Sen. Blackburn Slams Department of Education for Funding Professor Who Called October 7 ‘Stunning Victory’

Blackburn and Lummis

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) sent a letter criticizing the U.S. Department of Education after a watchdog report revealed the federal government is using taxpayer money to fund the salaries of multiple professors who hold anti-Israel or antisemitic views, including one educator who described the October 7 attack by Hamas against Israeli civilians as a “stunning victory” for Palestine.

The letter came in response to an October report by Open the Books, a nonprofit whose mission is to “capture and post all disclosed spending at all levels of government,” which revealed the Department of Education funded professors with antisemitic, anti-Israel, or pro-Hamas views at Columbia University, Indiana University, and Georgetown University, as part of two federal grant programs.

Read the full story

Minnesota Public School Teacher Tells Students to ‘Take Today to Mourn’ Following ‘Heartbreaking’ Election

Brian Isles

A teacher at Minnesota Connections Academy, an online public school, sent an email to eighth grade Language Arts students saying he wondered how he “could possibly come to school” following last week’s election of President Donald Trump.

“It’s the fact that it’s pushing an agenda. The Democrats are saying that it’s not happening, but it very clearly is,” Antonio Pici, a law enforcement officer and veteran, shared with Alpha News.

Read the full story

Commentary: Tim Walz’s Progressive Education Policies Could Doom Harris

Tim Walz

Donald Trump currently holds a razor-thin 0.6 percent lead over Kamala Harris in the RealClearPolitics Polling Average for Pennsylvania. With this key swing state potentially deciding the outcome of the Electoral College, Democrats can only wonder how different the polls might look if Pennsylvania’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro – once considered a frontrunner for Harris’ VP pick – were on the ticket instead of Tim Walz.

Read the full story

MTSU Student Logan Birdsong, Who Identified as Transgender Woman, Named in Campus Suicide

Logan Serenity Birdsong

Police identified the Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) student who claimed his own life on Monday as 21-year-old Logan Birdsong, who identified as a transgender woman and preferred the name Serenity.

On Wednesday, the Murfreesboro Police Department (MPD) wrote in a post to the social media platform X that Birdsong is the student who allegedly committed suicide at the James E. Walker library on the MTSU campus, and LGBTQ Nation confirmed both that Birdsong identified as a transgender woman and was vice president of MT Lambda, an LGBT organization at MTSU.

Read the full story

Medical Schools Are Politicizing Health Care, Putting Lives ‘On the Line,’ Watchdog Warns

Medical Students

The report “Activism Instead of Anatomy” from Do No Harm states that diversity, equity, and inclusion politics are crowding out scientific medical education at many schools across the country.

“If medical schools are short-changing rigorous training in science for the political indoctrination of future doctors, there are real consequences. Lives are on the line,” author and senior fellow Jay Greene wrote.

Read the full story

Ohio School District Adopts Controversial ‘Grading for Equity’ Policies

Math Homework

A school district outside Cleveland, Ohio, will have staff read Joe Feldman’s controversial book “Grading for Equity.” 

According to a Lakewood City Schools presentation to the school board from earlier this month, the book will be required for teachers in all grade levels. Critics say the book promotes practices that lower students’ standards, while its proponents say it is more fair to students.

Read the full story

Report: College Enrollments on the Decline as Americans Reject Higher Education

College Classroom

The rate of freshman enrollment at colleges across the country, from private to public, has dropped to the lowest levels since before the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Daily Caller, freshman enrollment at public universities decreased by 8.5% in 2024 compared to 2023, while private enrollment dropped by 6.5% in the same span of time. This comes despite the fact that freshman enrollment rose slightly in 2023 compared to 2022, with a mere 0.8% increase.

Read the full story

Tim Walz Welcomed Chinese Communist Party Officials into His Nebraska Classroom

Tim Walz

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, welcomed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials into his Nebraska classroom while working as a teacher in the 1990s, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

In February 1996, a delegation of three “educators” from southeast China visited Walz’s Alliance High School social studies class “to study the education system,” according to an unearthed Alliance Times-Herald article. However, the delegation included CCP officials who at the time worked for an institute serving a Chinese influence and intelligence agency, according to a DCNF review of Chinese government records.

Read the full story

Commentary: Extending Tax-Credit Scholarships

Students

According to a just-released Education Opportunity in America report by 50CAN, only 39% of public school parents are satisfied with their child’s education.

