Category: Education

Commentary: Cancel Culture Backfires on Its Leftist Makers After Trump Assassination Attempt Remarks

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Donald Trump

by David Huber   In a perfect world, people like Alison Scott, a teacher in the Oklahoma-based Ardmore City Schools district would have the self-control not to post stupid stuff on social media after a U.S. presidential candidate is almost assassinated. The high school music teacher responded to a Facebook user’s post saying they were going to donate $500 to would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks for “tryin’ to save us,” according to a screenshot obtained by Libs of TikTok. “Same!” wrote the teacher. “Wish they had a better scope” — followed by an “oh well” emoji. Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters subsequently posted on X that the teacher’s comments were “unacceptable” and added: “We will not allow teachers to cheer on violence” against President Trump. Later the same day Walters posted “I have investigated it enough. I will be taking [the teacher’s] teaching certificate. She will no longer be teaching in Oklahoma.” As of Friday, the Ardmore school district website had a pop-window notice of a district news release which stated officials had started a “thorough and swift” investigation, and that the district “strongly condemns acts of physical violence and any words that seek to encourage it.” According to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, the Ardmore staff “Master…

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Commentary: Harvard May Never Have to Face Accountability for Claudine Gay’s Actions

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Claudine Gay

In an ideal world, wrongdoers face swift and exact justice for their misdeeds. In reality, the legal system is costly. Justice comes at a steep price, one that I, and others whose works were allegedly plagiarized by Harvard’s Claudine Gay and others cannot afford.

After months of turmoil and legal back and forth, it is with a heavy heart that I announce that my intended copyright infringement case against former Harvard President Claudine Gay and the Harvard Corporation — a legal complaint that would have requested a jury trial — cannot be filed as planned in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. The inability to raise sufficient funds for a trial (a steep minimum of $100,000 to $250,000) and the knowledge that the losing party could be ordered to cover the legal expenses of the victors, to which no limits exist under federal copyright law, gave me pause.

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Medical Internship Program Under Fire for Rejecting Anyone Who Doesn’t ‘Identify’ as Black

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Medical Students

A medical internship program is under fire for allegedly racially discriminating against otherwise qualified applicants, requiring that applicants must “identify” as black or African American.

Do No Harm filed a complaint on behalf of a member on Thursday requesting the federal government investigate an internship offered by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM). The anonymous member was qualified academically and met all other requirements but was rejected because of his race.

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Federal Court Halts Student Loan Payment Program in Another Blow to Biden Admin

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College Students

A federal appeals court issued a temporary halt on Thursday on President Joe Biden’s income-driven repayment program for student loans due to challenges to its legality.

The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which was introduced in 2023, seeks to provide new repayment methods for student loan borrowers, including lowering monthly payments based on income and minimizing interest payments. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals halted the plan in its entirety in order to give the court time to issue a final ruling after also issuing a partial injunction in June.

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Commentary: The Four-Day School Weeks Are a Trend Across America Despite Questionable Results

RealClearWire
School with students learning

Next month, the Huntsville School District in Arkansas will join the wave of public schools switching to a four-day week. 

The shorter school week, which first emerged in a few rural areas decades ago, is now expanding into suburbs and smaller cities. At least 2,100 schools in half the states have embraced the three-day weekend mostly as an incentive to hire and keep teachers, prompting cheers of support from instructors, unions, and many families.  

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Virginia Lawsuits Challenging Year-Old Model Policies in Full Swing

The Center Square
Transgender Protest

One year after the Virginia Department of Education rolled out new model policies for the treatment of transgender students, the ACLU has undertaken several lawsuits on behalf of students identifying as transgender, saying the policies violate state and federal law. 

One lawsuit was dismissed Monday, and the other two will be heard on Aug. 6 and 20, one in federal court and the other in state circuit court. 

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Minnesota Public School System in Hot Water over DEI, Social Justice Trainings Kept Secret from Parents

Peter D'Abrosca
Teacher in Class

One Minnesota school system has found itself at the center of controversy over staff trainings regarding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), along with social justice. 

“Rochester Public Schools provides training that has staff participate in a “Social Justice Stretch” [and] staff are taught to embrace LGBTQ ideology with the ‘Genderbread Person,’ [and] staff are told not to tell parents about their children’s gender identity,” according to a watchdog group called Parents Defending Education (PDE). 

