Executive Director of the Tennessee Firearms Association John Harris and Professional Educators of Tennessee CEO JC Bowman continue their in-studio discussion of school safety on Wednesday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with host Michael Patrick Leahy.
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Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio led the introduction of a bill Tuesday that would prohibit taxpayer funds from being spent on K-12 American History and civics classes that promote Critical Race Theory (CRT), according to a copy of the bill obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Under the Protect Equality and Civics Education (PEACE) Act, federal dollars cannot be used to fund curriculum, teaching or counseling in K-12 American History and civics courses that promote tenets of CRT, including that the U.S. is fundamentally racist. Rubio introduced the bill alongside two co-sponsors, Republican Indiana Sen. Mike Braun and Republican North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer.
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Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) officially opened an investigation Monday into Harvard to determine whether or not the university’s use of legacy admissions violate the Civil Rights Act, according to a letter from the DOE.
The DOE’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) opened the investigation to determine whether or not Harvard discriminates on the basis of race by having donor and legacy admissions preferences after a complaint was filed on behalf of several activist organizations including The Chica Project, the African Community Economic Development of New England and the Greater Boston Latino Network, according to a letter from the DOE to Lawyers for Civil Rights. The complaint follows on the heels of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down race-based affirmative action admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
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Several teachers unions are seeing a decrease in their revenue due to a Florida law that prohibits automatic paycheck deductions, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Florida teachers unions of both public schools and universities filed a revised lawsuit and injunction against the state’s dues-deduction ban that went into effect July 1, arguing that the law has caused the organizations to suffer major revenue loss, according to the Tampa Bay Times. In June, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker declined the unions’ May injunction, arguing that granting one would “offer no redress for plaintiffs’ injuries.”
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Tuition is increasing at Virginia community colleges for the first time in five years due to a unanimous decision from the State Board of Community Colleges.
Virginia’s 23 community colleges are increasing their tuition by $4.61 per credit hour, about 3% of the previous in-state tuition rate. For most of them, tuition will be $158.61 per credit hour for the 2023-24 school year or $2,379.15 for a 15-credit-hour semester. Other mandatory fees will vary, depending on the college.
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The head of the Arizona Department of Education pushed back on a press release issued by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who warned that students participating in the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) program, Arizona’s growing school choice initiative, lose some rights and face unscrupulous vendors or scams after leaving the public school system.
A press release issued by Mayes’ office warned Arizonans that students entering the ESA program “give up rights,” especially from bills aimed at protecting children with disabilities and to access to their children’s educational records. Mayes lamented, “Families should not be denied admission or kicked out of private schools because of a child’s disabilities” and said she wants “families to know that if vendors or private schools” are abusing the program, “the Attorney General’s Office will investigate to the fullest extent of our authority.”
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Yale law library staff denied a reporter access to view the portraits hanging in its building in May and would not confirm whether a Clarence Thomas portrait donated to the library is among them, and this week deferred on numerous media requests asking about the whereabouts of the painting.
College Fix associate editor Maggie Kelly identified herself as a reporter and asked the interior gate attendant several times at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale whether she could access the building to view its portraits. The attendant told her that only Yale law students and their guests are permitted to access the library. He also declined escorting the reporter around the building for a tour.
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Local libraries have become a fierce battleground in the cultural revolution sweeping America.
“Drag Queen Story Hour” and the promotion of pornographic materials in children and teens sections have prompted parents around the nation to push back—and some families to withdraw entirely.
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On Monday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, Crom Carmichael served up a trio of recent events that illustrate how the far-Left is using its position and power to force Americans to accept its ideas about culture and society – even at the expense of its own.
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Many schools in the Washington, D.C., region participate in a program called “No Place for Hate” designed to promote inclusion among students.
At least 143, and possibly closer to 200, are in Virginia and Maryland.
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This week, the Tennessee Department of Education(TDOE) released final data on third-grade retention appeals.
In 2021, Tennessee lawmakers passed the Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act. It set forth key academic supports for third-grade students who did not score proficient on the English language arts (ELA) portion of their TCAP assessment. It further updated requirements for students to move to the next grade via multiple pathways for fourth-grade promotion.
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The latest data dump from the Nation’s Report Card reveals declining academic performance among US students. As with previous releases showing the same trend, especially over the past three years, the solution proposed by many education reformers and advocates is to double-down on the amount of schooling and school-like activities students get.