Other polling results are also discouraging. Released in August, EdChoice’s annual Schooling in America Survey revealed that 64% of parents think K–12 education in America is on the wrong track. Not only is this an eight-point increase from last year, but it is also the highest level of pessimism among parents since the question was first asked in 2014.

Read the full story

Voters Overwhelmingly Say Schools Should Not Keep Student Gender Transitions Hidden

Kids in Class

The overwhelming majority of Americans do not believe schools should hide a student’s gender change at school from parents, according to a recent poll of over 2,200 likely voters.

The issue of parental notification regarding a student’s gender transition has been hotly contested in recent years, especially in California, where the state has sided against school districts that have passed policies to let parents know students are using different names or pronouns.

Read the full story

Report: Arizona ESA Program to Have Long-Term Benefits for Taxpayers, Public Schools

Early Childhood Education

A recent report from the Fiscal Research and Education Center shows that school choice programs may save taxpayers money despite some Arizona politicians’ concerns about oversight of the statewide ESA program.

The report looked at 25 states plus the District of Columbia, including Arizona. The report looked at school choice programs through 2022, but since Arizona’s universal ESA program was not enacted until 2023, the report includes a separate fiscal analysis looking at the impacts of Arizona’s universal ESA program from 2023 through 2024.

Read the full story

Lawsuit Seeks to Stop Implementation of Bible Lessons in Oklahoma Schools

Class Presentation

A group of parents, teachers and religious leaders filed a lawsuit Thursday with the Oklahoma Supreme Court challenging a new state requirement to teach the Bible in public schools.

Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters announced the mandate for children in grades five through 12 be taught lessons on the Bible “as an instructional support into the curriculum” in June, and was quickly met with pushback from schools refusing to implement the rule. The suit alleges the mandate, which allocates $3 million to the Bibles, violates the state Constitution’s prohibition on spending public funds on religious items and is contrary to religious freedom.

Read the full story

State Rep. Gino Bulso Applauds Court Ruling Upholding Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act

Gino Bulso

Tennessee State Representative Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) said Sunday’s ruling in a case challenging the Williamson County Board of Education’s refusal to comply with a state law mandating that all public schools review the content accessible to students in school libraries is a “precedent setting decision” for cases challenging laws made by the Tennessee General Assembly moving forward.

Read the full story

Arizona Apprenticeship Program Investments Continue to Increase

Apprenticeship Program

Maricopa County is adding more funding the ongoing effort to increase Arizona’s trades workforce.

The county has already spent $12 million on the program, but the Board of Supervisors recently cleared another $500,000 to be spent on it in hopes of bolstering sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, and construction in the Phoenix metropolitan area, according to a news release.

Read the full story

Minnesota Teachers Union Conference to Feature Sessions on ‘Pronoun Usage,’ ‘2SLGBTQIA+’ Ideology

Education Minnesota

Public school teachers from across Minnesota will meet in St. Paul Oct. 17 to participate in a conference put on by Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union.

At Education Minnesota’s 2024 MEA Conference, educators will learn about, and discuss, various public education topics in conference sessions throughout the day. While some of those sessions appear to cover noncontroversial topics, others are steeped in what Center of the American Experiment policy fellow Catrin Wigfall described as “ideological agendas.”

Read the full story

Activist Arrested at University of Tennessee Anti-Israel Protest Sues Knox County Sheriff over Lack of Hijab in Mugshot

Vanderbilt University #FreePalestine Camp

An activist who was arrested for her alleged participation in an anti-Israel encampment at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK) in May is now suing Knox County, Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler, as well as Knox County Sheriff’s Office (KNSO) Sergeant Jonathan Burgess.

The lawsuit filed by Layla Soliz explains that she is Muslim and wears a hijab, but after her May 2024 arrest, “Knox County Sheriff’s Office employees demanded that Mrs. Soliz remove her hijab and be photographed without it for her booking photo,” then published it online.

Read the full story

Scholars Refuse to Provide Details on $30 Million Effort to ‘Braid’ Indigenous Knowledge into Science

Professors Sonya Atalay and John Woodruff

Two top scholars leading a $30 million federally funded effort to “braid” indigenous knowledge into science are ignoring requests for comment to explain exactly what that looks like in practice.

