Education

Will yet another example of rhetorical intemperance by an Obama administration official get a free pass? So far it mostly has. A Washington Post item by Valerie Strauss at its "Answer Sheet" blog quotes a dispatch from Libbly Nelson at the Politico, but does not link to it. I couldn't find a related original story by Nelson at her Politico archive or in a Politico search on Education…

As NewsBusters reported, former Florida governor Jeb Bush pounded public school activist Matt Damon in August for putting his kids in private school. Damon gave CNN's Jake Tapper a rather lame excuse for this in an online segment of their interview Friday while claiming, "I'd eat my shoe if he could name a Bush that ever even walked into a public school" (video follows with transcript and…

The student health care plan offered by Bowie State University, Maryland's oldest historically black college, is an example of one of those "substandard" plans President Obama, the Affordable Care Act's architects, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have been determined to extinguish. Well, they've gotten their way. Rather than continue a plan whose costs would have gone from $54 to $900 per…

In 2007, a group of governors and state education chiefs got together to try to remedy the declining and degraded U.S. public academic system. Their goal was to establish a new set of standards that better prepared kids for college, careers and their ever-changing, hyper-connected and globally competitive world. In short, as a result, the Common Core State Standards were born.

Recently declared Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis had a really, really bad opening round of campaign appearances. Naturally, the national press, which swooned over the Fort Worth Democrat's ultimately failed filibuster against a common-sense pro-life law in the Lone Star State's legislature, pretended not to notice. They had local help. On Wednesday, At The Monitor in McAllen, Texas…

"The chancellor of the University of Kansas announced Thursday that a journalism professor suspended over a tweet that angrily targeted the National Rifle Association after the Navy Yard shootings will not return to his classroom in 2013," John Milburn of the Associated Press reported yesterday. "[David] Guth will be given nonclassroom assignments, including service and administrative duties,…

As I've documented in the past, many leftist teachers teach our youngsters to hate our country. For example, University of Hawaii Professor Haunani-Kay Trask counseled her students, "We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it." Some universities hire former terrorists to teach and indoctrinate students.…

For all his accomplishments, Henry Louis Gates might be doomed to being best remembered as the man whose arrest led to the "Beer Summit." But the Harvard prof had something surprising to say on today's Morning Joe: Gates questioned the need for affirmative action for affluent African-Americans, saying instead such programs should seek to help poor people, regardless of race. Gates made the…

Trade-offs apply to our economic lives, as well as our political lives. That means getting more of one thing requires giving up something else. Let's look at some examples. Black congressmen and black public officials in general, including Barack Obama, always side with teachers unions in their opposition to educational vouchers, tuition tax credits, charter schools and other measures that…

According to one Christopher Lamb, Kansas University professor David Guth is simply guilty of choosing "the wrong shooting to criticize the NRA." What's more, insists Lamb, Guth -- who, you may recall, wished damnation and death on NRA members and their children, respectively -- was a victim of the breezy nature of Twitter, which is prone to "misinterpretations" because of its "140-character"…

On Thursday, Ken Shepherd at NewsBusters noted that Kansas University journalism professor David Guth, in the wake of Monday's Navy Yard murders, tweeted, "The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you." In an update which now also includes a defense of Guth by a former student, Ken noted that he has placed on administrative…

We already know that, in Michelle Goldberg's overactive imagination, evangelical Christians are theocrats-in-waiting, hoping to impose an actual honest-to-goodness theocracy on America. So it should come as no surprise that she seems to think homeschooling is a convenient excuse for child-abusing whackjobs to harm their kids. The way she writes about it, you'd think every other homeschooling…

The Associated Press, in story carried at Channel 6 in Lawrence, reported (HT Twitchy) that a Kansas University professor has been "placed on administrative leave" after he issued the following tweet concerning Monday's Navy Yard murders: "The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you." A NewsBusters post by Ken Shepherd…

Update #2 (Sept. 20; 5:43 p.m. EDT): A former student of Prof. Guth's, who says he's a conservative and NRA member, emailed me to object to my characterization of his former instructor. See below the page break for his email, which he assented for me to publish, with his name redacted. Update #1 (Sept. 20; 12:55 p.m. EDT): Kansas University has put Guth on administrative leave. Read Kat Timpf…