Star News Digital Media is a Nashville-based company that owns and operates five online news sites – The Tennessee Star, The Ohio Star, The Minnesota Sun, The Michigan Star, and Battleground State News – and publishes textbooks for secondary school students.
Our reporting on K-12 education is based on our philosophical perspective, which is reflected in our statement of principles.
Statement of Principles on K–12 Education
Seven key changes are required to return K-12 education in the United States to its previous position as first in the world. Those changes are:
1. Direct Instruction is the most effective way to teach the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic to K-5 Students, and it should become the preferred teaching methodology in all elementary schools in America.
2. Individual and local sovereignty and accountability should become the required standard for public school governance. School choice must be available to all citizens respecting the right of parents to make the best decisions for their children.
3. The objective of every high school in America should be to equip every student with skills that make them capable of economic self-sufficiency by the day they receive their high school diploma.
4. Civics and the Constitution should be required learning for everyone.
5. Shop Class (learning how to make things, build things and fix things) should be required for everyone, because developing a vocational skill is the starting point of economic self-sufficiency.
6. Home Economics (Consumer Sciences) should be required for everyone, because economic self-sufficiency begins with these skills as well.
7. Classical Curriculum, which instructs students based on the values and ideas of Western civilization, is the most effective way to develop thinkers and virtuous leaders in grades 6-12, and should be the preferred standard in all secondary schools. Character formation and the respect for human dignity nurtured in students through this curriculum provides the backbone for a civil society.
Michael Patrick Leahy
CEO & Editor-in-Chief, Star News Digital Media
Christina Botteri
Executive Vice President, Star News Digital Media
Nashville, Tennessee
October 21, 2019
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Photo “Classroom” by Grand Canyon National Park. CC BY 2.0.
