Education

A Christian law firm is declaring victory following a court hearing in Florida over whether a Christian organization should be allowed to distribute free Bibles on campus.

Liberty Counsel appeared in federal court, seeking an injunction to immediately allow World Changers to hand out Bibles to interested students in Collier County schools during non-instructional time. Liberty Counsel attorney Horatio Mihet tells OneNewsNow the school board displayed an amazing change of heart at the hearing.

"The Lord showed us great favor, and towards the end of the hearing the school board, I believe, saw the writing on the wall and did a complete about-face." Mihet reports that it "agreed that the distribution is constitutional and agreed to allow the Bibles to be distributed again in their schools"...

(CNSNews.com) - Politics may have played a role in the awarding of some Obama administration education reform grants, say pro school-choice groups that believe the reforms did not go far enough.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced Tuesday that nine states and Washington, D.C. qualified for “Race to the Top” grants in the second phase of a program that rewards states for promoting charter schools -- public schools run by non-governmental entities, which tie teacher evaluation to student performance.

With 18 states vying for a $3.4 billion pie, the department awarded grants to the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Only Delaware and Tennessee received grants in the first phase of the program...

Charlotte, NC (LifeNews.com) -- A national pro-life group for college students has uncovered new information revealing that college students who attend public universities in North Carolina will be forced to pay for abortions via their required student health care plan.

Students for Life of America has discovered that the North Carolina Board of Governors will require all students enrolled in a University of North Carolina public institution, starting with the 2010-2011 school year, to have health insurance.

Students who do not already have private health insurance are required to buy a state selected policy from Pearce & Pearce, Inc....

(CNSNews.com) – A professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), who was purportedly accused of “hate speech” and relieved of his teaching duties for teaching Catholic doctrine on homosexuality in his introductory class on Catholicism, will be allowed to teach the class again this fall.

In a letter last week, University of Illlinois Deputy Counsel Steven Veazie told the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) that the university will be contacting Dr. Kenneth Howell to offer him the opportunity to teach Religion 127, Introduction to Catholicism, as a visiting instructor for the fall semester.

“The University has corrected, for the time being, its academic freedom violation by not just suspending the decision to terminate him, but by bringing him back to the classroom,” ADF senior counsel David French told CNSNews.com. “It’s a huge win for academic freedom"...

An attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is describing the ruling in a case at Eastern Michigan University, which is challenging a Christian's rights to maintain her beliefs, as "open season on Christians." A federal court has ruled in the university's favor, but that decision is being appealed.

Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with ADF, is disappointed by the federal judge's decision because, as he says, "it basically has no respect for the right of conscience of Christians or other people who have sincere beliefs about the proper definition of marriage and whether certain sexual behaviors can be immoral"....

A federal judge has ruled in favor of a public university that removed a Christian student from its graduate program in school counseling over her belief that homosexuality is morally wrong. Monday's ruling, according to Julea Ward's attorneys, could result in Christian students across the country being expelled from public university for similar views.

“It’s a very dangerous precedent,” Jeremy Tedesco, legal counsel for the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, told FOX News Radio. “The ruling doesn’t say that explicitly, but that’s what is going to happen.”

U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh dismissed Ward’s lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University. She was removed from the school’s counseling program last year because she refused to counsel homosexual clients....

A school district in New Mexico is being sued by a group of students alleging discrimination against their pro-life beliefs.

"Relentless in Roswell" is a group of students from two high schools in New Mexico who performed good deeds around campus.

"They've handed out food, hot chocolate, candy canes and other things to the student body without any opposition or even prior permission from the school," reports Liberty Counsel founder Matt Staver. "They've also helped the janitors with trash and assisted fellow students with their lunch trays"...

(CNSNews.com) – A federal district court extended an order on Wednesday that allows a 13-year-old boy to return to his public school wearing his rosary until at least Sept. 10. The boy, Raymond Hosier, had been suspended from Oneida Middle School for wearing a Catholic rosary, which he had worn since the age of seven after his brother was killed in a car accident.

Hosier, a seventh-grader at the school in Schenectady, New York, was suspended for the day on Monday, May 17 for wearing his rosary. School officials claimed the rosary beads were gang-related and that Hosier had violated its dress code, which prohibits students from wearing anything it deems to be “gang related.”

The school’s dress code, however, does not specifically mention rosary beads. But the student dress code says, "A student's dress, grooming and appearance, including hair, jewelry, make-up and nails, shall: ...  read more »

In January 2008, every public school superintendent in the U.S. was sent a brochure called "Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth." It was a coordinated effort by 13 organizations – including the American Psychological Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association – to integrate teaching about homosexuality into school curricula. The brochure promotes the idea that all forms of sexual attraction among students (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual) are normal. Educators are informed that sexual-reorientation therapy can be harmful. It also advises school officials that "gay clubs" should be allowed on campus.

A few weeks ago, America's public school supervisors received another letter, this one from the American College of Pediatricians. Its message was quite different. Here's some of what it said on the issue of sexual orientation and young people...

(CNSNews.com) - Kevin Jennings, the Obama administration's openly gay safe-schools czar who previously ran an organization focused on normalizing homosexuality in public schools, declined Monday to directly say whether the U.S. Department of Education should promote teaching school children that homosexual behavior is morally good.

Instead, he pointed out that Congress has prohibited the department from interfering in the curricula of local schools.

Jennings, the assistant deputy education secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, made a rare public appearance Monday, speaking to a gathering of school teachers at the National Press Club....