Less than Half of Arizona School Districts and Charters Affirm They Teach Students About the Holocaust

Only 322, or 43 percent, of the roughly 750 Arizona school districts and charters surveyed confirmed that they are teaching students about the Holocaust and other genocides.

The completed survey, due to the Arizona Department of Education by January 24, 2024, asked schools to show evidence that students were receiving the required Holocaust education. “We surveyed districts and charters to find out if they are following the law, but more than half did not respond,” said Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne in a statement on Monday. He believes new legislation could help.

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Commentary: When Classical Learning Meets Public Education, the Dialogue Isn’t Always Socratic

School Work

The future of the controversial classical education movement will be showcased later this month when Columbia University senior lecturer Roosevelt Montás is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at a national symposium hosted by Great Hearts, the biggest classical charter network.

The views of Montás, author of the widely praised memoir “Rescuing Socrates,” are well to the left of many in the classical charter movement, which is rooted in Christian conservatism. What makes Montás’ upcoming speech so notable, then, is the signal it sends about the movement’s effort to diversify its brand and project a welcoming attitude as it seeks to expand beyond conservative strongholds and suburbs where it began.

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Tennessee State Senator Joey Hensley Explains ‘Present’ Vote on School Choice Bill

Joey Hensley

Tennessee State Senator Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) said he voted present on the State Senate’s version of Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice bill this week in the education committee because he said he believed there needed to be “more discussion” on the bill before it advanced out of committee.

“I was present, not voting, because I felt like we needed more discussion in the education committee,” Hensley said on Thursday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.

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Commentary: Taxpayer U

College Students

The college horror stories are endless. A mandatory Title IX training session at Harvard instructs students that “fatphobia” and “cis-heterosexism” perpetuate violence and that using the wrong pronouns constitutes abuse. Yet, hatred against Jews is tolerated at the school.

In California, community colleges teach that if someone claims they are not a racist, they are in denial and that colorblindness “perpetuates existing racial inequities and denies systematic racism.” A Michigan college held a “queer” abortion stories event earlier this year. The once-venerable University of Chicago is planning to host a “kink and consent” workshop for students, in which the practice of sex play with ropes will be taught.

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Tennessee House Education Committee Advances Bill for School Choice Expansion

School Work

Lawmakers in the Tennessee House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to advance legislation to expand school choice, moving forward the proposal announced by Governor Bill Lee in November.

Designed to create 20,000 new Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for Tennessee students next school year, HB 1183 passed the House Education Administration Committee with 12 votes in favor and seven votes against.

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Minnesota DFL Legislators Want to Enshrine Trans Sports in State Law, Ban Removal of LGBT Flags

A group of Democrats are putting forward legislation to enshrine transgender sports in state statute and ban the removal of LGBT flags in many public places.

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers have signed on to HF 4394 in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Authored by Rep. Leigh Finke, D-St. Paul, this bill would require the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) commissioner to develop a “gender inclusion policy” that must be adopted in some form by school districts across the state.

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Competing Tennessee ESA Proposal Set for Wednesday Committee Discussions

Kids Reading

The Tennessee Legislature’s debate on education savings accounts will continue Wednesday when competing versions of the bill are heard by the Senate Education Committee and House Education Administration.

Both versions involve a significant number of the ESAs, which will start at $7,075 and can be spent by students and families on school-related expenses such as private school tuition.

Both proposals involve 20,000 ESAs statewide starting in the fall with eligibility determined on some level by income.

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Two More Texas School Districts Sued for Electioneering

Ken Baxton Classroom

More public-school districts are being sued for allegedly using taxpayer resources to instruct staff to vote against school choice candidates in the Republican primary election regardless if they are Republicans.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Huffman and Aledo independent school districts on Friday alleging they used state resources to influence political races through illegal electioneering.

This is after Paxton first sued Denton, Frisco, Denison and Castleberry ISDs within one week “for illegal electioneering by using taxpayer-funded resources” to “stump for specific candidates during an election” and/or “promote certain political candidates and policies” related to school choice.

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Yale University Employs Nearly one Administrator per Undergrad

Yale University

Yale University employs more than three administrators and support staff for every four undergraduate students – roughly one administrator per undergrad, according to a College Fix analysis.

