A former student at Oakland University in the suburbs of Detroit is suing the school for over $2.2 million after he was kicked out in September 2011 for penning a salacious essay entitled “Hot for Teacher,” the Daily Caller reports. Joseph Corlett, 57, a builder who now resides in Florida, filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, reports the Detroit Free Press. He claims the public university violated his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. He says he also suffered mental anguish and humiliation when he was forced to leave the school. The suit names the school’s board of trustees and two high-ranking officials as defendants. When Corlett wrote the essay, he was majoring in writing and rhetoric and working toward a bachelor’s degree. The class at issue was English 380: Advanced Critical Writing. The comely blond instructor was Pamela Mitzelfeld…
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Chicago public schools will start sex education in kindergarten
The dismally low graduation rate for students who attend Chicago Public Schools is barely over 60 percent – substantially lower than the national rate of roughly 75 percent, the Daily Caller reports. Nevertheless, citizens of the Second City will surely take heart, because the Chicago Board of Education just passed a new policy that requires sex education to begin in kindergarten. The new policy, which was passed on Wednesday, according to ABC News, is part of a broader makeover of the school district’s sexual health program. Sometime within the next two years, students in every grade, including kindergarten, will be required to spend a certain amount of time on the birds and the bees. Mandated sex-ed for Chicago kindergartners will include instruction about male and female anatomy and reproduction. It’s not clear exactly how much detail five- and six-year-olds will be taught concerning the more sophisticated uses for their genitals…
…Read MoreNew York City public schools stealthily gave thousands of teens free morning-after pills
Students in New York public schools can frolic in all the unprotected sex they want without fretting over the natural consequences, thanks to the largesse of the Bloomberg administration, the Daily Caller reports. New York City, which is in debt to the tune of $110 billion, according to Crain’s New York Business, used 40 individual “school-based health centers” to lavish nearly 13,000 free doses of the “morning-after pill” Plan B on students during the 2011-12 school year, the New York Post reports. That number is an increase from 10,720 in 2010-11 and just over 5,000 in 2009-10. Plan B is an emergency oral contraceptive which can abort zygotes when taken up to 72 hours after sexual intercourse…
…Read MoreClassic literature to be dropped from high schools in favor of ‘informational texts’
If you really want to hear about it, new educational standards now approved in 46 out of 50 states mandate that nonfiction books constitute at least 70 per cent of the texts high-school students read, the Daily Caller reports. As a result, The Telegraph reports, literature classics such as The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are about to be replaced by insulation manuals and dated dispatches from the Federal Reserve. Common Core State Standards call for the new, notably nonfiction-heavy reading regime to be fully in place by 2014. English teachers nationwide have about a year to decide which novels, short stories and poems to eliminate, according to the Washington Post. Great novels will be largely replaced by “informational texts.” Examples include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and “FedViews” by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (2009). The suggested nonfiction list includes undeniably important works as well, such as the Declaration of Independence and Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”
…Read MoreThreat of legal action leads state to cancel school Christmas concert
The Hawaii Department of Education canceled a beloved annual Christmas concert by the Moanalua High School orchestra only four days before the event, following legal complaints by an First Amendment advocacy organization, the Daily Caller reports. Mitch Kahle, founder of the Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and Church, wrote a letter to the Department threatening a lawsuit because of New Hope Church’s involvement in the concert, according to Hawaii News Now. New Hope Church manages ticket sales and sells tickets to the concert at its services, sending all proceeds to charitable causes. In recent years, the church has raised more than $200,000 through ticket sales for a charity that treats poor people in Africa…
…Read MorePublic school teachers in hot water after bashing Obama on Facebook
Two public school teachers have found themselves in hot water at work after posting messages critical of President Barack Obama to their personal Facebook pages, the Daily Caller reports. After last Tuesday’s election, according to ABC affiliate WSOC-TV, South Carolina-based eighth-grade math teacher Sharon Aceta updated her status on Facebook with this sarcastic message: “Congrats Obama. As one of my students sang down the hallway, ‘We get to keep our food stamps’ …which I pay for because they can’t budget their money… and really, neither can you.” A spokesperson for Rawlinson Road Middle School, Aceta’s employer, said that multiple people had contacted the school with complaints…
…Read MoreNew research: School choice has positive impact on college achievement gap
As U.S. politicians continue to debate the merits of allowing parents to choose their children’s schools, research financed by the Department of Education has found that school choice programs significantly improve the future educational prospects of children who might otherwise attend lower quality schools, reports the Daily Caller. On Monday the National Bureau of Economic Research released a working paper written by Harvard, Dartmouth and Brown University researchers, providing “the first evidence of the impact of school choice on the college achievement gap.”
…Read MoreGOP Senator: ‘No Child Left Behind’ waivers are illegal
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio wrote to Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday, criticizing an Obama administration plan to grant No Child Left Behind waivers to states that adopt national standards backed by the administration, the Daily Caller reports. “I am concerned,” Rubio’s letter says, “that the administration’s requirements for granting a waiver from NCLB would entail states having to adopt a federally-approved ‘college and career ready’ curriculum: either the national Common Core standards, or another federally-approved equivalent.”
…Read MoreInner city parents protest NAACP, teachers’ union
According to the Daily Caller, minority parents in New York have a message for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT): you are hurting our children. In New York Monday, charter school parents staged another of several rallies to voice opposition to a lawsuit brought by the UFT and NAACP against the New York City Department of Education. If the organizations are successful with their suit, it would prevent enrollment or re-enrollment in 17 charter schools and stop the closure of 22 public schools…
…Read More