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Gov. Tony Evers has signed a new law that will change how kids in the state are taught how to read.
The governor on Wednesday signed the plan that will return Wisconsin schools to teaching phonics, and place a huge emphasis on making sure kids can read at grade level before the fourth grade.
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Following on the heels of an expected 6% increase in funding from the General Assembly, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education voted to freeze tuition for the fifth year in a row.
The 6% represents a $33 million increase over last year, though it’s a 2% overall increase because the General Assembly only provides about 30% of the system’s total revenues, Chancellor Dan Greenstein said.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the 2024 education budget with a record per-student investment in which taxpayers will foot all public school students’ breakfast and lunch, as well as pre-kindergarten for some 4-year-olds.
Democrats holding a political trifecta for the first time in 40 years say Senate Bill 173 will improve student success through tutoring, extra school programming, and literacy support.
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U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI-05) introduced a bill that would check the power of the National Education Association (NEA).
The Stopping Teachers Unions from Damaging Education Needs Today (STUDENT) Act aims to reform the NEA’s federal charter and “rededicate the organization to the pursuit of increased student learning and quality education in schools across America,” according to the congressman.
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The Virginia Education Department announced new model policies regarding the treatment of transgender students in the state’s public schools in guidance that separates students by biological sex and gives parents the sole authority to change their children’s names and pronouns in school.
The policies, released Tuesday, deliver on a significant campaign promise from Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to promote parents’ rights, as the guiding principles of the policies emphasize respecting all students and giving parents priority in making decisions for their children.
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The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) released the 2022-23 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) district-level results. TCAP provides insight into how school districts are performing across the state.
TDOE reported 68 out of 141 public school districts had 38.7 percent of students’ scores “met expectations” or “exceeded expectations” across all grades and subjects tested. An additional 19 districts reported 50 percent of students scored in the “met” or “exceeded” categories. Only nine districts failed to increase overall proficiency rates compared to last school year, while 107 increased those rates compared to the 2019-20 school year.
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The University of Minnesota is ditching legacy admissions, a mechanism by which children of alumni get preferential treatment within the admissions process, following a Supreme Court ruling that blocked the use of race-based affirmative action policies, a university spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Supreme Court ruled in June that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action admissions policies were unconstitutional. In light of the ruling, the University of Minnesota decided it will no longer consider race, ethnicity, legacy or employment in its admissions process, a university spokesperson told the DCNF.
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Attorney General Kris Mayes announced Monday that the Arizona Department of Education cannot stop funding schools because of their choice to teach English language learners with dual language programs.
“Only those school districts and charter schools found by the Board to be noncompliant are barred from receiving monies from the English language learner fund,” Mayes wrote in her opinion.
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I have been critical of political spending in education. For several years, whether it was advocacy disguised as philanthropy or teacher union spending, spending by both sectors has weakened the voice of stakeholders, parents, and educators. Citizens are less willing to get involved because issues are now more contentious. Even within Tennessee, too much education policy is being driven by groups outside the state.
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As Wisconsin businesses struggle through a worker shortage crisis, it appears Wisconsin’s public schools are failing to prepare students for the workforce.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce’s latest employer survey finds 73 percent of responding businesses said ‘no’ when asked if students graduating from the Badger State’s K-12 education system are prepared for the workforce.
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Two weeks into her tenure as Tennessee’s Commissioner of Education, Lizzette “Lizzy” Gonzalez Reynolds is garnering positive reviews.
“I found her knowledgeable, approachable, and willing to listen,” said State Representative Kevin Raper (R-Cleveland).
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According to the Knoxville Police Department (KPD), two people were found dead in an abandoned building at Knoxville College when the Knoxville Fire Department (KFD) was called to extinguish an unrelated fire.
“The Knoxville Police Department is investigating after two deceased individuals were found inside of a building on the Knoxville College campus Sunday morning,” KPD said on Facebook.
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Recently slashed fees on the state’s educational savings program could save taxpayers more than half a million over the next year.
State Treasurer Stacy Garrity said the 1.25 basis point reduction will impact 286,000 accounts enrolled in the state’s 529 Investment Plan, netting $579,000 in savings.
