Based on COVID-19 Data.  A new report found that, in the 2020 election, almost 15 million mail-in ballots were unaccounted for — meaning that their whereabouts are deemed "unknown" by election officials.  Meanwhile, four days ago, the director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) said during an interview that the reason kids are being forced to wear masks in school isn't necessarily because they are in danger of infection, but rather so that the school districts don't shut down classrooms.  Over in Florida, a group of parents were so concerned their kids were being forced to wear masks all day long at school that they had their kids' used masks sent for laboratory testing.  After the analysis, it was found that the masks had the presence of 11 dangerous pathogens, as well as fungi, parasites, and bacteria.  [Video clip]

Illinois threatens school board member's medical license for opposing mask mandate.  A school board member in Illinois could lose his medical license for opposing Gov. J.B. Pritzker's school mask mandate, raising concerns about the power of professional licensing regulators to chill speech on public matters.  The case of sports medicine physician Jeremy Henrichs is resonating all the way to the state capital, where a Republican lawmaker is warning Pritzker that intimidating public officials is a felony in Illinois.  A fellow board member also has come to his colleague's defense.  Henrichs serves on the Mahomet-Seymour Board of Education and the faculty of the University of Illinois Carle College of Medicine.  He's also team physician for the university's athletics department.

University in Connecticut to Fine, Block Internet Access to Unvaccinated Students.  Students at Connecticut's Quinnipiac University will be fined up to $2,275 and lose internet access if they fail to comply with the university's COVID-19 vaccination policies.  The private liberal arts college in New Haven County announced the new penalties on Aug. 16 in an email sent to some 600 students who haven't yet provided proof of COVID-19 vaccination or requested an exemption.  Students at Quinnipiac were required to submit their vaccination records by Aug. 1, according to an email obtained by The Epoch Times.  Those not in compliance by Sept. 14 will begin to face $100 weekly fines, with increases of $25 after every two weeks, up to a maximum of $200 per week.  They also won't be able to use the school's campus network and Wi-Fi.  Students could be fined up to $2,275 in total for the fall term, the university warned.  The penalties cover those who don't receive a vaccine, as well as exempted students who miss weekly COVID-19 testing.  There will be a $100 fine for each missed test.

The Editor says...
Here is some free advice:  Either make another selection and attend a different university, of which there are hundreds, or wait a year or two until sanity returns to this country.  If sanity does not return, your college education will be worthless anyway.

Texas Teacher in Tears Likens Lack of Mask Mandates to Mass Shootings.  As Americans face the prospect of reopened schools, some are deathly afraid.  Case in point:  Austin resident Jenny Gillis, who recently posted an impassioned plea.

The Editor says...
Maybe you shouldn't be a teacher if you live in constant fear.  Maybe you should turn off your TV and get some fresh, unfiltered air.

Matt Walsh Shows up and [excoriates] School Board Over Mask Mandates for Kids.  While the battle over mask mandates for children is most visible in Florida because Gov. Ron DeSantis has decided to actually fight back, other states are seeing the fights play out at the local level.  Parents are showing up to school board meetings to express their displeasure with leaders who continue to spit in the face of objective data when it comes to forcing kids to wear dirty pieces of cloth on their faces.  One of those parents who showed up is The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh, who gave a short speech (the board limits the time) that hit the nail directly on the head.  In a clear and concise laying out of the facts, he reinforced why this is a fight worth fighting for parents who aren't tired of complying.  [Video clip]

Atlanta Elementary School Allegedly Segregated Students by Race.  It may be 2021 but one elementary in Atlanta is acting like it's the Jim Crow era based on the principal's policy of segregating children in classrooms based on race.  A black mother whose child attends the Mary Lin Elementary School was shocked to find out the principal implemented this policy last year.  She only discovered it was happening when she asked to place her child with a teacher she thought would be a better fit.  "[The principal] said that's not one of the Black classes, and I immediately said, 'What does that mean?'  I was confused.  I asked for more clarification.  I was like, 'We have those in the school?'  And she proceeded to say, 'Yes.  I have decided that I'm going to place all of the Black students in two classes,'" mother Kila Posey told WSB-TV, according to Fox News, recalling her conversation with the principal.

Atlanta School Principal In Hot Water After Segregating Classes Based On Race.  A parent has filed a federal complaint against her child's school, alleging it segregated classes based on race.  She said it was a practice put in place by the school's principal, who thought she was doing what was best for all students.  Atlanta Public Schools confirmed to Channel 2's Tom Jones that it has wrapped up its investigation into the allegations and has taken action.  Parent Kila Posey still can't believe a principal thought separating students by race was a good idea.  [Video clip]

Making children wear masks in the classroom is 'child abuse': Report in Ireland says it can worsen existing health issues.  Making children wear masks in the classroom can stunt language skills and exacerbate anxiety, a health report commissioned by the Irish government has found.  The Health Information and Quality Authority's report published in March informed Dublin's decision not to mandate masks for children in elementary schools.  The HIQA paper noted that transmission of Covid was low in schools and that young children found it difficult to wear face coverings properly.

Williamson County, Tennessee, School Board Meeting Erupts After Board Members Mandate Masks for Elementary School Students.  Things got ugly in Williamson County, Tennessee, as the school board defied the parents and required students to wear masks this school year.  The debate inside the board meeting was very heated as the board members decided to force the students to wear masks regardless of what the parents wanted.  The four-hour school board meeting drew a large crowd of freedom protesters including former sports journalist and conservative political commentator Clay Travis, who has children that attend schools in the district.  [Video clip]

Loudoun County teacher Quits at school meeting in protest over CRT lessons.  A Virginia teacher has dramatically resigned during a meeting of her scandal-hit school board after blasting its obsession with lessons on critical race theory.  Laura Morris spoke before Loudoun County School Board in an emotional address, explaining why the 'equity trainings' and political dogma forced her to resign.  She said she could no longer be part of an organization that told her 'white, Christian, able-bodied females' needed to be reined in.

Arkansas law school feeling heat after naming professorship for Bill Clinton.  The time-honored tradition of naming a law professorship after a famous scholar or donor has gone off the rails a bit at a University of Arkansas law school — and the twist involves none other than the would-be honoree himself, former President Bill Clinton.  Newly released records show the scandal-plagued former president had withdrawn his approval for a teaching chair to be named after himself at the William H. Bowen School of Law.  Yet emeritus professor John DiPippa, who has held the post since it was first endowed in 2000, recently dubbed it the Clinton chair anyway.  Now the university is embroiled in questions about what prompted the sudden attachment of Mr. Clinton's name to the teaching chair, as well as the history that apparently settled the issue.

When Everything is Racist, Nothing Is.  Did the "diversity" industry not see that this would be the result of their ideology — or did they not care?  We no longer embrace the assimilation of the "melting pot."  We are embracing cultural communities within communities — segregation.  A number of colleges had separate graduation ceremonies this year.  One school system in Atlanta is even segregating classes by race again.  It's not being done by the evil right-wing haters — it's being done by the progressive left.

Oberlin College issues $80 million in climate bonds.  Investors bought $80 million in bonds last week to finance Oberlin College's four-year geothermal energy conversion project.  Following Stanford University, the Lorain County-based college is now the second higher education institution in the United States and third in the world to make use of Certified Climate Bonds for campus construction projects.  The green financing avenue can only be used for projects that align with the Paris Climate Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to lass than 2 degrees Celsius compared to temperatures before the age of industrialization.  When put up for sale, the climate bonds attracted bids totaling nearly three times the amount of the offering, according to Oberlin College.

The Editor says...
Please tell me:  How will these bonds improve the weather?

Mask-Wearing: Not Polite, Not Considerate.  After the CDC and the Biden administration again ignored science and recommended or re-imposed foolish mask mandates and the like, numerous municipalities and organizations eager to bow to — or afraid to ignore — left-wing dictates, went along with the latest round of Wuhan Virus absurdities. [...] Some schools — especially those in Democrat-run hell-holes, I mean large U.S. cities — are again forcing kids into masks.  School leadership making such decisions, along with the teacher unions, are the most foolish of all here.  They are ignoring science and data on multiple fronts as the mask mandates, and perhaps even shutdowns, are re-imposed.  Not only has science revealed the masks as largely useless to prevent the spread of the Wuhan Virus, but the data have long revealed children to be at very little to no risk from the Wuhan Virus.  In addition, schools the world over have long proven to be insignificant spreaders of the Wuhan Virus.

Masking kids and closing schools is irrational, unscientific child abuse.  A study out of the UK released last week proved — once again — what we've known for more than a year:  Kids transmit the coronavirus at a much lower rate than do adults.  Epidemiologist Shamez Ladhani, who led the study, found that children "aren't taking [the virus] home and then transferring it to the community.  These kids have very little capacity to infect household members."  Nevertheless, we Americans inflicted misery upon our kids.  We took away school, kept them apart from their friends, and needlessly covered their faces.  It wasn't all kids who suffered, though.  Kids in private and parochial schools in urban areas went to school.  Kids in public schools in GOP-governed areas also went to school (and even got to play sports, mask-free).  And everything turned out OK: States with open schools didn't have more child COVID cases and certainly not more hospitalizations or deaths.  Schools without mask mandates didn't have significantly more COVID cases.  They simply put kids first.

Galesburg, Illinois, School District Issuing Color Coded ID Badges for Vaccinated and Non-Vaccinated Employees.  They are not using armbands, yet; however, one school district in Galesburg, Illinois, is issuing color-coded identification to visibly label vaccinated and non-vaccinated school district employees.  This is how the process of stigmatization is begun; be aware of what is coming.  According to sources in Illinois School District 205 (Galesburg, IL), School Superintendent John Asplund sent the notification to school staff members announcing a new staff ID badge policy.  [Screenshot]  School staff now have the option to change from the customary white ID badge to a yellow ID badge to indicate that they have received the COVID-19 vaccine.  This policy is currently only limited to school staff and does not apply to students.  However, it can be anticipated the school may begin to visibly identify non-vaccinated students.

A California Marine Stands To Defend His Children From Forced Masks in School.  John Spiropoulos continues supporting parents as they fight against Critical Race Theory lesson plans and mandated masks in schools.  In this video report, John helps share the message of one "veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kevin McGowen."  As noted in the interview by Spiropolous, Mr. McGowen, "Never thought he'd have to later fight for his children to go to school mask-free.  He never even considered that he'd have to battle against a Marxist ideology being taught in U.S. schools.  But he's joined the fight."  [Video clip]

Illinois Superintendent Will Hand Out Yellow ID Badges Based on Vaccination Status.  Galesburg, IL School District 205 Superintendent John Asplund sent this shocking email out to staff members announcing a new ID badge policy.  School staff now have the option to change from the customary white ID badge to a yellow ID badge to indicate that they have received the covid vaccine.  They are actually going to use Yellow Badges for identification.

Parents Notch Victory in Effort To Recall School Board Member Who Opposed Reopening.  A group of Fairfax County parents on Monday reached the signature threshold to recall a school board member who voted against reopening classrooms.  Open FCPS Coalition petitioned a Fairfax County Court judge to recall Elaine Tholen, who voted against reopening schools despite evidence that it was safe.  The group collected more than 5,000 signatures from people who agreed Tholen was negligent in her duties to Fairfax County students, particularly those with special needs.

Classroom Cameras Won't Stop Big Education.  During my forty-plus years of teaching — both inside the classroom and outside as a tutor — public education has morphed into Big Education, and it is as protective of itself as are Big Tech and Big Media.  Big Education is no longer largely populated by people who believe in teaching critical thinking and knowledge, people who encourage innovation and creativity by modeling those qualities in their own classrooms.  Rather, it is populated with generations of teachers and "educators" who worship at the altar of the latest "approved" pedagogy, methodology, and ideology, and who work hard to keep everyone in line.  Big Education, again like Big Tech and Big Media, is particularly adept at repelling foreign invaders and is willing to repel them with great ferocity. [...] Big Education also does not acknowledge Any Outside Idea.  When ignoring Any Outside Idea isn't possible, Big Education simply incorporates the Outside Idea in a way that diminishes its role in the classroom dynamic.

White spite:  NYC principal 'conspired to oust Caucasian teachers'.  The faculty of a Washington Heights high school is rebelling against their principal, charging in a vote of no confidence that she has "flagrantly but unsuccessfully attempted to divide our school by race."  Paula Lev, principal of the High School for Law and Public Service, is now under investigation by the city Department of Education for allegedly telling a faculty member she "was going to get rid of all these white teachers that aren't doing anything for the kids of our community," a complaint states.  Lev, a Dominican, also asked the faculty member to "conspire with her" to try to oust a white colleague, according to the complaint filed last week with the DOE's Office of Equal Opportunity.  "She definitely has something against white people," says the complaint, obtained by The [New York] Post.

Illinois legislature passes law requiring feminine hygiene products in boys' bathrooms.  A bill awaiting the Illinois governor's signature would require schools to provide free menstruation products in both girls' and boys' bathrooms for grades 4 through 12.  Currently, Illinois requires tampons to be provided to students who need them, but the supplies are kept in the nurse's office.  State Rep. Kathleen Willis, D-Addison, a co-sponsor of the proposal, said products such as tampons and sanitary napkins are needed in both girls' and boys' bathrooms in order to address the health needs of transgender students.  "If you are biologically a female, but identifying as a male, you're going to menstruate and you're going to need these products," Willis said during floor debate.

Top 10 Examples of Leftist and Democratic Racism.  [#5] University of Michigan-Dearborn announces whites only cafe — It started out innocently enough, at least in the minds of certain racists in academia.  The University of Michigan-Dearborn last year held an event called "The BIPOC Café" which intended to provide "a space for student[s] from marginalized racial/ethnic/cultural communities to gather and to relate with one another and to discuss their experience as students on campus and as people of color in the world."  Sounds pretty racist, considering they're essentially practicing segregation, right?  Only there was no issue with the BIPOC Café initially because it's OK to discriminate against white students.  But when the university announced their "Non-POC Café" (for non-People of Color... a woke way of saying "white"), the left lost their minds.  Meanwhile, any rational observer understands that racism is racism, regardless of who you're discriminating against in the name of equity.

NM Kids forced to wear masks while running in 100-degree heat; Parents are striking back.  While over half of the country has removed mask mandates, New Mexico children ages 3yo+ are still required to wear masks at school as well as during outdoor athletics.  Summer temperatures in New Mexico range into the 100's, and kids are being forced to wear masks even while running track races and playing soccer in the summer heat.  New Mexico parents have reported that their children are suffering blackouts, vomiting, breathing problems, dizziness, disorientation, nosebleeds, learning problems, and other health problems as a result of the mask mandates.  The youth mask mandate is clearly putting kids at risk of imminent harm, yet nonetheless, the local school principals, boards, superintendents, and athletic associations are all saying that their hands are tied by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's policies.

Tacoma middle school teacher is condemned for handing out flyers telling children they can have an abortion at 11 without parental consent.  A middle school teacher from Washington State has come in for criticism after handing out flyers that advised students on sex and how to go about getting a abortion, without first getting the consent of parents.  The fact sheet, which was said to have been produced by Planned Parenthood, told eighth-grade kids aged 13 and 14 that they could obtain abortions 'AT ANY AGE' and without parental consent.  It went on to state they could also purchase condoms 'AT ANY AGE' and that someone could engage in sex as young as 11 so long as their partner was less than two years older than them.

Harvard Will Host a Free Music Business Course, Open to All Races but White.  Harvard University's set to host an August music business course.  Per the advertisement, it'll "cover topics that include financial literacy, mental health, and personal branding in the music industry."  On the official website, "No Label Academy at Harvard" announces thusly:  ["]Partnering with universities, brands, and a unique set of speakers, No Label and [rapper IDK] are constructing a comprehensive 10-day music business course at Harvard University.  This free course focuses on building a pipeline for BIPOC talent to kickstart their music careers, democratizing and reframing what is attainable in the industry.["]

Mandatory vaccination for college students is a travesty.  Many, if not most, colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated before resuming classes in the fall.  The two largest university systems in the country, California State University and the University of California, both have mandatory vaccination policies.  But we have data that show this policy inflicts more harm than good on the young age cohort that attends college. [...] This is a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease, though we are finding other examples of this, including the horrendous cost of unnecessary lockdowns and school closures.  The FDA is starting to recognize and warn against at least one of the negative side effects of some vaccines: [...] A group of students in the California State University System who have recovered from COVID and have antibodies are suing to escape the vaccination mandate that they face if they want to return to class.

Loudoun County School Board Meeting Goes Full Fascist When Over 200 Parents Confront Them Over Critical Race Theory.  The embattled school board of Virginia's Loudoun County cut off public comment during a fiery meeting Tuesday as residents traded barbs over new transgender policy proposals Tuesday following weeks of protests from district parents opposed to some of the measures, which they have criticized as potential left-wing indoctrination and a violation of parental rights.  The policies affect transgender student rights, privacy and restroom accommodations and would require Loudoun County Public Schools employees to use students' preferred names or pronouns.  An official school board vote on the proposal is not expected until at least Aug. 10.  [Video clip]

NJ school board slammed as 'arrogant and incompetent,' reverses decision to remove holiday names from calendar.  A New Jersey school board has reversed plans to remove all holiday names from their school calendar after parents expressed outrage at an emergency meeting on the decision.  The Randolph Board of Education voted 8-1 Monday to reinstate the holidays after dozens of members of the community voiced outrage during the public comment portion of the meeting.  Tom Tatem, a Randolph Township father of four who created a petition demanding school board members resign, and James Jacobi, a Randolph Township father of three, told "Fox & Friends" Tuesday that the victory should be a lesson in transparency for towns across America.

Rhodes College to charge unvaccinated students $1,500 'Health and Safety fee'.  Rhodes College said it will charge unvaccinated students an extra $1,500 per semester starting this fall to cover the costs of mandatory COVID-19 testing.  The private liberal arts college in Memphis informed incoming students last week that unvaccinated students will be charged a $1,500 Health and Safety fee per semester until the FDA formally approves the vaccine, in which case all students, faculty, and staff will be required to be inoculated.  "Until FDA approval, the college is not requiring, but strongly recommending full vaccination for any individual who comes to campus," the school said in an email to students obtained by Campus Reform.  "Immediately following FDA approval, students will be required to be vaccinated to access campus."

Prom Students Treated Like Prisoners In Nazi Germany.  The High School in Exeter, New Hampshire went too far this week by shaming the unvaccinated students attending the prom.  It was reported by a State Representative from Brentwood and School Board Member that parents had contacted her about their children being numbered with a black sharpie marker if they had not received the experimental mRNA shots.  These deadly injections are experimental treatments that cannot be mandated or forced onto people under U.S. law and FDA regulations.  Coercion is not only morally and ethically wrong, it's illegal.  Even worse, children should not be shamed or coerced through peer pressure to do anything against their will, or against their family values.  Schools and governments around the world are putting so much pressure on these children that many of them are reacting beyond all reason.

Update:
Handling of pandemic prom prompts calls for Exeter superintendent to resign.  A school board meeting turned into an anti-administration rally Monday night, with calls for the superintendent to resign over the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the controversial decision to write numbers on the hands of unvaccinated students to track them at Exeter High School's prom.  More than 150 people filled the high school's cafeteria for what was supposed to be a routine meeting of School Administrative Unit 16's joint board, which has members from the six towns in the SAU.  After a year of remote learning, masked children and meetings on Zoom, frustrated parents showed up for the in-person meeting to air a long list of grievances.  Most were related to the pandemic, but some also complained about other hot-button educational topics, including the controversy surrounding the critical race theory movement.

College endorses segregation against whites, turning former coffee shop into blacks-only haven.  The new bigotry on American campuses:  Beliot College in Wisconsin has decided to turn a former campus coffee shop into blacks-only haven, thus re-introducing Jim Crow segregation by treating blacks as a privileged race and all other ethnic groups and races as inferior and thus deserving of discrimination and second-class facilities. [...] The school's black population is about 7% of the total.  Thus, Beliot's administration has decided to give those students a privileged status, something that is exactly the opposite of creating "anti-racism and equity on campus."  It also does nothing to give its black students "a sense of belonging."  Instead, it isolates them and makes them a target of resentment and anger because they are being treated better than everyone else, merely because of their race.  It also helps teach them the horrible lesson that they cannot mix with other races, that anyone who is not black is their enemy who must be hated and feared.  That's the rational argument.  Then there is the legal one.  This policy is blatantly illegal under numerous federal, state, and local laws.  All it will take is one lawsuit and the school will not only be forced to cease and desist, it will likely have to pay out significant fines.

Eighth-grade girl blasts school board for policy that would allow 'boys into girls' locker rooms'.  A 14-year-old in Virginia is speaking out about what she says is a sexist move by Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) to allow "boys into girls' locker rooms."  The policy followed a previous one, 1040, that committed the county to providing an equitable, safe and inclusive working environment regardless of "sexual orientation, gender identity" and other individual characteristics.  The more recent proposed policy — 8350 — states in a draft that "students should be allowed to use the facility that corresponds to their gender identity."  At Tuesday's [6/8/2021] school board meeting, Jolene Grover, who was wearing a shirt that read "Woman is female" argued:  "Two years ago, I was told policy 1040 was just an umbrella philosophy and you weren't going to allow boys into the girls' locker rooms.  But here you are doing just that."

Louisiana lawmakers agree to make kindergarten mandatory.  The Louisiana Legislature agreed Wednesday [6/9/2021] to make kindergarten mandatory for children statewide.  Making the change was one of Gov. John Bel Edwards' legislative priorities.  A wide range of business and education groups also supported it.  Estimates of the cost of educating additional kindergarten students have been as high as $12 million, which Edwards said easily could be absorbed within the $3.9 billion education funding formula.  Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have mandatory kindergarten.  Supporters hope the mandate will keep children from falling behind in a state where only about half of students in grades K-3 are reading at grade level.  "Investing in early childhood education just makes good business sense," said Rep. Jason Hughes, a New Orleans Democrat.

St. Paul Public Schools cancels remaining classes due to hot weather.  St. Paul Public Schools announced Tuesday [6/8/2021] classes at all schools in the district are canceled due to hot weather.  The announcement states schools will be closed Wednesday through Friday, which is also the remainder of the school year. [...] "Two-thirds of St. Paul schools are not air-conditioned," said Kevin Burns, a spokesperson for SPPS.  "We did open up the last couple of night, opened up our buildings to let in quote-unquote, cooler air.  But with low temperatures in the 70s, that cooler air didn't really occur."

The Editor says...
[#1] The article above never mentions exactly how hot the weather is.  Is it 90 degrees outside?  More that that?  What a tough life you snowflakes have!  The weather is so hot in Minnesota that two thirds of the schools have no air conditioning.  [#2] Is this too-hot-for-school problem a recent development?  Has the weather warmed up this year more than any previous year?  Might be global warming!  If you Minnesota leftists really believe global warming is about to develop into a catastrophic thermal runaway state, you should install air conditioners in all public buildings right away!

Ohio HS football coach forces kosher player to eat pork as punishment.  A member of an Ohio high school football team who keeps kosher was forced to eat pork as a punishment.  The father of a MicKinley Senior High School junior told News 5 Cleveland that his son, who is kosher, was forced by the team's coach to eat a whole pepperoni pizza in front of the rest of the team as a punishment.  "The coach had a pork pizza as a penalty for this child not showing up for practice," said the boy's father's attorney Edward Gilbert.  "What's interesting is everyone on the team knows this child will not eat pork."

Update:
What we know about Canton McKinley firing football coach Marcus Wattley and six assistants.  Canton McKinley head football coach Marcus Wattley and six of his assistants were fired last week following allegations the coaches forced a 17-year-old player to eat an entire pepperoni pizza against his Hebrew Israelite religious beliefs as punishment for missing a voluntary workout.  It has left one of Ohio's most storied prep football programs working quickly to reset for its upcoming season and the Canton City School District in limbo as it awaits word on whether the player's family will file a First Amendment lawsuit and whether criminal hazing charges will be filed against the coaches.

LI school prom will have different rules for vaxxed and unvaxxed teens.  This is what a pandemic prom looks like under New York state guidelines.  Forget popular kids and dorks — seniors at one Long Island high school dance will be divided by whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated against COVID-19, The [New York] Post has learned.  Port Washington High School will be hosting the 500-person event — dubbed the "Gambol" — at the tony Village Clubs of Sandpoint on June 27.  The school said that, per state and CDC guidelines, kids who are vaccinated will be able to attend maskless — while those who aren't will need to wear a face covering.

Parents' group alleges Massachusetts school district held no-Whites-allowed event.  A parents-rights group has filed a federal complaint accusing a Massachusetts school district of engaging in racial discrimination by banning White students from an event on hate crimes against Asian Americans.  Parents Defending Education asked the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights to investigate the Wellesley Public Schools for an alleged Zoom session described as a "Healing Space for Asian and Asian American students (grades 6-12), faculty/staff, and others in the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community who wish to process recent events."  The invitation shown in a screenshot attached to the complaint went on to say: "* Note:  This is a safe space for our Asian/Asian-American and Students of Color, *not* for students who identify only as White."

Universities Are the New Church Ladies.  Both experience and medical consensus attest that young people are least at risk from COVID-19 and more likely to suffer or die from pool drowning or car and bicycle accidents.  Even if they "conceal carry" the pathogen, young people can stay away from those at greater risk, and college kids who spend most of their time with peers pose an even lower risk of contagion to others.  These facts haven't stopped universities from imposing bewildering and austere requirements on their students.  Colleges say little to their students about getting sufficient rest, proper nutrition, or outdoor exercise — the time-tested advice from Grandma to fortify the immune system.  Instead, schools demand masks for students, including outdoors where the risk of contagion is zero and also off-campus, where the authority of school officials is questionable.

Elementary School Administrator Boots Police Officer Off Campus.  A South Bend police officer conducting a routine walk-through at a local elementary school was told by a school administrator to leave campus because his presence could make people uncomfortable.  The incident occurred shortly before 9:30 a.m. on April 21, bodycam footage showed.  South Bend Police Officer James Sweeney was conducting a routine unannounced walk-through at Coquillard Elementary School when he was confronted by South Bend Empowerment Zone CEO Cheryl Camacho, WSBT reported.  [Video clip]

No vaccine, no college?  Physicians group urges students to fight back.  Many colleges and universities have announced they will require students planning to return to campus this fall to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, explaining their aim is to "protect the health and safety of the community."  And the American College Health Association — which recommends the vaccination requirement — makes it clear that the main purpose is not to protect the students themselves.  The protection is not for the young people, who have only a miniscule risk, but for the high-risk individuals in the surrounding community or wherever the students go in the "mass migration" at the end of the semester.

Youth football drill goes viral and causes massive outrage: 'This is child abuse'.  A video of a youth football drill from last year, with a coach who has since been fired, went viral Tuesday [5/11/2021] and sparked outrage on social media, with many wondering whether children should be doing something like this.  The 8-second clip shows a young ball carrier going head-to-head with a would-be tackler.  The ball carrier lowers his helmet and runs over the defender, and it appeared the two connected with each other's helmets.  The defender hit the ground and was a little shaken up, video shows.

These incremental changes only go in one direction, and that is the direction of more government control of your life.
Gov. Newsom proposes kindergarten for 4-year-olds.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a "total transformation" of public schools in America's largest state Wednesday by offering pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds, opening up college savings accounts for low-income students and offering universal after-school care in disadvantaged communities.  Newsom announced the measures as part of a broad new education spending package made possible by the state's surprise budget surplus.

Virginia School Board Shuts Down Parent's Objections To Racist Indoctrination.  The Fairfax County school board in northern Virginia ordered an upset parent raising objections to state-sanctioned racism called critical race theory in their schools to "go to your seat."  The altercation took place Thursday, after former Wall Street Journal reporter and local parent Asra Nomani spent three minutes scolding school officials for their blatant double-standards in pursuit of "antiracism" that endorses racism and cultural erasure.  Nomani, who writes for The Federalist, began her remarks outlining dismissals from each school board member of parent concerns at Thomas Jefferson High School, then highlighted members' comments declaring the parents toxic and racist for opposing racism in the high-ranking school district.

Parents across the country rally against school COVID-19 protocols.  Parents throughout the country have rallied against school coronavirus mandates to push back against masks and other policies, resulting in tense scenes, some of which prompted a police presence.  On Tuesday [5/4/2021], parents from the Granite School District in Salt Lake County, Utah, erupted at a local school board meeting that later turned into a full-scale protest.  Unruly attendees repeatedly chanted "no more masks!" at the meeting while some in the crowd approached top brass in the district, forcing the gathering to a halt.  Law enforcement was alerted to the display, and police are in the process of identifying the "main aggressors" who could face legal repercussions, district spokesman Ben Horsley told WGN-TV.  The demonstration followed comments from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox who has said face coverings will be required for the next school year.  Adults have also filed a lawsuit on the matter in an effort to repeal the COVID-19 protocols.

Parents Have Had Enough — South Salt Lake City School Board Shuts Down Parents During Meeting.  School boards are where mini-dictators are grown.  Thus the latest exhibit comes from South Salt Lake, Utah and the Granite School District Board of Education meeting.  The board was going to hear proposals of removing the mask mandate for K-12 students.  However, they would only allow one parent to speak during "citizen participation time", a control method for keeping the pesky proles from expressing their opinion of board policy.  After the board allowed a mask advocate from the state to speak, the School board said that's it, no more discussion.  Parents became infuriated, things got ugly.  The board ended the meeting and escaped out the back-door of the building.  [Video clip]

No whites welcome at this university's 'Racial Trauma Yoga' session.  Yoga is a topic that The College Fix has covered a lot over the years.  There was the trend a few years ago to allow students a chance to destress with goat yoga.  There was the time a university canceled a free yoga class after it was accused of cultural appropriation.  We were also there for the professor who accused white people who do yoga of "power, privilege and oppression."  And let us not forget Brown University's infamous naked yoga.  Today, in this hyper-racialized time in America (thanks to the progressive left), we bring you people-of-color-only yoga.  That's right, no whites welcome in this yoga healing space hosted by the University of North Carolina Asheville.  It's called "Racial Trauma Yoga," and it was advertised in a campus-wide email as "for BIPOC students."  BIPOC stands for black, indigenous and people of color.

