Georgian Chase Oliver, a Libertarian who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2022 and has launched a 2024 presidential bid, wants to end the U.S. Department of Education and return the money to the states.
Oliver said schools have turned into a political hot potato, and conversations have turned to whether school libraries should allow certain books.
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Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) has committed to the purchase of 3,300 shelter-in-place backpacks at a cost not to exceed $427,905. Officially known as “Complete Shelter in Place Emergency Preparedness Backpacks”, they are designed to ensure schools are prepared should students need to shelter in place as a result of a variety of emergency situations.
At last week’s board meeting, the MNPS school board committed to the purchase of the bags for the upcoming school year.
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Learning losses for Michigan students during the COVID-19 pandemic could result in a combined lifetime income loss exceeding $19 billion, according to research from Harvard and Stanford universities.
The Education Recovery Scorecard was released this week by Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford. The scorecard measures learning loss in 40 states between 2019 and 2022, and estimates how much earnings will be subtracted from students’ lifetime earnings.
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The University of Wisconsin (UW) System will no longer require new employees to submit statements outlining their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), CBS 58 Newsroom reported.
UW System President Jay Rothman announced the decision to end diversity statements to lawmakers on Thursday while delivering testimony in front of the state House of Representatives, according to CBS 58. Republican lawmakers, who have expressed interest in eliminating DEI programs, had threatened to cut campus state funding, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
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A new O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) video shows University of St. Thomas Associate Director of Residence Life Zoe Chang stating that the school allows biological males who identify as women to share living spaces with females.
This, according to Chang, is done as discreetly as possible in order to avoid upsetting parents. The video, OMG said in an email, documents the “mountain of rule changes and preferential treatment provided to trans students when it comes to their housing accommodations.”
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I was surprised by the Williamson County School Board’s recent call for action to Governor Lee, especially in how it seems to differ with a resolution that the Williamson County Republican Party released weeks earlier. What is most apparent in the Covenant School tragedy is that another deranged assassin targeted what is essentially a gun free zone. We will never know what might have happened if willing teachers or administrators received proper training and were allowed to carry firearms to protect the children entrusted to their care. Clearly, the bias against the 2nd Amendment has cost us an incalculable price once again.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has announced a grant program to improve student safety by beefing up security infrastructures in schools of higher needs.
The Stronger Connections program is a $16.4 million competitive grant program aimed at improving school security to curb assaults on schools, which may be vulnerable to attacks.
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In Michigan, local school district evaluations stated that there were only 165 teachers out of the 115,910 evaluated in 2021-22 that were found to be “inefficient.”
Statistically, that translated to 0%. In fact, 99% of all Michigan public school teachers last year were rated either as “highly efficient” or “efficient,” the highest two of four evaluation categories.
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Nickelodeon’s Transformers: Earthspark cartoon has recently fallen prey to woke transgender ideology as the franchise that, for years, has caught children’s attention with creative and action-packed battles of good guys vs. bad guys, now includes discussions about “pronouns,” and “non-binary” beings.
In one clip from November, Morgan Malto, the lead nine-year-old character, instructs Optimus Prime, an old-timer robot, on why robot Nightshade uses different pronouns.
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The parents of internationally known Ontario high school student Josh Alexander have been suspended from their teaching posts in another board and placed under investigation over what appears to be their son’s outspoken views against his Catholic school board’s cave to the LGBTQ agenda.
“From the beginning, I understood the consequences my actions may have and I was willing to take that stand and face the consequences,” Alexander told The Epoch Times, according to a report Thursday.
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Videos and other documents obtained by Parents Defending Education (PDE) have revealed an elementary school in Portland, Maine, cancelled its math and literacy classes to enable teachers to organize students in a social justice march that included children chanting “Black Lives Matter (BLM)” and waving signs.
