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Does questioning the idea of macroevolution, and random genetic mutation from species-to-species make you an ignorant, Christian-Conservative, fundamentalist nutjob who believes that a flying spaghetti monster created the universe? Or does being skeptical make you a REAL scientist? Are there more than two possible explanations for the origin of Life?....

Called the California Private Postsecondary Act of 2009, the law will require flight schools to pay a yearly fee and open their books to regulators. Flight schools will be required to pay an initial $5,000 fee, followed by a $1,000 annual fee, and 0.75 percent of yearly revenue to the program, which aims to 'protect the financial well-being' of students in case the school goes out of business.

In testimony to Congress Wednesday, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a startling claim: This year, up to 82 percent of public schools could "fail" the government's "No Child Left Behind" standards.

"No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now," he said, according to a transcript provided by the Department of Education.

State education officials have ordered the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools to immediately implement a plan that balances the district's books by closing half its schools. The Detroit News says the financial restructuring plan will increase high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidate operations. Officials say that the plan would wipe out the district's $327 million deficit by 2014.

In a disastrous move that many will probably view as Holocaust denial, Culpeper County Public Schools pulled Anne Frank's diary from the curriculum and from the shelves, because the book contained references to sexuality. School districts continually prove that they are more worried about political correctness (which most of the time is bigotry in disguise anyway) and appeasing often only one critical parent than about educating children. Common sense does not seem to apply these days when it comes to evaluating the historical and social values of various pieces of literature.

In what critics are seeing as an ultimate power grab, state officials in Connecticut are pushing forward a bill to require state investigations of children like never before – calling for a “confidential behavioral health assessment” of every public school student in grades 6, 8, 10 and 12, and every homeschool student at ages 12, 14 and 17.

The proposed Bill 374 is being described as the ultimate home invasion.

Earlier today, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against New Hampshire’s School Choice Scholarship Act of 2012, which offers tax credits worth 85% of corporate donations to registered, non-profit scholarship organizations that fund low- and middle-income students attending non-public or home schools. The ACLU argues that since parents can use the scholarships at religious schools, the law violates two provisions of New Hampshire’s constitution: the historically anti-Catholic “Blaine Amendment” and the “compelled support” clause.

Historians on Tuesday criticized proposed revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum, saying that many of the changes are historically inaccurate and that they would affect textbooks and classrooms far beyond the state's borders. The changes, which were preliminarily approved last week by the Texas board of education and are expected to be given final approval in May, will reach deeply into Texas history classrooms, defining what textbooks must include and what teachers must cover.

A 12-year-old Minnesota girl was reduced to tears while school officials and a police officer rummaged through her private Facebook postings after forcing her to surrender her password, an ACLU lawsuit alleges. The claims are the latest in a string of tales showing that even password-protected, private online activities might not be safe from curious government agencies and schools.