New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has found a way to solve the problem of chronically sub-standard public schools in his state, while dissolving the barnacles of public education, and its immense bureaucracy: privatize public education. The first part of his plan would authorize management organizations to operate five under-performing public schools in a public-private partnership.

Not surprisingly, New Jersey teachers’ unions have blasted this move as part of the Governor’s “ongoing effort to privatize public education in New Jersey.”

The U.S. Department of Education does not serve any clear purpose. The Constitution leaves education to state governments as a residual power. In our history, that did not mean states had to provide education to children at taxpayer expense, although that was the rule throughout the states, at least to a certain age.

Are school children allowed to carry weapons to school?  School districts throughout the nation have policies which ban weapons — and even objects that resemble weapons — from school grounds, buses, and events.

A study in the medical journal, Pediatrics, reported on Monday that 10 percent of the sexually active students in New York City schools had at least one homosexual partner and that adolescents who had such homosexual relations reported a higher-than-average amount of dating violence.

There are few bastions left against political correctness. Traditions, like the Confederate flag, have become highly controversial despite the fact that those who wish to honor that flag make a compelling case that their sentiment has nothing to do with racism or slavery. Most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves, and many Confederate officers, such as Robert E. Lee, disapproved of slavery.

Catholic Online reports that Cambridge, Massachusetts, will begin closing public schools for one Muslim holiday next year, with schools given two holidays, Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adah, to choose from. Marc McGovern on the Cambridge School Committee says that the measure is needed to step back from the hysteria which McGovern believes paints all Muslims as terrorists.

Abstinence is the oldest and most effective method of controlling premarital sex, children born out of wedlock, the spread of venereal disease, and many other social problems. The federal government has intruded itself into the education of our children for decades now, without much good effect, though in recent years many conservative-minded Americans have supported abstinence being a part of federally funded sex education. But a federal government that (unconstitutionally) funds public education can not only attach strings to the funding but change the strings. And now, the for first time in more than a decade, the federal government will be paying for sex education programs that are not rooted in abstinence.

Home schooling is growing in America. About three percent of children today are estimated to be home-schooled and that number is growing.

In New Jersey, a program called “Teach for America” is being tested as a tool for addressing the manifest failure of public schools in areas like Newark. This program purports to improve schools by providing them with leadership through this foundation, which combines teaching and administration.

Jeff Laszloffy, president of the Montana Family Council, has expressed outrage at a plan being considered by the Helena Public School System to have sex education begin in kindergarten.