The national parental rights organization that opposes indoctrination in schools submitted a public records request to Portland Public Schools for the documents and emails related to the BLM march that was reported to have been originally planned at Presumpscot Elementary School on February 28 – the end of “black history month,” but was ultimately delayed until March 3.
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The Metro Nashville Public Schools(MNPS) board revealed its proposed budget on Tuesday for the upcoming 2023 -2024 school year. The requested budget 0f over $1.2 million is drawn from the aspirational budget submitted to Mayor John Cooper by MNPS. It reflects the additional $100 million in school funding included in his proposed Metro budget.
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The latest plan to limit the books on school library shelves in Wisconsin could lead to lawsuits over “obscene materials.”
State Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, and Republican state Sen. Andre Jacque, R-DePere, are looking for support for their plans to ban material they deem obscene from school libraries, as well as allow parents to sue librarians if they break the law.
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A new mechatronics lab at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) opened to prepare its College of Engineering and computer science students for post-graduation careers.
UTC describes mechatronics as the “combination of mechanical engineering with electronics, electrical circuits, control mechanisms and software engineering.”
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Indiana scored the latest school choice victory with nearly all, save for 3.5 percent of families with school-age children, qualifying for the state’s new voucher program, The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted last week.
“The hits keep coming on school choice in Republican-run states,” The Journal editors observed, detailing:
The new law raises the income cap to 400% of the free- and reduced-price lunch income level, which is now about $220,000 for a family of four. The bill also removes the other criteria for eligibility so that any family under the income limit can apply. Tens of thousands of additional students could qualify, and a legislative analysis projects that some 95,000 students might use the program in 2025, up from about 53,000 in 2023.
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A South Carolina parent challenged the school board of Richland School District Two in Columbia where Blythewood High School (BHS) hosted the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) “No Place for Hate” program that invites children to “explore identity,” and “apply this understanding to recognize the relationship between identity, bias and power.”
ADL’s No Place for Hate program also seeks to “build the capacity to recognize and confront bias within oneself, others and institutions. Examine the relationship between individual biases and systemic oppression, including the impact of intersecting oppressions.”
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Campus Reform surveyed the entire US and found instances of K-12 public school districts carrying children’s books with messaging about “gender identity,” some including sexually explicit material.
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A video depicting a female student pepper-spraying a male teacher at Antioch High School (AHS) went viral over the weekend. The minute-and-a-half video, surfacing on Friday, shows the confrontation between the two after the educator confiscated a cell phone from the student for using it during an exam in the classroom. The student was asked repeatedly to put the phone away, The New York Post reported.
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House of Delegates Speaker Todd Gilbert has requested the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) to look into the rising cost of public higher education in Virginia – particularly the increase of administrative staff positions tied to diversity, equity and inclusion.
In a letter addressed to Hal Greer, executive director of the commission, Gilbert cites a November 2014 report from the commission entitled, “Addressing the Cost of Public Higher Education in Virginia.” In it, the commission adopted 16 recommendations. The speaker says it is “unclear which, if any,” of the recommendations were adopted from the 168-page report.
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A Massachusetts school district has spent more than $30,000 to conduct “social-emotional learning” (SEL) surveys on students and staff led by an educational organization founded by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s son-in-law, according to a public records request by Parents Defending Education (PDE), a parental rights in education group.
From 2018 to 2023, Old Rochester Regional School District spent $30,620.25 to partner with Panorama Education through January 2024 to conduct SEL surveys and trainings, a learning concept that has been accused of laying the foundation for Critical Race Theory (CRT), according to a public records obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Panorama Education has previously come under fire by parents for its connections to Garland, who directed the FBI in 2021 to “use its authority” on parents who protested at school board meetings.
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A bill to update Tennessee’s third-grade reading retention law has been signed by Gov. Bill Lee.
Starting this year, the bill will update a law originally passed in 2021 where students must show proficiency in order to advance to the fourth grade.
