Tag Archives: Topic: Education

Beliefnet News: The ACLU “is pushing its radical sexual agenda for children by intimidating school districts with a long string of scare tactics disguised as a concern over censorship,” says David Cortman, Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. “In truth, these school districts have no obligation to cave to the ACLU’s unwarranted demands. Our children come first.”

Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/news/2011/08/aclu-campaign-schools-must-stop-blocking-kids-access-to-pornography.php#ixzz1W5432Jyc

CSMonitor.com: In an effort to combat gender stereotypes, a government-funded preschool in Stockholm has eliminated the use of gendered pronouns.

The Commercial Appeal: The effort and others supportive of prayers at school sports events is a push-back to the DeSoto County Schools decision to halt prayers over public address systems. School officials made the decision after Freedom From Religion Foundation complained by letter that Supreme Court decisions prohibiting school-sponsored prayer were being violated.

Renew America: Students attempting to enroll in classes at the Christian college had to wade through gay activists carrying homosexual advocacy signs and others from the organization offering students informational paraphernalia on the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender lifestyles.

NBC Chicago: “Would you consider yourself to be a member of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community?”

OneNewsNow.com: “I’m pleased to report that … both the constitution and common sense prevailed in the Lake County School District of Florida,” the attorney tells OneNewsNow. “The school board completed its — quote, unquote — ‘investigation’ and concluded that Jerry Buell has done absolutely nothing wrong, has done nothing that would warrant disciplinary action, and therefore has reinstated him effective immediately.” Buell returns to his job today.

God Discussion: Bohon believes, despite statistics otherwise regarding religion and the American people, which we reported on a few days ago, “that in reality, a majority of Americans are probably more aligned with the views of legal advocacy groups like the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which in a similar case involving the FFRF has advised a Mississippi school district that its officials and students are well within their constitutionally guaranteed rights to pray at school functions.” The Alliance Defense Fund sent its own letter . . . [quoted]

The New American: In reality, a majority of Americans are probably more aligned with the views of legal advocacy groups like the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which in a similar case involving the FFRF has advised a Mississippi school district that its officials and students are well within their constitutionally guaranteed rights to pray at school functions . . . ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman noted in reference to the case. “Contrary to what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is arguing, this is not a government establishment of religion by any stretch of the imagination, except theirs.” . . . ADF Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco noted that the circumstances in question “would be no different from Principal Sparkman teaching a Sunday school class at a church that rented school facilities for its Sunday services. In both situations, Principal Sparkman is acting in his personal capacity as a citizen and has the same right to express his religious beliefs as any other citizen.”

Yall Politics: “Public school principals, teachers, and staff members should not be threatened for exercising their constitutionally protected right to organize and participate in private, religious events in their personal capacities. Contrary to what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is arguing, this is not a government establishment of religion by any stretch of the imagination, except theirs,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman.

The Christian Institute: ADF lawyer David Cortman said that the “ACLU is pushing its radical sexual agenda for children by intimidating school districts with a long string of scare tactics disguised as a concern over censorship”. And he added: “In truth, these school districts have no obligation to cave to the ACLU’s unwarranted demands. Our children come first.” Another ADF lawyer cautioned: “Parents expect schools to be places where their children learn – not places where they access pornography.

The Christian Institute: A ‘sex box’ for primary school aged children which includes a wooden penis and a fabric vagina has sparked a storm of controversy in Switzerland. The box is to be used as part of a radical new sex education programme for primary school aged kids in Basel.

LaTimes.com: The state charter school association has received a $15-million grant from the Walton Family Foundation to add 20,000 more charter school students in Los Angeles and 100,000 statewide.

Religion Clause: Film maker Greta Schiller, working with the National Center for Science Education and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is launching the “Celebrate Science” campaign beginning Aug. 28 in Tallahassee, Florida. A press release issued Monday announced that the Campaign will feature a new film, “No Dinosaurs In Heaven,” in cities around the country.

Olive Branch News: DeSoto County School Superintendent Milton Kuykendall says a group accusing the district of endorsing prayers before high school football games cares more about money than freedom of religion according to The DeSoto Times Tribune.

OK for school district employees to pray (OneNewsNow.com): “Contrary to what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is arguing, this is not a government establishment of religion by any stretch of the imagination, except for theirs,” contends David Cortman of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). Jeremy Tedesco, also of ADF, adds . . .

