Department of Education: Catholic Schools Beat Public Schools. When two schools meet in a basketball game, the winner is indisputable. One team outscores the other. The same is true in certain types of academic competition. When students take standardized national tests, students from some schools outscore students from others. In the most recent round of National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, which are administered by the U.S. Department of Education, the winners were indeed indisputable. It wasn't close. "In 2011," says the Department of Education in a report on the NAEP tests, "the average reading score for eighth-graders attending public schools was 19 points lower than the overall score for students attending private schools,and 20 points lower than for students attending Catholic schools specifically.
" If the Catholic school in your community beat the public school in basketball by 20 points, partisans of both teams would deem it a rout. So, what is the matter with public schools? One thing is certain: It isn't a lack of money. Going Too Far?: Police Handcuff 6-Year-Old for Temper Tantrum. What matters more to teachers unions – money & power or kids?
You know why we are in so much trouble? Because President Obama is in bed with the unions and they are helping one another. For example, teachers in the nations third largest school district have decided to go on strike for the first time in twenty-five years. The Huffington Post reports: Teachers in the nation’s third-largest school district voted overwhelmingly to authorize the first strike in 25 years if their union and the city cannot reach a deal on a contract this summer – signaling just how badly the relationship between teachers and Chicago school officials has deteriorated, union officials said Monday.Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis announced the result of last week’s balloting – nearly 90 percent of its 26,502 members voted to authorize a strike _and called it “an indictment of the state of the relationship between the management of CPS and its largest labor force members.”
State law requires 75 percent approval. “I can’t say we’re failing our kids. Video Shows Bus Monitor Being Abused by Greece Athena Students. Editor’s note: We have added a webcast at the bottom of this post featuring Billy Hallowell and Scott Baker from The Blaze discussing this disturbing story. Update: We’ve also posted a new interview with the bus monitor and her call for the students to be punished.
You can see that here. Prepare to see a disturbing video of young people at their worst. This clip of middle schoolers allegedly abusing a bus monitor is so disgusting, so bothersome that it will leave many wondering what has gone awry in our society. Of course, it is merely one of the many tragic, anecdotal instances of human cruelty that we so often see today. (Related: Online Campaign Raises $124,000 (& Counting) for Bus Monitor Abused & Threatened by Middle Schoolers) The woman purportedly shown in the video, Karen Huff Klein, 68, is victimized incessantly, as students spew insults and obscenities at her.
Watch the disturbing video (caution: language) below: “Fat ass.” A second purported video is also mentioned by the Post. Coney Island principal cancels singing of “God Bless the USA” at kindergarten event. Greta Hawkins, principal of PS 90 A controversial Coney Island principal has pulled the plug on patriotism. Her refusal to let students sing “God Bless the USA” at their graduation has sparked fireworks at a school filled with proud immigrants. Greta Hawkins, principal of PS 90, the Edna Cohen School, won’t allow kindergartners to belt out the beloved Lee Greenwood ballad, also known as “Proud to be an American,” at their moving-up ceremony. Five classes spent months learning the patriotic song, which skyrocketed in popularity after the 9/11 attacks and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
It was to be the rousing finale of their musical show at the June 20 commencement. The kids, dressed up for their big day, would wave tiny American flags — which, as the lyrics proclaim, “still stand for freedom.” But Hawkins marched in on a recent rehearsal and ordered a CD playing the anthem to be shut off, staffers said. She told the teachers to drop the song from the program. The song uproar comes amid tensions. NYC principal bars students from singing 'God Bless the USA' at graduation. Atheist Family Loses Lawsuit to Remove ‘Under God’ From Pledge of Allegiance. Back in February, we told you about an atheist family in Massachusetts that has been engaged in a legal battle to have “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.
In a press release sent out on Monday morning, the American Humanist Association announced that the Middlesex Superior Court ruled against the family. According to the statement, the atheist parents are already planning an appeal. (Related: Atheist Family Sues to Have ‘Under God’ Removed From Pledge of Allegiance) As The Blaze previously reported, the family decided to sue the Acton-Boxborough school system, claiming that the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance with the words “under God” discriminates against their children.
In Middlesex Superior Court earlier this year, David Niosie, the family’s lawyer asked that the words be taken out of the expression of loyalty to America. The main issue, the AHA president claims, is that the Pledge is “a daily indoctrination.” Ohio H.S. student banned from graduation for aiding sick mom. I quit, I think. I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think. I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency.
I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in. I just can’t do it anymore. Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. An exaggeration? The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It’s a religious idea and school is its church.
Socrates foresaw that if teaching became a formal profession something like this would happen. That’s why reforms come and go-without changing much. How much more evidence is necessary? Upper Manhattan public elementary school becomes the first to mandate Arabic as a foreign language. An upper Manhattan public elementary school will be the first in the city to require that students study Arabic, officials said yesterday. Beginning next semester, all 200 second- through fifth-graders at PS 368 in Hamilton Heights will be taught the language twice a week for 45 minutes — putting it on equal footing with science and music courses. One reason Principal Nicky Kram Rosen selected Arabic — as opposed to more common offerings, such as Spanish or French — is because it will help the school obtain a prestigious International Baccalaureate standing.
“She proposed this to the parent association. They were very supportive,” said Angela Jackson, CEO of the Global Language Project, which is backing the initiative. “Arabic has been identified as a critical-need language,” she said, citing students’ future “career trajectories.’’ “It means they can spin the globe and decide where they want to work and live.” “I like Arabic class. Nayanti said her mother was skeptical at first. I Quit, I Think - John Taylor Gatto.
Prologue - Page 2 Page - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 I Quit, I Think I was New York State Teacher of the Year when it happened. An accumulation of disgust and frustration which grew too heavy to be borne finally did me in. To test my resolve I sent a short essay to The Wall Street Journal titled "I Quit, I Think.
" Page - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8.