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An organization of doctors, healthcare professionals, and policymakers attempting to protect health care from “radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology” is questioning how East Tennessee State University (ETSU) will respond to the state’s new higher education transparency law that rolls back Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) requirements at publicly funded colleges, universities, and medical schools.
“ETSU is just continuing to double down on their DEI efforts,” Do No Harm’s Laura Morgan, MSN, RN, told The Tennessee Star in an interview, explaining that the school’s announced DEI program called “Moon Shot for Equity” is the “kind of program that House Bill 1376 and Senate Bill 817 is going to say you’ve got to get rid of because it’s pretty clear about not having courses or learning” related to DEI.
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Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill into law on Friday that expands the state’s pilot educational savings account program to Hamilton County, which includes the Chattanooga area.
The Legislature approved the deal April 21 after removing Knox County and then passed the bill along to Lee on April 24.
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Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) honored five Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) officers on Friday evening during one of the university’s spring commencement ceremonies.
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Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey returned to her alma mater Saturday to deliver fiery, racially-charged commencement remarks to the graduating class of 2023.
Winfrey, who skyrocketed to fame and fortune with the success of her 90s-area television hit, The Oprah Winfrey Show, lamented to the audience that “you are the generation that is forced to depend on body cams to obtain justice;” “books are being banned, and history is being rewritten;” and that “children are being gunned down by military-grade assault rifles.”
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The president of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia recently issued an apology and walked back his apparent affirmation of tweets expressing conservative views.
“I regret my lack of understanding of how ‘liking’ a tweet is an implied endorsement,” President Mark Tykocinski, who is also a molecular immunologist and medical doctor, told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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Oberlin College’s record on lawsuits is so bad that it hired a new role this school year – a dedicated risk manager.
The college most famously paid out $36.6 million to local Gibson’s Bakery after its administrators were found complicit in damaging and false accusations of racism against the town staple. The damaging accusations of racism came after a bakery employee chased several black individuals who stole alcohol in November 2016 out of the store.
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The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) announced Thursday it had filed a motion in court to have the venue of a lawsuit against the enforcement of an Arizona law changed from Tucson to Phoenix.
“Crucially, counsel for the parties are located in Phoenix. Even Plaintiffs are represented by local counsel in Phoenix, as is counsel for Superintendent [Tom] Horne. The result is that all of the Arizona lawyers are located in Phoenix, none are located in Tucson. That makes an overwhelming difference in the expense to the parties in litigating this case,” according to the motion, emailed to reporters.
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Massachusetts middle school student Liam Morrison was reportedly told again to remove his shirt Friday, one that said, “There Are Censored Genders,” which he wore to protest his school’s alleged decision to censor his right to free speech.
Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI) said it is now preparing to take legal action on behalf of Liam and his parents “to vindicate Liam’s right to speak truth in a culture inundated by lies.”
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The Michigan Senate has joined lower chamber colleagues and voted to scrap the A-F grading system used to evaluate public schools.
Lawmakers approved House Bill 4116 on a party-line vote of 20-18 on Wednesday. The bill moves to the desk of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
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Two months after facing heat for cutting ties with Arizona Christian University (ACU) in an apparent case of religious discrimination, the Washington Elementary School District (WESD) has gone back on its actions. In response, the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which sued the district, said it was the right move.
“At a time when a critical shortage of qualified, caring teachers exists, the Washington Elementary School District board did the right thing by prioritizing the needs of elementary school children and agreeing to partner once again with ACU’s student-teachers,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman.
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I have some advice for Tennessee’s new Commissioner of Education, Lizzette Gonzales-Reynolds. Please know that you will never be everyone’s cup of tea. And that statement of fact is true for all of us.
However, everyone is worthy of respect. In an Age of Irreverence, it is worth remembering that simple truth. We are all created in the image of God. It doesn’t mean you have to accept others’ beliefs, or even agree with them. However, it is a good starting point for human interaction.
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A major teachers’ union in the state of Colorado recently passed a resolution declaring that the capitalist system of economics “inherently exploits children, public schools, land, labor, and resources.”