Cornell defends BIPOC-only rock-climbing class after online uproar.  Cornell University is defending a new rock-climbing class offered to minority groups.  Among the Ivy League school's Outdoor Education offerings for the spring 2021 semester was a course called "BIPOC Rock Climbing".  The course description, according to The Cornell Daily Sun, specified that the class was "for people who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, or other people of color."  That prompted an uproar from across the internet.  The university was accused of violating federal and state civil rights law while one Reddit user decried what they described as a "horrifically and monstrously racist practice that has no place in the modern world" and "literally evil".

Track coach blasts mask rule after runner collapses from 'complete oxygen debt'.  On Wednesday [4/21/2021], a face-masked high school distance runner in Oregon collapsed unconscious on the track a few meters from the finish line — due to what her coach deemed "complete oxygen debt."  According to The Bulletin, despite Summit HS 800-meter star Maggie Williams' fall [...], she slid across the finish recording a blazing time of 2:08.45, a school record.  Maggie suffered a burn to her face along with scraped elbows and knees.  "I was pushing so hard and everything went blurry and I just fell," she said.

Schoolboy lashes his school for making the boys stand in front of the girls during assembly and 'apologise for rapes committed by their gender'.  Parents and male students were left 'mortified' after their school forced them to stand in assembly and apologise to their female classmates for sexual assaults committed by males.  Brauer College in the south-western Victorian town of Warrnambool held an assembly on Wednesday [3/24/2021] where boys were told to stand up in a symbolic gesture of apology to girls and women.  The move has since sparked outrage among parents of the school who say their children were made to feel ashamed about something they had no control over and didn't understand.

Columbia To Host Six Graduation Ceremonies Divided By Sex, Race, Income.  Columbia University is set to host six separate graduation ceremonies based on sex, race, and income in the name of "multiculturalism."  The graduations will "complement" the existing school-wide ceremonies.  The school's web page claims that the segregated events will "provide a more intimate setting for students and guests to gather, incorporate meaningful cultural traditions and celebrate the specific contributions and achievements of their communities."  The ceremonies provided include a "Native Graduation" for Native-American students, a "Lavender Graduation" for students who identify as part of the LGBTQ community, an "Asian Graduation," a "FLI Graduation" for "first-generation and/or low-income community" members, a "Latinx Graduation," and a "Black Graduation."  According to a report by the National Association of Scholars, more than 75 schools across the nation offer optional segregated graduation ceremonies to students.  The most notable and elite institutions include Harvard, the University of California-San Diego, the University of California-Irvine, Arizona State University, Stanford, the University of California-Berkeley, UCLA, and Yale.

The Editor says...
If the graduation ceremony or the whole school is restricted to one race or gender, excluding all others, that's monocultural, not multicultural.  Look, if you guys don't like being around white people, why don't you just say so?

Maybe the pendulum is starting to swing on cancel culture.  [Scroll down]  William Clark is a high school senior in Las Vegas.  He is biracial, with the "bi" in his racial being black.  His mother, also biracial, is raising him alone.  William attends a charter school, where he is the student with the lightest skin.  The school, therefore, insisted that he denounce himself as a "privileged" "oppressor."  When he refused, the school gave him a failing grade.  Instead of taking caving, he sued.

CA Dept of Ed voting on curriculum that would encourage students to chant to Aztec god of sacrifice.  The California Department of Education (CDE) is set to vote on a new ethnic studies curriculum that reportedly calls for the "decolonization" of society in America and encourages students to chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice.  The curriculum will focus on "social consciousness" and cultures that have allegedly not gotten enough attention in textbooks.  That would include "African American, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander studies," according to the CDE.  "By affirming the identities and contributions of marginalized groups in our society, ethnic studies helps students see themselves and each other as part of the narrative of the United States," the overview states.

Aztec worship chants now proposed for California public schools.  Leftists in education are always cooking up bad ideas of what's to be taught in schools, but here's one that arguably takes the cake. [...] So much for separation of church and state.  That's a religious chant to someone else's religion.  Their plan is to literally foist that "faith," if you can call it that, onto California's schoolchildren, many of whom already have religions of their own from their families.  So much for the usual claptrap out of this bunch about all cultures being alike.  This one is being favored and taught as theological indoctrination.  Worse still, it's as repellent and abhorrent a religion as such things come.  The Aztecs, as these clowns choose to ignore, had a religion commanding human sacrifice, cannibalism, and conquest.  Like pretty much every ancient culture, the ancient Aztecs had examples of civilizational greatness, but religion was not one of them. [...] The Aztecs were the ISIS of their age in terms of cruelty and the quest for power.  And not just ripping hearts out and stacking human skulls.  They also did a lot of cannibalism. [...] Bottom line is, they've chased God and the founding fathers from our public schools, but now they need to replace it.  They chose their religion, imposed it on others, and violated the separation of church and state.

Student Surveillance Vendor Proctorio Files SLAPP Lawsuit to Silence A Critic.  During the pandemic, a dangerous business has prospered:  invading students' privacy with proctoring software and apps.  In the last year, we've seen universities compel students to download apps that collect their face images, driver's license data, and network information.  Students who want to move forward with their education are sometimes forced to accept being recorded in their own homes and having the footage reviewed for "suspicious" behavior.  Given these invasions, it's no surprise that students and educators are fighting back against these apps.  Last fall, Ian Linkletter, a remote learning specialist at the University of British Columbia, became part of a chorus of critics concerned with this industry.  Now, he's been sued for speaking out.  The outrageous lawsuit — which relies on a bizarre legal theory that linking to publicly viewable videos is copyright infringement — will become an important test of a 2019 British Columbia law passed to defend free speech, the Protection of Public Participation Act, or PPPA.

$20 million suit says Bay Area school forced boys out for 'blackface' that was actually acne medication.  A pair of teenage boys and their parents are seeking $20 million in a lawsuit against an exclusive Catholic high school in Mountain View, saying school officials forced the boys out last year over an alleged blackface photo that they say actually showed acne medication.  The selfie photo, showing the two former St. Francis students and a third boy with their faces covered in painted masks of dark green, went viral amid last year's racial reckoning, prompting outrage from administrators and some other parents.  The boys' families said the school offered a choice:  leave or be expelled.

The Editor says...
Ten minutes of investigation would have saved the school $20 million.  Put me on that jury!

This Week in Campus Insanity Vol. 33.  [For example,] Cornell Charges Students $1,800 for Racially Segregated Rock-Climbing Class:  Cornell University offered a segregated rock-climbing class only for minority students.  After Campus Reform requested comment, Cornell edited the original course description to say the class is "designed" so that black, indigenous, and other minority students who are "underrepresented in the sport" could "feel included and supported."

Teacher Asked Students to List Their Political Party and Why, Then Publicized Their Responses.  There's been a lot of controversy over Joe Biden's seeming reluctance to want all the public schools opening up as soon as possible.  Obviously, that's not making a lot of parents very happy.  But if they saw what just happened at Porter Ridge High School in Indian Trail, North Carolina, they just might not want to send their kids back.  A teacher, as part of an assignment, asked kids to list what political party they would choose and had them write it down, and explain why.  The teacher then publicized to the rest of the class what each student had chosen and what they had written, with conservative students being bullied, according to WCNC.  One mother described how her daughter was bullied for being a Republican.

Oh The Places The Woke Will Go:  Dr. Seuss Canceled For 'Racial Undertones'.  A national educators organization is telling schools to avoid reading Dr. Seuss because the children's books allegedly have "racial undertones."  For more than 20 years, March 2 has been recognized as Read Across America Day in honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday.  The reading recognition day was founded by the National Education Association — the nation's largest labor union — in 1998.  This year's theme is "Create and Celebrate Diversity."  Learning for Justice — a left-wing educators group — is demanding that Dr. Seuss be canceled.  A prominent Virginia school district has taken marching orders and ordered its schools to avoid "connecting Read Across America Day with Dr. Seuss."  Loudoun County Public Schools, one of the nation's most affluent school districts, announced that it will no longer recognize Dr. Seuss on his birthday.

LA school board cuts one-third of police and replaces them with 'climate coaches'.  The Los Angeles Unified School Board unanimously approved a plan on Tuesday to cut one-third of its school police force and divert millions in funding towards the hire of social workers, restorative justice advisors, and "climate coaches."  The move will result in 133 positions being removed from the Los Angeles School Police Department — including 70 sworn officers, 62 non-sworn officers, and one support staff member, leaving the department with a total of 211 officers, the Los Angeles Times reported.  The "climate coaches" set to replace police officers in secondary schools will be members from the community who, according to the Times, "will work to promote positive school culture and address implicit bias."

Historians slam woke teacher responsible for renaming 44 San Francisco schools: incorrect research came from Wikipedia.  Acclaimed historians are hitting out at a chairman in charge of renaming 44 San Francisco schools after it was revealed that he refused to consult with them during the decision-making process and his research was based on information he found on Wikipedia.  Earlier this week, the San Francisco Board of Education voted 6-1 to strip 44 public schools of their current monikers because they honor 'racist' figures from American history.  Schools named after politicians including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are now set to be rebranded in the coming months.  The controversial decision comes three years after a task force was established to study the names of the city's 125 schools to determine which ones needed to be replaced amid a nationwide reckoning on race.

San Francisco Committee Changed School Names Based on Wikipedia and Wild Accusations.  The San Francisco Board of Education voted to rename 44 of the city's schools, claiming that prominent figures from American history, such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Paul Revere, were tied to racist incidents.  The committee based their decisions on Wikipedia and other wildly inaccurate information to source its claims.  Committee chairman Jeremiah Jeffries, along with his fellow committee members, used Wikipedia to support their claims that prominent U.S. historical figures had ties to racist incidents, and therefore warranted the renaming of scores of San Francisco schools, according to a report by Mission Local.

San Francisco to strip Abraham Lincoln, Dianne Feinstein and others from public school names.  The names of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and other prominent figures including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein will be removed from 44 San Francisco public schools, a move that stirred debate Wednesday on whether the famously liberal city has taken the national reckoning on America's racist past too far.  The decision by the San Francisco Board of Education in a 6-1 vote Tuesday night affects one-third of the city's schools and came nearly three years after the board started considering the idea.  The approved resolution calls for removing names that honored historical figures with direct or broad ties to slavery, oppression, racism or the "subjugation" of human beings.

The Editor says...
If you put a 12-foot fence around the entire U.S. Capitol, isn't that subjugation of the voters?

Fascism Strikes in Pro-Trump County as School Superintendent Moves to Fire Teachers and Employees Who Attended Trump Rally.  On Wednesday, a crowd of American citizens estimated to exceed 100,000 gathered in Washington, DC, to peacefully assemble and listen to a speech from the President of the United States.  All but a handful of the attendees dispersed peacefully.  Nothing done by the people who carried the demonstration into the US Capitol takes away from the legality and propriety of attending a political rally headlined by the president.  But if you were a teacher in Jefferson County, WV, you just found out that it doesn't matter if the voters in the county voted overwhelmingly to reelect President Trump, all it takes to put your livelihood in jeopardy is to have a fascistic school superintendent who is totally unacquainted with the US Constitution, and your job is in jeopardy.

Defenders of Civilization?  [Scroll down]  Little need be said of increasing tense racial relations, given that the collective optimism of a year ago during the booming 2019 economy — record low minority unemployment and the undepreciated powers of assimilation and integration were beginning to make race more incidental than essential — has dissipated.  That was then, and this is now after pandemic, lockdown, recession, George Floyd's tragic death, riot and looting, a bitter election, and an ongoing cultural revolution.  Cornell University is now mandating flu shots for its on-campus students, but with allowances for nonwhites to petition for exemptions, in the manner of those pedigreed epidemiologists who all but said science should be ignored in ranking those to be vaccinated by their race.  Had someone in 1980, 1990, or 2005 predicted such things, he would have been written off as a dystopian crackpot.

NYC DOE school ordered abuse probe, issued report cards for boy who wasn't a student there.  The city Department of Education turned John Tomasi into a phantom student — and not only gave him fake report cards, but wrongly put his family under investigation for child abuse.  The 14-year-old never enrolled in Cobble Hill School of American Studies in Brooklyn.  He never attended a single class, in person or remotely.  Yet this fall, the public school created two report cards for John, both including teacher comments.  His physical-education teacher twice gave John the highest grade:  "ME" for "exceeds standards."

Most Whites Must Adhere to Ivy League University Vaccination Requirement; Minorities Allowed To Claim Racism To Opt Out.  Cornell students are required to get a flu vaccination before arriving on campus as part of the Cornell Student Behavioral Compact in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Or, to put it more accurately, white students are required to get a flu vaccination.  Most white students, anyway.  If you're Caucasian, you must obtain a medical or religious exemption in order to opt out.

The Editor says...
Here's another option:  Don't attend Cornell University!

Second wave of school closures is killing our children.  We know how many people have died from the coronavirus.  We know how many people have tested positive for it.  We know which states have the most cases.  We even know how many people are in hospitals because of it.  The numbers are shoved down our throats by the media daily and are being used to justify a new wave of lockdowns and school closures as 2020 winds down.  There's no question the coronavirus is harmful to some people — chiefly elderly people and those with preexisting conditions.  But the lockdowns have been deadly, too — a portion of the narrative that has conveniently been left out of the conversation.  Children are especially prone to the unintended consequences.

Elementary school principal is suing school district after being fired for sharing conservative memes on her Facebook page.  The principal of a Pennsylvania elementary school who was fired after being accused of posting politically conservative posts on to her personal Facebook account is suing to get her job back along with $500,000 for the 'emotional turmoil' she has been put through.  Amy Sacks, who had been a teacher for 20 years posted on Thanksgiving Day that the Perkiomen Valley School District and Superintendent Barbara Russell 'decided that the First Amendment Freedom of Speech has no place in public schools and that teachers and administrators are unfit to serve if they hold and express political beliefs that are right of center'.  The outburst came after Sacks was removed from her post as the principal of Evergreen Elementary School in July.

Cornell Requires Its White Students to Get Vaccinated.  If you're a student at Cornell, you'll have to take a vaccine.  Unless you're black.  Or Asian.  Or Hispanic.  Or American Indian.  Or have any other kind of skin that isn't white.

Cornell vaccine mandate only applies to white students.  One of the amazing things we learned in 2020 is that the novel coronavirus can't infect people who attend Black Lives Matter protests.  Science!  Apparently the seasonal influenza is even more considerate, at least at Cornell University.  The Ivy League school offers a race-based exemption from its new mandatory flu shot, requiring only white students to get immunized before returning to the area.

New Covid rules for Ohio high school wrestling say students can wrestle but they can't shake hands..  It's 'rastling season and to try and limit the spread of Covid officials with the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) have done the responsible thing and released some updated requirements for players and coaches.  The students are still being allowed to wrestle.  In fact, they don't even have to wear face masks while they do so.  But they will no longer be allowed to shake hands before and after the match.

Parents sue Sarasota County School Board over requirement that students wear masks.  A group of Sarasota County parents has sued the Sarasota County School Board, arguing that its policy requiring children to wear masks while at school denies them their right to an equal education.  The 59-page lawsuit was filed Oct. 21 in Sarasota County by Amy Cook and Gustavo Collazo, as well as Nicholas Eastman and Catherine Gonzales.  The School Board is named as the defendant.  Several Sarasota County School Board members did not immediately return requests for comment on Monday [10/26/2020].  Board member Caroline Zucker said the board had not received a copy of the lawsuit as of Monday afternoon.

Investigation Prompts Schools to Report $6.5 Billion in Undisclosed Foreign Gifts and Contracts.  Universities in the United States reported $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed gifts and contracts from foreign sources as a result of an investigation by the Department of Education.  Federal law requires universities to disclose substantial foreign gifts and contracts to the Department of Education (DOE) twice a year.  Many have for years failed to do so, while others have underreported.  After the department opened an investigation into the matter in 2019, 60 schools that had never complied with the law disclosed $350 million in previously unreported foreign funds, according to a report released by the DOE on Oct. 20.

Student newspaper publishes instructions on how to make a Molotov cocktail.  The student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee posted an opinion-editorial containing instructions on how to make and use a Molotov cocktail.  The editor-in-chief of the UWM Post, Adam Kelnhofer, wrote an op-ed on June 14 going over the history of the Molotov cocktail after protests broke out in Milwaukee following the death of George Floyd.  The op-ed included instructions on how to "make a Molotov cocktail."

In Staying Closed, Schools Ignore Low COVID-19 Rates, Needs of Families.  Evidence continues to mount that COVID-19 affects children the least, and ad hoc school district e-learning platforms, hastily assembled in the spring, are driving families away from assigned schools.  Some of the largest school districts in the U.S. are still offering only online instruction, despite reports of losing contact with thousands of students, from Philadelphia to Houston to Los Angeles, when districts went online earlier this year.  According to reports, districts have still not been able to reach those students.  School officials have the unenviable task of balancing health and safety concerns with student learning, but those leaders should be considering the research on the spread of COVID-19 and the needs of local families and children in making reopening decisions.  Yet some district leaders are doing neither.

The Democrats' Abuse of Children in 2020.  [Scroll down]  Democrats and their indoctrinated followers constantly tell us rubes that coronavirus is not like the flu; they're right, it's less deadly.  In response to this natural biological event, the Democrats' response has been endless and harmful lockdowns.  Schools in particular have been emptied, both out of the irrational fear of many teachers (who, by no coincidence, are overwhelmingly Democrats themselves) and the same irrationality of parents.  Again, if those parents don't remove their kids from school during flu season, it's a losing argument they're making.  School closures undoubtedly hurt academics, but that's fine, because many schools have replaced traditional learning with heavy doses of white privilege and white supremacy sessions anyways.  Where school closures make a lasting impact, though, is on the emotional well-being of our young people, who rely on social interactions to meet emotional and psychological needs.

Sight-Words Are a Sick Joke.  Whole Word (one of almost a dozen aliases) was first introduced into public schools circa 1931.  The official goal required that students memorize at least 500 sight-words each year.  Two insurmountable problems showed up immediately.  For nearly all children, this goal is impossible to reach.  Even if someone did reach 500, that's not nearly enough. [...] So that's 12 years of hard work and struggle.  But you still can't be called literate because you can't read the typical book or newspaper except in a slow, unpleasant way.  Another huge defect is that sight-word lists for grades 1 to 6 usually include only lowercase words, mostly short.  How were children supposed to learn Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania, and Independence Day?  Sight-words seem designed to undercut not just reading, but also the study of geography, history, and science.  So it's easy to see that sight-words, from the start, were hostile to traditional education.

Marquette University mulling plan to implement 'black only' housing in response to student petition.  Marquette University is currently exploring ways to implement "black only housing" on its campus following student demands.  "Marquette will work toward creating a Black Living Learning Community in a residence hall," campus administrators said to the student body in a statement last month, adding that learning communities "bring together students with common majors or common interests."  The school's black student council started a petition, signed by over 1,500 people on Change.org in July, outlining a list of demands, including asking the university to "publicly recognize and apologize for the traumatic events that Black students experience on campus and the part Marquette has played in contributing to the experiences."

The Racist Left Resurrects Jim Crow.  Unfortunately, the "woke" directing the University of Michigan-Dearborn (UM-D) Center for Social Justice and Inclusion must have slept through segregation's wake.  Exposing stories one would be tempted to think were satire, the site Not the Bee revealed the racist Left's new efforts to impose segregation, albeit in this instance "voluntary."  According to Harris Rigby, UM-D issued the following separate invitations (and non-invitations) for "twice monthly virtual gatherings called 'cafes'" to students.  One group's invitation read:  "The Non-POC (People of Color) Café is a space for students that do not identify as persons of color to gather and to discuss their experiences as students on campus and as non-POC in the world."

School district suspends student for attempting to come to school.  Officials at William Floyd High School in New York recently hit Maverick Stow, a 17-year-old student, with a five-day suspension for coming to school on a Tuesday in early September, a "designated remote learning day" for Stow.  The school district said Stow believed he should attend school in person five days a week, not four.  That's right, Stow was suspended for not skipping school.  To make matters worse, the student-criminal returned to school on the Wednesday [9/9/2020] and Thursday following his suspension and was promptly arrested by the Suffolk County Police Department for unlawfully entering school grounds.  Though the district said it agrees with Stow's view that in-person instruction should take place five days a week, it also said it was required to follow state social distancing regulations and labeled his actions as "irresponsible and selfish behavior."  And a "publicity stunt."  Huh?  State social distancing regulations allow students to attend school "in person" four days a week but not five?  Do the powers that be think trimming the number of students allowed on campus by 20% makes all the difference?

Loyola University Chicago explores blacks-only freshman housing plan.  Loyola University Chicago recently said it continues to contemplate a proposal for a residential community for black students only.  The Catholic university on the north side of Chicago released an update on August 28 on a series of initiatives meant to address racial issues on campus.  The initiatives stem from 15 demands lodged in June by several student groups, led by the Black Cultural Center, and called "In Support of Black Students."

U.S. Universities Underreport Donations from Hostile Regimes by Over $1.5 Billion.  [Scroll down]  Cornell initially reported taking $340 million in foreign funding, but the real number is closer to $1.3 billion — over $800 million of which came from Qatar.  The University of Colorado Boulder initially reported $55 million in foreign funding, but the real number is closer to $345 million — 61 percent of which came from the United Arab Emirates.  Yale initially reported $128 million, but the real number is $496 million — almost $42 million of which came from China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Russia.  Foreign influence is growing on college campuses, and universities seldom disclose their fiscal relationships with foreign actors.

Contact tracing app at Michigan college is a surveillance-state nightmare.  Make way for the U.S.S.A. — the United Surveillance States of America.  And it's all due to COVID-19.  A contact tracing app that administrators at a college in Michigan forced on all students as a condition of their presence on campus not only identifies the app user by name — not only pinpoints the app user by geographic location — not only generates a specific code that labels the app user as either "certified" or "denied," based on required coronavirus test results — but also sends an alert to school bureaucrats about "denied" students behaving against COVID-19 protocols.  Administrators then, in turn, can lock these students' identification cards remotely and prevent them from accessing certain buildings and campus facilities.  Think about that for a moment.  An app that tattles; hmm, what could go wrong?

Massachusetts mandates flu vaccination for most students.  Most students in Massachusetts will now be required to receive flu vaccinations, state health officials announced Wednesday [8/19/2020].  According to a Department of Health press release, the "influenza immunization will be required for all children 6 months of age or older who are attending Massachusetts child care, pre-school, kindergarten, K-12, and colleges and universities."  College students who are fully remote are exempt from the mandate, as are homeschooled students.

After students balk at demand to wear 'BioButton' health-monitoring device, university backs down.  Oakland University in Michigan is encouraging its students to wear BioButtons in order to keep track of potential symptoms of COVID-19.  At first, the request was framed in some written material from the university as a requirement, but the university clarified the policy after students objected and a petition titled "Make the BioButton Optional for Staff and Students at Oakland University" drew nearly 2,500 signatures.  The coin-sized BioButton is worn to monitor temperature, respiratory rate and resting heart rate through a smartphone app, according to the company.  The button will notify the user, through the use of an algorithm, whether or not he or she is well enough to attend classes in-person.

Public high school threatens to punish students who portray it negatively.  A public high school in Georgia that found itself under fire for its crowded hallways has now come under further criticism for threatening punishment of students who paint the school in a negative light.  Its threat of punishment led to a rebuke from the Student Press Law Center and a coalition of 28 other free-speech and freedom of the press supporters, which sent a letter to the school on August 7. Signers include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Society of Professional Journalists.  North Paulding High School suspended two students earlier this month after they tweeted pictures showing students back at school — packed into hallways — after they returned to campus.  The high school had originally been shut down in March as part of Governor Brian Kemp's coronavirus guidelines.

Maine University asks students & staff to sign a BLM pledge, signers to be named.  Southern Maine University is asking students to sign a Black Lives Matter statement pledging to practice 'anti-racism' behaviors.  The University President asked the faculty and students to sign a statement pledging to PARTICIPATE in "anti-racism behaviors."  It's not enough that universities deny your free speech rights, now they plan to control your physical actions.

Fairfax County, Virginia public schools tell parents not to hire tutors because it is unfair to kids whose parents can't afford them.  If you had any doubt that hard-left ideologues run government school systems in many (most?) places, take a look at Fairfax County, Virginia's most populous county, with over a million residents, one of the richest counties in the United States with an average household income well over one hundred thousand dollars.  The educrats who run the Fairfax public schools have advised parents there not to hire tutors or organize informal homeschool "pods" to replace the shuttered schools because some parents cannot afford to do so, and that would be "unfair."

Politics, Not Science, Keeping Schools Closed.  One of the most important functions of a civil society is to protect and educate its children, and the cancellation of in-person education stands to become one of the most detrimental acts of collateral damage during this pandemic.  California currently expects its 5-year-olds to complete kindergarten exclusively through online distance learning.  For this dubious undertaking, the politicians are given passionate political cover.  The Los Angeles Teachers Union maintains that "the only people guaranteed to benefit from the premature reopening of schools amidst a rapidly accelerating pandemic are billionaires and the politicians they've purchased" — as if billionaires typically send their kids to L.A. public schools.  The wealthy will send their children to in-person private schools or hire additional tutors, while most American families will suffer from a widening education gap that could set their kids back years.  Worst of all, none of this is medically substantiated.

Harvard on-campus residents: must get flu vaccine, participate in COVID testings.  Harvard has released its Residential Community Compact for students planning to reside on campus in the fall.  This is because, as noted by The Crimson, students who do come back to campus will "enter a residential situation bearing little resemblance to the one the College normally offers."  The compact, which is chock full of student "I will" statements, says "Because COVID-19 infects individuals by spreading across and within close community networks, it is essential that every one of us in the residential community enters into a shared obligation and commitment to act prudently, safely, and in accordance with public health directives."  That shared obligation involves getting a "seasonal flu vaccine" and "participat[ing] in routine COVID-19 testing."

9 Radical Ideas in the Biden-Sanders 'Unity' Platform.  Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) released the policy recommendations of their "unity task force" on Wednesday [7/8/2020]. [...] Here are nine of the most radical proposals in the "unity" document: [...] [#2] Shift the entire "fleet of 500,000 school buses to American-made, zero-emission alternatives" in five years.  This is among the more wild-eyed proposals in the platform's climate change section.  It is not clear who will produce these buses (presumably to run on battery power), or what is to be done with half a million currently functional buses that run on ordinary fuel, and how local school districts are meant to afford the cost.  The platform provides no further details.

Washington State suggests schools give priority to nonwhite students during reopening.  Washington state is considering a plan that would give priority to minority and disadvantaged students when schools reopen in the fall following months of closure during the coronavirus pandemic.  Like most state chief executives across the country, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee shuttered his state's public schools earlier in the year as part of a coronavirus mitigation plan.  States have lately begun considering how they will re-open their schools in the fall, if at all.

UCLA Professor Under Police Protection Following Threats.  A college professor is living under police protection after rebuffing a request to exempt minority students from taking final exams in the wake of George Floyd's death.  University of California Los Angeles accounting professor Gordon Klein faced threats of violence after he declined a student's request that he delay a final exam in light of national unrest.  The university suspended the professor for three weeks beginning on June 25 and launched a discrimination investigation into the incident.  Klein declined a request for comment, but a Malibu Police Department spokesman said the department increased police presence near the educator's home after Klein received multiple threats.

Why Did they Close the Schools?  On March 12, 2020, a banshee-like cry went out to an email list of public health professionals and government officials who were then in a state of mental meltdown.  Pull the trigger now, screamed the memo.  Close the schools.  As with any email chain, there were a few dominant voices who post more than others and with more passion, while others shrink back in fear of being shamed.  Such was the case here: one disciple of computer modeling, Dr. Carter Mecher of the Veterans Administration, was convinced that the coronavirus was another Spanish Flu.  Why he didn't explain.  Mostly he wanted to try out his closure/lockdown/social-distance model on which he had been working for 14 years since he first became a convert to agent-based modeling techniques.  Coronavirus of 2020 was as good an excuse as any.  Mecher emerged as the leader of the list, sending hundreds of messages of increasing alarm.

'Police Do Not Belong in Our Schools.' Students Are Demanding an End to Campus Cops After the Death of George Floyd.  Student activists across the country are calling for their schools to cut ties with police departments and remove officers from campuses in response to a national uprising against police brutality.  And school leaders in Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., have already taken that step.  While debates over the role of police officers in schools have raged for years, activists say the latest high-profile examples of police violence against black people — the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., — have fueled the argument that police officers don't belong in schools.

The Editor says...
The schools have cops on campus for a very good reason:  That's where the criminals are.  If this were not the case, there wouldn't be cops all over the schools.

Elon Musk Says Take the Red Pill.  [Scroll down]  What's all this got to do with public schools?  Everything.  They are the perfect embodiment of a tyrannical P.C. culture, which populism and conservatism should oppose.  Go ahead: take the red pill, and grapple with the shocking truths of K-12 malfeasance.  The professors and bureaucrats who mismanage our public schools claim they care about education, your kids, and our country.  A steady diet of blue pills makes that sound reasonable.  It took years for me to be red-pilled.  Finally, I couldn't escape the conviction that deep down in their Progressive hearts, our professors of education are actively hostile to kids, this country, and education as traditionally defined.  When you take the red pill, you see with clarity that millions of American children don't learn to read for a horrifyingly specific reason.  No, it's not bad eyesight or a genuine disability.  It's because American public schools insist on using a method known not to work.  Whole Word (AKA sight-words) devastates genuine literacy and thus educational progress.  Math is more of the same perverse intent.  Your kids may struggle with basic arithmetic and become calculator-dependent at an early age.  Why?  Because Reform Math and Common Core Math befuddle children and deflate whatever native abilities they have.

U.S. Colleges Have Accepted $6 Billion in Undisclosed Donations from Foreign Governments, DOE Probe Finds.  The Department of Education has discovered at least $6 billion in unreported donations to American universities from adversarial foreign nations, Townhall reported on Friday [5/22/2020].  The DoE revealed its updates in a May 19 letter to Congress and a subsequent briefing to several ranking House Republicans who are conducting an investigation into the foreign funding of U.S. educational institutions.  The investigation was spurred by increasing reports of Chinese funding at U.S. educational institutions, including the prevalence of Confucius institutes on U.S. campuses.  Confucius institutes are Chinese-government funded centers which ostensibly promote Chinese language and culture, but which U.S. agencies have warned spread propaganda for China's government.