Christian Post:
David Cortman, the defense fund’s senior legal counsel told the Idaho Press-Tribune, “In our opinion, the court failed to perform any meaningful analysis of any issue in the case including the seminal one: whether there is any educational purpose to ban all religious documents from objective teaching.” Cortman also accused the circuit judges of ignoring the right of local school districts to choose their own curriculum and texts. “Censoring classical books, including religious books, does not improve a student’s education,” he said in a statement. “It harms it.” [more]

LifeSiteNews.com: “ACLU is pushing its radical sexual agenda for children by intimidating school districts with a long string of scare tactics disguised as a concern over censorship,” said David Cortman, Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). “In truth, these school districts have no obligation to cave to the ACLU’s unwarranted demands. Our children come first.” [more]

NCPA Policy Digest: Borrowing looms large in American life from homes to cars. But the explosion of student debt in the last decade is a pernicious trend that the colleges themselves are encouraging. As this semester begins, college loans are nearing the $1 trillion mark . . .

David Hudson at The Volokh Conspiracy: One of the most pressing issues in student-speech jurisprudence concerns when school officials can punish public school students for posting profane, racy, bullying or otherwise objectionable material online. Several federal courts of appeals have weighed in on the issue, heightening the possibility of U.S. Supreme Court review . . .

Bluegrass Policy Blog: “…71% of respondents said that they have trust and confidence in America’s teachers. However, when asked about the teacher unions, 47% say they believe the unions have hurt education, compared to only 26% believing the unions have helped education.”

KLFY.com: An atheist group wants a local superintendent to reprimand one of his principals for allowing a prayer rally to take place in a school.

Dayton Daily News: The debate over bringing creationism into Springboro classrooms ended after a shift in viewpoint by the school board member who started the discussion, which prompted a national response, including threats of legal action.

Houston Chronicle: A southeastern Kentucky public school district had stopped its practice of a public prayer before high school football games.

OneNewsNow.com: “It’s certainly our hope that a majority of the Supreme Court will understand that it’s not permissible for any state agency at any level to completely ban an entire category of books,” Cortman contends. “It’s just another way of the dumbing down of our public education system.”

The New American: David Cortman, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the legal advocacy group representing Moffett and the charter school, told the Idaho Press-Tribune in an e-mail that he is prepared to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. “In our opinion, the court failed to perform any meaningful analysis of any issue in the case,” Cortman wrote, “including the seminal one: whether there is any educational purpose to ban all religious documents from objective teaching….” In addition, he charged, the 9th Circuit panel ignored the right of local school districts to choose their own texts and curricula. “Censoring books, including religious books, is not the proper way to educate children,” Cortman said in an ADF statement, adding: The court’s opinion requiring the removal of religious books to comply with the so-called “separation of church and state” conflicts with established U.S. Supreme Court precedent stating that “the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like.”

Religion Clause: In Britain, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies is pressing the British government to create a new student loan system that is consistent with Sharia law.

FoxNews.com: But when I see that the content involves a token nod to abstinence and an emphasis on “safer sex” practices, I’m reminded of a saying made popular by Alcoholics Anonymous: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

Big Government: Parents in Wisconsin are voting with their feet. Or at least their kids’ feet.
More than 260,000 Wisconsin K-12 students exercise some form of educational choice, according to a new study by the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy.

Desoto Times Tribune: Prayers were scattered throughout the stands instead of spoken over the loudspeaker during last night’s DeSoto County football games after the DeSoto County School Board received a letter of complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

AP: When the nearly 300 students of the Irene-Wakonda School District returned to school this week, they found a lot of old friends, teachers and familiar routines awaiting them. But one thing was missing: Friday classes.

The Canberra Times: Gay and lesbian teenagers could be called upon to star in an anti-homophobia video for ACT schools. Education Minister Andrew Barr has flagged the idea after the Victorian Safe Schools Coalition released a similar clip this year.

Fortune: Brought down to individual terms, a typical Wharton MBA in this class will graduate with average debt of nearly $124,000. With monthly payments of $1,477 over 10 years, the total would come to $177,256, including nearly $53,000 in interest alone. It would be the proverbial bite that would be hard to chew for most because a graduate would need an annual gross salary of $176,560 to comfortably pay down the loan, according to financial advisors. That’s not a comforting thought when the median starting pay of a Wharton grad was only $110,000 last year. (You can crunch your own numbers on an online loan calculator to estimate the impact of your own debt.) And none of these numbers include the debt assumed by students during their undergraduate years.

The Volokh Conspiracy: Student loan debt has grown by 511% over this period. In the first quarter of 1999, just $90 billion in student loans were outstanding. As of the second quarter of 2011, that balance had ballooned to $550 billion.

Charisma: “School districts shouldn’t be bullied into exposing students to sexually explicit materials,” says ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “The ‘Don’t Filter Me Initiative’ would be better named the ‘Public School Porn Initiative.’ . . . “The materials that the ACLU wants children exposed to is sexually explicit enough that just mentioning them in an email to adult district officials triggers an ‘offensive content’ filter,” says ADF Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “The ACLU cannot mask its attempts to turn school computers into porn portals for children with a supposed concern for censorship. Parents expect schools to be places where their children learn—not places where they access pornography.”