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For most Americans, “Mom” evokes images of kindness, courage, sympathy and love. Likewise, “liberty” calls up concepts like individual rights, freedom of expression, equality and justice. Yet, the perversity of the current political environment is such that a parental rights group whose name combines these two words has been demonized by Democrats, the corporate media and the reactionary left. Just recently, a New Hampshire Democrat denounced the group as “Assholes with casseroles,” the Hill ran a story titled, “Six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization,” and the Southern Poverty Law Center added them to its Hate Map.
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Ohio higher education employees “will face personal risk” if they violate the Supreme Court ban on considering race during admissions, state Attorney General Dave Yost wrote in a recent letter.
His office won’t be able to protect public colleges and universities if they act counter to the ruling, Yost wrote, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
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Back in November 2019, the Commonwealth of Kentucky was well on its way to being a blue state.
That is, until the state’s Republican leadership saw the trend and decided to do something about it.
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A university in a prominent Scottish fishing sector cautions its students that a classic Ernest Hemingway novel contains “graphic fishing scenes” that may upset some readers.
Students at the University of the Highlands and Islands are informed prior to their reading assignment that “The Old Man and the Sea” includes descriptive fishing passages, reported the Daily Mail, which obtained a copy of the warning through a public records act request.
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A historic all-boys school in New York City will begin allowing trans students who identify as male, according to the New York Post.
Browning School is an elite K-12 school on the Upper East Side that costs $62,500 a year per student and was founded to educate Percy and John D. Rockefeller, according to the Post. The school will “consider for admission any child who (i) identifies as a boy or (ii) was assigned male at birth, who wishes to join a boys’ school and is well-served by our mission,” according to their website.
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On Tuesday, a new Gallup poll suggested that Americans across all demographic groups are less confident in the institution of higher education than they were several years ago.
According to Axios, the Gallup survey in question shows that just 36 percent of Americans report having confidence in colleges and universities. In 2018, that number stood at 48 percent, which itself was a drop from 57 percent in 2015.
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The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a former Catholic school employee Thursday whose contract was not renewed after disclosing her same-sex marriage.
Michelle Fitzgerald, the school’s former co-director of guidance, filed a lawsuit in 2019 after the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and Roncalli High School informed her that the school did not intend to renew her contract for the next year because she had violated her terms of agreement by being in a same-sex relationship, according to the lawsuit. Judge Richard Young rejected Fitzgerald’s appeal to a previous ruling, noting that she had violated the terms of her contract by entering into a same-sex relationship, which goes against the Archdiocese’s beliefs about marriage.
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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a measure that would prohibit the Department of Defense from establishing or maintaining a Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program at any private school operated by entities linked to the People’s Republic of China, Chinese Communist Party, or the People’s Liberation Army.
U.S. Reps. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., introduced the Deterring Egregious State Infiltration of Schools’ Training Act in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to a news release.
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The recent Supreme Court ruling regarding college admissions has once again thrust America’s educational system into the spotlight. A major question that has come from this ruling is whether America’s children are being intellectually and academically prepared to even enter or succeed in these colleges and universities. The tragic answer is that America’s public education system is failing to equip our youth with the tools necessary to succeed in higher education and in their future professional lives. We are failing America’s most valuable asset—our children.
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Approximately 25 percent of citations in leading history journals were found to be inaccurate in a recent study published by a trio of academic researchers.
The researchers analyzed five of the top history journals and found that 24.27 percent of citations “do not substantiate the propositions for which they are cited.”
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A major benefactor is pulling funding from Arizona State University amid the firing of an ASU staff member who hosted an event featuring conservatives Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager.
Tom Lewis of the T.W. Lewis Foundation previously helped fund ASU’s T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development, which is housed in Barrett, The Honors College, at ASU.
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A program designed to remove financial barriers for potential teachers to enter the profession is undergoing modification. As a result, some prospective teachers may find themselves financially unable to participate.
The new changes potentially put the program at odds with its original goals. Compounding the issue is a lack of transparency by both the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) and the Tennessee Grow Your Own Center.
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A comprehensive report by an organization that seeks to protect health care from discriminatory ideology has published a report that finds Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine is steeped in teaching medicine through the lens of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda, and notes the school will need to examine its admissions processes to align with the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action ruling.
The report, by Do No Harm, is released in the wake of the Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down affirmative action policies in school admissions.
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Nearly 400 Pennsylvania State University professors have signed a letter that defends antiracism teaching and administrative practices targeted in a lawsuit objecting to giving black students inflated grades.