University tells illegal immigrants to fill out census forms.  The University of California-Berkeley Undocumented Students Program held an online presentation on the U.S. Census, during which illegal immigrant students were encouraged to participate in the 2020 U.S. Census.  According to a report by the Daily Californian, the presentation was led by Griselda Martinez, a sophomore at UC-Berkeley and a census community organizer.  It was held for University of California-Berkeley students and specifically focused on illegal immigrant students.

Students to get free meals from 400 NYC schools; several locations turning into childcare centers.  Beginning Monday [3/23/2020], free meal services for students will be distributed at certain schools while other locations will turn into childcare centers for essential workers' children.  Students can get three free meals a day at 400 sites across the city, according to the Department of Education.  No ID is necessary.

The Editor says...
The school can't be used as a school, but it can be used as a day care center.  Same kids, same food, same building.

The All-Time Dirty Deal.  The state of Illinois' education commissars have a group called the "Affirming and Inclusive Schools Task Force," which is one task force too many.  It has issued a report:  "Strengthening Inclusiveness in Illinois Schools".  Its recommendations are meant to apply to all schools, all the time, from preschool through Grade 12.  To list just a few of these asinine proposals: no more prom queens or kings; no more "gender language," like "boys and girls" — absolutely forbidden; all school activities to be gender-neutral (can they still play football?  Or only if the girls play, too?); gender-neutral dress code, whatever that might be; all bathrooms and locker rooms open to anyone who wants to stroll in; and — this is the kicker — Only involve parents "as appropriate."  Translation:  "Never."

California Teachers Union Wants Kids to Pursue Gender Transition Without Parental Consent.  Even in California, you have to be 18 to get a tattoo, 16 to drive a car, 21 to buy a gun, alcohol, or pot.  But if you want to change your gender?  Well, then, you just have to be 12.  And your public school will be more than happy to help.  Need an abortion?  Tell your teacher.  Want to refill your birth control?  Go to the school clinic.  Thinking about starting hormone treatments?  Your parents will never find out.  At least, not under the policy the California Teachers Association is pushing.  That's the amazing revelation from last month's union meeting.

School launches secret program to turn kids 'trans' without telling parents.  A Wisconsin school district's policy of allowing students of any age to transition to a different gender and use a different name while at school without parental notice or consent has drawn a lawsuit from angry parents.  The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and the Alliance Defending Freedom are representing 14 individual parents from eight families who contend the policy violates constitutionally protected parental rights.  "This is a life-altering decision that educators have no business making," said ADF Senior Counsel Roger Brooks.

Wisconsin parents suing school district for letting students switch genders without notice.  Parents are suing a Wisconsin school district for adopting a policy that allows students of any age to transition to a different gender and use a different name while at school without parental notice or consent.  The policy, according to the religious-liberty law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, prevents school officials from communicating about the child's choice to transition with parents if the student does not consent.  The parents charge that the school's policy violates their parental rights, usurping the upbringing of their children under Wisconsin law.

Minors May Get Sex Changes Without Parental Consent, if California's Teachers Union Has Its Way.  The California Teachers Association's recent position statements suggest that students should be able to receive hormone therapy to change their sex without parental consent.  Although this CTA belief does not directly change regulations on the matter, it indicates the kind of legislation the powerful union will support.  On Jan. 26, CTA changed an existing policy to explicitly include transgender and non-binary youth among the students who can leave class without parental permission to receive birthcontrol, abortions, and other such services.

Columbia University continues to deny students accused of sexual assault their due process rights.  The latest example is Ben Feibleman, who is using his real name to fight the allegations against him, made by a woman who, as usual, gets to keep her anonymity and is only referred to as Jane Doe in court documents.

Seattle Schools Prohibit Unvaccinated Students From Returning to School.  Thousands of school students in Seattle have been warned by the city's public schools that they will not be allowed to attend school after Christmas break unless they get in compliance with Washington's new vaccine laws.  Seattle Public Schools posted a notice on Dec. 20 telling parents that their children must meet a Jan. 8 deadline to ensure student records reflect "updated immunization status," otherwise students "cannot attend school."

California School Children Won't Be Suspended for Disobeying Teachers.  A new California law that takes effect in 2020 will make it illegal to suspend a student in grades 1-5 for disobeying teachers or administrators.  Starting next year, the rule will be applied to students in grades 6-8 and will include charter schools.  There's a very good reason for this change, according to supporters.  It's because of racism, you see.  More little black kids are punished for disobeying teachers than little white kids.  Naturally, there's only one possible explanation, to the exclusion of all others.  Whitey has it in for black children. [...] So we should be telling a 9-year-old kid (going on 21) to take a minute and think about what he's doing.  This will give the teacher an opportunity to "calm the classroom," which you can't do because no one will get suspended for giving the teacher the finger.  Presumably, after thinking about it, a light bulb will go off over the kid's head and he will immediately become docile and apologize for his "willful defiance."

One of the nation's biggest school districts is letting pupils take a day off every year to protest.  Students in a Virginia school district will soon be allowed to take a day off in order to participate in protests in a novel new policy.  The school board of Fairfax County has confirmed it will formerly allow the children to skip a day of class in order to exercise their civil rights.  It comes amid a wave of student activism across the country which has seen thousands of young people take to the streets to call for change, from stricter gun laws to action on climate change.

Good Public-school Teachers Under Siege.  [Scroll down]  One of the children prefers the plural pronoun "they," while the other, who claims not to be a boy or a girl, prefers "zee."  Seriously.  After that, the two children discuss the alleged need to "educate" their own teachers, especially substitutes, on the supposed importance of using the newly invented pronouns that students choose for themselves.  If that all sounds crazy, that's because it is.  Teachers are already finding themselves in hot water for refusing to play along with the madness.  Indeed, teachers such as Peter Vlaming at West Point High School in Virginia have already been fired from their jobs for refusing to refer to girls using male pronouns, and vice-versa.  In California, teachers say they are required to submit to the gender madness or be fired, too.

Are Low Test Scores a Problem?  [Scroll down]  Our Education Establishment has a well known knack for picking bad instructional methods.  We can forgive a few mistakes.  But if all they ever pick is bad methods, maybe that's what they prefer.  Charlotte Iserbyt summed up her conclusions in the famous title:  "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America."  The key word is deliberate.  The technique was simple.  Get rid of all the traditional stuff that works; replace it with dysfunctional concoctions that do not work.  Flatlining is guaranteed.

Reality Fades to Zero.  About 20 years ago, a great number of videos sprouted on YouTube, all preaching the glories of 21st-Century Learning.  The recipe was emphatic: everything has changed, so get rid of old-fashioned categories such as information and knowledge.  Instead, let's emphasize Critical Thinking, Cooperation, Creativity, Global Literacy, Health Literacy, Financial Literacy, Communication, Civic Literacy, Global Awareness, Digital Literacy, Collaboration, et al.  These novelties are often capitalized, as if to suggest the utmost solidity.  In the last several years, another alibi opened up as social justice warriors found more reasons for anger and resentment.  Once students are made to open their eyes, history is nothing but a parade of politically incorrect affronts that need to be erased.  History was dominated by men, therefore it can be ignored.  Most science was invented by males; no good.  Battles and other military events often illustrate aggression and competition.

Student tracking, secret scores:  How college admissions offices rank prospects before they apply.  To learn more about prospective students, admissions officers at the University of Wisconsin-Stout turned to a little-known but increasingly common practice:  They installed tracking software on their school website.  When one student visited the site last year, the software automatically recognized who she was based on a piece of code, called a cookie, which it had placed on her computer during a prior visit.  The software sent an alert to the school's assistant director of admissions containing the student's name, contact information and details about her life and activities on the site, according to internal university records reviewed by The Washington Post.

School Districts Push A Return To Busing, Despite Their Own Data Suggesting It Won't Reduce The 'Achievement Gap'.  Multiple school districts across the country are considering busing-style programs to distribute impoverished students equally, but data suggest that such proposals would not reduce an achievement gap between poor students and their wealthier schoolmates, analyses by the Daily Caller News Foundation and others found.  Demographic-based redistricting seeks to spread poverty equally among all schools.  In Fairfax County, Virginia, that would mean every middle school would have 35% of students in poverty.  But a DCNF analysis found that the Fairfax school that currently most closely mirrors that rate has the worst test scores in the entire county for non-impoverished students, and nearly the worst scores for impoverished students.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Forcing Public Universities to Dispense Abortion Drugs.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill into law that requires public colleges and universities in the state to distribute abortion drugs, effectively turning the schools into first-trimester abortion clinics.  On Friday [10/11/2019], Newsom signed SB 24, which was championed in the State Senate by Sen. Connie Leyva (D) as a reproductive rights issue.

Fake News, Fake Education.  Sight-Words are said to be a legitimate way to teach reading.  We know that this is not true because the U.S. has 50 million functional illiterates.  We are told endlessly that Reform Math and Common Core Math will improve math scores, but math skills continue to drop.  The Education Establishment has embraced Constructivism as an all-purpose elixir suitable for every class, but its only real effect is to prevent teachers from teaching.  They must accept the reduced role of passive facilitator, with the demonstrable result that children learn less.  We are assured that these empty suits and numerous others represent sincere efforts to improve the skills of students.  Arguably, those assurances are straight-up lies.  In any case, you won't believe the claims if you look closely at these pedagogical impostors.  Once a school system shifts toward social engineering and ideological manipulation, truth is no longer deemed essential.  Whatever will move the most people in the direction you want, that becomes truth.

More evidence that "diversity" means "eliminating whites."
Public Schools Revive Racial Segregation In The Name Of 'Diversity'.  Public school districts across the nation, from Washington to Virginia, are assigning children to schools based on race and family income.  They claim to oppose segregation, a practice that was outlawed in the 1950s.  Perversely, however, these districts are reviving it.  For example, in Howard County, Maryland—the third-highest-income county in the United States—the government pushes integration efforts while using a backward definition of "segregation" that would perpetuate racial segregation instead of ending it.

NYC is allowing students to skip class to attend a "global climate strike".  Climate change is one of the major altars that the Left likes to worship at and they want to get children involved in that worship as well. [...] Would the Bill de Blasio and NYC school districts agree to let their students strike in support of gun rights?  I have a very strong reason to believe that they probably wouldn't.  But this allowable strike most likely won't be limited to school districts in New York.  Districts in Los Angeles and Massachusetts are working similar plans.  If I had a child in any school district that willing allows students to skip out of class to attend a climate strike, I would be absolutely livid.  The education has been infected with socialist ideas for a long time but there is still some value in getting an education.  Kids should be in school and not advocating for leftist talking points.

California's Ban on School Suspensions Invites Another Parkland.  The Parkland shooter was a known-wolf.  Before the massacre was over, students knew who did it.  He was considered so dangerous when he attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that school administrators banned him from bringing a backpack and frisked him every day for fear that he'd bring a deadly weapon.  Even though security staff brought him to the principal's office all the time, his disciplinary record looked pretty clean on paper.  If he had been arrested at school for his crimes, maybe the FBI could have followed through on tips that he would shoot up the school.  And if he'd been disciplined for his sub-criminal misbehavior, maybe school administrators could have made a strong case for sending him back to a specialized school for disturbed students, where he so badly needed to be.  But the Broward County school district had embarked on a quest to fight the "school-to-prison pipeline" by lowering suspensions, expulsions, and arrests.

Back to School Day in Arlington, VA Includes Gender-Neutral Sports Uniforms, Preferred Pronouns.  Children heading back to school in grades K through 12 in northern Virginia on Tuesday will now fall under sweeping transgender and "gender-nonconforming" policies pushed and put in place by groups such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Arlington Gender Identity Allies (AGIA).  The University of Michigan reported on Arlington Public Schools' new policy implementation procedure (PIP), which includes using "preferred pronouns" and gender-neutral sports uniforms.

Back to School:  The Rush to Create 'Trauma-Sensitive' Classrooms.  Some parents hope their children will experience a challenging math and reading curriculum during the new academic year, but many school staff and administrators are focused on social and emotional learning, and how to create "trauma-sensitive" classrooms.  "We're in an all-fired hurry because there's this 'trauma' thing and we have to help our kids," said Melissa Sadin, according to Education Week.

NYC Wants To End Gifted Programs to Desegregate Public Schools.  A panel of "experts" assembled by New York Mayor Bill De Blasio has suggested to the city that the best possible way to desegregate its school system is simply to do away with the gifted programs for some the Big Apple's best and brightest students.  The reasoning?  These programs are mostly full of white and Asian students, and not many black or Hispanic kids.  So, if they get rid of these classes, then the city naturally becomes desegrated.  A panel of "experts" assembled by New York Mayor Bill De Blasio has suggested to the city that the best possible way to desegregate its school system is simply to do away with the gifted programs for some the Big Apple's best and brightest students.  The reasoning?  These programs are mostly full of white and Asian students, and not many black or Hispanic kids.  So, if they get rid of these classes, then the city naturally becomes desegrated.

Fla. science teacher booted from his own classroom after chastising students who didn't stand for Pledge of Allegiance.  A Florida science teacher was told to leave his own classroom by school officials after he called out students who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.  The Florida Times-Union reported that Daniel Goodman, the teacher, wrote a lengthy diatribe on the classroom whiteboard in which he chastised students who didn't stand for the pledge or the playing of the National Anthem.  A student's parent, angry over Goodman's actions, posted her complaint to Facebook.

Computer-based Teaching of Remedial English Skills Just Doesn't Work.  College administrators and pedagogues, confronted with the incontrovertible signs of intellectual miasma among their students and perhaps unconsciously aware that they have raised a generation of toffee-nosed misfits and incompetents, have responded by installing a plethora of writing and language courses, mainly of the digital variety.  They believe that computer instruction in grammar and syntax will redress the balance by teaching students how to write and think.  The evidence shows otherwise.

Multiculturalism Is a Nation Killer.  In the name of multiculturalism, schools have segregated dormitories, student unions, and even graduations.  But imagine if whites wanted to segregate the student union, to have white-only dormitories and graduations?  The virtue signalers would descend on the campus in outrage.

The Humanitarian Hoax of Black-Only College Graduation Ceremonies.  The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic.  The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.  The humanitarian hoax of black-only college graduation ceremonies is a classic example of destruction disguised as altruism.

Texas Teacher Fired for Asking Trump on Twitter to Remove Illegal-Immigrant Students.  A high-school teacher in Texas was fired this week after asking President Trump for his assistance in removing illegal-immigrant students from her school, in what she thought were private tweets.  Georgia Clark, who taught English at the Carter-Riverside High School for 20 years, was fired on Tuesday [6/4/2019] after eight members of the school board voted unanimously in favor of her termination.  The vote came three weeks after Clark asked the president to deport students she believed to be in the country illegally.

Colorado school officials ask voters to consider tearing down, rebuilding Columbine High School.  It was the place that spawned a new breed of attacks on innocent people.  Now, 20 years later, Columbine High School faces scrutiny of another kind:  Whether it should be torn down and replaced.  Calling the infamous Colorado shooting "a macabre source of inspiration" for troubled people around the globe, the superintendent of the school system overseeing the high school said in a letter posted Thursday [6/6/2019] that it might be time to consider a change.  Jefferson Public Schools Superintendent Jason E. Glass said in the letter, sent to the Columbine community, that the idea is in the very early stages and may not happen.  It would entail asking voters to approve $70 million "at some point" to construct a new school.

The Editor says...
Education bureaucrats love to brag about new school buildings.  They constantly campaign to get new buildings built.  If schools have to be torn down and replaced every time there is a shooting, there will be no end to the construction.  Incidentally, when I was a kid, the schools that I attended were all about 40 years old at the time, and they are all still standing.

Faces in the crowd.  The Lockport (N.Y.) City School District was poised to test a facial recognition security system for students and staff this week until a late-breaking memo from the New York Department of Education temporarily halted the program.  The district told parents the goal was to enhance student safety, but the proposal drew criticism from concerned local residents and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).  The system would have provided surveillance at schools and issued an alert when the cameras detected someone whose face appeared in a database of flagged individuals.  The NYCLU asked the New York Department of Education to intervene, stating that schools should be "safe spaces" where students are not "constantly surveilled."

Florida teacher allegedly writes [an offensive comment] on student's homework.  Melinda Smith, the student's mother, told Panama City's WJHG on Tuesday [5/28/2019] she was shocked when her son showed her his science homework with [an offensive comment] written on top.  "[I]t wasn't anything about not getting the credit, it was more so the language about the writing to students, that was very inappropriate and not acceptable for a teacher whatsoever," Smith said.  Her son, whose identity was not released, is a student at Rutherford High School in Panama City.  Smith told WJHG that the teacher should be "reprimanded."

'Adversity score' for college admissions plagued with problems.  The goal of the scores is to increase socioeconomic diversity in colleges by giving students credit for overcoming great obstacles they face in their lives.  It does not raise SAT scores, but rather supplements them.  The measurement of overcoming adversity has been tested by 50 colleges since last year and the test group will expand to 150 schools in the fall, before being used for all SAT test-takers starting in 2020.  Many parents and students are rightfully worried after hearing about this new tool that colleges and universities will use to determine who gets admitted.  Does this "score" that a student has no control over somehow negate his or her hard work?  Does it lend false confidence to a modest scorer from a lower income background?

UCLA knew of a cash-for-admissions deal, years before the scandal.  Families involved in the current college admissions scandal in most cases sent money to a purported charity through which the scam's mastermind allegedly funneled bribes to university coaches and administrators.  What happened at UCLA in 2014, according to the report, is different in that the money was donated to UCLA's athletic program and did not break any laws.

Texas Public Schools To Become Psychiatric Centers.  Via federal funding, public schools have become mental health clinics.  SB10 opens the door for school districts to operate as mental health providers with psychiatry colleges located on school campuses.  Medical solutions offered by these colleges include drugs. [...] Records of assessments, whether real or just imagined by a mental health provider, will follow children the rest of their lives.  Many will become dependent on the highly addictive psychotropic drugs.

Texas Classrooms Expose Young Children to Harm With Addictive Digital Screens.  The TEA is pushing addictive video programs into grades pre-K through 8.  Classroom technology not only leads to worse academic performance for kids, it can also clinically hurt them.  Two hundred peer-reviewed studies have connected screen time to increased ADHD, increased aggression, anxiety, screen addiction, depression, and even psychosis.  Children under 10 are especially susceptible to screen addiction.  A two-year study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed students who used several types of digital media several times daily were twice as likely to have ADHD as classmates who were less frequent users.

Dirty dental utensils may have exposed Seattle schoolkids to risk of HIV, hepatitis B, C: reports.  More than 1,000 students could be at risk for HIV and hepatitis B and C after getting dental care at 12 schools in and around Seattle, local reports said Tuesday [4/2/2019].  The utensils, which were used to treat 1,250 kids at the schools' dental clinics, weren't properly sterilized, KING-TV reported.

The Editor says...
Why do those twelve schools have dental clinics?  Does every school in Seattle have a dental clinic?

School district that forced girls to shower with boys can't get out of Title IX lawsuit.  A federal court permitted a lawsuit to proceed against an Illinois school district that allows high school boys to use girls' locker rooms, restrooms and showers in order to accommodate transgender students.  But girls who don't want to be seen naked by boys got bad news:  The judge ruled that they have no right to "visual bodily privacy" if the government says so.

U-Illinois instructor smashes student's phone, gets up in his face; Student gets in trouble.  A University of Illinois instructor got in a student's face in 2017 and smashed his cellphone.  The university responded by disciplining the student, but not the instructor.

School Lets Transgender Advocate Address Kindergartners, Says It Informed Parents They Could Opt Out.  This Report Says the District Lied.  At the very end of February, an elementary school in Arlington, Virginia had kindergartners sit on the floor to hear a transgender spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) read them a book in which the claim is made that a boy can have a "girl brain but a boy body" or a boy brain and a girl body.  The school district later claimed "parents were notified by a letter ahead of time and were allowed to opt out of they chose." But that claim was reportedly false.

The bigger scandal in college admissions is what is legal.  Alleged fraud marks the explosive indictments relating to college admissions practices revealed yesterday, but a much bigger scandal consists of all the legal ways ruling class privilege replicates itself through the vehicle of higher education.  I am grateful to the U.S. attorneys who pressed ahead with their investigation of the alleged criminal acts underlying the college admissions scandal rocking higher education today.  And I await further indictments that apparently will be forthcoming.  But I know that the people who got caught, including those whose indictments may come later, are the tip of the iceberg (in Alan Dershowitz's phrase) and were foolish in committing actual crimes, when completely legal ways of accomplishing the same ends are so widely available.

Students Across US Now Majoring In Marijuana At Colleges.  Colleges are now adding cannabis to their curriculum.  Grace DeNoya is used to getting snickers when people learn she's majoring in marijuana.  "My friends make good-natured jokes about getting a degree in weed," said DeNoya, one of the first students in a new four-year degree program in medicinal plant chemistry at Northern Michigan University.  "I say, 'No, it's a serious degree, a chemistry degree first and foremost.  It's hard work.  Organic chemistry is a bear.'"

Dartmouth Offers Free Ski Trip for Students of Color Only.  Why do so many people in higher education seem to think they can improve racial relations in this way?

School issues apology after gym class plays runaway slave game during Black History Month.  A Virginia elementary school is under fire for a Black History Month gym activity involving student portrayals of slaves.  Madison's Trust Elementary School in Brambleton, Virginia, has issued an apology after a gym class featured a game that encouraged students to pretend they were slaves moving through the Underground Railroad.  The activity was planned for February's Black History Month and reportedly took place earlier this month.

Social justice has become a new excuse for prejudice.  Racial segregation in American schools and universities is making a comeback.  Faculty and administrators defend the concept of demographically distinct "safe spaces" and racially segregated cafeteria tables in the effort to prevent "uncomfortable learning."

Purdue segregates blacks from whites at 'Racial Literacy' event.  Indiana University- Purdue University in Indianapolis is hosting a "White Racial Literacy Project" in order to address racial inequalities, including whiteness, on the campus.  Speakers for the spring semester project will discuss subjects ranging from white privilege to "negotiating whiteness."  "The purpose of this project," the official project's site says, "is to undertake an innovative approach to racial equity on campus by facilitating concrete efforts to address whiteness and racial inequities in institutional decision-making, the academic curriculum, and the campus."

What Does Diversity Have to Do with Science?  Do you care about the race of your doctor, or the gender of the person who built the bridge you drive across?  The latest trend across STEM fields claims you should.

The Editor says...
STEM is now being supplanted by STEAM, which means science, technology, engineering, arts and math.  In other words, at a STEAM school, the kids are taught everything in the world except spelling, grammar, history, geography, civics, and English.  And every science, math and engineering class has socialism baked into it, as an un-advertised bonus.  Most of the math classes are really just Common Core arithmetic, or instructions on how to use a calculator.  Kids these days don't memorize multiplication tables, and when they get a high school diploma, almost all of them are unable to make change for a $20 bill.  There's no point in claiming that second-grade kids are learning engineering, when all they're doing is stacking cups or assembling Lego pieces — in teams, of course.  Engineering is a college-level subject, and engineering students must understand math and applied physics before moving on to the college level.  Similarly, there's no point in claiming that elementary school kids are learning technology when all they're doing is learning how to use the internet — which they probably learned at home already.  And what are they learning in science classes, other than evolution, endangered species propaganda, and global warming hysteria?

Take a look at this 4th grade report card from the early 1960's.  (Click to enlarge, of course.)  You can tell from the grades that it's not my report card.  (It actually belongs to Mrs. Editor.)  Back then, reading, spelling, handwriting and English were four separate subjects.  Health studies and physical education were separate also.  (As you can see, Mrs. Editor made a B in math once, but she later went on to get a math degree.)  The 4th grade kids learned about social studies, geography, history and elementary science.  All together, it was a solid foundation for any future career.

And there's more!  The 4th grade kids were also expected to behave and act like good citizens.  That is a concept that would be foreign to today's day care kids.  These days, if you told kids to exercise courtesy, self-control and good posture, they would probably ignore you, look it up on their cell phones, or file a lawsuit.

Afro-centric schools, public and private:  A step back into segregation?  All across the country, taxpayer dollars are being used to promote so-called Afro-centric schools.  But these Afro-centric schools, public and private critics argue, simply promote a new form of racial segregation. [...] Using public funds to segregate students by race and teach them a curriculum radically different from what other students are receiving may be a formula for the Balkanization of American society.  The advocates of Afro-centric education are clear in their goals.  Molefi Asante, chair of the Temple University African-American Studies Department, says African-American educators launched these schools to challenge the "Eurocentric" nature of American public schools.

Beware Silicon Valley Santas in the schools.  In 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook showered a rural Idaho school district with 500 iPads and Apple TVs for every classroom, along with free training as part of a 29-state $100 million personalized digital technology program.  He visited the Idaho schools recently with Ivanka Trump, where she praised the "laboratories of innovation" for using Apple products "to transform the learning environment and personalize students' educational experiences based on their unique needs and strengths!"  With all due respect, this is what I call Edutech Shiny Toy Syndrome.  And it's out of control.  Kids don't need screens for individualized educational experiences.  They are already on those stultifying, addictive, isolating screens far too much.

Trump Administration Revokes Obama-Era School Leniency Policy for Minorities.  The Trump administration has revoked an Obama-era policy that urged public schools to employ more lenient forms of discipline for students of color and of other minority groups.  On Friday [12/21/2018], the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice rescinded the Obama administration's 2014 "Dear Colleague Letter" that a federal school safety commission said "may have paradoxically contributed to making schools less safe."

Sanity on Discipline.  President Trump, following the recommendation of a national commission on school safety chaired by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, will repeal the Obama administration's "Dear Colleague Letter" on school discipline.  The DCL, issued in 2014, advised school superintendents nationwide that racial disparities in suspension rates would be grounds for finding school districts in violation of federal anti-discrimination law, and therefore at risk of losing federal funding.  The directive, cast as a "guidance," in fact formalized a fundamental shift in the Department of Education's approach to civil-rights enforcement.  Prior to the DCL, the standard held that civil rights are violated if students are treated differently because of race; for instance, if a black student and a white student both curse at a teacher, it's wrong to suspend the black student and give the white student a warning.  The DCL expanded the standard from disparate treatment to disparate impact; now, if two black students and one white student curse at a teacher, it could be a civil-rights violation to punish them all equally.

Sanity on Discipline.  President Trump, following the recommendation of a national commission on school safety chaired by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, will repeal the Obama administration's "Dear Colleague Letter" on school discipline.  The DCL, issued in 2014, advised school superintendents nationwide that racial disparities in suspension rates would be grounds for finding school districts in violation of federal anti-discrimination law, and therefore at risk of losing federal funding.  The directive, cast as a "guidance," in fact formalized a fundamental shift in the Department of Education's approach to civil-rights enforcement.  Prior to the DCL, the standard held that civil rights are violated if students are treated differently because of race; for instance, if a black student and a white student both curse at a teacher, it's wrong to suspend the black student and give the white student a warning.  The DCL expanded the standard from disparate treatment to disparate impact; now, if two black students and one white student curse at a teacher, it could be a civil-rights violation to punish them all equally.

Trump to arm more adults in schools, end Obama's light discipline of troubled students.  The Trump administration issued proposals Tuesday to prevent school shootings, a plan that includes arming more school personnel, taking guns away from highly dangerous people and revoking Obama-administration rules that were criticized for easing discipline of minority students.  The president's commission on school safety, which was formed after the mass shooting Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, also calls on the media to stop publicizing the names and photographs of shooters to discourage other potential killers from seeking notoriety.

PC Police Are Circling The Sound of Music.  A politically correct Principal has created a furor over The Sound of Music, a musical about a real-life Austrian family of singers who escape the Nazis.  It is the beloved tale of the Von Trapp family.  The Principal banned the Nazi props and demanded they be removed from the LaGuardia High School's production.  The principal at the elite "Fame" school, Lisa Mars, ordered Nazi flags and symbols removed from the stage set, students told the Daily News.  "This is a very liberal school, we're all against Nazis," one sophomore performer told The News about the fuhrer furor.  "But to take out the symbol is to try to erase history.  "Obviously the symbols are offensive," he added.  "But in context, they are supposed to be."

Virginia high school could be renamed for interracial couple over Lee.  A northern Virginia high school that is removing Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's name could be renamed for an interracial couple.

The Word 'Mean' is Leftists' Lethal Weapon.  Can you believe illegal students in our schools are allowed to demand that U.S. students not wear clothing to school that features the U.S. Flag on Mexican holidays?  Illegals claim wearing U.S. gear on a Mexican holiday is racist, insensitive, and mean.  Incredibly, leftist school administrators agree and send U.S. students home for wearing t-shirts which feature our flag.

Brilliant idea!
University distributes hockey pucks to protect against active shooters.  How do you stop a bad guy with a gun when there's no good guy with a gun around?  Maybe throw a hockey puck at him.  A university in suburban Detroit is distributing hockey pucks as a form of self-defense against potential active shooters, according to reports.  Because Oakland University has a no-weapons policy, university Police Chief Mark Gordon suggested using a hockey puck to distract a shooter.

The Editor says...
The school has a no weapons policy.  But here they are distributing weapons (of the school's choice) for use against potential shooters.  Is it wise to bring a hockey puck to a gunfight?  Is it impossible to imagine an unpopular professor being pelted with hockey pucks on the last day of the semester?

School apologizes after students recite Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish.  Two days before Thanksgiving, the principal at Fairfax, Virginia's Westfield High School introduced a new program to encourage students to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in different languages.  A week later, the principal reportedly canceled the program and apologized to students for the "offensive" idea, according to Stephanie Somers, mother of a senior at the school.  Somers said her son was excited when asked to recite the pledge in Spanish on Monday, but by Tuesday afternoon the program was scrapped over complaints from the community.