ADF corrects atheist group’s disinformation about ability of staff members
to pray on campus when school not in session

Citydesk: But a senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund told the Idaho Press Tribune that his group is prepared to take their case to the Supreme Court. David Cortman said the Ninth Circuit “ignored the right of local school districts to choose their own texts and curriculum.” Ultimately Cortman said he’s prepared to file a petition to submit the case for review by the high court.

WorldNetDaily: Harrold-Claeson has been involved in some of the most notorious child-custody cases, including the case of Domenic Johansson in Sweden. Her involvement so alarmed local judicial officials that they ordered the Johansson family to be represented by an attorney of the court’s choosing instead of Harrold-Claeson. That case is pending before the European Court of Human Rights, where the Home School Legal Defense Association and the Alliance Defense Fund, an international civil and religious rights organization, are arguing Domenic needs to be returned to his parents.

Idaho Press-Tribune: “In our opinion, the court failed to perform any meaningful analysis of any issue in the case, including the seminal one: whether there is any educational purpose to ban all religious documents from objective teaching …” Cortman said.
He said the court also ignored the right of local school districts to choose their own texts and curriculum.

A public high school teacher in California may not be sued for making hostile remarks about religion in his classroom, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

LifeSiteNews.com: Equity policies purporting to combat “homophobia” amount to “ethical cleansing” that aim to eliminate opposing moral views, says the Catholic Civil Rights League of British Columbia.

ADF: ACLU’s ‘Don’t Filter Me Initiative’ should be renamed ‘Public School Porn Initiative’

Liberty Counsel: Jerry Buell, last year’s “Teacher of the Year” at Mount Dora High School, has been suspended from the classroom for a comment he made on his own personal Facebook page, expressing his disapproval of legalized same-s*x marriage in New York. Buell commented that homosexuality is a sin and that seeing two “grooms” kissing on a news story revolted him

OneNewsNow.com: “A branch of UNC Wilmington, a branch of the … North Carolina state government is setting up lists of churches that approve or mirror its views on sexual morality. That’s really outside the balance of what state institutions are supposed to be doing,” contends Travis Barham of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) . . . “Universities are so intolerant in their attitude and unconstitutional in the way they operate,” the attorney contends. “Instead of being the marketplaces of ideas that they’re supposed to be, they’ve become these islands of intolerance; they will not tolerate any views that differ from theirs.”

A long-time educator recently named his district’s ‘Teacher of the Year’ is under fire after he likened same-sex unions to a ‘cesspool’ on Facebook.

ADF Attorney Bryan Beauman at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: Starting this school year, Indiana offers Hoosier families a sweeping variety of school choice options. Despite recent efforts by the state’s largest teachers’ union, those options remain in place pursuant to a ruling Monday.

Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy: Over at Inside the Law School Scam, the anonymous “Lawprof” has some interesting posts, here and here, on why law school tuitions have grown so much over the last 20 to 30 years. I agree with some of it, but I wonder if it’s also missing a significant part of the picture: The combined role of rising law firm salaries and readily-available student loans.

Religion Clause: The Commission adopted the view of the state attorney general that the use of religious documents or texts in a public charter school classroom would violate Art. IX, Sec. 6 of the Idaho Constitution. | Nampa Classical Academy v. Goesling, (9th Cir., Aug. 15, 2011)

WFCourier: The Board of Education’s recent decision to invest more than $60,000 into a Cedar Falls church which will house part of the district’s preschool program has caught the attention of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The New American: Travis Barham of the Alliance Defense Fund, which was involved in the Georgia case, said that whether the Wilmington college is “promoting denominations or whether they’re promoting individual churches … that’s not the business of a university.”

Education News: While the job market remains sluggish, student loan debt continues to rise, fueling fears that a higher-education spending bubble may be underway.

Education News: Parents opting out tend to be white and affluent, said Dr. Wilma Wooten, the San Diego County public health officer. Dr. Wooten said she is not surprised the number of personal exemptions is growing. She said parents are weighing fears of allergies and other side effects associated with vaccines, placing more trust in holistic medicine and spacing out shots.

USATODAY.com: Vanderbilt’s Office of Religious Life recently sent professors a calendar of 2011-12 “religious holy days and observances” and a related policy on student absences. The faith listed next to four of the days on the calendar is “Wicca/Pagan.”

LifeSiteNews.com carries the text of the test.

LifeSiteNews.com: After facing criticism from the media and the Canadian Egyptian Congress, Toronto’s Coptic Orthodox leaders have renewed their threat to remove up to 4,000 families from the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) should it fail to protect Catholic teaching in the schools.

Daily World: A national group of atheists and agnostics has sent a letter to the St. Landry Parish School System protesting a prayer rally held last week at Opelousas High School, and asked that Superintendent Michael Nassif reprimand OHS Principal Rodney Johnson.