Over the last decade, Yale added 631 administrators and support staff to its payroll, according to data provided by administrators to the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

As the university embraced new DEI efforts, the number of administrators and support staff increased by 13 percent, from 4,942 to 5,573, between 2013-14 and 2021-22, the analysis found.

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East Tennessee State University Veteran Memorial Vandalized with ‘Free Palestine’ Messages

ETSU Sign

A veterans memorial at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) was recently vandalized with anti-Israel messages. University officials reportedly told a local news outlet that they were working to remove the vandalism from the site Friday night.

The top of the memorial statue was vandalized with messages saying “Free Palestine,” “We have failed ourselves,” and “How many must die?”

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Report: Ohio School Spending Rising; Teacher Pay, Enrollment Declining

Grade School Students In Class

Ohio schools spent nearly 15% more per student in 2020 than in 2002, while enrollment, the number of teachers and teacher pay dropped.

According to a new report from the Reason Foundation released Thursday morning, the bulk of the inflation-adjusted increase covered employee benefits, specifically teacher pension debt.

The Reason Foundation’s Education Spending Across 50 States showed Ohio’s inflation-adjusted education revenue grew from $14,008 per student in 2002 to $16,064 per student in 2020. That increase keeps it well below the national average, ranking 38th in the country.

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Aaron Gulbransen, Michael Patrick Leahy Slam State Rep. Todd Warner’s Vote Against School Choice Bill

Todd Warner

Aaron Gulbransen, executive director of the Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, condemned Tennessee State Representative Todd Warner’s (R-Chapel Hill) vote against Governor Bill Lee’s proposed school voucher program.

On Tuesday, state lawmakers on the K-12 Subcommittee voted 6-2 to pass the House version of the governor’s school voucher program, which would make Education Freedom Scholarships worth $7,000 available to students in every county of the state.

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University of Virginia Professor Cancels Class to Support Anti-Israel Walkout

Christa Robbins

A University of Virginia professor on Monday canceled her class to support a walkout on campus timed to coincide with voting on a student referendum calling on the school to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

“I’m writing to let you know that I am canceling class today in solidarity with the ‘Yes on Divest Walkout’ that the UVA Apartheid Divest Coalition organized. I realize this issue is polarizing right now, so I want to take a moment to let you know why I made this choice,” Christa Robbins, an associate professor of art history at UVA, wrote in a Monday email to students, reported the Daily Caller, which obtained a copy of the memo.

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Corey DeAngelis Explains How School Choice Vouchers May Motivate Schools to Respect Parents’ Input as Competition Arises

Learning

Corey DeAngelis, a school choice activist and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, detailed how implementing a universal school choice program in Tennessee could motivate public schools to respect and strive to meet parents’ expectations in order to compete with schools attracting families with vouchers.

On Tuesday, state lawmakers on the K-12 Subcommittee voted 6-2 to pass the House version of Governor Bill Lee’s proposed school voucher program, which would make Education Freedom Scholarships worth $7,000 available to students in every county of the state.

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Green Bay School Superintendent Resigns After Calling Colleague ‘Witch,’ Wisconsin ‘Lily’ White on Hot Mic in Atlanta Radio Interview

Radio Interview

A Green Bay, Wisconsin school superintendent resigned on Tuesday after he was captured on a hot mic describing the district as “lily” white and expressing his displeasure at working in a “white district” during an appearance on WAOK-AM as he visited Atlanta to recruit educators.

Former Green Bay Area Public School District (GBAPS) Superintendent Claude Tiller Jr.’s hot mic comments were broadcast on YouTube while the radio station broadcast was on a commercial break.

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Bill Would Expand Ohio Student Access to College Courses

Ohio high school and junior high students could get more opportunities to earn college credits at little to no cost, and more high school teachers could teach those classes under a proposal in the Legislature.

A new bill that passed the Senate and hasn’t had any committee hearings in the House would enact several recommendations State Auditor Keith Faber made in a 2021 report, including allowing students to sign up for the program semester by semester.

