Temporarily Tied Senate ~ Democrats confer on the Senate floor as the Republican side sits empty during a recess, Friday, Jan. 27, 2017, in Olympia, Wash. Senators were debating whether to vote on the “levy cliff” bill, which would delay a reduction in the amount of money school districts can collect though property taxes. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) ~ Senate Republicans on Friday released an education funding plan that seeks to replace local school levies with a statewide uniform rate earmarked for schools.
Lawmakers are working to comply with a 2012 state Supreme Court ruling that they must fully fund the state’s basic education system. Lawmakers have already put more than $2 billion toward the issue since the ruling, but the biggest piece remaining of the court order is figuring out how much the state must provide for teacher salaries. School districts currently pay a big chunk of those salaries with local property-tax levies.
The GOP-proposed levy changes are expected to bring in $2 billion a year for education, and the state would also spend an additional $700 million per year to back-fill to ensure that each school district has $12,500 per student. Republicans say they can pay for the back-fill with existing resources. The plan would raise the local school levy in some places, like Seattle, and decrease it in others. Continue reading
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A widely-read children’s magazine that prides itself on its “wholesome” content has decided to feature two homosexual men in its pages for the first time.
Minecraft: Education Edition has officially released a 1.0 edition. It introduces valuable tools for students and educators alike — both in and out of the game.
No Reading, Writing and Arithmetic for today’s Teachers or students… instead of the Three ‘R’s it is now the S – E – X. No written report cards either, it is mostly ORAL.
On the wall of my office hangs one of my most cherished possessions. It is old and yellowed with age, but it is a delight to look at with its artistic embellishments and its beautiful calligraphy. It has a beautiful wood cut print of a lyre, a bust, a globe and various other implements of knowledge under an arched graphic proclamation, Washington County Indiana Public Schools. It measures a prominent size of 22 inches long and 17 inches high. It certifies that, Bertha Susan Roll of Posey Township, Washington County, Indiana has passed a creditable examination in Orthography, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Geography, English Grammar, Physiology, and United States History. It is signed by Joe C. Bush, County Superintendent and dated the 23rd day of August 1900. In the lower left corner is an affixed gold seal of the Indiana State Department of Education. That class of Posey Township had seven graduating seniors and represented the handful of residents in that rural county who would ever achieve a high school education. 
“A U.S. Department of Education; implementation of a scientific materialist philosophy; studies revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic and other features of the bourgeois ideology; students taught on the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and general ethics of a new socialist society; present obsolete methods of teaching will be superseded by a scientific pedagogy. The whole basis and organization of capitalist science will be revolutionized. Science will become materialistic, hence truly scientific. God will be banished from the laboratories as well as from the schools.”
Probably most of us have seen those sweet and subtle adds on television about the National Education Association and their supposed dedication to educating the children of America. I hate to be the bearer of negative news — but they are all hogwash!
So, Al Capone lives in your city. Do you talk about it? Do you mention that this Mafia guy got his mansion by breaking the law, blackmailing people, buying and selling politicians, not to mention killing people?
The Public Schools system of the US has crashed and burned! No longer are our children the best educated in the world. Now our scholars rank among the less well educated even among a few of the third world countries. This is a shame we have brought upon ourselves by inviting the Federal Government and the Unions into our schools.
Many Americans are coming out in opposition to Common Core. I applaud that. But I have to wonder how many understand that Common Core is nothing more than the move from state standards to the standardization of exit outcomes, nationwide?
Recently I read an article by Gary North having to do with public schools – always an area of concern for me. Ever since the days of the textbook protest in Kanawha County, West Virginia in the mid-1970s, I have had a major concern about public schools and what they do to the children of America.
The Every Student Succeeds Act, which was signed into law to restore greater control to state and local leaders over education, is an opportunity to address problems within our school systems, writes Edward Gaston in LA Sentinel – and we agree.
A court ruled late last November that a school could force a pro-life teacher in Oregon to facilitate classroom presentations by Planned Parenthood.
I consider myself a historian of sorts. For the past decade and a half I have been collecting every document I could find from the period which saw our Republic come into existence. Over the past few years I have expanded my search to include documents relating to the period most commonly known as the Civil War. Over the course of this journey of mine there has been a question that has been repeating itself with increasing frequency: Why wasn’t I taught this in school?
I continue to ask this basic question: Exactly WHAT is the definition of BASIC EDUCATION. I have yet to find a CLEAR and CONCISE definition of what constitutes “BASIC EDUCATION”. We are being told we MUST FUND EDUCATION but there is NO codified definition of what that term means so we can tell if it is what can be used to obtain a job and live life.