The four-paragraph “Letter in Support of Antiracist Faculty at Penn State” denigrates a recent lawsuit filed against the university by Zack De Piero, who taught English at the school’s Abington campus and has since filed a lawsuit that alleges he was discriminated against because of his race. He is white.
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The Department of Education (DOE) announced Friday that it will automatically forgive $39 billion of student loan debt for more than 804,000 borrowers, following a recent ruling by the Supreme Court that blocked the administration’s plan to grant forgiveness to nearly 40 million Americans.
The DOE will start notifying borrowers Friday that their federal student loans “will be automatically discharged in the coming weeks,” according to a DOE press release. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June that the Biden administration cannot use executive power to cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt for non-Pell Grant recipients and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
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Arizona school district administrators advised social workers to conceal students’ gender transitions from their parents, a former school social worker told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Cyndi O’Brien, a former social worker at Scottsdale Unified School District, recounted a September 2022-2023 meeting where she says district social workers were told that they were not required to call parents if a child comes out as transgender during a counseling session. Instead, O’Brien says social workers were told to only disclose this information if a parent or guardian explicitly asks about it. O’Brien first wrote her story anonymously for Scottsdale Unites For Education Integrity, a parental rights group, before sharing her identity with the DCNF.
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Author and journalist Chris Rufo presents The Transgender Empire, a new video about the evolution of the transgender movement and its political mission to change American culture forever.
In the video, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, Rufo details how the transgender movement has taken hold of American life via LGBTQ activist teachers, who have transformed classrooms into propaganda mills, social media influencers, and a predatory transgender medicine industry.
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A report released Monday indicates Virginia’s K-12 education system has received inadequate state funding for years — and Republicans and Democrats are blaming each other for the results.
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission staff reviewed Virginia’s K-12 funding formula – the mechanism used to determine the state’s education budget – upon being directed to do so by the 2021 General Assembly and shared its findings and recommendations in the report.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order establishing the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential, or MiLEAP.
MiLEAP is meant to improve education outcomes from preschool through postsecondary by establishing clear metrics, collaborating with cross-sector leaders at the local, regional, and state level, and developing a shared action plan.
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Arizona State University and Applied Materials, Inc., aided by the Arizona Commerce Authority, formed an alliance to bring more than $270 million to create the Materials-to-Fab Center in the university’s MacroTechnology Works building at ASU Research Park.
The MTF Center will create a world-class shared research, development, and prototyping facility.
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Historically, unions have done some remarkable work in the private sector. However, union officials in the early 1950s began to capitalize on the many extraordinary powers and immunities that were created by legislatures and the courts. This allowed union bosses to no longer depend on rank-and-file workers’ input or support. Starting in the late 1950s, public-sector unions started to grow, and private-sector unions began to decrease.
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The California State Parent Teacher Association (PTA) is co-sponsoring a bill that seeks to establish a framework for parenting that enshrines in law the idea that failing to affirm a child’s self-identified gender will be considered detrimental to his or her well-being, a press release from Capitol Resource Institute (CRI) announced Monday.
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The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) runs a program to help art teachers create anti-racist curriculum.
“In this three-day long summer 2023 institute, participants will have an opportunity to deepen their understanding of culturally responsive and ant-racist curriculum development in and through the arts as it relates to Ethnic Studies,” MDE explains of an upcoming course that is an optional aspect of a program funded by the U.S. Department of Education and led by MDE’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Center.
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Abortion and transgender hormone giant Planned Parenthood is drawing teens to its “Sex Ed Summer Camp” in late July with the promise of a $150 gift card to those who complete the program.
“Sex Ed Summer Camp is a sexual health peer education certification program,” Planned Parenthood states about its camp for 15-18 year-olds to be held July 24-28 in Mankato, Minnesota. “Participants will use knowledge they learn to educate friends and peers. Topics covered include sexual anatomy, birth control methods, sexually transmitted infections, healthy relationships and consent, and more!”
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New York University (NYU) held an antiracist workshop series during the spring semester for white public school parents to reflect on “white supremacy” in their communities, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The series was put on by NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools (MCRETS) from February to June and cost $360 per person to attend, according to a now-deleted website. Parents attended five different meetings to discover how to become allies to minority parents and students and discuss how “internalized white superiority shows up in our actions, relationships, and institutions.”
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