Six Steps to Reform Education Right Now.  Public schools are full from basement to roof with dysfunctional gimmicks that never worked.  To improve the public schools, the path to success is simple.  Get rid of the counterproductive ideas, i.e., the methods that seem to be designed, from conception to implementation, to subvert education.

High School Bans Expensive Coats To 'Poverty-Proof' The School.  Students are allowed to bundle up during the winter, but only if they do so cheaply, says a high school in northwestern England.  The school sent a letter to parents in early November warning them that expensive coats would no longer be allowed.  The headteacher of Woodchurch High School in Birkenhead said the ban would take effect after Christmas and the school was "mindful that some young people put pressure on their parents to purchase expensive items of clothing," according to CNN.  The coats being banned are from Canada Goose and Moncler, brands that sell jackets that can cost well over $1,000.

The Editor says...
Banning expensive clothes for the sake of the poor kids' feelings is a little extreme; however, if you can afford to buy a thousand-dollar coat, you can afford to send your kid to a private school.

High School Bans Expensive Winter Coats Because They Make Poor Kids Feel Bad.  A high school in the U.K. has banned expensive, designer winter coats because they might make poorer kids feel bad, a report says.  Woodchurch High School in northwestern England's Birkenhead has put the kibosh on expensive coats from companies such as Canada Goose and Moncler because they "stigmatize" poor kids.

School bans 'expensive' jackets due to 'poverty shaming' of students.  A school in the United Kingdom has forbade students from wearing "expensive" jackets because doing so may "poverty shame" other students.  A letter sent by officials from Woodchurch High School in Merseyside informed parents that "pupils will not be permitted to bring in Canadian [sic] Goose and Monclair [sic] coats after the Christmas break."  Such garb can cost up to $900, according to Reason.

What Michigan's Radioactive Boy Scout Tells Us about American Education.  Public schools and factories were developed at about the same time.  The pattern adopted was that of an assembly line with parts — or, in the case of schools, subjects, being bolted on as the child moves on an assembly line, stations one, two, grades three, four.  There is no recognition of differences of personalities or of the individual needs of the students.  The lack of respect for privacy, the kids' expectations of being told what to do, the regimenting and promotions based on politics rather than merit, destroys whatever joy children gain from learning and self-improvement.  Coursework is unrelated to adult needs or to lifetime work.  The public schools don't work very well, are expensive, and can do profound damage.

Emails show Harvard favored applicants with ties to big donors.  Harvard University "rolled out the red carpet" for applicants with ties to influential donors, according to stunning emails revealed as part of a lawsuit that claims the school's admissions process is discriminatory.  The correspondences revealed Wednesday show that officials catered to certain recruits with upstanding pedigrees over others, including the student who received the royal treatment after his family gave $1.1 million over the course of four years.  The men's tennis coach fired off a thank-you email in 2014 to longtime admissions dean William Fitzsimmons, saying "it would mean a great deal" to see that student at Harvard.

Obama's Social Experiments Are Wreaking Havoc on America Today.  [Example #1]  The sexual assault maelstrom:  It all started in 2011, when the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under Obama's Department of Education (DOE) issued a "Dear Colleague" letter reinterpreting Title IX of the 1972 Higher Education Act.  The OCR letter encouraged colleges and universities to set up what Harvard Law professors Jacob Gerson and Jeannie Suk called a "sex bureaucracy."  Separate Title IX offices at colleges across the country heard sexual assault cases, doling out punishments on their own.  These mini bureaucracies operated off of the false assumptions that police are biased against sexual assault victims, that 1 in 4 women on college campuses are raped, and that basic due process protections for the accused would violate the rights of the "victims."  Men who have been falsely accused — and even acquitted by real police investigations — have seen their lives and reputations destroyed.

U.K. student union swaps clapping with more inclusive 'jazz hands'.  The student union at Manchester University in England voted last week to ban clapping and whooping in favor of more inclusive "jazz hands" to pacify anxiety-prone students.  The University of Manchester Students' Union voted Thursday to use jazz hands, or the BSL (British Sign Language) sign for clapping, instead of traditional clapping and cheering at its sponsored events, the union's newspaper, The Mancunion, reported.  "This union notes that since 2015, the National Union of Students (NUS) has been using British sign language (BSL) clapping (or 'jazz hands'), as loud noises, including whooping and traditional applause, can pose an issue for students with disabilities such as anxiety or sensory issues," the motion read, The Guardian reported.

Professors accused of pimping out students got nearly $500K to study prostitution.  In a shocking irony, the John Jay College professors accused of pimping out their students raked in more than half a million dollars in government money to study prostitution.  Thousands more in taxpayer and non-profit cash poured in for the academics to study addiction — at the same time the profs were allegedly running their own on-campus snakepit called "the swamp" where drugs were sold and used.  Four professors at the publicly funded criminal justice college are on paid leave while the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and State Inspector General probe allegations they brought the underworld they studied into the hallways of John Jay.

UMich claims due process hurts poor students.  The public and the media are captivated by grand, sweeping, all-or-nothing legal arguments that crusade for justice.  Judges often prefer boring, technical, context-specific arguments.  It's hard to see how the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will be swayed by one of the dumbest arguments I've ever seen a university make in court.

Socialism at its finest:  Most NY kids can't get any of that 'free' education.  Back in the Occupy days, "free education for all" was the daily socialist battle cry.  And sure enough, New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo eventually handed it to them in a much ballyhooed rollout, of free scholarships to all New York residents, to any state school, in 2017.  Free stuff!  The protesters won! [...] Turns out the free rides weren't so free, actually.  Seventy percent of New York's students got rejected for them, and not because they couldn't read or something.

'Morality test,' on topics like incest and puppy-killing, judged 'not OK' by students' parents.  A "morality test" distributed to students at an Ohio high school — featuring questions on topics like incest and puppy-killing — has outraged parents and resulted in the teacher's suspension.  Sarah Gillam, a 35-year-old Language Arts instructor at Hilliard Bradley High School, was placed on paid administrative leave pending the results of an internal investigation, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

The Founders Were Not Education Centralizers.  If the Founders wanted a secular, centralized, government-controlled education system, why did they fail to provide for it in the Constitution?  Education and schools are not mentioned in the Constitution.  The Framers did not designate education as one of the enumerated powers under the purview of the federal government.  On the other hand, they believed education (and many other powers) should reside exclusively in "the states or [with] the people."  Although some of the Founders wanted local lawmakers to enact systems of universal public education and compulsory attendance laws, that does not mean they advocated state or federal control of education.  In fact, decades after the colonies declared independence, most American children were taught in small private academies or at home.

Is Your Library Inviting Drag Queens to Talk to Children?  Texas Values has been tracking a disturbing trend across the country which recently occurred in Houston as well.  Known as "Drag Queen Story Hour," public libraries are allowing men dressed as women, or drag queens, to read stories to young children.

Racist Cop?  Anti-Gay Preacher?  Kids Told to Pick Who Lives, Who Dies.  The Earth is about to blow up and there's only room on the spaceship for eight passengers.  So who gets left behind?  Seventh graders at Roberts Middle School in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio were assigned the task last week of deciding who got to live and who was doomed to be blown to smithereens.  The "Whom To Leave Behind" lesson has caused quite a lot of outrage among moms and dads who believe the assignment sends the wrong message to their children.  For the assignment students were asked to choose between a list of 12 hypothetical people.

Assignment has kids choose who they would save if world was ending; choices provided enraged parents.  An Ohio middle school is under fire after an assignment asked students to decide based on gender, sex and other factors who to save if the world was ending.  Students at Roberts Middle School in Cuyahoga Falls were asked to make the decision in the "Whom to Leave Behind" assignment, according to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.  The not-yet identified teacher asked students to choose eight of 12 people to put on a space ship to take to a different planet if the Earth was about to be destroyed.  Some of the choices included in the controversial assignment, which parents slammed as "insensitive," included a "militant African-American medical student," a "homosexual, male professional athlete" and a "female movie star who was recently the victim of sexual assault."

Fifth-grade boy is punished for calling his teacher 'ma'am.' Parents take it to the press.  Once upon a time teachers used to complain about students who behaved like rotten little monsters.  These days some teachers instead have taken to kvetching about students who behave like gentlemen.  Take students like Tamarion, a 10-year-old North Carolina boy who got in trouble at his Tarboro preparatory school after he had the audacity to refer to his teacher as "ma'am."

North Carolina mom in 'disbelief' after son, 10, punished for calling teacher 'ma'am'.  The mother of a 10-year-old boy in North Carolina is outraged that her son was recently punished for calling his fifth grade teacher "ma'am."  "I was in disbelief," Teretha Wilson, the boy's mother, told Fox News on Saturday [8/25/2018]. [...] Wilson claims Tamarion's teacher told her that her son "was getting on her nerve when he called her ma'am" but "couldn't give me a reason of why that was bad."  The teacher also claimed Tamarion knew that she wasn't serious when she allegedly threatened to throw something at him, Wilson said.

K-12: Parallels with Venezuela.  In 1931, the American Education Establishment proclaimed the salvation of reading.  We would bury phonics, which never worked, and we would instead make children memorize every English word by sight.  This was a disastrous boondoggle that we are still living with.  We have 50 million functional illiterates.  As a result, the country is groggy on its feet.  This seems to be the goal of our Progressive educrats.  In 1962, the same arrogant, self-congratulatory pattern continued.  Finally, at last, our professors had figured out how mathematics should be taught.  This breakthrough was called New Math.  There was a year-long buildup for this weirdly inane failure.  Few schools stuck with it for even two years.  New Math the Sequel, circa 1985, was called Reform Math.  New Math 3 is called Common Core Math.  These things were not designed by mathematicians.  They were all designed by far-left professors in the Education Establishment.

The case for abolishing public schools.  Here are the reasons why a public school system should be abandoned.  [#1] Safety.  Placing kids together in large numbers in one place is a safety and security nightmare.  Schools become attractive targets for psychos, terrorists, pedophiles, and undesirables, many of whom seek jobs in the public school system just to be around kids to exploit them for various agenda-driven reasons.  Transporting kids by the millions twice every day via buses and cars exposes them to danger.  When one considers that many of these needless travel miles are forced on students to achieve "diversity" goals, the idiocy of it all boggles the mind.

NYC's War on Academic Excellence.  While student "Dreamers" here illegally from south of the border garner bleeding-heart front-page stories and nightly news dispatches, the high-achieving sons and daughters of legal immigrants from Asia are getting shafted by far-left Democrats.  And it's all in the perverted name of "diversity."

Hard Truths About School Shootings and Gun Violence.  In response to the tragic shooting at a Santa Fe, Texas high school earlier in May, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan tweeted, "What if no children went to school until gun laws changed to keep them safe?  My family is all in if we can do this at scale.  Parents, will you please join us?"  Duncan's shoot-from-the-hip reaction embodies the "action for the sake of action" mentality that so often follows in the wake of heartbreaking school violence.  Duncan, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, served as secretary of education under President Barack Obama.  Apparently, Duncan is taking advice from Chicago's mayor and former Obama chief-of-staff, Rahm Emanuel, who infamously quipped, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

History of the Conspiracy against Reading.  The power of our Education Establishment to maintain its destructive nonsense is frightening.  These shifty people have put the leaders of the country in straitjackets, apparently.  Even President Trump and Betsy DeVos cannot speak the obvious: children should learn to read in the first grade.  Anything else is unacceptable.  If you hear about children bringing home lists of sight-words to memorize, start screaming.  That's where illiteracy begins:  sight-words.  If literacy is the goal, children should memorize the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they represent.  To save the country, we first have to save the public schools.  To do that, we have to save reading.

The Plague of 'Theory' in Educational Discourse.  What we may pejoratively call "theory" in today's educational discourse bills itself as a critical resistance movement serving the presumably dispossessed and the marginalized.  Particularly in the humanities, the social sciences, and the post-colonial disciplines, the arena is now monopolized by the paladins of resentment in pursuit of an ideological revolution — that is, the subversion of established power fields and the destabilizing of traditional values.  Departments of education are at the forefront of the cultural subversion movement, focusing their efforts on preparing a cohort of teachers to carry out the mandate of social reconstruction.

Illinois lawmakers vote to let kids take medical marijuana in school.  The Illinois Senate's overwhelming vote to allow sick students to take medical marijuana in school sends the proposal to Gov. Bruce Rauner for a decision on its fate.  The state Senate voted 50-2 last week to allow students who qualify for medical marijuana to consume it on school premises, as long as they don't smoke it and school officials agree that it won't disrupt other students.  The measure is named Ashley's Law, for 12-year-old Ashley Surin of Schaumburg, who takes medical marijuana to treat the epilepsy she developed during chemotherapy treatments for leukemia.

The Editor says...
Medical marijuana sob stories in the newspapers are designed to exert political pressure in the states that don't already permit marijuana use for medicinal purposes.  That's because medical marijuana use is the incremental wedge needed to open the door (a few years later) to recreational marijuana, followed (a few years later) by full legalization of marijuana, at which time the whole country will see the effects already experienced in Colorado, e.g., marijuana-intoxicated hippies causing wrecks on the freeways.  At that point, some news organization will find a cute little 5-year-old whose seizures can only be remedied with heroin (or hashish or cocaine or LSD or assisted suicide), and the cycle will repeat.

Illinois Senate considering bill to give kids access to medical pot at schools.  The Illinois State Senate is now considering a bill the House overwhelmingly approved Wednesday [4/18/2018] that would allow parents or guardians to medicate their children with cannabis while they're at school.  State Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, sponsored the measure, which sailed through the House with a 99-1 vote.

7 elementary school students cut wrists with blades; parents notified weeks later.  Seven students at a Maryland elementary school cut their wrists using blades in pencil sharpeners a day after a parent said their daughter attempted suicide in the same building — but parents were only notified nearly three weeks later.  Prince George's County Public Schools officials said Tuesday [4/17/2018] the seven students at William Paca Elementary School in Hyattsville had cut their wrists on March 29, FOX5DC reported.  A concerned parent came forward about the incident and officials launched an investigation.  Just before spring break, parents at the school received a notice that handheld pencil sharpeners, with the detachable blades, were banned.  On Tuesday, parents found out about the cutting incident in a letter after officials completed their investigation.

Why Doesn't School Arm Teachers with Nerf Guns?  A school district near Erie, Pennsylvania has decided to arm school teachers — not with guns — but with baseball bats.  And by "baseball bats" — I don't mean Louisville Sluggers.  The Millcreek School District is equipping teachers with 16-inch, miniature baseball bats.  William Hall, the superintendent of Millcreek Schools, said every classroom in the district will have a mini-bat — locked away for safe keeping.

Violent crime by juveniles up sharply since Broward County adopted PROMISE program.  Broward County's PROMISE program (which stands for Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports & Education) coincides with higher levels of violent crime among juveniles, even as levels of such crime have been falling statewide.  Broward County adopted the PROMISE program in 2013 at the urging of the Obama Education Department.  As Ed pointed out last month, based on a story by Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations, the move away from arrests even for repeat offenders appears to help explain why school shooter Nikolas Cruz was able to engage in violence and even bring bullets to school without any arrests or legal consequences.  Sunday, Sperry published a follow up looking more broadly at the results of the PROMISE program.  He found those results don't match up with the claims of its supporters.

New Jersey looks to extend college financial aid to undocumented students.  Immigrant students stood up when the vote came down — New Jersey's assembly gave the final approval needed to send a bill (A-3467) to the governor's desk that would extend state financial aid for college to undocumented students.

Pennsylvania school district arms teachers with baseball bats: report.  A Pennsylvania school district said it will arm 500 school teachers with baseball bats in response to the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, Erie News Now reported.  The Millcreek School district organized a training day on how to respond to a potential shooting and the 16-inch bats were handed out to each teacher, the report said.  The district paid $1,800 for the bats.  William Hall, the district's superintendent, told the paper that the bats were primarily symbolic, but a "last resort," and "an option and something we want people to be aware of."

The Editor says...
One of the arguments that teachers (or anyone else) should not carry a gun because the weapon can be taken away and used by an attacker.  That's much more likely to be true of a baseball bat.

The Surreal World of Teaching.  [D]id you know that in the inverted world of education today, if a student has a baby, then more financial aid is available?  Indeed!  Consequently, students are being told by their college advisers that they should get pregnant.  Even some of the students are appalled at this suggestion.  But then there are those who proclaim that "the money comes from the government," implying that it is not really problematic.  Deliberately unschooled in how things actually work, and already the recipients of financial assistance, these students see government as the ultimate security blanket.  There is no connection to the idea that government comprises taxpayers.  What a wonderful idea — to have a money tree somewhere pumping out financial aid ad infinitum!

Obama Supporters Rush to Save His 'Dangerous' School Leniency Policy for Minority Students.  As U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was meeting behind closed doors with educators and parents to re-evaluate the Obama-era school leniency policy of reducing reports of violent behavior committed by minority students, left-wing media and politicians were touting a new report that noted black students, boys, and students identified as "disabled" are disciplined at higher rates.  According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report — requested by Democrats Rep. Bobby Scott (VA) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY) — national civil rights data for academic year 2013-2014 show "black students, boys, and students with disabilities were disproportionately disciplined (e.g., suspensions and expulsions) in K-12 public schools."

K-12: Illiterate New World.  [Scroll down]  Hardly 20 years after the introduction of this brave new illiteracy, the situation was already so bad that Rudolf Flesch felt compelled to write a book explaining what had happened to the country (Why Johnny Can't Read, 1955).  Many millions of Americans felt compelled to read the book.  Almost everyone knew that something had gone horribly wrong.  It continues to go wrong today.

Pennsylvania District Equips Classrooms with Buckets of Rocks to Stone Mass Shooters.  Schuylkill County officials are equipping classrooms with buckets of rocks to stone mass shooters.  Dr. David Helsel made the announcement this week in Harrisburg.

Stone Age Thinking.  What are America's students to do while awaiting Hogg's era of no gun violence?  Many educators, or at least education administrators and teachers' union leaders, don't want to allow protectors armed with guns in schools.  Dr. David Helsel, the superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District, in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, has the answer:  "Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone.  If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full students armed with rocks and they will be stoned."  Superintendent Helsel's district does have an armed protector, a single maintenance employee, who will no doubt drop his mop or hammer and rush to the defense of students, but Helsel says the district won't arm teachers.  Instead, the students have been trained to barricade themselves in their classrooms then use that bucket of rocks if the classroom's door and that lone maintenance guy fail to protect them.

Prof wants colleges to pay women extra for 'emotional labor'.  A communications studies professor wants colleges to compensate female faculty members for their "emotional labor," such as "supportive communication" and generally "making a person 'feel good.'"  Brandi Lawless argues that emotional labor is equivalent to other academic work, such as teaching classes and grading assignments, blaming the "neoliberal agenda" for making emotional labor an expectation.

Broward County's Reverse Jail-to-School Pipeline.  At the same time the Broward County school system was dismantling the "school-to-prison pipeline" under policies that failed to stop accused shooter Nikolas Cruz, it was building another pipeline, funneling back into regular classrooms thousands of other potentially dangerous students released from local jails, county and school district records reveal.  Through a little-known "re-engagement" program for serious juvenile offenders, the Florida district has "transitioned" back to school almost 2,000 incarcerated students, a number comparable to student bodies at many high schools, according to district data obtained by RealClearInvestigations.  Local probation officers warn that these offenders have a high risk of reoffending.  Another initiative, the Behavior Intervention Program, attempts to mainstream a smaller number of "students who exhibit severe, unmanageable behavior," according to a 2017-2018 program handbook, including those who are "convicted of a serious crime such as rape, murder, attempted murder, sexual battery or firearm related [offense]."

The Editor says...
The same people who constantly want more money to assure "safe schools" are the ones who are importing known criminals from the county jail back into the school system.  I suspect this is done because the schools get paid in proportion to the number of warm bodies in attendance each day.

The Obama Administration's Evil Lives On.  In 2014, the Obama administration promulgated a "guidance" to America's public schools that threatened federal investigations and litigation against schools where black students are disciplined (e.g., by suspension) more often, on a pro rata basis, than white students, on the ground that such numerical discrepancy is evidence of discrimination.  Many schools responded by adopting discipline quotas, which meant in practice that after a certain number of students of a particular race had been suspended, teachers and administrators were helpless to enforce any kind of discipline in classrooms.  The Obama administration is gone, thankfully, but its "guidance" has not been revoked.  Meanwhile, state governments and federal courts that are in liberal hands have taken up the claim that disparate incidence of discipline must be discriminatory, a theory that flies in the face of common observation that misbehavior in school is not randomly distributed in the student population.

K-12: The War on Boys and Men.  [Scroll down]  But the paradigm of stupid instruction remains Whole Word.  That's where the student has to memorize the English language one word at a time.  The famous Dr. Samuel Orton, a neurologist, did a study in 1926-28 and declared that this method doesn't work... and, in addition, it will damage every child it touches.  He was exactly correct, and the Education Establishment knows it.  What do we see in the schools of America?  Millions of semi-literate children with messed up minds.  StatisticBrain claims that 32 million Americans "can't read."  Tens of millions more read marginally.  This is a vast national tragedy.  Ask yourself, why is this tolerated?  Perhaps because it makes the population easier to control.

Parents Argue School District's Decision to Allow Student Walkout Breaks Law.  A group of parents from New Milford, Connecticut has hired an attorney to articulate their concerns about the decision by their school district to allow students to participate in the national student walkout held Wednesday to advocate for gun control.  In an email sent to Breitbart News, the parents — who wish to remain anonymous — argue the student walkout might appear to be a fairly innocuous First Amendment event to honor the students killed in the Parkland, Florida, shooting and to advocate for gun control.  However, the parents add, the decision involves issues concerning "adherence to law and policy, the manipulation of minors, the misuse of tax dollars, and indoctrination and political activism during school hours."

Parents up in arms after NYPD removes cops from schools.  The last NYPD cops assigned full-time to New York City public schools are being moved out — despite nationwide calls for heightened security in the wake of last month's Florida shootings.  As the nation mourned the 17 victims of the school massacre at Parkland, Fla., the NYPD was removing Sgt. Raul Espinet from his post at Francis Lewis HS in Fresh Meadows, Queens — where he had worked for more than a dozen years.  Parents, teachers and students are livid over the beloved cop's departure.

Segregated Staff Meetings at a Public Middle School.  For the second time in recent months, principal Adrian Harries of Nichols Middle School in Evanston, Ill., instructed his staff to segregate themselves by race.  His emails directed the "white" staff to room 126 and the "staff of color" to room 226.  The basis for these segregated staff meetings was a racial-equity agenda calling for "courageous conversations" in which staff members could discuss their "racial awakening[s]."  There was no mention of any educational innovations aimed at closing the profound achievement gap between white and black students — the entrenched problem that had necessitated Nichols's equity agenda in the first place.

Elementary School Pilot Program Replaces Detention With Yoga.  A special grant from Denver Public Schools has allowed Doull Elementary to pilot a program where they trade out detention for Yoga.  "I teach children the practice of yoga and meditation," said Trinidad Heffron.

The Editor says...
Yoga is Buddhism.  The Left constantly complains about "separation of church and state," yet they come up with ideas like this, to inject religion into the schools — as long as it's not Christianity.

In the good old days, such a person wouldn't have been allowed within a mile of an elementary school.
Elementary Principal Announces He Is Transgender, Will Start Dressing as a Woman.  A 52-year-old male elementary school principal has announced he is now transgender and will begin dressing as a woman at school.  Tom Daniels, principal of Stanley School in Swampscott, Massachusetts, said in a letter to the school community that was forwarded to the Boston Globe, "I am transgender.  For me, that means I identify as both a male and female, and I plan to move toward presenting myself and identifying as female."

Kent State SJP applauds eviction of Jews from Pride Parade.  A pro-Palestine student group at Kent State University applauded the eviction of Jews from a recent Pride Parade because they were "associated with far right pro-Israel groups."  The SJP group even acknowledged that evicting the Jewish marchers would have been anti-Semitic if they had not been "associated with racist right wing groups."

Father Daughter school dance cancelled for not being gender neutral.  I get that a public school is for all the kids and I am ok with that.  A daddy daughter dance or donuts for dads is a thing schools do intentionally.  At least they do in the Midwest.  These events are put on by schools, the Kroc Center, the parks and rec and all sorts of community and religious organizations so dad can have a special day with his daughter(s).

Canceling a father-daughter dance is an example of political correctness gone out of control.  Breaking news:  Believe it or not, fathers and mothers are not identical.  Neither are sons and daughters.  And both research and common sense support the notion that children benefit when they have good relationships with a loving mother and a loving father.  Unfortunately, the enlightened, oh-so politically correct and highly educated bureaucrats at the New York Department of Education appear to be unaware of this startling revelation — even though it was common knowledge going back to prehistoric times.

PC culture killed our school's father-daughter dance: parents.  A Staten Island elementary school scrapped its traditional father-daughter dance this coming Friday because of the Department of Education's new gender guidelines.  The DOE ordered schools to "eliminate" any "gender-based" practices like the dance in a March 2017 policy update unless they serve a "clear" educational purpose.  The PS 65 shindig, set for Feb. 9, was abruptly postponed until next month after the school's PTA realized the dance would run afoul of the rules.

Princeton Set to Host 'Fat Positive Dinner' for 'Fat Identified' Students.  Princeton University is set to host a "fat positive dinner" in February for students who self-identify as "fat."  According to a report from Campus Reform, Princeton University is set to host a "fat positive dinner" for "fat identified" persons on February 8th at the campus's women's center.  "This space is intended for fat identified people to share their experiences as a fat person at Princeton in an accepting and supportive environment," a Princeton newsletter reads.  "We will discuss fat positive programming ideas for the Spring semester as well."  It is not yet known what will be on the menu for the fat positive dinner.

NYC School Cancels Father-Daughter Dance to Comply With New Gender Guidelines.  A Staten Island elementary school cancelled its traditional father-daughter dance because of the Department of Education's (DOE) new gender guidelines.  PS 65 had the event scheduled for Friday, February 9, until the school's parent-teacher association realized it would not comply with the Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Student Guidelines, which went into effect in March 2017.

Prof uses American flag as doormat in college 'art display'.  A professor at Broward College in Florida cut an American flag in half, painted it white, and laid it on the ground as a doormat for a school art display.  A BC student who is also a Marine Corps veteran took issue with the display, and wrote a letter notifying the school's president.

Florida professor tricks students into walking on U.S. flag for art show.  A Marine Corps veteran who attends Broward College in Florida wants answers after attending a faculty art exhibit with a U.S. flag disguised as a doormat.  Jess Karcher says a "Full-time Faculty Exhibition" running Jan. 26 through Feb. 21 felt like a "kick in the gut" after he witnessed peers inadvertently walking all over the American flag.  The disabled veteran provided pictures of BC Assistant Professor of Art Lisa Rockford's project to the educational watchdog Campus Reform on Monday [1/29/2018].

K-12: Killing Democracy.  The majority of children in the United States learn to read with sight-words. [...] As a practical matter, the victims of sight-words are given a severely limited vocabulary.  You might think of it as a worker's or slave's vocabulary.  Instead of the 100,000 or 200,000 words that most educated people speak and read without much effort, you have people who are painfully confined to a reading vocabulary of only 500 or 1,000 sight-words.  These people are called functional illiterates, and they are not a tiny minority.  This is 50 million people.  Illiteracy and sight-words go together like love and marriage.

Why I Quit Teaching.  Three reasons determined my course of action.  For one thing, administration had come to deal less with academic issues and more with rules of conduct and punitive codes of behavior, as if it were a policing body rather than an arm of the teaching profession.  Woe betide the (male) student accused of sexual assault or misconduct; the administration will convene an extra-judicial tribunal to punish or expel the accused, often with a low burden of proof.  It will find ways to shut down conservative speakers.  It will browbeat faculty and students to attend sensitivity training sessions on matters of race and gender.  It will strike task forces to deal with imaginary issues like campus rape culture and propose draconian measures to contain a raging fantasy.  The administration is now beset by two basic compulsions: to expand its reach at the expense of the academic community and to ensure compliance with the puritanical norms of the day.  I thought it prudent to take early retirement rather than wait for the guillotine to descend.

Can America's Schools Be Saved?  An Insider Weighs In.  The American education system has long been in crisis.  It seems every administration seeks to reform the system, but it usually ends up making matters worse.  The book, Can America's Schools Be Saved?  How the Ideology of American Education Is Destroying It helps explain what has gone wrong.  Author Edwin Benson is a teacher and shares the fate of his students by being a victim of programs, testing standards, and newfangled crazy ideas.  He vents his frustration at dealing with ivory tower reformers and theorists who will not let students be students and teachers be teachers.

One Ivy League College Just Took Self-Identification to a Whole New Level.  Brown University decided to change its graduate program's application process.  The change would allow potential students to 'self-identify' as a person of color, The College Fix reported.  Apparently, the university decided to make the change after faculty complained that international and Asian American students weren't being "treated as members of historically underrepresented groups."  Because of the lack of recognition, some students were missing out on invitations to multicultural events.  This policy is said to help the university reach its goal of doubling historically underrepresented groups by 2022, the Brown Daily Herald reported.

Brooklyn College doesn't want police using campus bathrooms.  Brooklyn College is kowtowing to cop-hating students by directing officers who need a bathroom break to the broken-down facilities in a building on the far edge of campus.  Amid a planned petition drive to ban cops from the taxpayer-funded campus, Donald Wenz, the school's director of public safety, told the student newspaper The Excelsior that he's trying to keep New York's Finest out of sight.

K-12: The Math You Need Is Not the Math You Get.  Common Core wants you to "to reason abstractly and quantitatively."  What could that mean?  Public schools do not teach fundamental skills, so students, after years in the classroom, can't do life's simple problems.  Instead, they can "use appropriate tools strategically."  Does anybody know what that would be?  Oh, maybe they mean a calculator.  That's pretty much the way all the kids end up:  calculator-dependent. [...] It's a total bait-and-switch, just like sight-word reading.  School officials promise to teach you superior methods that turn out to be vastly inferior.  Then you realize you've wasted years; at the end of it, you can't do simple arithmetic (just as you can't read).  Focus on the tsunami of waste for a few minutes, and you'll start to scorn our professors of education.