Education News: Governors and teachers’ unions are going head-to-head in several states across the country, and the public feels caught in the middle, a new survey on the public’s perception of U.S. schools finds.

Daily World: A national group of atheists and agnostics has sent a letter to the St. Landry Parish School System protesting a prayer rally held last week at Opelousas High School, and asked that Superintendent Michael Nassif reprimand OHS Principal Rodney Johnson.

WTOP.com: The caller, Bill from Manassas, explained he teaches in a Catholic school, where students who had attended public schools would often say they were forbidden from praying or expressing their faith in public schools.

Christian Post: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit filed against a Missouri school district for filtering what it calls “educational lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender content” has no legal grounds or traction and will likely be thrown out, speculated Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) Senior Counsel David Cortman. “There is no basis in law for the claims that the ACLU are making in that case,” he said.

The National Law Journal: Louisiana College has about 1,500 students and is based in Pineville, La. It is owned by the Louisiana Baptist Convention, and the law school’s curriculum will have a Christian focus. Johnson has held a variety of positions with the Alliance Defense Fund, which seeks to “defend religious liberty.”

Americans United: Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the ACLU of Indiana and the national ACLU today asked a federal court to block an Indiana city’s plan to use public funds in support of a religious school.a

ADF attorney David Cortman at FFRF: Imagine No Religion |: Are we that far gone in this country where community members–even those who work for the government–can no longer voluntarily gather together to pray for our students, schools, community, or country? And isn’t that what we do each year at See You at the Pole and on the National Day of Prayer? If FFRF has its way, these events will no longer be “legal” under the supposed evolving, changing version of our founding documents.

WSJ: But student loans are up sharply. There was $550 billion in student debt outstanding in the second quarter, up 25% from $440 billion in the third quarter of 2008.

ABA Journal: The ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has sanctioned Villanova University for inaccurately reporting law school admission data

Beverly K. Eakman at Education News: Most voters today no longer remember a time when the tenets of “progressive education” were not part of their everyday lives. It no longer seems strange to the average parent, for example, that what once gave America its cohesiveness, as well as its economic and cultural “edge” over other countries, is largely missing from the school environment and curriculum.

FoxNews.com: Travis Barham, who worked on the Georgia case as part of the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which has defended Adams in a court battle with the university over a promotion he claims he was wrongly denied, said he’s not sure whether the University of North Carolina Wilmington is in danger of a similar violation. But Barham questioned whether it was appropriate for the university to put out such a guide. “Whether they’re promoting denominations or whether they’re promoting individual churches … that’s not the business of a university,” Barham said. | Daily Mail: North Carolina University Puts Out List of ‘Gay Friendly’ Churches

A judge Monday declined to halt Indiana’s broad new school voucher program, saying the law was “religion-neutral” and likely to be upheld.

The Hill: The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Monday against a Missouri school district for using Internet-filtering software that blocks websites aimed at gays and lesbians.

Yahoo! News: According to the New York Times, law grads need to make at least $65,000 a year in order to keep up with their debt (which is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy). The law school industry has grown rapidly, even as the recession took a big bite out of the number of jobs at corporate law firms. Nine new law schools opened in the last 10 years, and the number of law degrees given out increased by 11 percent over the same period.

“Not Much Good Takes Place at Slumber Parties for High School Kids, and This Case Proves the Point”

The News-Sentinel: The issue of student free- speech rights has always been a contentious one. On one side are those who think school authorities and students exist in a microcosm, with the student “citizens” having the same rights in relation to educators as “government” that exist between citizen and government in the larger society. On the other side are those who argue that students’ rights can be limited by the need to maintain a structured learning environment; these are adults there to teach and children there to learn that we’re talking about, not equal partners . . .

Education News: Vermont Law School, the price of standing on principle was $500,000. That’s how much school officials estimate they lost in federal money every year for refusing to allow military recruiters on campus because of their opposition to the Pentagon’s policy on gays in the uniformed services.

Judge Michael A. Martinez ruled that a voucher program designed by the Douglas County School District violated the state constitution because it sent public funds to schools that infused religion throughout their curriculum, required students and faculty to meet certain standards of faith and required students to attend religious services.

OneNewsNow.com: Casey Mattox, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defense Fund, says the student chapter of the Christian Legal Society was being discriminated against, as it was not included in the distribution of student activity fees. (See earlier story) “Every UM student and student group deserves to have their student fees distributed in a manner that complies with the First Amendment and doesn’t favor certain views over others,” contends Mattox.

God Discussion (includes video): The Allliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian legal defense non-profit organization, received a $3.139 million matching grant from an undisclosed “generous Christian family” to fight discrimination and hostility toward Christians at secular universities.