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California Passes Law to Keep Students’ Gender Transitions Secret from Parents

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Gavin Newsom visiting a public school

On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) signed a controversial bill into law that would forbid schools from notifying parents if their children have decided to “transition” their gender.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, polling has suggested that the law is widely unpopular with voters nationwide as well as within California. A poll from Rasmussen in June of 2023 shows that over 60 percent of likely voters in California support schools informing the parents about a child’s desire to “transition.” A national poll by the Center Square in November saw two-thirds of respondents say that schools should let parents know.

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University in Kentucky Suspends Instructor After ‘Offensive’ Trump Shooting Post

The Center Square
John James

A college in Louisville has placed an instructor on unpaid leave after posting on social media he wished the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump succeeded.

“If you’re gonna shoot, man, don’t miss,” John James wrote in all caps on a post discovered Sunday by Libsoftiktok. The statement was made above a screenshot of a news story on the Saturday shooting during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that left the former president and current Republican nominee injured after a bullet grazed his ear.

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Middle Tennessee State University Earns ‘Green Light’ FIRE Rating for Respecting Free Speech

Tom Pappert

Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) last week earned a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Freedom (FIRE), a nonprofit organization that gained fame by defending freedom of speech on college campuses.

A FIRE press release confirms MTSU became the latest university to receive the rating, with the organization noting just 68 other institutions throughout the country have qualified for the “green light” rating it explains” is reserved for institutions with no written policies that seriously imperil student free speech rights.”

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Wisconsin MPS Recall Group Threatens Class Action Lawsuit

The Center Square
Learning

The group driving the Milwaukee school board recall is now looking to file a class-action lawsuit.

The MPS School Board Recall Collaborative said it has filed formal complaints against the city’s school board with the Wisconsin Board of Ethics, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, and the U.S. Department of Education against Milwaukee’s elected school board members. The group is alleging “malfeasance, illegal and unethical activities that cannot be denied by any of the Board members.”

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Defense Department Hid DEI Relaunch in K-12 Schools, Emotionally Manipulates Students: Watchdog

Just the News
Military school

As the Democrat-controlled Senate prepares to debate and consider amendments to the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which already passed the GOP-led House with several amendments supported by Anti-Woke Caucus members, a transparency group is shining a light on the curriculum and vendors in the Pentagon’s 70,000-student school system.

The K-12 Department of Defense Education Activity, probed in a January hearing on “progressive ideologies in the U.S. military,” simply reshuffled its “radical” diversity, equity and inclusion programs and staff after reassigning DEI chief Kelisa Wing and deleting its DEI Division page, according to a report by OpenTheBooks.com published Thursday.

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Audits Find Financial Issues with Some Florida Charter Schools

The Center Square
Classroom

The Florida Auditor General’s office has released two reports that detail significant issues and financial trends in the Sunshine State’s charter schools, charter technical career centers and district school boards.

There are 720 charter schools and charter technical career centers operating in Florida, with the majority in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. State law requires these schools to be annually audited by an independent certified public accountant.

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Corey DeAngelis: ‘Great News’ Universal School Choice Is Included in 2024 Republican Party Platform

Kaitlin Housler
Corey DeAngelis

Corey DeAngelis, a school choice activist and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, applauded the 2024 Republican Party Platform for including universal school choice in its 20-point agenda released earlier this week.

On Monday, the Republican Party unveiled its 2024 platform, which consists of 20 promises Republicans intend to deliver on if Trump is elected back to the White House and Republicans obtain majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate.

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Commentary: The Huge American Sex-Abuse Scandal That Educators Scandalously Suppress

RealClearWire

Every day millions of parents put their children under the care of public school teachers, administrators, and support staff. Their trust, however, is frequently broken by predators in authority in what appears to be the largest ongoing sexual abuse scandal in our nation’s history.

Given the roughly 50 million students in U.S. K-12 schools each year, the number of students who have been victims of sexual misconduct by school employees is probably in the millions each decade, according to multiple studies. Such numbers would far exceed the high-profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America.

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Ignoring Parents’ Objections, Virginia County’s School Board Unanimously OKs Gender Ideology Lessons

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Children in Classroom

A Northern Virginia school district will teach kindergartners about gay parents and middle schoolers about transgenderism in the wake of a unanimous vote late last month—despite significant parental opposition.

The Fairfax County School Board unanimously approved changes to its Family Life Education Curriculum on June 27 that include “broadening examples of family structures to be more inclusive of the many different families in our schools.”

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Duke University Dumped Doc Who Exposed Lack of Evidence for ‘Racism’ as a Public Health Crisis

Just the News
Dr. Kendall Conger, Duke University

Two years ago this month, the University of Pennsylvania law school stopped accusing a tenured professor of making up statistics about black student performance, which she called defamatory, after ignoring requests for the supposedly correct statistics going back four years.