Common Core Rape-Themed Assignment for Biology Confuses Parents.  A 9th-grade assignment at a Mississippi high school is causing concern and disgust among parents.  A mother recently posted her student's assignment to Facebook in a special group that was created for the growing discontent parents feel toward public school education — "Inappropriate Common Core Lessons."  This particular assignment asked 14-year-old students to determine the identity of a fictional rapist based on sperm DNA.

Georgia teacher allegedly assigns students task of creating Nazi mascot.  A middle school teacher in Georgia is under fire after she allegedly assigned students the task of creating a mascot for the Nazi party.  The homework assignment requested students in a social studies class at Shiloh Middle School, in Gwinnett County, to "think about all of the information that you have learned about Hitler and the Nazi party" and to create a mascot for it, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.

Is Technology Really Better for Education?  Of the propaganda that generally swirls around public education, none is more prominent than the claim that technological "personalized learning" can transform learning.  Ed-tech companies trumpet how "innovative" and "engaging" their products are, perfect for efficiently training the 21st-century drones needed by the global economy.  Buy our digital devices for your students, they urge, and we'll throw in the apps for free!  Act now!  Don't be left behind!  Not so fast.  University of Colorado researchers recently released a report analyzing the myriad problems with "personalized learning" schemes.  Every legislator, education professional, and parent should read this report and slam on the brakes.

Schoolhouse Commercialism, Student Privacy, and the Failure of Policymaking.  Digital technologies used in schools are increasingly being harnessed to amplify corporate marketing and profit-making and extend the reach of commercializing activities into every aspect of students' school lives.  In addition to the long-standing goal of providing brand exposure, marketing through education technology now routinely engages students in activities that facilitate the collection of valuable personal data and that socialize students to accept relentless monitoring and surveillance as normal.  This year's 19th annual report on schoolhouse commercialism trends examines how technological advances, the lure of "personalization," and lax regulation foster the collection of personal data and have overwhelmed efforts to protect children's privacy.

Univ of Kansas opens women's only lunchroom as 'safe space' for Muslims.  At the conclusion of the Student Senate meeting on Jan. 27, Diversity and Inclusion Director Omar Rana announced the creation of a women's lunchroom in the Office of Multicultural Affairs.  Room 102 of the OMA is available from noon to 1 p.m. on weekdays, mainly for women on campus who require a safe space to eat lunch due to religious attire that cannot be removed in public, Rana said.  He said the process to get the lunchroom approved was lengthy and required the exploration of many campus resources, including Student Senate.

Feds Spend $138,000 Asking Four-Year-Olds About Their 'Internal Sense of Gender Identity'.  The National Science Foundation is spending over $130,000 on a study that asks four-year-olds about their "internal sense of gender identity." A grant for a two-year study was awarded to the University of Washington this summer.  The project will interview 250 children aged four to six, and their parents, asking a series of questions about "gendered behavior."  "Prominent theories of gender development have discussed the degree to which gender identity results from an internal sense of gender and socialization processes," according to the grant.

The Dregs of Higher Education Damage Our Immigration System.  There is no agreed-upon list of institutions that may be preying on the immigration system, just as there is no list of potential Nobel Prize winners or potential bank robbers.  But we can assemble a list of schools that have the characteristics that suggest some of them may engage in immigration abuse.

Universities [are] finally discovering that tolerating progressive violence and intimidation will cost them dearly.  Progressives have already done significant damage to the values that once animated scholarship and higher education, putting political goals above the disinterested search for the truth and open consideration of the facts.  This damage is for the most part welcomed by the left, as they see it paving the way for their political dominance.  However, the reflexive backing of (or failure to discipline) radical students who attack or intimidate conservatives is staring to hurt those institutions whose surrender to the left becomes widely known.

Stossel: Government-Run Schools Crush Innovation.  The late Andrew Coulson, a leading advocate of free-market education and a former senior fellow at the Cato Institute, partnered with the Free to Choose Network to create the recent PBS film School, Inc., which examines the problems with America's government-run schools and how to fix them.  But School, Inc. is three hours!  So John Stossel made a two-part short-attention-span version.

Florida school accused of offering students 'front of lunch line pass' for $100; parents outraged.  A Florida middle school has come under fire after a fundraising form was sent out to parents stating that for a $100 donation a student would be granted a "front of the lunch line pass."  A PTSA sponsorship form for the Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland, Fla. was sent out to the students' parents to raise money for the school but one offer stuck out.  The form stated that a $100 donation would grant the donor a "last name or company logo feature on the website, as well as PTSA events AND front of the lunch line pass," according to ABC Action News.

Parents Shocked by Adult Drag Queen Performance — at Grade School Talent Show.  What in the name of Ru Paul is wrong with the New York City Board of Education?  Parents are furious after children as young as 5-years-old were exposed to a man's erotic drag show performance at what was supposed to be a school district talent show.

The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged Edition, Page 1507.

American University blocks whites from cafe designated as 'sanctuary' for nonwhites.  After black student activists issued a demand list to American University in response to the racist-banana incident two weeks ago, the administration agreed to three demands.  One of them is a ban on whites using a new "student lounge" for the rest of the spring semester.  The Bridge Cafe only opened six weeks ago, and it won't be serving coffee and food until the fall semester, The Eagle reported April 3.

Dem. Assemblyman Pushes Bill to Guarantee Teachers Cannot Shoot Back if Attackers Strike.  California Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-7) is pushing legislation to take away school administrators' power to allow teachers with a Carry Concealed Weapon license to be armed in classrooms for self-defense.  McCarty's bill — AB 424 — was introduced months ago and is snaking its way through the legislative process.

California Schools Approve New Policy For Students: 'It's Okay To Break The Law, Police Are Evil'.  The Los Angeles School Board is taking modern day liberalism to a whole new level.  They have created a mantra to not only ignore Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents also known as ICE, but to also ACTIVELY do their best to take illegal actions against them if they were to see ICE ever to set foot on their school grounds.  It was a unanimous approval for a set of policies that the board members said would provide families with a much higher level of protection when it came to federal immigration raids.  Among this set of new policies it was also stated that no immigration officer will be given any permission to be on campus without first getting clearance from the superintendent of schools.  Until that happens they will be denied access to school property EVEN if they arrive with a legally valid subpoena.

Manhattan school trashes all its textbooks.  In a scene out of "Fahrenheit 451," administrators at Life Sciences Secondary School have ordered all textbooks rounded up and removed — calling them "antiquated," sources say.  Principal Kim Swanson and Assistant Principal Derek Premo, who launched the ban, "really frown upon the use of books," an insider told The [New York] Post.  "They just took books that teachers have been using and not replaced anything."

Is This The Most Racist High School Assignment Ever?  A taxpayer-funded high school in North Carolina has come under criticism from local parents because a history teacher gave students a blatantly racist assignment involving a bomb shelter and an impending nuclear war. [...] The assignment — called "Bomb Shelter Activity" — forces students to use skin color and ethnic background to choose four strangers who will be allowed enter a bomb shelter prior to a nuclear attack.

LGBTQ, transgender issues should be taught in nursery school, UK teachers' union says.  A British teachers' union wants to teach children as young as 2 years old about transgender and LGBTQ issues, but conservatives and faith-based organizations see such a move as an infringement on parental rights.  The National Union of Teachers (NUT) called on members this week at their annual conference in Wales to promote LGBTQ issues to children — beginning in nursery school.  NUT also urged ministers to make proposed sex and relationship education "inclusive" of lesbian, gay, and bisexual issues.

Repudiating the Obama Vision for Higher Education.  In 2012, there was a White House forum to discuss the remaking of our institutions of higher learning.  The forum was based on a 136 page volume A Crucible Moment:  College Learning and Democracy's Future by The National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement.  The National Task Force was composed of 11 individuals.  The writers or supervisors of the writing were these eleven individuals, so we shall never know who is responsible for which section of the report.  The writing of books by committee is another sign to this writer of the dilution of individual responsibility as well as individual rights.  It is a collective manuscript.  And if you ask teachers in our schools, they will tell you that increasingly textbooks are "written" by a large committee of scholars.  This report reflects this trend.  However, chief spokesman for this report at the 2012 White House Forum was Carol G. Schneider, then President of the American Association of College and University Professors.  This report should send a chill up the spines of every citizen in the United States.  Why?  It represented nothing less than an attempt to turn institutions of learning away from preparing students for careers and professional employment and away from the unbiased search for truth, which presumably is a scientific and philosophical goal in our colleges.  According to the vision of this report, institutions of higher education should be engaged in community development and promoting engagement.  It is a "social justice" model, a progressive model.  Universities should fill in gaps where existing institutions have failed communities.

Tulsa Teen Comes Home From School With Contraceptive Implant.  In a shocking case coming out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a mother who consented to what she was told was a "field trip" discovered that her 16-year-old daughter had been taken — by representatives of a local clinic and with the consent of school officials — to receive the Norplant contraceptive implant.  The girl — whose name is being withheld because she is a minor — is a student at Langston Hughes Academy, an arts and technology charter school located in North Tulsa.  Her mother, Miracle Foster, told FOX23 that she was blindsided when her daughter came home with the implant.  "Had I known that this field trip was to get that done, I would not have allowed her to go," Foster said, adding, "I just feel like my rights as a parent were violated."

What Does It Take to Declare a School 'Unsafe'?  [Montgomery County, Maryland] citizens have since learned that an illegal immigrant can be 18 years old, enroll in the public schools, undergo no background check, and because they have no verifiable high school credits, automatically be enrolled as a freshman, putting them in the same classes as 14 and 15-year-olds.  Under the law, the school cannot ask about the student's immigration status; the school system chooses to not perform background checks on incoming students.  In this light, the shock is not that this happened, the shock is that this hasn't happened until now.

A Plan to Reform Our Failing Universities.  To begin with, Title IX should be abolished a.s.a.p.  Originally intended to prevent sexual and racial discrimination — a well-intentioned but ill-conceived bipartisan measure signed into law in 1972 — Title IX has been corrupted beyond recognition, trampling due process in sexual harassment cases, feeding the campus rape panic, curtailing free speech rights in an effort to avoid "offense," diluting the curriculum via "trigger warnings" and "microaggression" claims, establishing a culture of grievance, allowing talks and lectures by conservative speakers to be cancelled or disrupted, gutting men's sports programs, and surrendering to the most absurd and untenable student demands.  This abomination was promoted under the rubric of "equality" in a world where natural and imprescriptible inequalities abound in both the physical and intellectual domains.  The casualties are merit and individuality.

High School Tries Shaming Boy, Demanding He 'Tolerate' Undressing with Girls to 'Make it Natural'.  A teenage boy and his parents have filed a lawsuit against a Pennsylvania high school saying that administrators tried to shame the boy for being "intolerant" and demanded that he undress with girls in the school locker room to "make it seem natural."  The lawsuit, filed by Alliance Defending Freedom and Independence Law Center (ILC), is alleging that the Boyertown Area School District in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, sexually harassed the plaintiff, CBS News reported.  "No school should rob any student of this legally protected personal privacy," said ILC attorney Randall Wenger.  "We trust that our children won't be forced into emotionally vulnerable situations like this when they are in the care of our schools because it's a school's duty to protect and respect the bodily privacy and dignity of all students."  "My client is standing up not only for himself but for others who feel bullied," Wenger added.

How to Short-Circuit a Child's Thinking:  Radical education reformers have made a point of removing context from children's education, and to squash their natural curiosity, undermining their capacity to think.  They have done this in five ways:  1) by withholding the basic tools and codes of learning, such as suppressing phonics for reading, as well as clarity in standard arithmetic; 2) by withholding the content knowledge necessary to connect dots in understanding history and civics; 3) by withholding and demeaning literature that reveals universal human experiences and shared understanding, such as the classics and Shakespeare; 4) by de-stabilizing a child's sense of self and identity.  This is a natural byproduct of de-sexing every child, which happens through mandates to teach kids about transgenderism; and 5) by promoting relational aggression against any child or parent who might resist this totalitarian program.  Radical education reform encourages schools and communities to single out those who disagree with this coercive program as misfits, bigots, or religious nuts.  All of the above would subvert anybody's ability to think clearly.

How to Short-Circuit a Child's Thinking.  Radical education reformers have made a point of removing context from children's education, and to squash their natural curiosity, undermining their capacity to think.  They have done this in five ways:  1) by withholding the basic tools and codes of learning, such as suppressing phonics for reading, as well as clarity in standard arithmetic; 2) by withholding the content knowledge necessary to connect dots in understanding history and civics; 3) by withholding and demeaning literature that reveals universal human experiences and shared understanding, such as the classics and Shakespeare; 4) by de-stabilizing a child's sense of self and identity.  This is a natural byproduct of de-sexing every child, which happens through mandates to teach kids about transgenderism; and 5) by promoting relational aggression against any child or parent who might resist this totalitarian program.  Radical education reform encourages schools and communities to single out those who disagree with this coercive program as misfits, bigots, or religious nuts.  All of the above would subvert anybody's ability to think clearly.  It leaves children unmoored from reality and in a constant state of anxiety about being socially rejected by peers or teachers for thinking thoughts deemed wrong.

WA College Helps Parents 'Cure' Their Toddlers of Racism and Sexism.  The workshop, for parents of children aged 3-6, includes a presentation, handouts, group activities, and homework that will help you cure your young children of any attachment they have to rational thought.  That way, they don't have to wait until college to find out that their ideas about race and gender are outdated.  The class is taught by a grad student who, according to the event page, is "engaged in education initiatives focused on inclusion and equity."

Justice Department no longer fighting injunction on transgender school guidance.  The Justice Department on Friday [2/10/2017] signaled it stopped fighting to overturn a national injunction blocking the federal government from giving guidance to schools and transgender students, another sign President Donald Trump's administration is taking a different approach than former President Barack Obama's.  A hearing was set for next Tuesday in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in which the Justice Department was fighting Texas and 11 other states, which had filed a lawsuit to prevent the Education Department from being able to give that guidance to transgender students that they are allowed to use restrooms that match their gender identity.

Baltimore mom outraged after third grader comes home missing 3 teeth.  Shanda Flemming thought she was signing a permission slip for her son to get a routine dental cleaning at school, but was shocked when he came home missing three teeth. [...] Her 9-year-old son, Michael, is missing two teeth on one side and one on the bottom.  Flemming claims she was not notified by the elementary school about the procedures, which were done by a dental program visiting the school.

LGBT groups want halt to Utah school laws involving homosexuality talk in schools.  A pair of gay rights advocacy groups said Thursday [1/26/2017] a judge should halt Utah state laws that discriminate against LGBT students by restricting talk about homosexuality in schools.

Violence in the Halls, Disorder in the Malls.  If Donald Trump wants to make schools safe again, he must rescind the Obama administration's diktats regarding classroom discipline, which are based on a fantasy version of reality that is having serious real-world consequences.  The Obama Justice and Education Departments have strong-armed schools across the country to all but eliminate the suspension and expulsion of insubordinate students.  The reason?  Because black students are disciplined at higher rates than whites.  According to Washington bureaucrats, such disproportionate suspensions can mean only one thing:  teachers and administrators are racist.  The Obama administration rejects the proposition that black students are more likely to assault teachers or fight with other students in class.

Federal Appeals Court Nixes Blanket Drug Screening of State College Students.  Last week a federal appeals court ruled that requiring incoming students at a state college to surrender their urine for drug testing violates the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches.  The decision is a welcome departure from a body of case law that usually defers to the government's perception of "special needs" that supposedly justify analyzing people's bodily fluids without a warrant or any evidence that they pose a threat to public safety.  Linn State Technical College, now known as the State Technical College of Missouri, started demanding incoming students' urine in 2011 because members of its advisory council thought it was a good idea, not because there was any reason to believe the school had any special drug-related safety problems.

Why the Education Establishment Hates Cursive.  You rarely see thoughtful praise of cursive.  Even people who are sentimentally inclined to support cursive can't think of many reasons to do so.  I propose a higher truth:  the Education Establishment is always a reliable guide to what is good.  If our socialist professors rail against X, you know that X is educational gold.  Here are eight reasons why cursive is valuable and we should fight to keep it in the classroom: [...]

16 Most Ridiculously PC Moments on College Campuses in 2016.  [#10]  A student was hit with a "safe space" complaint for raising her hand.  A student at Edinburgh University in Scotland said she was hit with a "safe space" complaint for raising her hand to disagree during a student-council meeting.  The school's "Safe Space Policy" strictly forbade "hand gestures which denote disagreement" because apparently they are just too scary for adult students to handle.

Secondary school BANS pupils from raising hands in class because it 'doesn't challenge and support the learning of all'.  A secondary school has today been accused of putting 'gimmicks' over education after banning pupils from raising their hands to answer questions.  The Samworth Church Academy in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, has written to parents to say it has abolished the 'age old practice' because it doesn't 'challenge and support the learning of all'.  But the move has been criticised by some parents and the National Union of Teachers (NUT), who said it 'shows a lack of respect' to staff at the school.  Parents and other headteachers have called it 'bizarre' and a 'step backwards'.

School Bans Students from Raising Their Hands to Answer Questions.  Samworth Church Academy, a high school in Nottinghamshire in the U.K., has banned its students from raising their hands to answer questions because it is unfair to students who do not raise their hands.  In a letter explaining the policy, Samworth principal Barry Found called hand-raising an "age-old practice."  "We find that the same hands are going up and as such the teaching does not challenge and support the learning of all," he said, according to an article in the Daily Mail.  Samworth teachers have been instructed to forbid hand-raising in their classrooms and instead call on students at random to answer questions — which is completely and totally ridiculous.

The Editor says...
If nobody seems to know the answer to the teacher's latest question, and little Jimmy finally raises his hand to indicate otherwise, that is now counted as a microaggression, due to the ban on "hand gestures which denote disagreement."  But unfortunately the students will someday encounter many such gestures, and it would be better to have the schools prepare them for a world of controversy.

Is it Time to Stop Running Our Schools Like Factories?  Since the 19th century, the United States has adopted what is known as the "Prussian model" of teaching (also known as the "factory model").  We would recognize the manifestation of this model fairly easily:  a teacher at the front of the room, and neat rows of desks with students sitting in front of him/her.  The purpose of this structure is fairly simple:  the teacher is giving students information in "assembly-line fashion," and the students — through memorization, repetition, and eventually testing — hopefully retain it.  The reason education was modeled this way so long ago was to prepare students for factory work.  The Industrial era needed a steady stream of bodies to ensure that production did not wane and the economy did not suffer.  The problem is that we no longer live in this era or learn in this way.  Our civilization has changed drastically since the 19th century.  Our workplaces have changed, our social mores have changed, what we know about the mind has changed, our cultural demographics have changed, and our technology has definitely changed.  The only thing, it seems, that hasn't changed is our way of educating.

California Voters to Decide Whether Schools May Teach Students in Spanish.  Voters in California will weigh in Tuesday on a decades-old debate about bilingual education in the state's public school system.  The outcome ultimately could determine whether California schools will continue to be required to teach in English, or may use Spanish or another language.  Although largely overlooked in a crowded election season, the issue has split Californians into two camps, those who believe the country benefits from a multilingual society and those who believe such policies hurt students and serve only to further ethnic and racial divides.

UT prof claims 'inappropriate' name guess is sexual harassment.  A student at the University of Tennessee was accused of sexual harassment after incorrectly identifying the name of his instructor on a geology quiz.  Keaton Wahlbon guessed "Sarah Jackson," resulting in a grade of "0" because the name is apparently shared by a nude model.  When Wahlbon appealed the grade, professor Bill Deane refused to reconsider, asserting that guessing that name "meets the Title IX definition of sexual harassment.

'White pride' shirts prompt Polson protest.  Polson School District has condemned the actions of some high school students who included racially charged messages on outfits worn as part of a school spirit day Thursday [9/29/2016].  Photos of the outfits were widely shared on social media and have spurred a protest that was expected to take place at Polson High School's football stadium Friday during homecoming festivities.  According to a press release from the district, each class was assigned a color for the day.  The seniors were instructed to wear black, the juniors to wear white, the sophomores to wear blue and the freshmen to wear green.

Clemson Bans Mentions of Harambe the Gorilla Because of Racism And Rape Culture.  It looks like all the fuss began with a silly meme.  Is that really supposed to be enough to ban all references to an animal that's been in the news lately?

KU bars gorillas from jungle-theme decoration due to 'masculine image'.  An RA at the University of Kansas was advised against incorporating an image of a gorilla into a jungle-themed floor decoration because the animal apparently represents "a very masculine image."  Assistant Complex Director Dale Morrow also noted that there are "stereotypes that surround this animal," and therefore its inclusion in the display would not be "inclusive."

A California University's Troubling Ties to Terrorism.  San Francisco State University (SFSU), which has a well-deserved reputation as a breeding ground for anti-Israel radicalism, became national news in April.  That's when campus police stood by as a hate-Israel group, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), shouted down and disrupted a lecture by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, prompting much criticism of SFSU's president, Leslie Wong.  But there's worse.  As revealed by an investigation into SFSU by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, SFSU has partnered with a Palestinian university that's a hotbed of radicalization.  What our investigation turned up:  SFSU signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with An-Najah University of Hebron in 2014 at the behest of Rabab Abdulhadi, director of SFSU's Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

George Washington University hires former Al Qaeda terrorist as homeland security expert.  Jesse Morton has been hired as an Islamic terrorism expert to work in George Washington University's Program on Extremism.  Mr. Morton used to go by the name Younus Abdullah Muhammad when he served as a recruiter for the al-Qaeda terrorist network.  That's right, George Washington University has hired a "former" Islamic terrorist as an expert on homeland security.

A College Strikes Back Against Safe Spaces.  [Scroll down]  Mind you, the extreme leftness of academia — there are around five times as many liberal professors as conservative ones, according to a 2014 survey by the University of California Los Angeles — means that even if this trend of ditching safe spaces continues, few liberal students will be seriously affected by hearing challenging ideas, at least in the classroom.

Lifelike baby dolls not effective birth control, study finds.  A weekend spent mothering a robot baby to mirror the "real experience" of parenting is meant to discourage teenage girls from getting pregnant.  But so-called Baby Think it Over dolls don't cut teen pregnancy rates and in fact increase the risk, Australian research has found.  In a study published in The Lancet medical journal Friday, researchers found teenage girls who used the lifelike computerized dolls as part of a pregnancy-prevention program were more likely to become pregnant compared with girls receiving a less high-tech sex education.

Md. school district:  Don't tell parents of transgender males bunking with daughters on field trips.  A Maryland school district is instructing teachers and administrators not to tell parents if their daughters are bunking with male transgender students on overnight field trips.  Bob Mosier, chief communications officer for the Anne Arundel County public school system, says in a training video on how to accommodate transgender students that privacy issues prevent the district from informing parents about such arrangements.

Illegal Immigration:  Destroying Schools One District at a Time.  Illegals aliens bring their children, so-called DREAMERs, into the country, and thanks to Democrats, we require that schools accept every child in their district without regard to the immigration status of the child or the family.  Like their parents, these illegal alien children can't speak English, and are uneducated in their home language.  That means that tremendous resources must be used to "mainstream" these kids into the classroom.  That does two things.  First, it takes resources away from kids who are, and whose families are, US citizens.  For the most part, these families pay the taxes to run the schools and their kids are getting robbed of any chance of a decent education by the flood of illegals taking up classroom resources.  Second, it slows down the learning process for the entire class, because these kids can't be just put into a special needs classroom until they're able to keep up, because that might "scar them."  Rather than call attention to the fact that they have no business in a regular classroom, educators mainstream them and slow down the whole class.

Labor board rules that university students can unionize.  Graduate students at private U.S. universities can unionize, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday [8/23/2016] in a decision that could upend the balance of power on campuses and deliver new members to labor unions.  Critics called the decision politically motivated, saying it will make it even tougher to cut costs and reform the country's higher education system.  But labor advocates cheered, saying universities have been maltreating graduate students for years, and this new ruling gives those students the power to demand better.  The NLRB said that students who are compensated for teaching classes or handling other official roles for their universities — "student assistants" — are employees of the schools, and are therefore covered under federal labor laws.

Texas teacher implements no-homework policy, the Internet rejoices.  A second grade teacher's no-homework policy has gone viral, thanks to a student's mother posting about it on Facebook.  Last week, mom Samantha Gallagher posted a note on Facebook from her daughter's teacher reading:  "After much research this summer, I'm trying something new.  Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day.  There will be no formally assigned homework this year."  Godley Elementary School teacher Brandy Young told parents research doesn't prove homework improves performance.  So, she said, time after school is best spent eating dinner as a family, reading together, playing outside and getting children to bed early.

The Editor says...
Maybe so, but "eating dinner as a family, reading together [and] playing outside" aren't feasible if the kid goes directly from school to daycare and then home to a single mother who's been at work all day.

School Rule Posted At Catholic High School For Boys Sparks Debate.  One strict rule at a high school has gone viral and sparked debate.  Catholic High School for Boys posted a sign on Facebook six days ago, and it has now been shared more than 110,000 times.  The message tells parents to turn around at the front door if they're bringing something for their sons.  "If you are dropping off your son's forgotten lunch, books, homework, equipment, etc., please turn around and exit the building.  Your son will learn to problem-solve."

The Editor says...
If the school administration is using "problem-solve" as a verb, that's an incompetent school.

Why not just teach English?
Middle Schoolers Quizzed on Words 'Popo, Bling Bling, True Dat'.  Some middle school students in Georgia got a lesson in slang from the streets this week and some parents are not pleased.  WSAV-TV is reporting a class at Godley Station School got quizzed on words like "punked," "popo," "true dat" and "bling bling."  A parent posted the quiz online and now many are questioning what arrived on the desks of some Savannah-Chatham students this week.

New School 'Gender Unicorn' Sparks Parental Outrage.  A protest was held Tuesday [8/9/2016] after a school district in North Carolina created a "gender unicorn" to teach staff and faculty about gender identity, gender expression and transgenderism.  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), a school district in Charlotte, N.C., created a purple unicorn with two hearts to explain transgenderism in training materials for school staff, reports WCNC.  The school district will use the training materials to teach staff and faculty how to best help transgender students.  The North Carolina Values Coalition led a protest against CMS' plans to let transgender students use the pronouns, name and bathroom according to their gender identity.  Speakers at the protest said that new CMS policy infringes on student privacy.

Good Grief:  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Want To Stop Calling Kids Boys And Girls.  Why can't hardcore nutjob moonbat liberals just let kids be kids?  Why do they have to push their crazy ideas on kids?  Why can't they just mind their own business and, oh, say, teach them subjects which will allow them to be functional members of society?

Two murals at University of Wisconsin-Stout to be removed: 'Psychologically devastating'.  Two inoffensive murals hanging in the lobby of Harvey Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW-Stout) are being removed because of a recommendation of the so-called Diversity Leadership Team.  One mural depicts a wooden fort, and the other depicts French trappers canoeing down a river with Indians.  No violence, no depiction of white supremacy — about as inoffensive as you can find.  But the DLT claims that the murals may be psychologically devastating to American Indian students.

College Takes Down Historical Paintings Because They Might Traumatize Students.  Since 1936, two large murals by Cal Peters portraying early Wisconsin history have dominated the common area of Harvey Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW-Stout). One mural shows French fur traders and American Indians traveling down the Red Cedar River by canoe, while another portrays a wooden fort constructed by the French.  Neither painting shows any violence at all.  But now, after 80 years, the murals are abruptly being given the heave-ho after concerns were raised that the paintings are offensive.

Satanists Push Clubs for Elementary Schools.  [Satanists are] plotting to bring their wisdom to the nation's public elementary school children.  They point out that Christian evangelical groups already have infiltrated the lives of America's children through after-school religious programming in public schools, and they appear determined to give young students a choice:  Jesus or Satan.  "It's critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they have a choice in how they think," said Doug Mesner, the Satanic Temple's co-founder.

An After School Satan Club could be coming to your kid's elementary school.  "It's critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they have a choice in how they think," said Doug Mesner, the Satanic Temple's co-founder.  On Monday [8/1/2016], the group plans to introduce its After School Satan Club to public elementary schools, including one in Prince George's County, petitioning school officials to allow them to open immediately as the academic year starts.

Sunday Washington Post Hypes After School Satan Clubs.  On Sunday (the Sabbath, of course), The Washington Post took time out from prostrating itself before Hillary Clinton to give a boost to the Fallen Angel.  In a long. front page middle finger to Christians, the Post hyped the efforts of the Satanic Temple to introduce After School Satan Clubs to America's elementary schools.  Oh, don't worry.  The worldly secularists at the Post aren't suddenly practicing the occult.  "The Satanic Temple doesn't espouse a belief in the existence of a supernatural being that other religions identify solemnly as Satan, or Lucifer, or Beelzebub," author Katherine Stewart assures readers.  Goodness no!  They're far too postmodern and ironic for that.  "The Temple rejects all forms of supernaturalism and is committed to the view that scientific rationality provides the best measure of reality."

Science Teachers Giving Unbalanced Education on Climate Change.  A nationwide survey of 1,500 U.S. middle and high school science teachers, conducted by the National Center for Science Education and published in the February 12 issue of Science, found half of the teachers who discuss climate change in the classroom ignore evidence of the role of natural factors. [...] Jane Shaw, former president and current board member of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, says the study's authors are the ones getting the science wrong.  "The survey's authors assume humans 'are causing' climate change, as though that were the only cause," said Shaw.  "That assumption is not scientific at all.  Humans may be contributing, but [they are] exclusively causing it?  That's ridiculous."  Shaw says teachers should teach the truth, not worry about sending mixed messages.  "Equally bad is the claim teachers should shave the truth in order to avoid sending 'mixed messages' to middle school and high school students," said Shaw.  "Telling the truth is bad because it sends 'mixed messages?'  That's a horrifying claim."

Massive K-12 Reading Failure Explained.  [Scroll down]  The evil genius of whole-word reading is to coerce children into processing a simple phonetic word as though it were a human face.  Look at all of the activity involved in identifying this person — about 25 saccades to identify one face.  For victims of bad pedagogy, reading is hard work indeed.  Instead of a few flicks, there may be a few dozen flicks.  Instead of a fraction of a second, the process may take a fraction of a minute.  Reading, far from being quick and fun, becomes difficult and tedious.  Fewer people achieve full literacy.  Fewer Americans reach the point where they can read for pleasure.