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass Amherst) last year was awarded a five year, $30 million grant — the largest grant in the school’s history — from the National Science Foundation to establish a new international science and technology center at which researchers would work to address issues related to climate change, biodiversity, and changing food systems.

Read the full story

Moms for Liberty Defeats School District That Birthed It, Speaking Rules Deemed Unconstitutional

Classroom

The Florida school district that birthed Moms for Liberty as a repudiation of its COVID-19 mandates on their children is parenting the conservative group all wrong, so to speak, according to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Its Tuesday ruling smacked down Brevard Public Schools and four current and former school board members for unconstitutional restrictions on public comments at their meetings in a lawsuit by Moms for Liberty’s founding Brevard County chapter and its members, putting public schools on notice across the court’s jurisdiction of the Sunshine State, Alabama and Georgia.

Read the full story

School Choice Helps Close Performance Gap for Low-Income Students, Study Finds

Teacher and student

Cities with robust charter school programs have drastically lowered the performance gap between low-income students and their peers, a study published in October found.

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) found that student performance rose in every city with a majority of low-income students when 33% or more are enrolled in charter schools, according to the report. Non-white students make up a large percentage of those benefiting from school choice policies.

Read the full story

Migrants Are Overwhelming School Districts in Pennsylvania, Saddling Taxpayers with Hefty Price Tag

Students

A massive influx in non-English speaking students in Pennsylvania is overwhelming school districts across the state, and the logistical strain on administrators could be leaving other students behind.

The number of English Language Learners (ELL) in school districts in Pennsylvania has surged nearly 40% since 2021, forcing public schools to shell out more cash to try and meet the needs of these students, according to documents obtained via records requests and open-source information reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The surge for many schools began in the 2021-2022 academic school year, coinciding with the onset of the Biden-Harris administration and the subsequent border crisis.

Read the full story

ESL Teacher Sounds Alarm over Number of Foreign Students as Taxpayers Spend Nearly $600 Million Educating Children of Illegal Immigrants

Illegal Immigrant Children

A teacher who educates students receiving English as a Second Language (ESL) lessons in Middle Tennessee told Fox 17 Nashville on Wednesday that the number of students who do not speak English is straining the state’s resources.

The outlet reported an anonymous teacher reported 1,000 ESL students in one district, with 120 in kindergarten alone, and that many of the foreign-born students are years behind their American counterparts. 

Read the full story

68 Protesters Charged over Arizona Anti-Israel Encampment at Arizona State University After Judge Previously Dropped Case

ASU Palestine Protest

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) on Wednesday announced new charges against 68 individuals who allegedly participated in the April anti-Israel encampment at Arizona State University (ASU) after the case was previously dropped due to a lack of specific charges.

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell on Wednesday announced new misdemeanor trespassing charges for 68 people accused of defying police orders to leave an anti-Israel encampment at ASU’s Tempe campus in April.

Read the full story

Supreme Court Declines to Take Case Alleging Weaponization of DOJ Against Parents Who Spoke Out Against Schools

children reading time

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected to take on a case that accused the Department of Justice (DOJ) of targeting parents who voiced concerns over school curricula, mask mandates and vaccine requirements.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2021 after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a directive to investigate “threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The case was petitioned to the Supreme Court in July with several parents alleging Garland’s investigation created a “chilling effect on their right to freedom of speech and reputational harm” after they were labeled threats for speaking out against school boards.

Read the full story

Columbus Schools Will Resume Busing for Some Ohio Students

Kids getting on school bus

Ohio’s largest school district will resume busing more than 100 charter and private school students next week as a lawsuit continues over its transportation changes.

Columbus City Schools sent a letter to those parents who rejected payment instead of busing and requested mediation, saying new routes will be added and transportation will resume while the mediation process is ongoing.

Read the full story

CDC: Record Number of Kindergartners Had Vaccine Exemptions in 2023-24 School Year

COVID Vaccine

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday revealed that the 2023-2024 academic school year held the record for the most kindergartners declining at least one vaccination.

The CDC said a total of 3.3% of kindergartners nationwide, equaling 127,000 kindergartners, were granted exemptions on at least one vaccine, which beats the previous record of 3% in the 2022-2023 school year.