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Lee Spokesman Rebukes Claims Tennessee Education Commissioner Lacks Qualifications as Democrats Demand Resignation

TDOE Commissioner

The office of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on Tuesday pushed back on claims by Democrats in the Tennessee House of Representatives who claim that Lizzette Reynolds, the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE), lacks the constitutional qualifications required for the position.

Reynolds has faced calls for her resignation by Democrats since late January, when Democrats claimed in a press conference that Reynolds is not eligible to lead TDOE citing the Tennessee Constitution.

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Feds Fund Training Program to Help Teachers with Gay and ‘Queer’ History Lessons

A federally-funded training program set to take place in July will teach middle school teachers about LGBTQ+ history and provide them with strategies to further integrate “queer” content into their classrooms.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is funding a two-week summer program titled “LGBTQ+ histories in the U.S.” that will instruct 30 middle and high school teachers on “expanding historical narratives” and “identifying pedagogical strategies” in their classrooms to better incorporate LGBTQ+ content. The July session is the second iteration of the NEH-funded program, the first having occurred in 2022, with the two activities collectively costing taxpayers nearly $400,000, according to federal grant listings.

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Democrats Aren’t Sold on Pushing Gender Ideology in Schools, Polls Show

Queer Kids Protest

Democrats are split over whether students should be forced to learn about gender ideology at school, according to polling from the University of Southern California (USC) and Pew Research Center (PRC).

A PRC poll published Thursday found that only 53% of Democratic teachers supported a student learning that “gender can be different from their sex at birth” in K-12 schools. Additionally, while over 80% of Democrats approve of high schoolers learning about LGBTQ topics, only 44% felt that schools should discuss “gender identity vs. biological sex” with elementary students, according to a survey from USC published Wednesday.

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Maine’s Public Schools Purchased Taxpayer-Subsidized Electric Buses but Say They are Defective

School Bus Driver

Maine’s Department of Education is reportedly urging school districts to stop using taxpayer-subsidized electric school buses that were purchased within the last year.

The districts reported problems with the new buses, which were supplied by Canada-based Lion Electric Co., last fall, according to CentralMaine.com. The windshields on the buses would leak whenever it rained, as the glass didn’t appear to be securely in place.

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Georgia Board of Education Affirms Firing of Teacher Who Read Gender Book to Fifth-Graders

Katie Rinderle

The Georgia Board of Education upheld a previous decision Thursday to fire Katie Rinderle, a former fifth-grade teacher, for reading a book about gender identity to her students, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Rinderle, who had taught for 10 years, was fired in August 2023 by Cobb County School Board for reading the book “My Shadow is Purple” which encourages kids to go “beyond the gender binary,” according to the AJC. Rinderle had appealed the school’s decision in September, but the board determined that her firing was not “unconstitutionally vague” or as a result of a “predetermined outcome.”

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Commentary: Foreign Cash Could Be the Culprit Turning Our Kids into Terrorist Sympathizers

Texas A&M

Shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a Harvard CAPS-Harris X poll found that 48 percent of Americans ages 18-24 supported Hamas over Israel. This is in direct contrast to 95 percent of Americans 65 years of age and older who sided with Israel. This stark difference begs the question: why do half of young Americans support a group that has been designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since October 1997? Our ongoing fight for transparency suggests at least some of the answers lie in Qatar’s pocketbooks.

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Commentary: Solving the Literacy Crisis

Reading

Learning to read is trending. The most fundamental of K-12 subjects is fueling YouTube videos and feature stories in People magazine and is now the subject of a report from Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Let’s hope the renewed interest spreads, because a shocking proportion of American children cannot read, and the data have profound implications for these children’s futures—and the entire criminal justice system.

Oliver James is the former convict who announced on social media that he taught himself to read as an adult, which sparked media coverage on how learning to read changed his life. As a student, James had been passed along from grade to grade without learning this basic skill.

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Biden Cancels Another $1.2 Billion in Student Loan Debt

In yet another move circumventing the Supreme Court on the question of student loan debt, Joe Biden announced the cancellation of approximately $1.2 billion in student loan debt for about 153,000 borrowers.