School safety drills are terrorizing our kids.  As sensationalized as mass shootings have become, they're still extremely rare.  We are much more likely to die in a car accident or from an illness than in any kind of mass shooting, let alone a school shooting.  According to the FBI, there were 479 gun fatalities for all children under 18 in 2013, the last year for which they have data.  In a population of about 74 million kids and teens, that makes the likelihood of dying via a gun 0.000646 percent.  No one wants to make light of even one child being killed, at school or anywhere else, but the likelihood of such a thing happening remains extremely slim.  So why are we raising kids with these chilling drills that can do lasting mental damage to them?

Colleges cool to feds' campaign to purge criminal history questions from applications.  College-bound high school students who have had trouble with the law may still have to check a certain box the Obama administration wants off of admissions forms.  Not all colleges and universities are buying into the Department of Education's "Beyond the Box" campaign to stop admissions officers from forcing applicants to disclose criminal and disciplinary histories.  The administration believes such probing is a barrier to minorities, but critics say schools have a right to know if incoming students have rap sheets.  "It's a nationwide social experiment putting college students at risk," said Dan Gainor, of the Media Research Institute.  "If you commit crimes — sexual assault, domestic violence and others — we have a right to know and decide whether we want to associate with you."

An Education in DC Driver's Ed.  The program consists of 30 hours in the classroom and 8 hours of behind-the-wheel practice, presumably with an instructor.  That's exactly backwards.  My research tells me there are zero instances of people sitting in a classroom being killed in an auto crash, but there are thousands happening on the street.  The ratio should instead be 8 hours in the classroom and 30 on the road.  There the instructor could introduce the fledgling driver to the mystery of the turn signal and explain how it's not just for turning, but comes in handy for lane changes, too!

Many parents give new mind-boggling report cards an F.  As a lawyer, Dennis Weldon has to make sense of tortuous legal papers.  But a year ago, the Plumstead Township resident opened a nine-page document that left him flummoxed.  It was his child's report card from Gayman Elementary School in the Central Bucks School District.  Gone was the traditional A-B-C-D-F report from the teacher.  Instead, parents were sent to their computers to click open a nine-page digital document with row after row of learning standards and success indicators for specific reading or math skills.  Grades ranged from a high of E (exceeding standards), through M (meeting standards) and A (approaching standards), down to LP (limited progress).

1.2 Million Foreign Students in American Universities.  Numbers and quantities matter in all facets of public policy, but nowhere are numbers more consequential than in the debate over immigration and visa programs.  Today [5/2/2016], Immigration Customs and Enforcement released its quarterly international student data detailing the number of foreign students residing in this country under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP).

With Apologies to Nathan Hale.  [Scroll down]  In St. Paul, Minn., two high school students punched and body-slammed a teacher who had complained about lenient disciplinary policies that had led to assaults against teachers.  Both students were black, all the beaten-up teachers were white.  The Obama administration has threatened school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts if the school punishes the perpetrators.

More Tests Track Children's Emotions.  Thanks to a new federal requirement inside a new law Republicans promised us meant a return to "local control," schools are beginning to track student emotions and behavior to be used in government ratings of school quality, even as researchers say these evaluations are not trustworthy.  The Every Student Succeeds Act, which recently replaced No Child Left Behind, includes a provision allowing states to use "alternative measures" for evaluating public schools.  The act specifically states this could include "school climate" surveys and "any other indicator" that states and school districts are beginning to use as a license to track children's emotions and behavior, The New York Times reports (as did Education Week before the bill passed).

A Liberal Magazine Just Spilled the Beans about K-12 Education.  American public schools, for many decades, have been a killing field for mathematical achievement.  John Saxon became a legend in the late 1980s for his valiant effort to create instruction that would replace the nonsense epidemic in the schools.  The Education Establishment resisted Saxon with all of its considerable resources.  These officials had come up with New Math circa 1964 and then Reform Math after 1985.  All those bad, and very unpopular, approaches have modulated into Common Core Math.  All bunk according to many analysts, but that doesn't mean our Education Establishment willingly lets a smidgen of it go.

Parents to face charges if they approach school to pick up child under new policy.  Texas parents have had enough of an elementary school's new pick up policy that reportedly could have them face trespassing charges if they try to get their child after the school day is over.  Bear Branch Elementary in Magnolia implemented the policy at the beginning of the school year.  Under the new rules, if a student does not take the bus, parents must wait in the mile-long car pick up line to get their child, according to Fox 26 Houston.  Now, some parents have pulled their kids from the school.  "She's threatening to arrest people," Wendy Jarman said about Principal Holly Ray to the Fox station.

School's new policy bans parents from walking children to school.  Pick your child up from school and you could be charged with trespassing.  That's the threat against parents at Bear Branch Elementary School in Magnolia ISD.  This is the school's tactic to keep parents who live close to the school from walking on school grounds.  Bear Branch is losing students over this pick up policy, that's been in place since the beginning of this school year.  The principal has decided that no matter how close the student lives to the school, the student must either take the bus, or the parent must wait in a long car pickup line.  Try to walk your student off the campus and you could face criminal charges.

The Editor says...
No matter how close you live, you can't walk to that school.  Is the school not on public property?  Can pedestrians with no connection to the school walk by?  Why are the schools centrally located in neighborhoods if the kids can't go there on foot?  And aren't these the same nanny-state bureaucrats who preach about childhood obesity?  Maybe walking to school would be good for them.

Texas School Threatens to Punish Parents Who Walk Children Home.  In September, Houston's KPRC 2 News (NBC) reported the new rule prohibited parents from walking to the Magnolia Independent School District campus to retrieve their own children.  Parents cannot drive to the school, park their cars at the school, or go inside to get their children early.  Their options are to send their children home by school bus or drive to the school and wait for their children in a very long pickup car line assembling for the 3:25 p.m. dismissal.

Magnolia ISD threatens to arrest parents for walking kids home from school.  It's a bad time to be a kid at Bear Branch Elementary.  The new principal this year, Holly Ray, may look as sweet as sunshine, but parents says she's got some wicked ways!  For one, she won't let parents walk up to the Magnolia elementary school to get their kids after school.  They have to be in a car.  And she's serious!

The Editor asks...
What if you don't own a car, or your car is in the repair shop?

Texas School Bans Parents From Walking Children Onto and From School Property.  One Texas elementary school is coming under fire after the principal banned parents from walking their children to and from school, and who is threatening parents with arrest.  The trouble began in September when the principal at Bear Branch Elementary School in Magnolia, Texas, decided to implement a policy that not just discourages but prohibits parents from walking their children home from school or walking inside the school to retrieve their children after parents had parked their cars, according to KPRC-TV.

Texas Principal Wants to Arrest Parents Who Let Kids Walk to School.  'They have been threatened, if they step one foot on school property, they will be arrested and charged with who knows what.'

Hey kids, how much privilege do you have?  Quiz riles Florida parents.  Kids at Monroe Middle School in Florida got a lesson on privilege the other day — in their Spanish class.  "How much privilege do you have?  That was the name of the survey administered to seventh and eighth grade students.  It wasn't quite as bad as the white-shaming exercises we've seen on university campuses and in the Armed Forces.  But it was certainly inappropriate for a bunch of 12, 13 and 14-year-olds.

Tennessee lawmakers fume over state university's 'Sex Week'.  Youngsters at the Volunteer State's flagship university are about to engage in all sorts of debauchery ranging from lessons on male sexual fluidity to a lecture [...] from an amateur porn star.  Sex Week at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville kicks off April 4 — five days of depravity that makes Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street look like a Sunday school picnic.  The star of the show is Sophia St. James, a self-described "queer diesel femme."

New Mexico college recruiting undocumented students.  Western New Mexico University recently launched a campaign targeting potential students like [Grecia] Rivas using a combination of social media and face-to-face recruiting.  Through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the school works to convince the students they'd find a hospitable environment for immigrants and possible financial aid at the 3,700-student university located in the mining town of Silver City.  Other colleges, like City University of New York and Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, have followed the same trend as schools search for more students amid nationally declining enrollments.

Yet another reason to homeschool:
New York City teacher fined $300 for showing ISIS video.  A New York City teacher was fined — not fired — as punishment for showing a video of an ISIS beheading to a middle school class.  A veteran teacher at the South Bronx Academy for Applied Media says she mistakenly showed a video of an Islamic State beheading to her eighth grade class.  She was fined $300, at the discretion of an arbiter, while the City Department of Education pushed to fire her, according to a report from the New York Post.  "This teacher demonstrated a complete lack of judgment, and this incident betrayed our schools' promise to provide a safe and supportive environment," Department of Education spokeswoman Devora Kaye told the New York Post.

This was originally published in 1998:
To destroy your privacy, to destroy your life.  As always, Clinton and Gore are photographed with children using computers, claiming that they are the real interest.  They promise a computer for every child in government schools, which is just the latest "chicken in every pot" version of the socialist redistribution schemes entrenched since FDR's New (Red) Deal.  It takes a village idiot to believe their fluff.  In reality, the computer-and-kids propaganda is a cover for destroying personal privacy and liberty.  Ari Schwartz is a specialist who works for OMB Watch, a private group that watches the White House Office of Management and Budget.  According to Schwartz, almost half of the 70 federal agencies checked are in the business of collecting personal information from Internet users, including names, addresses and Social Security numbers.  The agencies provide no notices as to how the personal data is or will be used.

Letting undocumented workers teach in NY called 'insane'.  The state Conservative Party chairman on Friday [2/25/2016] ripped the state Education Department for a new policy that will let some undocumented workers apply to be teachers in New York.  The regulation, approved by state Board of Regents this week, is drawing criticism from Republicans and conservatives, but support from Democrats.  The measure would allow people who can't get legal residency because of their parents' immigration status to seek teacher certifications — as well as apply for more than 50 professional licenses managed by the Education Department.  State Conservative Party chairman Mike Long called the policy "bureaucrats gone wild," charging that it's another attempt by governments with liberal policies to thwart immigrant laws.

Cost effectiveness of NC's green schools debated.  A new report for the John Locke Foundation says green schools in North Carolina and nationally fall short of their promised energy savings and can be less energy-efficient than traditional schools.  The report looked at green schools in four North Carolina school districts, including Wake and Durham counties, and found most were less energy-efficient than similar schools in their districts.  The report, which was released this week, says that the failure of those schools to produce energy savings as promised is an "environmental failure."  Proponents of green building say that most schools built according to environmentally sensitive principles do save money and can have other benefits for students.

University rebukes instructor who banned 'mom,' 'dad' and other gendered words from class.  The University of Florida's stellar free-speech rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education may be at risk of slipping.  A lecturer and "dance/movement therapist" is threatening students with lower grades if they use gendered words such as "mom" and "dad" in assignments or if they make classmates feel "unsafe or unwelcome."

The Good News in American Higher Education.  [Scroll down]  The public and even college administrators are increasingly fed-up with extreme, over-the-top campus politics that seem to have reached their own absurd conclusion.  Recent expletive-filled, mob-rule protests, fueled by outrageous demands and coupled with histrionic cowering in so-called "safe spaces" have led many observers to conclude that the inmates are running the asylum and that this nonsense has to stop.  All this for just $65,000 a year?  Does anyone even go to class?

Cop in uniform tossed from college classroom by 'uncomfortable' teacher.  A Georgia police officer taking classes in his spare time got an unwanted lesson from a college instructor last week, but now it is the school that is feeling blue — and apologizing.  The unidentified cop was wearing his uniform and carrying his service gun when the Darton State College instructor reportedly became uncomfortable with his presence, according to WALB-TV.  School officials confirmed the police officer was escorted out of the classroom, but did not elaborate.

University Forces Students To Share Sexual History Before Registering For Classes.  The University of Southern California (USC) is forcing students to complete an online training course and fill out a questionnaire detailing their sexual history before they can register for classes.  USC sent out a campus-wide email explaining that the course was "mandatory, and you must complete it by February 9, 2016.  If you do not complete the training by this date you will receive a registration hold until the training is complete," according to Campus Reform's Anthony Gockowski.

Update:
USC apologizes for questioning students about their sexual history.  The University of Southern California has issued an apology for including questions about students' sexual history in a sexual assault training course required for registration.  In a statement to the Washington Examiner, USC Senior Vice President for Administration Todd Dickey apologized for the questions and said they have been removed from the training.

DOJ grants $63 million for social justice school discipline promoted by Bill Ayers.  According to an October 1st statement from Attorney General Eric Holder, "This funding is being awarded as part of the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative — a large-scale, multi-agency research effort to build practical, and scientifically-sound, knowledge about effective ways to increase school safety nationwide."  However, according to a review of past and current restorative justice initiatives in schools, the funding appears to be just another effort to expand whole-child social justice reforms touted by far-left progressive educators like William Ayers.  Believing that the American education system is inherently racist and oppressive and students of color only act out because they are victims of that system, Ayers began writing about restorative justice alternatives to school discipline many years ago.

The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids.  Step into an American preschool classroom today and you are likely to be bombarded with what we educators call a print-rich environment, every surface festooned with alphabet charts, bar graphs, word walls, instructional posters, classroom rules, calendars, schedules, and motivational platitudes — few of which a 4-year-old can "decode," the contemporary word for what used to be known as reading.  Because so few adults can remember the pertinent details of their own preschool or kindergarten years, it can be hard to appreciate just how much the early-education landscape has been transformed over the past two decades.  The changes are not restricted to the confusing pastiche on classroom walls.  Pedagogy and curricula have changed too, most recently in response to the Common Core State Standards Initiative's kindergarten guidelines.

"Whole word" reading:
Why Kids Can't Read.  [Scroll down]  So if you want to understand why reading is difficult, it's because the commissars who took over the field of education changed the game.  They moved the goalposts, oh, about a mile.  They changed the very nature of the activity from something that is as basic as walking, which everyone can do, to a much more elaborate activity, much like dancing in a Broadway show, which very few can do.  That's a quick and quite accurate description of the biggest education story of the last century.  It is not the complete story.  The other major part of the story is the aiding and abetting that have kept this swindle in play.  Millions of professors, principals, administrators, and teachers have promoted and protected this destructive con.  And still do.  Imagine being an accomplice in something that makes people suffer throughout their lives.

The DOE is now in the High School Girl's Shower.  The Civil Rights Division of the DoE declared a new cultural battleground when it sent a letter to Dr. Daniel Cates, Superintendent of the Township High School District 211, a school district near Palentine, Illinois, accusing the district violating anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl to change and shower with the girls in the girls' locker room without restrictions.  The DoE gave the district 30 days to accommodate the transgender student or lose its Title IX funding.  The problem began when the transgender student's family filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR), because the student was not allowed to shower with the female students.  The student filing the complaint is biologically male, but self-identifies as female.  The school made arrangements to accommodate transgender students by providing separate, private facilities for the student to use to use.  This was not satisfactory for this student.

Principal doesn't want teachers sitting — so she threw out all their desks.  A Bronx principal ordered her teachers to give up their desks last week, and had the furniture dumped at the curb — telling staff she doesn't want them sitting in class.  Donna Connelly, principal of PS 24, the Spuyten Duyvil School in Riverdale, also told teachers to empty their filing cabinets, which she then discarded.  With class in session, teachers were told to push their desks and cabinets into the hallway.  Custodians then hauled them outside and piled them like trash on the blacktop of a school across the street.  "It's the 21st century — you don't need desks," Connelly said, sources told The [New York] Post.

The Editor says...
Yes, it's the 21st century.  If schools don't need desks, why do they need principals?  Why do they stop teaching during the summer?  Why do schools encourage activities (cheerleading and football) that injure and sometimes kill their students?

Famed teacher files $1B class-action suit against L.A. schools.  The nation's second largest school district has been hit with a $1 billion class-action lawsuit alleging it conducts "witch hunts" against older teachers in a "shrewd" effort to save money on retirement benefits.  The suit was filed Thursday [10/15/2015] on behalf of about 2,000 teachers by Rafe Esquith, 61, one of the Los Angeles Unified School District's best-known and most popular teachers.

What the Heck Are 'Word Attack Skills'?  According to our literacy experts, if children are to become expert readers, they have to learn "word attack skills."  Okay, that's jargon we don't really need.  But let's go with it.  What are these word attack skills that the experts are talking about?  At this point, we are entering an alternative universe.  Your common sense will be offended, and your credulity will be stretched.  For, as we'll see, our Education Establishment has been searching for literacy in all the wrong places.

Florida school board reaches $600G settlement over principal who hypnotized students.  The families of three high school students who died after being hypnotized by a former principal will receive $200,000 each from a Florida school district under a settlement agreement approved Tuesday [10/6/2015].

State Gives 10-Yr-Olds Free Birth Control Implants.  Children as young as 10 years old are receiving taxpayer-funded birth control in Washington State, according to public records obtained by Judicial Watch from the agency that provides medical coverage for the poor.  JW filed a public records request with the Washington Health Care Authority after reading a disturbing article in a pro-life news site over the summer about a Seattle high school that offers different forms of birth control without parental knowledge or consent.  This includes implanting an intrauterine device (IUD) in a girl's uterus free of cost.  It's part of an initiative offered by Medicaid, the joint federal and state insurance program for the poor.  The article points out the irony that a teen in Seattle can't get a sugary soft drink in high school but can have a device implanted into her uterus.

Elementary School Teaching Children to Throw Books at Classroom Gunmen.  A father is outraged after learning that an "active shooter protocol" at his children's school, Stevenson Elementary in Heath, Ohio, includes encouraging his eight-year-old son to throw books at the gunman.  According to Fox 28, Dean Spencer says his nine-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son "were told by school teachers to throw books at anyone with a gun should they ever make their way into their library or classroom."

Michelle Obama's school lunch group: Americans 'clearly support' new rules.  How deluded is Michelle Obama's school lunch organization "Let's Move"?  A press release issued in advance of the new school year claims that kids love the new standards, and Americans "clearly support" what they're trying to do. [...] Only someone educated in public schools would be unable to see through this push poll.  The facts are a little different.  [#1] More than a million kids have dropped out of the school lunch program.  [#2] Food waste — that is, the weight of food thrown out by kids who refuse to eat the unappetizing fare — is up 56%.  [#3] Eighty percent of school districts report having financial problems because fewer kids are in the program.

The Data Destroyers.  A few weeks ago, the California education department did a peculiar thing: It scrubbed historical data about standardized-test scores from its public DataQuest website.  This being a government agency, it immediately began to lie to the public about why it had done this.  California law forbids using comparisons between different tests to set policy or evaluate programs.  This makes sense:  If last year 40 percent of students received 85th-percentile ratings on a standardized test and then this year 70 percent of students received 85th-percentile ratings on a different standardized test, it is likely that the radical difference is in the test, not in students' performance.  The law, however, says not one word about making historical test-score data available to the public or suppressing that data.

Hiring of accused pedophile rocks Albuquerque school system.  He was slated to be second-in-command at Albuquerque Public Schools, but Timothy Martinez has instead started the year as a fugitive on the run from police in two states before being captured Wednesday [8/26/2015] after he was revealed to be facing multiple outstanding child sex abuse charges in Colorado.

Why We Have More Than 40 Million Functional Illiterates.  [Scroll down]  Sight-word readers report the most amazing cognitive problems.  Words slide around on the page.  Words reverse themselves.  This doesn't seem to make sense until you consider that the eyes are jumping around on the page in random jerks, thus inducing complementary side-effects.  For many children, the next step is to be told they have dyslexia, which simply means they don't read well.  They are told they have ADHD.  They need an appointment with a shrink.  They need to take Ritalin.  Pretty soon these children are a mess inside and out, all because their school gave them an impossible task.  Even if you do memorize the 220 sight-words perfectly, you have been set up for a lifetime of cognitive schizophrenia.  You will read some words phonetically and some as designs, back and forth in no predictable order.

Are iris scanners on school buses necessary?  Cheryl Chumley, author of "Police State USA: How Orwell's Nightmare is Becoming Our Reality," appeared on CSPAN's Book TV After Words program to address the idea.  She discussed with Theresa Payton, former White House chief information officer, the roles of data and technology as applied to the American consumer and, more importantly, the American family.  That "any school would think iris scanners on buses were necessary" shocked Chumley.  She was also disturbed by the erosion of parental authority over the deployment of security technology.  Even when consent is sought, she said, "You can always use a worst case argument to justify any action by the government."

Obama's "Community Schools" Aim to Replace the Family.  Lawmakers and the Obama administration are plotting to unconstitutionally commandeer local schools and turn them into "full-service community schools" — government centers that will usurp vast new responsibilities over children that have traditionally been handled by parents and families.  Under the plan, adopted in the Senate last month as part of a massive "education bill" solidifying federal control over children and schools, federally funded so-called community schools will "target" families and children for "services" covering their "academic, physical, social, emotional, health, mental health, and other needs."  If Congress and the Obama administration get their way, these full-service parent-replacement centers will soon be coming to a community near you, along with the swarms of government workers in charge of "home visitation" and "parenting education" under the program.  In fact, even without legislation to authorize it, Obama's education bureaucracy has already started using tax funds to create the "community schools" nationwide.

University Language Guide Says Not to Use the Word 'American'.  I had a revelatory moment when reading this story.  Someone was actually paid to write this "language guide" that recommends not using certain words because they aren't "inclusive" enough, or don't reflect "diversity."  Someone sat around dreaming up reasons why some words that were historically innocuous, or even generated pride, had suddenly become objectionable.  What kind of loon would apply for a job like that?  No matter.  The University of New Hampshire's "Bias Free Language Guide" reinforces the notion that the elites at our universities have gone stark, raving mad, with the promise that their insanity will only get worse.

Kindergarten Application Asks If Child Had 'Vaginal' Birth.  Among the questions the admission form at a public elementary school in Connecticut asks parents is whether the child was delivered into the world via "vaginal" or "Caesarean" birth.  The taxpayer-funded school is Aiken Elementary in the serene, perfectly suburban town of West Hartford (pop. 63,268), reports local CBS affiliate WFSB.

Connecticut mom balks when son's kindergarten application gets personal.  A Connecticut mom wanted to snap her No. 2 pencil in half when she sat down to fill out her son's kindergarten application and came across personal questions about his birth that left her demanding answers instead of filling them out.  The application, which West Hartford School District officials say have been standard for decades, sought information such as whether Cara Paiuk's delivery was by C-section or not, whether there were other complications and even if her newborn son had gone home with his parents without delay.  Paiuk said she talked to other Aiken Elementary moms, and they also were taken aback by the intrusive questioning.

The Editor says...
School administrators and other public officials sometimes try out bad ideas on us to see how much we will tolerate without backlash, or at least without getting the press involved.

White House Poet Taught Kids to Sit in Circles and Watch Porn for College Class.  A University of Pennsylvania English course taught by a poet who performed for President Obama at the White House ended up exactly as the professor envisioned it:  college kids watching porn.  "Wasting Time on the Internet," a once-a-week creative writing course taught by Kenneth Goldsmith that required students to stare at a computer screen for three hours completed its first class this spring.  Goldsmith wrote last fall that students could use the three hours to watch porn, and then "use it as the basis for compelling erotica."

Stuff like this can happen here, too.
Italian Families Protest Forced Cross-Dressing of Schoolchildren.  In the northern Italian city of Trieste, parents are in uproar over a taxpayer-funded elementary school program that includes dressing little boys as girls and girls as boys to overcome so-called "gender stereotypes."  Schools are calling the exercise "the game of respect," which purportedly adopts many guidelines from the European standards on sex education, attributed to the World Health Organization.

Wake up and smell the chaos.  If you wondered how things could have gotten this bad, how Americans could be so apathetic to pure evil, look no further than an educational system that was intentionally severed from culture and values by John Dewey and his pedagogical descendants.  When knowledge is valued for its own sake, without any nod to right and wrong, we as a society are essentially giving a loaded gun to a baby.  A case in point surfaced early last week at Encinal High School in Alameda, Calif., where sophomore students were assigned by their teacher to pry into their parents' private possessions to look for condoms or sex toys, then take a "selfie" exhibiting their haul of sexual hardware.  The ulterior motive of turning children against their parents, which communist educator Bill Ayers promoted as long ago as the 1960s, could not be any more transparent.

Texas parents outraged after teacher allegedly orders other students to slap son in class.  Parents of a child at Houston, Texas' Frank Black Middle School are outraged after they say their son was slapped by several students and that their son's teacher gave the order.  Skyler Norman said she was beside herself after her son, 14-year-old Gavin Norman, told her that he was assaulted at school.

Students sue college over forced vaginal exams.  Two college students say they were forced to submit to transvaginal probes as part of their classroom training to learn how to perform the medical procedure.  The details are outlined in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday [5/14/2015] in Orlando against Valencia College and three instructors.  It alleges that medical diagnostic students at Valencia College were forced to submit to the examination of their sexual organs under threat of having their grades reduced or of being blacklisted by future employers.

School freaks out over boys baseball storage shed.  One of the parents knew the owner of a company that made precast one-story buildings.  The company offered to donate the manpower and materials to build the boys a shed. [...] "It cost the booster club zero," Carl told me.  And that was that — until a few months ago.  That's when officials with the Clark County School District showed up at the school and demanded that the storage shed be torn down.  They said it violated Title IX. [...]In other words, for every boy sport there must be a girls alternative.  And in the case of Arbor View High School — if the boys have a storage shed — the girls must have a storage shed.

Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.  [#5] Democracy and Education (1916): John Dewey, who lived from 1859 until 1952, was a "progressive" philosopher and leading advocate for secular humanism in American life, who taught at the University of Chicago and at Columbia.  He signed the Humanist Manifesto and rejected traditional religion and moral absolutes.  In Democracy and Education, in pompous and opaque prose, he disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking "skills" instead.  His views had great influence on the direction of American education — particularly in public schools — and helped nurture the Clinton generation.

Safety first.  Academia has given us so much for which not to be grateful — identity politics, race/gender studies and sundry unpleasantries. But it has topped itself now with one even better — the right to be treated as something quite fragile, always endangered and almost too precious to live.  Last December, the Boston Globe informed us that "students at Harvard Law School, joining their counterparts at a pair of other leading universities, have asked that final exams be postponed for students who have been 'traumatized' by recent grand jury decisions" in New York and Missouri, explaining "we cannot walk away from our pain."  In England, some female students suggested we move from clapping to hand waving to signal approval, as the sound of applause could be threatening.

Parents protest after learning school hired sleazy teacher.  Enraged parents protested outside PS 186 Castlewood in Bellerose, Queens on Friday [3/20/2015] after learning a teacher found guilty of inappropriate behavior with a student was working as a substitute at the school.  The [New York] Post revealed last July that James Rampulla Jr., 45, then a teacher at nearby Irwin Altman MS 172, gave a 14-year-old male student lavish gifts, sent him 513 text messages — including one saying he loved him — and let the boy drive his car.  "The fact that the DOE brought in a guy with this kind of history to potentially come near kids is infuriating," said Craig Ahlemann, a father of two PS 186 students, age four and six.

Illinois high school principal defends 'black students only' event.  A black high school principal in Oak Park, Illinois, is defending his decision to hold an event for "black students only," so that they could safely discuss race issues without the presence of white people.  Oak Park and River Forest High School Principal Nathaniel Rouse hosted a "Black Lives Matter" event exclusively for black students at the school on Feb. 27, The Chicago Tribune reported.  School officials sent out a news release following the event, after many white students were literally turned away at the door.

Education: Playing Games with Recess.  Education in America will make you crazy.  There is hardly a part of it that is not corrupted by ideology and contaminated by sophistical thinking.  What could be simpler to understand than recess?  When you're talking about little children, you're talking about puppies.  They need to run around until they fall down laughing on the grass.  Exertion to the point of exhaustion — that may be the most important thing they do each day.  Well, if you know anything about our Education Establishment, you know they schemed to get rid of recess.

Monessen Middle School Students Given 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' Puzzles.  The "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie doesn't hit theaters until Friday [2/13/2015], but it's already making waves in an unlikely place, Monessen Middle School in Westmoreland County.  Several students reportedly were given or somehow got their hands on a word search puzzle with words like "bondage," "sensuality," and "submissive," all words relating to the steamy book turned movie.

Never bring  a knife  canned food to a gunfight.
Principal: Let students hurl canned food at intruders.  An Alabama middle school principal wants to stockpile cans of corn and peas in classrooms for students to hurl at possible intruders as a last resort defense.

The Editor says...
Every classroom has a stash of canned food, of course.

Schools Ask Students to be Armed with Canned Food in Case of School Shooting.  An Alabama middle school has devised a new way to protect their students from a potential intruder.  They requested that students bring canned food to school and use it as a weapon if a dangerous intruder confronts them.  W.F. Burns middle school's principal and assistant principal sent a letter home to students asking them to bring an eight ounce can of "corn, beans, peas, etc." they may use "in case an intruder enters their classroom."  The school administration did seem to grasp the bizarre nature of the request, but assured parents that the plan has the ability to work[.]

High School Flier Promotes "Punch a Cop Without Going to Jail" Program.  A flier promoting an after-school youth boxing program was removed by a Northern California high school after residents complained that the "Punch a Cop" theme was inflammatory. [...] Daniel Thigpen, a representative of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, astonishingly told The Los Angeles Times the fliers were "intended to use humor to continue attracting students to the boxing and fitness program."  The joke fell flat for a number of Folsom residents.

Proposed Minnesota Policy Would Allow Student Athletes to Choose Teams Based on 'Gender Identity'.  Minnesota high schools may soon be affected by a proposed policy that would allow students to participate in sports based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex.  On Dec. 4, the board of directors of the Minnesota State High School League will vote on the policy.

America's Worst University Now Demands To Know Students' Sex Habits Or They Can't Enroll.  Florida Atlantic University has found yet another new and exciting way to demonstrate that it is the worst place in America to attend college. [...] Students have reportedly been blocked from registering for courses unless they answered the invasive questions posed by the public school officials.

Minneapolis Schools Now Racially Segregate Discipline.  In a prima facie violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Minneapolis School Board has decided to begin segregating their students into two different categories — white, and everyone else.  If teachers and administrators want to suspend a white student, there will be no questions asked.  But if they dare attempt to suspend a "student of color," the act will be reviewed by the school district superintendent and "her leadership team."