Dean Ted Ruger still sought “major sanctions” against Amy Wax for “intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic actions and statements,” and disgraced ex-President Liz Magill approved a hearing board’s recommended one-year suspension, slashed pay and mandatory scarlet letter in her public appearances.

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California Joins 26 States in Requiring Students Take Personal Finance Class

The Center Square
Students in Class

Over half of U.S. states now require high school students to receive a financial literacy course before they graduate after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill passed by the California Legislature.

With the passage of California’s law requiring schools to offer a course in personal finance by the 2027-28 school year and requiring the class of 2031 to receive at least one class, a total of 26 states now require students to take a course on how to manage money, according to a nonprofit spearheading efforts to pass such laws.

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Michigan Budget Includes Tuition-Free Pre-K and Community College

The Center Square
Gretchen Whitmer

The recently passed Michigan budget would guarantee tuition-free community college for all residents, and expands access to tuition-free preschool.

The tuition-free community college program is paid for by $330 million in taxpayer dollars, an increase of $30 million from last year. The new program gets rid of income caps, so any student can receive free tuition at an in-district community college.

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Federal Court Halts Biden’s Title IX Regulations in Four New States

Just the News
Federal Judge John Brooms

Federal judge John Broomes ruled on the side of attorneys general in Kansas, Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming, claiming that Title IX was meant to protect biological women from discrimination in education.

A federal court in Kansas on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations from taking effect in four states, becoming the latest court to stop the new controversial rules from taking effect in August.

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Pennsylvania State Senate Passes Bill to Help Schools Ban Cell Phones

Tom Pappert
Student with Cell Phone

The Pennsylvania State Senate on Wednesday passed SB 1207, which seeks to amend the Public School Code of 1949 in order to establish a Cell Phone Lockable Bag Pilot Program that would encourage schools to restrict cell phone use among students.

Introduced by State Senator Ryan Aument (R-Lancaster), the legislation would “provide funding to cover the costs of purchasing secure cell phone lockable bags,” which will be available to schools throughout the commonwealth who establish a “policy that prohibits the use of cell phones during school time” and requires students to store their phones in “lockable bags.”

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Commentary: Don’t Let the Department of Education Silence Our Kids

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Moms for America

The Founding Fathers recognized that an educated citizenry was vital to the survival of our republic. Thomas Jefferson, for example, saw education as essential to giving every citizen the opportunity to participate meaningfully in a free society.

Writing in 1818, our third president described public education as “the means to give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business … to express and preserve his own ideas … to improve his morals and faculties … to understand his duties, and to exercise his rights.”

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One of Oldest Women’s Studies Departments in U.S. on Chopping Block, Citing ‘Low Student Interest’

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Wichita State University

Wichita State University is closing its women’s studies department, one of the oldest in the country, due to continuously low student interest.

The Department of Women, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Studies will be dissolved and its degree program will be merged with the English Department, according to an action plan approved earlier this month by the Kansas Board of Regents.

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Mean Speech Not Protected at Public Universities, Appeals Courts Rule

Just the News
Stephen Porter

Faculty at public universities in nine states may have fewer speech protections than they assume following federal appeals court rulings against professors on the political right and left who were punished for perceived lack of collegiality – strong words short of harassment.

But a private university has egg on its face after taking seven months to allegedly clear a professor of wrongdoing for telling anti-Israel campus protesters they are “ignorant” and “Hamas are murderers,” despite having immediate access to both viral video and its own surveillance.

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Tennessee Students Show TCAP Math Score Improvement

The Center Square
Students Testing

Tennessee students showed math test scored improvements since hitting a pandemic low point in 2021, just as occurred in English language arts, according to new data released by the Tennessee Department of Education.

The Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program places results into four categories – exceed, met, approaching and below – compared to student comprehension expectations.

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Commentary: Single-Sex Education Is a Tradition to Reconsider

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All Boys School

The last time I was a member of an officially male group, I was 12 and in the Little League. After that, I shied away from them. There was a nearly all-male Catholic high school I earned a scholarship to, but I chose another school and another scholarship. There were still several prestigious all-male colleges to choose from, but I had no desire to go to those places. Princeton got me instead.

But as I look back and as I’ve grown more aware of what colleges used to be like, I wonder why we take for granted the superiority of having boys and girls, or young men and women, together everywhere and all the time. Shouldn’t there be at least some places that are otherwise? Here, one of the tenets of the progressive creed, that people’s sexual proclivities ought to be championed no matter what they are, is in flat contradiction with another one of the tenets, that all-male institutions are to be eliminated.