As reported by ABC News, the Biden Administration made the cancellation official on Wednesday, including a draft email that will be sent to all of the borrowers in question. The email will read, in part: “Congratulations — all or a portion of your federal student loans will be forgiven because you qualify for early loan forgiveness under my Administration’s SAVE Plan.”

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Yale University Reinstitutes Standardized Testing in Admissions

Yale University

Another elite university in the U.S. has backtracked on its decision to eliminate standardized testing in admissions after years of following the practice.

Yale University announced Thursday that it would be instituting a “flexible testing policy,” which allows students to submit several different test scores for admissions, including ACT, SAT, International Baccalaureate, and Advanced Placement scores, according to a Yale website. The university said that after performing extensive research, they found that “test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s future.”

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Red States Considering Sex Ed Bills That Would Require Students to Watch Pro-Life Video

Multiple legislatures are considering bills that would require students to watch a video of an infant’s development in the womb as part of their sex education.

Live Action, a pro-life activist organization, created a three-minute video, which shows an animated infant named Olivia go through the developmental process from conception to full term at nine months. Bills have been proposed in Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri and West Virginia to include an animation “comparable” to the Live Action video for students from high school to as young as third grade.

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Tennessee State Rep. Scott Cepicky Says Full Text of Governor Lee’s Universal School Choice Bill Expected to be Unveiled Next Week

Scott Cepicky

Tennessee State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka), who chairs the Education Instruction Subcommittee, said Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice bill, known as the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, will likely be revealed next week.

Cepicky said there was a meeting on Wednesday for the committee chairs and caucus members to go over the bill’s language, making tweaks to ensure the bill will “function properly” and is “constitutional.”

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New Report on Connecticut’s Social Studies Standards Details Troubling Effect on Students

The National Association of Scholars’ Civics Alliance coalition released a comprehensive report critiquing Connecticut’s social studies standards, which is the state’s guide for teachers detailing what students should be learning from Pre-K through 12th grade.

The 34-page report, titled “Disowned Yankees: How Connecticut’s Social Studies Standards Shortchange Students,” details how the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) produced the curriculum, the result of implementing the curriculum, as well as “recommendations for how to fix the adoption process and the substance of Connecticut’s social studies instruction, by substantive revision of the Standards.”

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Denver Schools Facing ‘Unprecedented Challenge’ with Influx of Migrant Students

Alex Marrero

Denver’s public school system has been taking in as many as 250 new students a week since the new year, which it attributes to the increase in the number of migrants arriving in the city.

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero called the situation an “unprecedented challenge” in a message to the community posted on the district’s website. The district said the influx of new students will cost an additional $837,000 “to support additional needs across the system.”

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Head of School at Rutherford Classical Academy Phillip Schwenk Announces New Charter School Will Be Located in La Vergne

Phillip Schwenk

Phillip Schwenk, the founding head of school at Rutherford Classical Academy, announced that the charter school will be located in La Vergne on Ingram Boulevard, close to I-24, and will accept 340 students the first school year.

The Rutherford County School Board voted last April to approve the building of the charter school by a vote of 5-2.

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Goldwater Institute Sues Department of Education over ‘Unprecedented’ $37 Million Fine Assessed Against Arizona’s Christian Grand Canyon University

Grand Canyon University

The Goldwater Institute (GI) sued the U.S. Department of Education last week over fining Grand Canyon University (GCU) almost $40 million.

The fine was purportedly for “insufficiently inform[ing] PhD students that they may have to take continuing courses while completing their doctoral dissertations,” GI said in a press release. GI noted that the $37 million fine against the Christian university “is 10 times bigger than penalties the Education Department assessed against Penn State and Michigan State for covering up the sexual crimes of Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar.”

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Deer Valley Unified School District Board Member Paul Carver Offers Insights for Parents Concerned with K-12 Issues Today

A couple of Arizona’s largest school districts have been rocked with scandals lately, mainly over administrations trying to implement woke agendas.

However, the Deer Valley Unified School District (DVUSD), located in northwest Phoenix and surrounding cities, has escaped much of the controversy. Paul Carver, who sits on the governing board, said he believes it is because his district stresses transparency and teamwork. He said the superintendent has regular interfaith meetings, which have been transferred to Zoom since COVID-19, and the superintendent and many board members try to include everyone regardless of demographics.