Schools propose: Let boys into girls locker rooms.  If you live in Minnesota, your high-school daughter might soon be showering next to a male after athletic practice if a "transgender" policy being considered by the Minnesota State High School League is approved next month.  And beyond Minnesota? Such a policy could be coming to other states, too, if there is not already one in place.

Victory! Boys born as boys can shower with girls in Kentucky school.  I probably would have missed this story were it not for Maggie Gallagher at The Corner.  It seems that the good people on the appeal board considering a case at Atherton High School (part of the Jefferson County public school system) have determined that you can use the girls' bathrooms, locker room and showers if you say you're a girl.  No physical required.

Fifth-grader is banned from using ChapStick at school because it's considered an 'over-the-counter drug'.  An 11-year-old girl whose lips became so chapped they bled at school is now petitioning the district to let her use lip balm.  Grace Karaffa, a fifth-grader at Stuarts Draft Elementary School in Virginia, has suffered from dry lips for years and and repeatedly her requests for ChapStick have been turned down because the district considers the ointment an 'over-the-counter drug' that require's a doctor's note and must be held by the school nurse.

Army officer denied entry into daughter's school because uniform might 'offend' students.  Rochester, Michigan, was denied entry into his daughter's high school by four members of its security staff, told that his uniform might "offend" some students.  "Before he was allowed in, the security guard stopped him and said sorry you're not allowed in the school.  Security told him men and women in uniform weren't allowed because it may offend another student," Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker's wife, Rachel, told a local Fox affiliate.

Army officer told he cannot enter his daughter's school while wearing a uniform.  Lieutenant Colonel Sherwood Baker says he is just a father who was trying to help his daughter find her way at her new high school.  Lt. Baker has served in the Army for 24 years.  This past week he was told by Rochester Adams high school security that if he wanted to get into the high school with his daughter he was going to have to go home and change his clothes.  Baker's wife, Rachel Ferhadson says, "Before he was allowed in, the security guard stopped him and said sorry your not allowed in the school.  Security told him men and women in uniform weren't allowed because it may offend another student."

And now, final exams for kindergartners. Really.  John Gemmill of Dodge City, Kansas, told me in an e-mail that he spent at least half of the 186 days he teaches a year giving some sort of mandated standardized assessment — with strict rubrics to follow — to kindergartners in his classes last year.  One veteran educator described his granddaughter's Houston kindergarten class as a "sweat shop."  This past spring the interim principal and four teachers at an elementary school in Elwood, N.Y., sent a letter to parents saying the annual year-end kindergarten play was being cancelled so kids could keep working hard to be "college and career ready."  (This really happened.)

Teacher suspended after Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin lesson.  An Alabama teacher was suspended without pay after being accused of having sixth-grade students re-enact the deadly police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida.

Texas principal fired for telling students to speak English.  The Texas principal who was placed on administrative leave and then fired for telling Hispanic students at her middle school that they should speak English in the classroom can now speak freely — the gag order has expired — and says that her request only mirrored what's written in state law.  Amy Lacey was placed on administrative leave in 2013 after she asked via an intercom announcement that Hempstead Middle School students should speak English in the classroom.  She shortly after learned that the school board declined to renew her contract and would be firing her.

Are Public Schools Collecting Too Much Data on Your Kids?  Parents are increasingly voicing concern that public schools are collecting massive amounts of personal data on students, storing it and distributing it to third parties without their consent.  Dawn Sweeney, a Pennsylvania mother, has two children in public schools and home-schools her younger three.  She had planned to enroll them in public schools when they reached seventh grade, as she did with her two oldest.  But because of the data collection, she's now reconsidering.

Isn't this what the PTA is for?
Konocti Unified School District launches new mobile app.  Konocti Unified School District announced that its new mobile app is available for use at the county's largest school district.  Parents will have instant access to their child's academic information from the palm of their hand.  Any time, anywhere, KUSD parents can stay updated on their students' progress.  Community members can download the app to stay informed of school district events and activities.

Thugs Run L.A. Classrooms, Thanks To Obama Suspension Ban.  As we predicted, the Obama regime's anti-suspension policy is backfiring.  Los Angeles teachers complain unsuspended violent kids are intimidating them and effectively ruling their classrooms.

Reading: The Con Continues.  Not much is certain in life, but here are two things you can take to the bank.  If you want a child to learn to read, phonics is the way that works.  Second, you can be sure that our Education Establishment will try to keep phonics at a minimum and force children to memorize the English language one sight-word at a time.  Where reading is concerned, the nonsense never stops.

The Case For Banning Laptops In The Classroom.  I banned laptops in the classroom after it became common practice to carry them to school.  When I created my "electronic etiquette policy" (as I call it in my syllabus), I was acting on a gut feeling based on personal experience.  I'd always figured that, for the kinds of computer-science and math classes that I generally teach, which can have a significant theoretical component, any advantage that might be gained by having a machine at the ready, or available for the primary goal of taking notes, was negligible at best.  We still haven't made it easy to type notation-laden sentences, so the potential benefits were low.  Meanwhile, the temptation for distraction was high.  I know that I have a hard time staying on task when the option to check out at any momentary lull is available; I assumed that this must be true for my students, as well.

Race Matters.  Whether or not you agree with the program, No Child Left Behind was crafted under the apparent assumption that different groups in the U.S. do not have different traits which impact on learning, and all students can and should be able to achieve at the same rate if only the school will do its job. [...] Is the NCLB standard wrong?  Should we no longer try to improve the education of the lowest-performing students?  Are the schools being given an impossible task?  Did the program place too great a burden on schools and not enough on the pupils' families and community?  Should we just hand out high school diplomas based on substantially disparate achievement?

The First Lady's food-fight debacle.  Progressives blame kid-hating Republicans and greedy businesses for the revolt against Mrs. Obama's failed policies.  But the truth is right around the corner in your students' cafeterias.  Districts are losing money.  Discarded food is piling high.  Kids are going off-campus to fill their tummies or just going hungry.  According to the School Nutrition Association, almost half of school-meal programs reported declines in revenue in the 2012-13 school year, and 90 percent said food costs were up.

North Dakota U. Bans Something Truly Ridiculous from Campus.  Fencing is not only an Olympic sport; it is sponsored by more than 30 NCAA colleges and universities.  However, that didn't stop a North Dakota university from banning its fencing club from practicing on campus.  The reason?  Fencing violates the school's "weapons policy."

Kangaroo Courts on Campus?  There seem to be a dangerously large number of people who think that the law exists to give them whatever they want — even when that means denying other people the same rights that they claim for themselves.  Nowhere is this self-centered attitude more common than on college campuses.  And nowhere are such attitudes more encouraged than by the Obama administration's Justice Department, which is threatening colleges that don't handle rape issues the politically correct way — that is, by presuming the accused to be guilty and not letting Constitutional safeguards get in the way.

Overreaching on Campus Rape.  Jezebel seems to think that the Department of Education (DOE) investigations are evidence of a sexual-assault epidemic and insidious "rape culture" plaguing our college campuses.  Actually, the investigations show no such thing.  The DOE has made it clear that a college's investigation "in no way indicates at this stage that the college or university is violating or has violated the law."  What the investigations actually reveal is just the beginning of the messy results of three years of federal overreach into campus rape policies.  Through a series of heavy-handed executive actions, the Obama administration has effectively required universities to serve as investigators and jurors for felony offenses.  By doing so, they have placed universities in an impossible position, created costly bureaucracy, trampled students' due-process rights, and empowered a cadre of hypersensitive, trigger-happy gender warriors on campuses.

Internet in schools means pornography in schools.  I've taken some criticism for saying over and over again in this space, that kids don't belong on the Internet (unsupervised and uncontrolled really), and that classrooms should not have Internet access introduced.  The basic problem is that unfettered Internet access brings bullies and predators to kids.  It also means pornography will just keep popping up, and there's no way to fix that with these uncontrolled environments.  It's just not worth the risks.

Kindergarten show canceled so kids can keep studying to become 'college and career ready.' Really..  This didn't come out of the blue.  Kindergarten (and even preschool) has increasingly become academic — at the expense of things such as recess and the arts — in this era of standardized test-based school reform.  In most states, educators are evaluated in large part on test scores of students (sometimes students they don't have) and on showing that their students are "college and career ready," the mantra of the Obama administration's education initiatives.

Product placement: Brands including Nike, iPods and Barbies appear in exam papers.  The use of well-known brand names in school tests has led to accusations that education boards are making product placement deals.  Nike, Barbie and iPod were among the more famous brands to have appeared in a recent New York Common Core standardized English test taken by more than a million students in grades three to eight.  Other brands included Life Savers and Mug Root Beer.  Outraged parents have demanded an explanation for why specific brand names were used in the tests — with some suggesting they've become little more than just another way of advertising to young children.

The Editor says...
Later in the day, some of the same schools preach against "consumerism," which is what they call capitalism, meaning the dreadful presence of commercial advertising anywhere and everywhere.

El Paso parents say YISD fourth-graders receive inappropriate reading...  Questions about affairs, death and murder were all part of a fourth-grade reading assignment at Pasodale Elementary in the Lower Valley.  One woman who did not want to show her face on camera told KFOX14 her son brought the assignment home because he was attending another tutoring session when his teacher passed it out.  She is concerned other students completed the questions in class, so other parents could not stop them from reading it.

4th Graders Assigned "Inappropriate" Homework on Infidelity and Death.  Parents in El Paso, Texas were outraged over an "inappropriate" homework assignment given to fourth graders at Pasodale Elementary School.  Students were asked to read passages about a wife discovering her husband cheated and a mother finding out her military son was killed.  They then had to answer questions about the adult-themed topics.

Undocumented immigrants as teachers?  Long before Alejandro Fuentes Mena became a fifth grade teacher, he was an undocumented immigrant from Chile.  "I came to the United States when I was four years old," Fuentes Mena said.  In August, he started at the Denver Center for International Studies at Ford Elementary School as part of effort by Denver Public Schools administrators to be the first school district in the nation to actively seek out teachers people who were initially brought to the United States illegally.

Despite Hype, Few Complete Free Online Classes.  Amid breathless media reports that free online university classes will dramatically change education, a new study finds few who enroll complete or even attend the classes.  Of approximately a million people who enrolled in one or several of sixteen Coursera "massive open online courses," or MOOCs, on average only 4 percent completed a course.  Only half viewed at least one lecture video from their course.

Principal fired for Spanish language ban, Hispanic activists seek FBI Investigation.  A principal at a Texas middle school where about half the students are Hispanic in ethnic origin has been fired for reportedly getting on the school intercom and announcing a ban on the use of Spanish in all classrooms.  The incident occurred on Nov. 12 at Hempstead Middle School in Hempstead, a tiny town about 50 miles northwest of Houston.  The principal, Amy Lacey, had been on paid administrative leave since the incident.  School district officials announced at a school board meeting on Monday [3/17/2014] that her contract will not be renewed, reports the Houston Chronicle.

Middle school principal in mucho trouble for Spanish language ban.  Students at a Texas middle school say their principal got on the intercom last month and announced a ban on the use of Spanish in all classrooms.  The incident occurred on Nov. 12 at Hempstead Middle School in Hempstead, a tiny town about 50 miles mostly west of downtown Houston.  The principal who allegedly banned Spanish, Amy Lacey, has since been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation by the school district, reports local CBS affiliate KHOU.

Principal who told kids not to speak Spanish will lose job.  The Hempstead school board won't renew the contract of a principal who instructed her students not to speak Spanish, in a rapidly-evolving district where more than half of the students, like many Texas schools, are now Hispanic.  Hempstead Middle School Principal Amy Lacey was placed on paid administrative leave in December after reportedly announcing, via intercom, that students were not to speak Spanish on the school's campus.

Revolt Against the Testing Tyrants.  To be clear:  I'm not against all standardized academic tests.  My kids excel on tests.  The problem is that there are too [...] many of these top-down assessments, measuring who knows what, using our children as guinea pigs and cash cows.  College-bound students in Orange County, Fla., for example, now take a total of 234 standardized diagnostic, benchmark and achievement tests from kindergarten through 12th grade.

How Every Part of American Life Became a Police Matter.  Though it's a national phenomenon, Mississippi currently leads the way in turning school behavior into a police issue.  The Hospitality State has imposed felony charges on schoolchildren for "crimes" like throwing peanuts on a bus.  Wearing the wrong color belt to school got one child handcuffed to a railing for several hours.  All of this goes under the rubric of "zero-tolerance" discipline, which turns out to be just another form of violence legally imported into schools.  Despite a long-term drop in youth crime, the carceral style of education remains in style.  Metal detectors — a horrible way for any child to start the day — are installed in ever more schools, even those with sterling disciplinary records, despite the demonstrable fact that such scanners provide no guarantee against shootings and stabbings.

Changing the SAT for 'Social Justice'.  Question:  What test was created to eliminate the advantages that wealthy families used to influence and advance their children's educational cause?  Answer:  The Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT):  a test created to end the discrimination and aristocracy in college admissions.  It leveled the playing field by relying on an empirical test score that was valid, aligned with college success, and incapable of determining color, race, or socio-economic condition.  Problem:  According to Zachary Goldfarb in the Washington Post, the College Board is overhauling the SAT to "level the playing field" for high school students from a wider range of families.

School forces half-naked, sopping wet student to stand outside, frostbite results.  A Minnesota public high school was so committed to obeying its fire drill policy to the exact letter of the law that it forced a female student — dressed only in a swimsuit, and sopping wet — to stand outside in the freezing cold for ten minutes.  As a result, she suffered frostbite.  Administrators wouldn't let the student retrieve her clothes, sit in a car or wait inside another building, according to WCCO.  The trouble began when a small science experiment triggered the fire alarm at Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Fourteen-year-old Kayona Hagen-Tietz was swimming in the school pool for health class at the time.  Her clothes were in her locker, and a teacher told her that there was no time for her to change.  Hagen-Tietz was rushed outside — still wet and dressed in only [a] swimsuit.  It was 5 degrees below zero in St. Paul that day.  With the windchill, it was 25 degrees below zero.

The Editor says...
Yes, I can hear you saying, "That's just an isolated incident."  Sure it is — just as all the ridiculous zero tolerance cases are isolated and unrelated — only they're not.  In every public school I've ever seen, the rules are the rules and the "teachers" and administration never depart from the rules, for two reasons:  (1)  they can never be perceived as showing favoritism, because of the civil rights activists, and (2)  every departure from the rules opens up the threat of civil litigation.  The schools are in the condition they're in because of left-wing liberalism.

Betsy Ross, Meet Cinco de Mayo.  Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., set out to celebrate Cinco de Mayo in 2010 in a "spirit of cultural appreciation."  It didn't work out that way.  Some students decided they wanted to celebrate by wearing shirts with the American flag.  Other students objected.  A student warned an administrator she thought there would be problems.  Fearing for the safety of students wearing red, white and blue, administrators asked those teens to turn their shirts inside out or go home under an excused leave.  Three students — minors known as M.D., D.M. and D.G. — have sued the district for violating their rights to free speech and equal protection.

'Scream rooms' in schools are psychological sadism.  In many states throughout the U.S., teachers and school administers will lock students in small spaces called "scream rooms" to discipline them for misbehaving during the school day.  The infractions can be relatively minor — such as swearing too many times or shooting spitballs.  And students are sometimes kept in seclusion this way for hours.  In one reported case, a student was not allowed out even to go to the bathroom and subsequently urinated on the floor.  Scream rooms aren't just for high school bullies or tough athletes with attitudes either.  First graders can be confined in them, as well as kindergarteners.  Children sometimes weep and struggle to get away before being locked up.

Obama Administration Takes Groupthink To Absurd Lengths: School Discipline Rates Must Be "Proportionate".  [I]n January, [the Obama] administration — specifically the Departments of Justice and Education — [sent out] a "guidance" letter that demands a group equality approach to student discipline in America's public schools.  If federal bureaucrats suspect that there's any racial disproportionality in the punishments meted out for misbehavior in school, they will descend on the school's administrators.  Unless those officials can then prove to the government's satisfaction (good luck!) that any differential in rates of punishment by race or ethnic group is "necessary," the school will face the loss of federal funds and costly mandates for diversity training.  Most school officials would just as soon have a root canal as face a plague of lawyers from the Justice and Education Departments.  To avoid that possibility, they will probably take the safe route and adopt a de facto racial quota system for student discipline.

Parent of dying boy has to prove her son can't take standardized test.  Andrea Rediske's 11-year-old son Ethan, is dying.  Last year, Ethan, who was born with brain damage, has cerebral palsy and is blind, was forced to take a version of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test over the space of two weeks last year because the state of Florida required that every student take one.  His mom has to prove that Ethan, now in a morphine coma, is in no condition to take another test this year.

The Ritzy Student Bash At The School With No Books.  Their school provides them no textbooks, no supplies or art classes.  But here are the underprivileged pupils of Far Rockaway's PS 106 — dressed to the nines in tuxes and gowns for an elaborate, wedding-themed bash they must pay to attend at the insistence of their do-nothing principal.

All wrong — in California, girls can use urinals in the boys' restroom.  As of January 1, students in California public schools have been able to choose whether to use the boys' rest room or girls' rest room, as well as the girls' locker room or boys' locker room, based on whether they feel female or male, not whether they are anatomically female or male.  That's right:  Governor Jerry Brown, of California, signed a bill that took effect January 1 that tells kids from kindergarten on that they should decide whether they believe their gender identity is and act, accordingly.

Leftists Committed To Getting Their Grubby Paws On Your Kids Early.  Progressives will trot out study after study to prove to you that your child will never learn to write his name without sticking the pen in his eye if you don't get him to a preschool STAT.  (One wonders how all of the scientists who got us to the moon were able to do so without the benefit of having gone to preschool.)  It's all garbage, of course, but it's purposeful garbage.  The sooner they can get your kids out of your hands and into those of a government employee who will say anything for a pension, the better.

Higher education itself might not be such a good idea.
The Outlaw Campus.  Colleges have gone rogue and become virtual outlaw institutions.  Graduates owe an aggregate of $1 trillion in student debt, borrowed at interest rates far above home-mortgage rates — all on the principle that universities could charge as much as they liked, given that students could borrow as much as they needed in federally guaranteed loans.  Few graduates have the ability to pay back the principal; they are simply paying the compounded interest.

Oppression in Higher Education: Hilarious and sad.  There is so much entertaining, self-destructive, and pathetic overthinking going on here that one barely knows where to begin.

Our Kids: Victims of the Rough Grasp of the State.  Wake up, Mom and Dad:  your government has its paws all over your children during school hours — always figuratively, and too often literally.  If parents are taken out of the education equation completely, something will fill the vacuum.  And that something is bound to be the police state.

Hernando teacher suspended after requiring fourth-grader to participate in Pledge of Allegiance.  The issue is one that has cropped up in school districts across the country for decades:  Do students have a right to opt out of the Pledge of Allegiance?  In the Hernando County School District, the answer is clear:  Yes.

ENDA Would Grant Transgender Rights to Elementary School Teachers.  It's hard to imagine that in the year 2013 that any business in the country could fire someone simply because he is gay without facing a major backlash and boycotts.  So does the country now need a new federal law prohibiting such discrimination by private businesses?

Kid Cages at School Bus Stops Spark Outrage.  Environmentalists have galvanized behind a movement to resurrect wolf populations in rural America. [...] In Catron County, New Mexico, aggressive Mexican gray wolves are terrorizing residents.  Here wolves are killing pets in front yards in broad daylight, and forcing parents to stand guard when children play outside.  The threat has become so ominous the local school district has decided to place wolf shelters (kid cages) at school bus stops to protect school children from wolves while they wait for the bus or parents.  These wolf proof cages, constructed from plywood and wire, are designed to prevent wolves from taking a child.  The absurdity of this scenario is mind-numbing.  What kind of society accepts the idea of children in cages while wolves are free to roam where they choose?

Teachers' unions fight bill that would bar sex offenders from schools.  A bipartisan bill that would stop convicted sex offenders from working in schools has been passed by the House but is running into a foe as it heads to the Senate:  major teachers' unions like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.  Kyle Olson, with the Education Action Group Foundation told Megyn Kelly Wednesday night [10/23/2013] on "The Kelly File" that the unions' objection to the bill proves "unions are out to protect the adults... they are not out for the interests of the children."  "We should have zero tolerance for issues like this," Olson said.

Schools Shutting Out Some Top Students from AP Courses.  The Los Angeles Times reported last week that some high schools have made advanced placement (AP) courses open to all students regardless of ability.  If an AP class is oversubscribed, the schools use a random lottery to determine who gets in, meaning some of the best students can be shut out.  This is a really bad idea. [...] These classes should be reserved for students who have demonstrated their potential to do high-level work.  And if there is a limit on how large the classes can be, priority should be given to the students who are most likely to benefit.

Faculty: Sexual Harassment Policy Approved by Feds 'Orwellian'.  Of special concern is a requirement that those professors who fail to complete training are being reported to the federal government.  Faculty members questioned exactly what information the university felt obliged to report to the DOJ and asked how the agency plans to use the information in a letter to University of Montana President Royce Engstrom, the Missoulian reported last week.

The Bizarre, Misguided Campaign to Get Rid of Single-Sex Classrooms.  Wealthy families have always had the option of sending their children to all-male or all-female schools, but parents of modest means have rarely had that choice.  That changed in 2001, when four female senators sponsored legislation that sanctioned single-sex classes and academies in public schools.  Today, there are more than 500 public schools that offer single-sex classes and 116 public all-girl or all-boy academies.  Many are in struggling urban neighborhoods and many have proven to be hugely successful.

Arizona police officer asked not to wear uniform at daughter's school.  A police officer who dropped off his daughter at her Phoenix elementary school was asked by the school's principal not to wear his uniform to the school because other parents were concerned that he was carrying a gun, MyFoxPhoenix.com reported.  Scott Urkov is a police officer for the Coolidge Police Department.  The department told him not to comment to media inquiries, but immediately after he received the no-uniform request, he posted on Facebook.

Anti-bullying laws: A mom dares to critique the social trend.  Anti-bullying laws have proliferated in the past decade:  But some people are troubled at what lawmakers and advocates almost always portray as a positive movement against bullying that may or may not have the desired effect.

Bully for You; Bully for Me.  Has bullying become more pervasive and aggressive in recent years?  Or is it just reported more often than it used to be?  Is something serious going on, or is it a manufactured crisis?

Obama rewrote federal education law as Congress napped.  President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind education law was the largest expansion of federal involvement in elementary education since President Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.  And the Bush measure was unpopular from day one. [...] NCLB required all public schools to establish Adequate Yearly Progress standards and administer statewide standardized tests to make sure those standards were being met.

Who pays if L.A. Unified students lose or breaks Ipad?  Another issue in the Los Angeles Unified School District's $1-billion effort to equip every student with an iPad surfaced Wednesday:  Are parents liable if their child breaks or loses the tablet?  The question emerged after revelations that 300 or so students at Roosevelt High School skirted security measures on the device and visited unauthorized websites.  In response, the district suspended all home use of the Apple tablets, which have gone out to about two dozen schools so far.

The Editor says...
There is a big difference between bypassing a filter and breaking the computer.  And if high school kids can defeat the security features, the school district needs to get some new IT people.

California college bars student from handing out copies of Constitution.  The Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, but don't try to pass out copies of it at Modesto Junior College in California.  A student at the school who tried to pass out pocket-size pamphlets of the very document that memorializes our rights got shut down on Sept. 17 — a date also known as Constitution Day.

Parent Files Complaint Against Hartford Schools Over Slavery Re-Enactment On Field Trip.  A Farmington parent has filed a human rights complaint against the Hartford school system following a magnet school field trip last fall in which students participated in a slavery re-enactment that included the use of racial slurs.  Sandra Baker said Thursday [9/19/2013] that her daughter, who is African American, and fellow classmates at Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy were essentially "terrorized" during the nighttime Underground Railroad exercise that was part of a field trip to Nature's Classroom in Charlton, Mass.

Should Students Use a Laptop in Class?  Let's start with the million-dollar question:  May computers (laptops, tablets, smartphones) be used in class?  Some instructors are as permissive as parents who let you set your own curfew.  Others are more controlling and believe that having your phone on means your brain is off and that relying on Google for answers results in a digital lobotomy.  Professors are united, though, in the conviction that the classroom is a communal space and that students share the responsibility for ensuring that nobody abuses it by diminishing opportunities to learn.

ObamaCare for Everything.  One attribute that sets the U.S. higher education system apart from any in the world is the diversity of its 4,495 degree-granting institutions — big, small, private, public, religious.  Under this plan, that historic diversity would melt beneath conformance.  The Obama plan says it will increase the number of college graduates and contain tuition costs by "rewarding states that are willing to systematically change their higher education policies and practices."

Educational Collapse Mestastacizes.  Constructivism prevents teachers from teaching.  Instead, students are told to find information for themselves. [...] Cooperative Learning mandates that students are always cocooned inside a little group. [...] This is good training for socialism, but not for serious independent work.  Prior Knowledge forces the teacher to waste time assessing what each child already knows, instead of simply teaching all children what they now need to know. [...] Whole Word, the biggest blunder in American education, requires that children memorize English words as graphic designs.  This is the foolish approach that Rudolf Flesch exposed in his famous 1955 book.

California lawmaker pulls son from class over transgender law.  A Republican state lawmaker says a new California law allowing transgender students to choose which restroom and locker room they use is part of the reason at least one of his sons will not return to his local public school this fall.

Don't depend on cowards for advice on self-defense.
'Run and hide' is Obama administration's clever plan for next school shooting.  In response to the Newtown, Conn. massacre and a host of school shootings in recent years, the Obama administration released a 67-page report on emergency planning this summer that includes several pages advising educators on how to manage "an active shooter situation."  The U.S. Department of Education's "live-shooter" section doesn't recommend that schools arm teachers or employ armed guards.  It doesn't even advise schools to add door locks for classrooms.

Why Did a Tennessee Grade School Ban Pork?  A Tennessee elementary school banned students from eating ham sandwiches, BLT's and anything else made with pork, but eventually lifted the ban after parents complained. [...] "No meats containing pork," read the memorandum.  "Starting Monday, August 12, 2013 your child must provide their own snack from the above approved snack list." Kids could nosh on raw vegetables without dips or sauces, fresh fruit, crackers, pretzels, and popcorn — but no ribs or pork rinds.

The Editor says...
The ban was quickly lifted, but don't ever forget that they tried to impose Islamic (halal) restrictions on food that the kids were bringing from their homes!  Even the Food Police have never been so brazen, but the Muslims are, and I suspect that's who is at the root of this ill-conceived order.

Obama pushes ambitious Internet access plan for schools.  President Obama liked the idea laid out in a memo from his staff:  an ambitious plan to expand high-speed Internet access in schools that would allow students to use digital notebooks and teachers to customize lessons like never before.  Better yet, the president would not need Congress to approve it.  White House senior advisers have described the little-known proposal, announced earlier this summer under the name ConnectEd, as one of the biggest potential achievements of Obama's second term.

Bias alert!
How else would "White House senior advisers" describe an Obama proposal to the press?

Turning public schools into forts.  As surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero-tolerance policies, lockdowns, drug-sniffing dogs and strip searches become the norm in elementary, middle and high schools across the nation, America is on a fast track to raising up an Orwellian generation — one populated by compliant citizens accustomed to living in a police state and who march in lockstep to the dictates of the government.

DOJ ripped for making transgender restroom use new front in civil rights battle.  The U.S. Department of Justice's latest cause — fighting for a transgendered California ninth-grader's right to use the boy's room at school — has conservative groups wondering just how far Washington will go in the name of civil rights.  The student was born a girl but "has identified as a boy from a young age," according to the Department of Justice, which reached a settlement with the public school district in Arcadia, an affluent LA suburb.  Under the deal, the district must not only change the student's restroom privileges and make similar accommodations on overnight trips.  It also must institute a host of measures to ensure transgender students are treated as whatever gender they consider themselves to be.

Arizona Student Suspended for Asking that Classes be Taught in English.  A 50-year-old community college student in Arizona has been suspended — her crime:  asking that class discussions be conducted in English. [...] It's a twisted day in America when a student has "ineffective communications skills" because she speaks English.  Foreign language skills are beneficial for workers in a variety of fields, but to punish a community college student for lacking Spanish proficiency is obviously absurd.

Michelle Obama Gives a Nod to 'Walking School Buses'.  First Lady Michelle Obama is promoting walking to school as part of her anti-obesity campaign.  In remarks to mayors gathered at the White House last week, the first lady singled out Knox County, Tenn., which — inspired by Mrs. Obama's "Let's Move!" campaign — has created a bike-share program and something called a "walking school bus." [...] A "walking school bus" is a group of children who walk to school with adult chaperones.

The Editor says...
The Obama regime is now dispensing lipstick for pigs.  This used to be called, "walking to school," and now we will all feel better because the kids can pretend they're in a "walking school bus."

Calif. lawmakers pass K-12 transgender-rights bill.  California lawmakers approved a bill Wednesday [7/3/2013] that would require public K-12 schools to let transgender students choose which restrooms they use and which school teams they join based on their gender identity instead of their chromosomes.

The Editor says...
Whenever schools allow the kids to make decisions about their rules, trouble is inevitable in the chort term, and chaos in the long run.  The same would be true if the inmates were allowed to make policy decisions in prisons.  Where liberals rule, common sense does not.

California is about to pass a law requiring bathroom, locker room access regardless of gender.  Mere ownership of a penis or a vagina will no longer limit California students in their decisions concerning which bathrooms and locker rooms to use, or which sports teams to join.  Under a proposed law that has passed the state legislature and now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown, students in California will be able to make such choices based on their perceived gender identities, CNN reports.  Assembly Bill 1266 aims to extend the rights of transgender students.