Read the full story

Commentary: Classical v. Unclassical Curricula

Teacher and Student

Chad Aldeman, a Virginia-based researcher who focuses on education-related issues, recently detailed the educational experience of his daughter, who completed sixth grade in June. He writes that her teachers didn’t use textbooks, assign homework, or expect kids to study at home for tests, didn’t teach kids to sound out words, and didn’t drill times tables. He also mentions that there were no spelling tests, students didn’t practice handwriting of any kind, cursive or otherwise, and didn’t learn the 50 states and their capitals, let alone world geography.

Aldeman is very concerned by this shift, arguing that her educational experience has “reduced instructional time devoted to science and social studies and emphasized isolated skills such as critical thinking or reading comprehension over teaching students a coherent body of knowledge and facts.”

Read the full story

Former Virginia Teacher Receives $575,000 Settlement After Being Fired over Refusing to Use Transgender Pronouns

Peter Vlaming

A former teacher in Virginia received $575,000 in a settlement to end his lawsuit after he was fired by West Point High School in 2018 for refusing to use the preferred gender of a student who identified as transgender, the conservative legal organization behind the lawsuit announced on Tuesday.

The Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF) announced on Tuesday it reached a settlement with the West Point School Board after the firing of Peter Vlaming, who taught French at West Point High School prior to his firing in 2018.

Read the full story

Minnesota Teacher Fired over Vax Mandate Warns: Gov. Tim Walz Is a ‘Petty Tyrant’ and ‘Not a Man of Reason’

Russ Stewart, Gov, Tim Walz

A college instructor who taught for nearly 30 years was fired due to the strict COVID protocols in Minnesota — just weeks before they were rescinded.

Russ Stewart was an instructor at Lake Superior College in Duluth where he taught ethics, logic and philosophy. The school is part of the Minnesota State System of Colleges and Universities and, as such, Stewart was a state employee.

Read the full story

Arizona State University Scholars Ruben Espinosa and Curtis Austin Condemn ‘White Ownership’ of English Playwright and Poet William Shakespeare

Ruben Espinosa, Curtis Austin

Two faculty members condemned “white ownership” of William Shakespeare and the state’s manipulation of black history during an “Appropriation Series” at Arizona State University last week.

The scholars are pushing for changes in curriculum and leadership that reflect more “diverse” voices. During the panel, they spoke to eleven ASU students in the audience and other faculty members via Zoom.

Read the full story

New Research Shows Students from Schools That Closed During COVID Are Not Returning

Empty Classroom

New research shows that school enrollment has declined in over 5,000 public schools in the U.S., suggesting families are rejecting traditional schools because of the pandemic.

The Fordham Institute’s new study, conducted by researcher Sofoklis Goulas from the Brookings Institution, released Wednesday, found that families were over twice as likely to leave low-performing public schools.

Read the full story

Threat Against Arizona High School Came from ‘Outside of this Country,’ Law Enforcement Confirms

Chaparral High School SUSD

Scottsdale Police Chief Jeff Walther confirmed on Thursday the threat that required Chaparral High School to lock down on Wednesday came from outside the country during an appearance on KTAR News 92.3 FM.

Walther told The Mike Broomhead Show host Mike Broomhead the threat “was from outside the country,” but called police in Scottsdale claiming he had taken hostages in a high school bathroom in Arizona after making a “series of 911 calls.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Contaminating Children’s Minds and Ruining Their Future

Students Learning

In parts one and two of this series, we’ve examined how Democrats and their poisoned ideology have declared war on America’s children. If anyone has any doubt as to the intention of the Progressive left to poison the minds of children and ruin their future, look no further than America’s teachers’ unions, especially Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers.

Historically working in tandem with the Democrat Party, teachers’ unions are intense advocates for curriculum that does not include basic knowledge to get ahead in life. Rather than actual education, its agenda includes social justice propaganda, racial division, climate change dogma, and promotion of sexual deviancy.

Read the full story

Investment Giants Leveraged Texas Universities’ Endowment Funds to Back Anti-Oil Agenda, Report Finds

UT Austin

Several asset managers leveraged two major Texas university systems’ endowment funds to advance anti-fossil fuel shareholder proposals in 2022 and 2023, according to a report from the conservative watchdog group American Accountability Foundation (AAF).

BlackRock-owned Aperio Group, Cantillon, former Vice President Al Gore-chaired Generation Investment Management, GQG Partners and JP Morgan Asset Management collectively manage approximately $4 billion for The University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) as of July, which handles the university systems’ endowments.

Read the full story