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Commentary: Chronically Absent Students Need an Alternative

Empty Chairs

It’s no secret that chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed since the pandemic. As The 74s Linda Jacobson writes, a new analysis of federal data released in late 2023 shows the problem may be even worse than previously understood.

The report from Johns Hopkins University shows that two out of three students were enrolled in schools with high or extreme chronic absenteeism rates during the 2021-22 school year—more than double the rate in 2017-18. (Students who miss at least 10% of the school year, or roughly 18 days, are considered chronically absent.)

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School District Allows LGBTQ Lesson Opt-Outs After Legal Threat by Muslim Parents

Christian, Jewish and Muslim families in suburban D.C. are waiting for a federal appeals court to determine whether their school district can continue requiring their children to read LGBTQ “storybooks” without parental knowledge or consent.

Eleven hundred miles away in a similarly blue jurisdiction led by the United States’ first known Somali-American mayor, Muslim immigrant families who escaped a war-torn country didn’t have to go to court to have their parental rights honored.

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Elite Colleges Reconsidering SAT Score Requirements

Several elite universities are considering reversing recent decisions to reduce or even eliminate requirements for application that include standardized test scores such as the SAT exams.

According to Axios, multiple colleges used the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to weaken the importance of SAT and ACT test scores in most student applications. But in recent weeks, several schools have reversed course; Yale is considering repealing its prior policy of making SAT/ACT requirements optional, with Dartmouth already reinstating the requirements earlier this month. MIT reversed a similar policy back in 2022.

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Los Angeles Private School Forced to Close Due to Homelessness and Drug Use

Academy of Media Arts

A private school in Los Angeles was forced to close due to rising safety concerns as a result of the homeless and drug-abusing population in the vicinity.

As Fox News reports, the circumstances of the closure are detailed in a lawsuit filed by Dana Hammond, the founder of the Academy of Media Arts. Hammond claims that the city’s failure to adequately protect the school from vagrants constituted a breach of contract with the building that hosted the school.

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Commentary: Homeschooling Isn’t What I Expected It to Be

Homeschooling Child

I’ve heard it said, “I was a great parent before I had kids.” The same can be said of being a homeschooling parent.

Homeschooling circles are full of idealistic moms and dads who often have very high standards for themselves and their children. Certainly, having strong ideals can work as a guide and benchmark for navigating what can be a very challenging endeavor. However, these high standards can also backfire and leave even the best of us feeling like failures.

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Vanderbilt Students Walk Out on ADL CEO for Putting ‘Students at Risk’ by Speaking

ADL Vanderbilt Event

Many Vanderbilt University students took seats at a campus speaking event only to leave them because of the event’s headliner, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

Jewish Voice for Peace Vanderbilt, a student organization part of the larger Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) group that advocates for Israel to stop its military campaign against Hamas terrorists, posted a video of the February 15 walkout to Instagram.

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Yet Another Harvard University Official Accused of Plagiarism

Shirley Greene

An administrator of the Harvard Extension School (HES) was accused of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint sent to the school Friday, according to The Harvard Crimson.

Shirley Greene, an HES administrator who handles Title IX compliance, was accused of 42 instances of plagiarism in her 2008 dissertation, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Crimson. The allegations mark the latest plagiarism scandal to hit the university after a string of allegations against high-ranking university faculty members, including former Harvard President Claudine Gay.

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Corey DeAngelis: Vermont Has Had a Successful School Choice Program Since 1869

School choice activist Corey A. DeAngelis joined Wednesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the future of school choice in the U.S., specifically in Democrat-run states.

Leahy kicked off the segment by noting how Vermont has the oldest operating school voucher program in the country’s history with its Town Tuitioning Program.

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Teacher Who Exposed School’s ‘Woke Kindergarten’ Program Put on Leave

The San Francisco-area elementary school whose test scores dropped following implementation of the so-called “Woke Kindergarten” program suspended the teacher who exposed the controversial program.

On Thursday, the teacher who blew the whistle on the program was “summoned […] to a video conference” during which he was told to “turn in his keys and laptop and not return to his classroom […] until further notice,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

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