Shape-shifters are Changing America.  Mostly unbeknownst to most of us mortals, a modern day shape-shifter can become the opposite of the sex he or she was born as, transforming into a man or woman in an instant.  It doesn't matter if the biological assignment given at birth remains.  Proclamation of one's sexual identity is enough.  One's gender can be established by fiat.  Even children may change sex just by proclamation, as the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary School guidelines affirm, stating that even if a child physiologically resembles a boy in every respect, but decides to be a girl, his new identity is to be acknowledged as the "real" one.  Just to be perfectly clear, lest anyone accuse the district of discrimination, it is not necessary to declare one's self male or female at all.  A student can essentially check the box "Neither."

Grooming the New Totalitarians.  America's younger generations are being groomed for totalitarianism.  We begin In Polk County, Florida, where students at an elementary school, a middle school and a high school had their irises scanned — without parental permission — as part of what officials are characterizing as a "student safety" program.

Only if grandma is under 30 and has a job.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan: Pre-School is Better Than Grandma.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday [6/12/2013] that "cultural hesitation" makes it more difficult for some Hispanic parents to want to enroll their children in public pre-school programs because of their preference for family and friends.

Confirmed: Polk County, FL schools conducted iris scans on students without permission.  Florida parents are right to be outraged at the outrageous privacy violations that took place late last week in at least 3 Polk County, Florida schools.

Who's tracking your children?  The school year may be over for most American students, but parents must remain as vigilant as ever when it comes to protecting their children's privacy.  Look no further than the shocking, invasive conduct of the Polk County, Fla., educational district last week.  It's a surveillance-state sign of the times.

Taking away the Fifth.  Sometimes the best lessons are the ones that aren't planned.  High school students in Batavia, Ill., recently received real-world training in the Bill of Rights unlike anything found in a textbook.  Social studies teacher John Dryden landed in hot water when he mentioned the Fifth Amendment to his students as he, under orders, passed out an intrusive questionnaire.  The survey asked detailed questions about drug and alcohol use so that administrators could identify students with potential emotional problems.  Mr. Dryden simply reminded the children that they didn't have to incriminate themselves with their answers.

Teacher's Fifth Amendment advice to students gets him in trouble.  An Illinois Social Studies teacher faces disciplinary action for reminding his students of their Fifth Amendment rights when filling out a school survey on behavior, according to the Daily Herald.

Update:
Batavia teacher in 5th Amendment debate ordered to curb remarks.  The Batavia High School teacher at the center of a recent controversy over his recommendation to students about a school survey was warned to keep his opinions about all future district initiatives to himself or risk losing his job.  Calling his actions "inappropriate and unprofessional," the school board officially reprimanded John Dryden, a 20-year teacher at the high school, at a recent school board meeting after dozens turned out to support him.

The use of textbooks as propaganda tools:
Michelle O Wants Textbooks to 'Swap Cupcakes for Apples' in Math Problems.  First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" initiative is praising textbook publishers for "swapping out cupcakes for apples in math problems," in a campaign to incorporate health information into the learning resources for kids.  "Today at the White House, we celebrated a group of educational publishers on their development of voluntary guidance to incorporate health information into textbooks and other learning materials," Let's Move! said in a blog post entitled, "Cookies 2 Carrots," on Wednesday.

Parents expected to pay to see school curriculum in Texas?  A controversial school curriculum management system in Texas that once included a description of the Boston Tea Party as terror, and has referenced Islamic terrorists as freedom fighters, now has been found to be trying to charge parents hundreds of dollars to see the instructional materials being used by their own children, officials said.  However, under Texas Education Code Chapter 26, all parents have the undisputed right to see any and all instructional materials used in state classrooms.

Teacher Sues School over Suspension for 'Weapons' Charge: Showing Students Garden Tools.  Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a civil rights lawsuit against a Chicago public school district on behalf of a second-grade teacher who was suspended after he displayed garden-variety tools such as wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers in his classroom as part of a "tool discussion" in his class. [...] Bartlett was subsequently penalized with a four-day suspension without pay — charged with possessing, carrying, storing or using a weapon.

The Editor says...
The teacher must not have known about the "Screwdriver Free Zone" signs in front of the school.

The Rehabilitation of New Left Terrorists.  This week, the rehabilitation of the most extreme of the New Left groups — The Weather Underground — entered a new stage.  Yesterday [4/4/2013], The New York Post revealed that convicted felon Kathy Boudin — who was released from jail a decade ago after serving 22 years for her role as getaway driver in a deadly 1981 Brinks truck robbery — was given the position of Adjunct Professor at Columbia University's School of Social Work.  At the same time, Boudin was also(!) given a position held concurrently at New York University, where she was appointed Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence.

Parents outraged that Mass. kids were denied lunch.  As many as 25 students at a Massachusetts school were denied lunch this week — with at least some forced to dump their food in the garbage — because they couldn't pay, school officials and parents said.

School Bans the Word 'Easter'.  Boys and girls at an Alabama elementary school will still get to hunt for eggs — but they can't call them 'Easter Eggs' have the principal banished the word for the sake of religious diversity.  "We had in the past a parent to question us about some of the things we do here at school," said Heritage Elementary School principal Lydia Davenport.  "So we're just trying to make sure we respect and honor everybody's differences."

The Abolition of Sex.  The Massachusetts public school system has taken the tired mantra "You can be whatever you want to be" to new heights of absurdity.  It is now possible for any student to declare what his sex is regardless of whether it is the biological opposite of what she was born as.  The new transgender manifesto, which includes punishments and counseling for students who object to the idea of changing one's sex by fiat, can be found here.  The basic premise is that a student has the right to decide what sex he or she is, and the school is required to support the child's self-proclaimed identity in every respect.

Professor Makes Students "Stomp on Jesus".  A Florida Atlantic University student said he was punished after he refused a professor's directive to stomp on a piece of paper with the word "Jesus" written on it.  The university, meanwhile, is defending the assignment as a lesson in debate.  "I'm not going to be sitting in a class having my religious rights desecrated," student Ryan Rotela told television station WPEC.  "I truly see this as I'm being punished."

'Jesus Stomping' Professor is Democrat Party Vice-Chairman in Palm Beach County, FL.  Just in time for Holy Week are many reports about this controversial incident involving a local college professor at Florida Atlantic University in Davie, Florida making his students literally stomp on paper after they were instructed to write the name Jesus on it.  However national media, while reporting on this incident, neglected to include the fact that the professor is also vice-chairman of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party as reported today by a popular and influential local business/political web site called Biz Pac Review.

Media fail: Stomp Jesus FAU professor is a Dem. Party official.  Florida Atlantic University professor Deandre Poole instructed his intercultural communications class earlier this month to write the name "Jesus" on a piece of paper, then drop it on the floor and stomp on it.  One student, a devout Mormon, was so so disturbed by the exercise that he complained to school officials, saying Poole had offended his religious convictions.  The school responded by suspending the student from the class.

University Apologizes for "Stomping on Jesus" Assignment.  Florida Atlantic University has issued an apology for a classroom assignment that involving students writing the name "Jesus" on a sheet of paper and then stomping on the paper.  The university also said the lesson will never again be used.

The Editor says...
Let's try the same assignment with "Mohammed" or "Martin Luther King" or even "Obama" on the paper and see what happens.

University Takes Action to Punish Student.  A Florida Atlantic University student who filed a complaint against his professor after he was ordered to stomp on the name of Jesus has been brought up on academic charges by the school and may no longer attend class, according to documents obtained by Fox News.

Update:
University Bows to National Outrage, Won't Punish Student Who Refused to Stomp Jesus.  Florida Atlantic University has issued a formal apology to a student that was facing academic charges after he complained about a professor who ordered the class to write the name "Jesus" and then stomp on the pieces of paper.  Ryan Rotela, a student at FAU, was accused of violating the student code of conduct after he reported his instructor to university administrators.  He was removed from the class, ordered not to contact fellow students, and was facing possible suspension or expulsion — pending the outcome of a student hearing.

More N.J. schools turning to advertising to make ends meet.  The electronic sign in front of Linden High School may begin showing ads along with school messages, a deal Linden officials were told could bring in $100,000 a year.  The North Hunterdon-Voorhees High School District is exploring "corporate partnership opportunities" that could paste company logos on everything from high school football scoreboards to library walls.

Education Gone Berserk.  During my 30 years of teaching, I have experienced plenty of irrational teaching methods and behaviors coming from liberal teachers and administrators bent on controlling every move that students or faculty members made.  Every year administrators added extra pages to the official code of conduct.  These were deliberate steps to restrict freedom and to punish real or potential bad behaviors.  Needless to say, lawyers were busy defending ridiculous claims and actions that a person with common sense would have known to avoid or ignore.  But liberals like to micromanage everything and everybody.

Rising special ed cases are huge cost to Minnesota schools.  Every school day, the boy, who has autism and doesn't speak, came to the barren cell built only for him.  Two adults spent all their time teaching him to communicate.  The price?  $153,000 for a year of instruction, nearly 20 times what's spent on a student without special needs.  "The costs are staggering," said Connie Hayes, superintendent of the public school district that built the classroom.  A decade ago, the boy would have been institutionalized.  Today, he's sent to public school.

The Editor says...
Does it improve the quality of the other students' education to "mainstream" violent, autistic children?  No, especially since the rest of the student body is in another part of the building.  The only reason to accomodate one-in-a-million cases like this is money:  The school districts are reimbursed (by the federal government, so it doesn't really cost anybody anything) in proportion to the number of warm bodies in attendance, and I suspect there is a financial incentive to take in especially difficult cases.

The feverish de-legitimization of personal self-defense .  Three Florida high school students disarmed another student who was armed with a loaded pistol while riding home on a school bus.  The school district then promptly suspended all three students for being involved in an "incident" with a weapon.  One of the suspended students asked, "How are they going to suspend me for doing the right thing?"

Welcome To Your 21st Century Global Educational System.  We are entering into a new era of education with a global curriculum designed by the United Nations that will be implemented not just in developing countries, but right here in the United States.  Once our daycares are forced to shut their doors because of purposeful and costly over-regulation by state and federal governments, babies will be forced into the 0-12 educational system and the educational leaders will have accomplished their goal of compulsory education for even the youngest in our society.  Once all children are herded into the public school system (because homeschooling will no longer be allowed), this is what our newly transformed educational system will look like.

There are a hundred compelling reasons for removing your children and grandchildren from the public schools.
American Education: Rotting the Country from the Inside.  [Scroll down]  So it is my conclusion that what the WU failed to accomplish when they went underground and began their strategic sabotage is now being accomplished through the educational system and the political means that they have gained by supporting such people as Barack Obama and his Chicago supporters.  I tell people today that we are losing our freedoms because of the attacks that emerge from the left and are targeted on all of our basic societal organizations.  God is eliminated from the classroom; the history of our country is no longer being taught, but rather a revised edition which depicts our people and our nation as enemies of the world and of all that is good and right.  This includes church, religion, veterans, educational institutions, and any organization that supports the greatness of our country and the strength of its institutions.

Ten shocking lessons a huge Texas conglomerate has foisted on public school students.  Most — though not all — of the critics of CSCOPE are politically conservative.  They charge that the controversial curriculum is a radical, backdoor way for progressives to circumvent both the Texas legislative process and the desires of local school boards and communities.  They also charge that the creators of the curriculum operate secretly and do not make it easy for parents or even school board members to see the material.

Parents Upset Over Tutoring Program That Excluded Whites.  A Colorado school principal is apologizing after he mailed parents a letter informing them that an after-school tutoring program was for non-whites only.  Andre Pearson, the principal at Mission Viejo Elementary School in Aurora, also left a voice mail message confirming that the program excluded whites.

Elementary school bans white kids from tutoring.  An elementary school principal in the Denver suburbs told parents that white children would be excluded from an after-school tutoring initiative.  Andre C. Pearson, the principal at Mission Viejo Elementary in Aurora, Colorado sent letters home to parents informing them that only students of color are eligible for the program, KJCT, the local ABC affiliate, reports.

Black principal bans white children from after school tutoring program.  This is an amazing story.  In short, Andrea Pearson, Mission Viejo Elementary school principal in Colorado sent a letter home with students that informed the parents of an after school tutoring program for students of color only — no white kids allowed.

Securing America's schools.  Both on the left and the right there are calls for enhancing security in schools in the wake of the Dec. 14 mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.  Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, wants to deploy the National Guard to protect our classrooms.  Her proposal included the establishment of a $50 million grant program that would help schools buy more metal detectors, surveillance cameras and other high-tech security measures.  Turning America's schools into fortresses isn't the solution.

Washington University holds porn star panel in main university chapel.  At Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, students are perpetually lamenting the fact that their excellent Midwestern school isn't mentioned more often with Ivy-caliber powerhouses.  Well, this story probably isn't going to help.

Gun Free Zones.  By making schools a "gun free zone", you automatically disarm all law abiding citizens at those locations.  This is tantamount to placing a sign on the front of the building inviting criminals and mentally deranged persons to come shoot up the place.  "Come on in.  We're all unarmed, by law.  We won't interfere with your mayhem."

Officials Defend Decision to Name School After Murderer.  A California school district is defending its decision to name a new elementary school after an infamous murderer — by calling him a hero and a role model to children.  The decision has infuriated many parents and law enforcemetn [sic] officers.  The Alisal Union School District in Salinas agreed to name the new school in honor of Tiburcio Vasquez — who was eventually hanged for killing at least two people in the nineteenth century.

The Strategic Concentration of Modern Children.  What any ruling class wants is to get children away from the influence of their parents.  And what better way could there be to concentrate and homogenize children than in government child custodial facilities?  It is curious that the modern rampage shootings started around the time that the best and brightest decided that the big youth problem was the education of girls — even though it stands to reason that boys are the ones who need to be socialized away from their dawn-raid instincts, and always will.

RFID used to track school students.  A court challenge has delayed plans to expel a Texan student for refusing to wear a radio tag that tracked her movements.  Religious reasons led Andrea Hernandez to stop wearing the tag that revealed where she was on her school campus.  The tags were introduced to track students and help tighten control of school funding.

More on suspended student refusing to wear tracking device.  The district attempted to paint this "students-as-livestock/prisoners" effort as being there for the safety of students and staff.  But underneath all the "safety" talk was a large pile of money that the school district hoped to pocket.  The so-called "Student Locator" project Texas' Northside Independent School District was implementing put school officials within handout distance of nearly $1.7 million in state government funds.

San Antonio Officials Re-Admit Expelled High School Student After Ending RFID Tracking Program.  School officials with the Northside Independent School District have agreed to re-admit Andrea Hernandez to John Jay High School's Science and Engineering Academy.  Hernandez, who will resume her studies at John Jay as a high school junior when school convenes on Monday, Aug. 26, was expelled from the magnet school program after raising religious freedom and privacy objections to NISD's "Student Locator Project," which relied on RFID tracking badges to enable school officials to track students' location on school property.

School Administrator Brushes Off 'Constitutional Niceties' Like Fifth Amendment Rights For Students.  For many school administrators, the default mode is to limit the rights of students while enforcing very broadly-worded policies.  The default mode may start shifting, though, as more courts are reminding administrators that, while students' rights may be more constrained than those of adults, they're not nonexistent.  Recently, a court reminded a Minnesota school district that demanding a student's Facebook password was a violation of her First and Fourth Amendment rights.

Electronic Versions Of Textbooks Spy On Students As They Read Them.  The rapid uptake of ebooks by the public shows that there is a widespread recognition of their advantages.  This would be good news for the publishing industry as it faces the transition from analog to digital formats, were it not for the fact that some publishers keep finding new ways of making ebooks less attractive than physical versions.  Here's the latest idea:  electronic versions of textbooks that spy on students as they read them.

Student Expelled for Refusing Location Tracking RFID Badge.  After months of protesting a policy requiring high school students to wear an RFID-enabled ID badge around their necks at all times, Andrea Hernandez is being involuntarily withdrawn from John Jay High School in San Antonio effective November 26th, according to a letter sent by the district that has now been made public.  The letter, sent on November 13, informs her father that the Smart ID program, which was phased in with the new school year, is now in "full implementation" and requires all students to comply by wearing the location-tracking badges.

Spying on school kids.  School districts in Texas are using tracking chips to spy on students.  That's just fine with a federal judge who ruled Tuesday [1/8/2013] against Andrea Hernandez, a 15-year-old high school sophomore in San Antonio.  With the help of the Rutherford Institute, Miss Hernandez and her father filed a lawsuit arguing the creepy "student locator project" violated her constitutional rights.

The Editor says...
Besides the fact that electronic textbooks can be instantly revised and edited en masse at any time by the ministry of truth, i.e., the education secretary (whose department should not even exist) says he wants to move as fast as possible, according to the reports above.  Any time the government wants to make sweeping changes quickly, there is deception involved.  And then there is the issue of government-issued (or government-mandated) laptop computers:  Who knows what else will be installed on those computers?  The computers go home every night, and will probably need to be connected to the internet for "upgrades" and eventually for news bulletins and pronouncements from Big Brother.  A few years ago, Kindle users found out one morning that some of their electronic books had been revoked, including (ironically) 1984.  Over-reliance on computers can only lead to disappointment and confusion down the road.

Leftists are using our children as pawns for all their policies.  Along with this, we must include the shocking statistics on drugging our children.  Researching this, I found that six million of our children are on psych drugs — that's one in 12 — and often, in my opinion, (and I am not an expert) the drugs are used to force inquisitive and lively children into conformity with the herd, into manageability.  Note, if you look at the link, how early drugs are started — an astounding number of children are force-fed them early, before their first birthdays.  Instead of prescribing more of these drugs, we need to develop an ethic where the adults in the room take the time and make the effort to help less tractable and manageable kids find their path in life.  The effort needed to do so is profound, but the rewards will be, too.  We need our quirky thinkers, our single-minded inventors, our daredevils, and we need to let them know they are valued.

Drugging Kids For Profit.  [Scroll down]  Since the early 1990s the psychiatry profession has been pushing for "mental health screenings" to find new patients.  Pushing community mental health providers into public education means a steady revenue stream created diagnosing children with mental disorders which will then be treated with drugs purchased from Big Pharma.  Health care dollars from insurance companies for treatment and from government agencies for research yield still more revenue.  Records of assessments, whether real or just imagined by a mental health provider, will follow children the rest of their lives.  Many will become dependent on the highly addictive psychotropic drugs known as neuroleptics and will suffer from an array of adverse side affects.  According to a 2017 report, the rate of antidepressant use in the United States increased nearly 400 percent over the last two decades.  With community mental health providers on school campuses, this will become an even greater national crisis.

Father of ADHD Admitted in Final Interview That Disease Was "Fictitious".  These were the words of Leon Eisenberg, the "scientific father of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)," in his last interview before his death.  Leon Eisenberg made a luxurious living off of his "fictitious disease," thanks to pharmaceutical sales.  Coincidentally, he received the "Ruane Prize for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Research.  He has been a leader in child psychiatry for more than 40 years through his work in pharmacological trials, research, teaching, and social policy and for his theories of autism and social medicine," according to Psychiatric News.  Yes, it was even admitted that they are his THEORIES. The medical industry is using the guise of helping children to depersonalize and disconnect our children from a healthy, normal upbringing.

NRA boss Oliver North blames Ritalin, 'culture of violence' for school shootings.  Incoming NRA President Oliver North tried to blame the rash of school shootings across the U.S., including the massacre at a Texas high school Friday, on video games and ADHD medication instead of access to firearms.  The gun lobby's newest spokesman said the wave of killings were carried out by "young boys" who "have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten."  "I am certainly not a doctor, I'm a Marine, but I can see those kinds of things happening," North said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

The Left Has Created A Cottage Industry From the Deaths of Children.  More details about the incident are sure to be made public in the coming hours and days, but we'll take a wild guess here:  White, male student, considered a loner, possibly already on the radar of local law enforcement, and almost certainly under the influence of prescription drugs in the SSRI class.  Why do I feel so confident about making this assumption?  Simply because this has been the M.O. of nearly every mass shooter in American history since the advent of antidepressants, (which is pretty much every mass shooter in American history).

Guns and school shootings:  The dirty and deadly big secret.  What's changed, especially in the lives and minds of many young people, over the last two decades?  A lot has changed.  From accelerated "progressive" cultural rot to more broken and latchkey homes to incredibly easy access to violence and sex via TV, movies, the internet and social media, and video games, all of these can be listed as possible contributors to the scourge of heinous behavior — much of which is perpetrated by males under the age of 30.  But in almost all cases, the killers are found to be "unstable" or "depressed" and taking some type of psychotropic prescription drugs:  mind-altering substances to deal with depression, emotional frailty, or just the dramas of everyday life as a young adult.

From Prozac to Parkland:  Are Psychiatric Drugs Causing Mass Shootings?  If you develop digestive problems after a change in diet, do you look for the cause in foods you always ate or the new ones you started eating?  While the answer is obvious, this common sense is painfully uncommon when analyzing the new phenomenon of continual mass shootings:  Many blame the long-present "foods" — guns in this case — and ignore the new diet whose embrace coincided with the problem.  And part of what's new is the widespread use of psychiatric drugs.  As a case in point, the Parkland, Florida, shooter, who murdered 17 on Valentine's Day, was on medication for emotional issues, his aunt related.  This is now a familiar story, too.  As WND.com's David Kupelian put it Thursday [2/22/2018], the following is par for the course:  As information about a "perpetrator emerges, a relative confides to a newspaper that the 'troubled youth' who committed the mass murder was on psychiatric medications — you know, those powerful, little understood, mind-altering drugs with fearsome side effects including 'suicidal ideation' and even 'homicidal ideation.'"

Florida school shooter in custody may offer an opportunity to explore role of medications in school massacres.  The rash of school shootings in the United States over the past two decades has nothing to do with the availability of firearms to youths, as the gun-grabbers claim.  American youngsters have always had access to firearms.  In fact, in decades previous, guns were much easier to purchase. [...] So, in looking for causes, it makes sense to examine other factors — for instance, the fame bestowed upon shooters by overboard media coverage of their misdeeds. [...] Or... maybe we should examine the widespread use of psychotropic stimulant drugs, such as Ritalin, on male pupils in schools, which began to be used on a wide scale in 1996.  Particularly when the drug use stops, there may be undesirable consequences.

CPS Seizes 7-Year-Old After Parents Dispute ADHD Diagnosis.  Advocates of the federal school regime claim it was established to educate America's children.  Apparently, it also looks to usurp the natural right of parents to decide questions of medical treatment of their children, as well.  Camden Maple is seven years old and sometimes, according to his mom and dad, he is "rambunctious."  Administrators at his public school, however, insist that Camden is "mentally unstable." [...] One in 20 adolescents in America are diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).  Rather than addressing that child's needs, the stigmatizing and system-summoning label of "mental instability" is slapped onto the child, and with it, years of mandatory therapy and medication.

Does the left have a drug problem?  Drug use within the entertainment industry and the mindless plebeians who worship them is well known.  No news there, but what about the overwhelmingly liberal academia or media?  I suspect that drugs could be playing a significant role, especially among those susceptible to the pressures of "publish or perish" or like pressures.  In 2010, CBS's 60 Minutes broadcast a report about the use of ADD/ADHD drugs, such as Ritalin and Adderall, in universities.  In that report, Katie Couric interviewed Brandon Adams, who taught economics at Harvard University.  Regarding the prevalence of this type of drug use in academia, Adams stated, "I think it's extremely common.  It's extremely common in all of the professions from what I've seen."  Before dismissing ADHD stimulant drug use in academia as being inconsequential or insignificant, the reader should take time to note some of these drugs' side effects: [...]

Drugging toddlers becoming big business for Big Pharma with over a million kids under 5 on brain-damaging psych meds.  Toddlers as young as 18-months-old are being treated like experimental rats, drugged up with some of the most brain-damaging, life-altering psychotic pills.  These are the kinds of pills that cause wild delusions, aggressive impulses, erratic behavior, or in some cases, cause violent and suicidal thoughts.  Why do parents, doctors, psychologists and neurologists continue to disregard these appalling side effects?

Education as a Cause of Mental Health Issues.  It's one of the most bizarre and destructive events in American history.  Circa 1931, public schools started using Whole Word to teach reading.  (This method has many other names, such as Look-say, Whole Language, Dolch Words, and Sight Words.)  Almost immediately, children started having psychological problems — i.e., mental health issues.  The typical pattern is that a boy will reach the second or third grade and realize that his teachers and family think he is, in effect, retarded because he can't do this simple thing that most other kids can do.  In fourth grade he will be labeled dyslexic.  In fifth grade he will be declared to have ADHD and be in need of Ritalin.  This story, in endless variations, has descended upon millions of Americans, on males more than females (so it is a component of the War on Boys).

Let me guess:  Fatherless undisciplined food stamp bastards with a babysitter named Spongebob Squarepants.
Why so many kids can't sit still in school today.  The Centers for Disease Control tells us that in recent years there has been a jump in the percentage of young people diagnosed with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, commonly known as ADHD:  7.8 percent in 2003 to 9.5 percent in 2007 and to 11 percent in 2011.  The reasons for the rise are multiple, and include changes in diagnostic criteria, medication treatment and more awareness of the condition. [...] Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist and the founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England, suggests yet another reason more children are being diagnosed with ADHD, whether or not they really have it:  the amount of time kids are forced to sit while they are in school.  This appeared on the TimberNook blog.

Americans no Longer Live in a Scientific Society.  [P]eople coming to therapists for mental health issues are often prescribed drugs which end up creating more problems then the person originally had.  For example, 90% of maniac shooters are said to have been on psychiatric medication, or coming off of it, and under the care of a therapist. [...] We have a very dangerous crisis — while 20% of US population is on psych meds, almost 100% of the violent shooters are from this group.

New Report: 1 in 13 Schoolchildren Now On Prescription Psych Meds.  While common prescriptions such as Ritalin and Adderall do help many children, the National Institute of Mental Health reports that they are often incorrectly prescribed to kids who have been misdiagnosed with ADHD and may actually have a different condition (or no condition at all).  Additionally, these medications can have harmful side effects, the long term implications of which the medical community does not yet fully understand.

Are Schools Asking to Drug Kids for Better Test Scores?  In the past two decades, the number of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has nearly doubled.  One in five American boys receives a diagnosis by age 17.  More than 70% of those who are diagnosed — millions of children — are prescribed drugs.  A new book, "The ADHD Explosion" by Stephen Hinshaw and Richard Scheffler, looks at this extraordinary increase.

ADHD Does Not Exist.  After a long career treating patients complaining of such problems as short attention spans and an inability to focus, [neurologist Richard] Saul is convinced that ADHD is a collection of symptoms, not a disease, and shouldn't be listed in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.  Treating ADHD as a disease is a huge mistake, according to Saul.

Why Ritalin Still Rules.  Almost 14 years ago, the inaugural issue of Policy Review under newly appointed editor Tod Lindberg ran an essay of mine called "Why Ritalin Rules."  It observed that American children were taking psychotropic drugs at (then-) record rates; that some doctors and other experts believed methylphenidate (the generic name for Ritalin) was being over-prescribed; that the disorder for which it and related stimulants were given — Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder — included a uniquely protean symptoms checklist; and that the line between science and advocacy was hard to find in the bustling pediatric zone of the psychotropic universe.

The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder.  After more than 50 years leading the fight to legitimize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Keith Conners could be celebrating. [...] But Dr. Conners did not feel triumphant this fall as he addressed a group of fellow A.D.H.D. specialists in Washington.  He noted that recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990.

Are too many kids taking antipsychotic drugs?  The number of children taking powerful antipsychotic drugs has nearly tripled over the last 10 to 15 years, according to recent research.  The increase comes not because of an epidemic of schizophrenia or other forms of serious mental illness in children, but because doctors are increasingly prescribing the drugs to treat behavior problems, a use not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  And a disproportionate number of those prescriptions are written for poor and minority children, some as young as age 2.

CDC: More Than 20% of 14-Year-Old Boys Diagnosed With ADHD.  More than 20 percent of the 14-year-old boys in the United States have been diagnosed at some point in their lives with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a newly released study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  The study also said more than 20 percent of 11-year-old boys had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives.  The study indicated that American boys were 125 percent more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD, and that boys were 127 percent more likely than girls to be medicated for it.

Psychiatric Meds: Prescription for Murder?  "In virtually every mass school shooting during the past 15 years, the shooter has been on or in withdrawal from psychiatric drugs," observed Lawrence Hunter of the Social Security Institute.  "Yet, federal and state governments continue to ignore the connection between psychiatric drugs and murderous violence, preferring instead to exploit these tragedies in an oppressive and unconstitutional power grab to snatch guns away from innocent, law-abiding people who are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution the right to own and bear arms to deter government tyranny and to use firearms in self defense against any miscreant who would do them harm."

Nearly Every Mass Shooting In The Last 20 Years Shares One Thing In Common, and It's NOT Weapons.  The overwhelming evidence points to the signal largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes.

Diagnosis: Human.  The news that 11 percent of school-age children now receive a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — some 6.4 million — gave me a chill.  My son David was one of those who received that diagnosis.  In his case, he was in the first grade.  Indeed, there were psychiatrists who prescribed medication for him even before they met him.  One psychiatrist said he would not even see him until he was medicated.

Medicate Your Children to Guarantee Compliance.  Aside from the obvious social benefits of having more disabled children who are qualified for even more benefits, the medicating of these children is helping to stimulate the Pharmaceutical industry at a rate of more than $7 billion per year.

Evidence Mounts of Mass Shooting Causes: Sociopathic Progressivism & Drugs.  It seems the root causes of this twisted behavior include, at least by affinity, the ideological motivations of, or even pathological drives for, political or sociological causes shared by the progressive "left" — mixed with psychotropic drugs — and that, especially among but not limited to adolescent men.  I am not joking; deadly serious.  This brief compilation may serve as an introduction.  I have seen sound reports on numerous of these instances.

Stop and think - and you will realise that banning guns is a waste of time.  Some suggest he may have been on one of the many powerful and poorly tested 'medications' that modern medicine casually inflicts on bored children who fidget in class, or on people who are just unhappy in various ways.  There is, as yet, no clear answer.  There may never be, as the authorities and the media just aren't interested enough.  One of the Columbine High School killers, Eric Harris, was on such medication (as we know thanks to a Freedom of Information inquiry), and the other, Dylan Klebold, may have been taking mind-altering pills at some point before he acted, though his medical records are sealed — inexplicably, given the importance of the information.