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Commentary: Honest Pros and Cons of Homeschooling

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Homeschool

It’s true. Sometimes homeschoolers do school in their pajamas.

But that wasn’t the norm in my home when I was growing up. Generally, my mother kept us to a set schedule. Piano practice was at 8:15 sharp. Math class started at 9:00. The other subjects fell into place around that. Often, we finished our work by lunchtime, after which my sister and I would go outside and play in the woods behind our house, read, draw, or work on some other personal hobby.

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Obama-Appointed Judges Strike Down Parts of Biden’s Student Loan Repayment Plan

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President Biden with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona

Obama-appointed federal judges blocked parts of the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan on Monday in response to Republican states’ lawsuits.

Judge John A. Ross of Missouri and Judge Daniel Crabtree of Kansas blocked parts of the administration’s SAVE plan, which was an income-driven repayment program intended to lower monthly costs for borrowers. The court rulings prohibit the Department of Education from further lowering payments or eliminating more debt through the program, Politico reported.

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Attorney General: Student Loan Ruling ‘a Huge Win for South Carolina’

The Center Square
Alan Wilson

South Carolina’s attorney general called a federal judge’s decision to block part of President Joe Biden’s latest push to delay or cancel roughly half a trillion dollars in student debt “a huge win for South Carolina.”

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree in Kansas and U.S. District Judge John Ross in Missouri issued separate rulings halting Biden’s plan, dubbed the Saving on a Valuable Education — or SAVE — Plan. Republican attorneys general, including South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, filed a lawsuit challenging the plan.

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Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules Against First Publicly-Funded Religious Charter School

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Gentner Drummond

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the approval of what would have been the nation’s first publicly-funded religious school was unconstitutional, according to court records.

Oklahoma’s Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve an application for a virtual religious charter school in June 2023, prompting state Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond to file a lawsuit in October to block the funding, calling it “an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty” and “an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately sided with Drummond on Tuesday, finding that “under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school” and that “as such, a charter school must be nonsectarian,” per court filings.

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Covenant Killer Audrey Hale Wrote in Journal About Training with Firearm She Purchased with Pell Grant, Concealed in Family Home

Tom Pappert
Gun Range

Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote in the journal police recovered from her vehicle about training at a Nashville gun range with one of the weapons she purchased using federal Pell Grant funds and concealed in her family home.

The Tennessee Star confirmed on June 5 it obtained Hale’s journal and a tranche of police documents from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation, and on June 6, including a journal entry in which Hale claimed to witness an accidental firearm injury while training at a Nashville gun range just two days prior to her devastating March 27, 2023 attack.

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State Representative Scott Cepicky: Tennessee’s Public Education Has Opportunity to Be Improved Through Both Universal School Choice Program and Reform Measures

Kaitlin Housler
MPL and Cepicky Interview

Tennessee State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) said the Tennessee House version of the universal school choice bill that failed to pass the General Assembly earlier this year is “eerily similar” to the Wisconsin school choice bill that passed the state’s legislature nearly 14 years ago.

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Nearly a Third of ‘Pro-Palestine’ Campus Protesters Had a Job Offer Rescinded, Survey Finds

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Pro-Palestine protesters

A recent survey found that 3 in 10 college students or recent graduates had job offers rescinded as a result of their “pro-Palestine” activism.

Intelligent surveyed 672 students or recent college graduates who have engaged in anti-Israel activism and found that 29% of them had a job offer rescinded in the past six months and 55% believe there was bias against them in the hiring process because of their activism.

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Commentary: America Doesn’t Need Federal Homeschooling Standards

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Home Schooling

Some of you may remember that four years ago this week I debated Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet who called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling. The online event was hosted by the Cato Institute and drew thousands of participants, including many homeschooling families who were incensed by Bartholet’s proposal.

Now, Scientific American is joining the crowd of busybodies eager to constrain a family’s right to raise and educate their children how they choose. “The federal government must develop basic standards for safety and quality of education in home­school­ing across the country,” read a recent editorial in the magazine.

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Foreign Aid and Student Loan Forgiveness Behind Massive Increase in Deficit Estimate, Congressional Budget Office Says

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Joe Biden

America’s debt is growing faster than previously expected, largely due to actions taken by the Biden administration and recent legislation, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The United States’ projected deficit is $1.9 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year, $400 billion higher than it was projected to be in February, the CBO announced Tuesday. CBO analysts increased their estimate due in large part to the foreign aid package signed by President Joe Biden in April and his administration’s efforts to reduce student loan balances.

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