According to Fox News, the final draft of the resolution passed by the Colorado Education Association (CEA) reads: “CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources. Capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy, (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality.”
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Republican Gov. Henry McMaster signed school choice legislation into law Thursday that provides private and religious school students with taxpayer funds.
Under S 39, every student enrolled in a private or religious school will be eligible to receive $6,000 to spend on education related costs. The bill, signed into law by McMasters on Thursday, passed the state Senate in February and the state House approved the bill in April, 79-35.
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The president of the Minnesota Nurses Association — a one-time appointee of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Health Equity Taskforce — has been elected to serve on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents.
Mary Turner, an ICU nurse at North Memorial Medical Center, has led the nurses union since 2015. Last fall she helped lead a strike of more than 15,000 nurses across the state as they negotiated with hospital employers for higher wages and what they described as workplace safety improvements.
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Virginia U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine has joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers in introducing the College Transparency Act, which would give students and their families access to make more informed decisions about colleges and areas of study to best fit their needs.
Kaine and his colleagues hope the legislation will help students and their families make better, more transparent decisions looking at the larger picture when determining the best path in higher education, ultimately leading to successful careers.
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Citing “very serious side effects” and a “lack of reliable scientific evidence for their efficacy and safety,” Missouri is clamping down on chemical and surgical gender transition interventions for both children and adults.
The move comes as public schools across the nation push children toward transgenderism with organized efforts and intentional tactics that leave children’s parents and legal guardians in the dark.
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The Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI) announced Tuesday the public policy organization sent a demand letter to the superintendent of Middleborough Public Schools on behalf of a 12-year-old student who was allegedly punished for wearing a shirt that said, “There are only two genders.”
Liam Morrison defended his First Amendment rights to his school committee on April 13, several weeks after he was reportedly taken out of gym class at Nichols Middle School and informed by school staff that complaints had been made about the shirt he was wearing that said, “There are only two genders.”
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The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) released on Wednesday the names of appointees to the newly created Tennesseans Investing in Student Achievement (TISA) steering committee.
The state is transitioning to a new public school funding model. The newly created committee will advise on the implementation of the new, student-based K-12 education funding formula, which goes into effect for the 2023-24 school year.
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Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne (R) released a statement Tuesday, blasting the practice of “equitable grading” that he claims is helping to create a lazy student body.
“In education today, we have a war between excellence and mediocrity. So-called ‘equitable,’ ‘compassionate,’ or ‘standards-based’ grading promotes mediocrity. Test scores show that the students are not learning enough to properly compete in an internationally competitive economy,” Horne said. “If we are to increase learning and show it in increased test scores, students must do homework and be graded objectively. The parents of the state are demanding this result.”
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U.S. Education Department data released on Wednesday finds national eighth-grade test scores in U.S. History and civics dropped to their lowest level on record last year.
Compared to 2018, average test scores on the 2022 Nation’s Report Card (National Assessment of Educational Progress – NAEP) declined in both subjects. Additionally, scores dropped for lower- and middle-performing students in civics, and across five selected percentiles, except the 90th percentile, in U.S. history.
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Warner Elementary Arts Magnet School Principal Ricki Gibbs is the new head of elementary schools for LEAD Public Schools. The Nashville-based charter school chain does not currently operate any elementary schools but plans to expand to grades K-4 soon. The hiring of Gibbs is the first step in that expansion process.
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A senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation says leftist lawmakers in Democrat-led states such as Minnesota and California are feeding into a culture of victimization and identity politics with their plans for mandatory K-12 ethnic studies curricula, the goal of which, he says, is actually to erase American culture.
In an op-ed at the Washington Examiner Tuesday, Mike Gonzalez wrote that what is most disturbing about the leftist call for mandatory K-12 ethnic studies curricula in government schools is that most of the lawmakers proposing these bills are actually “not in the least bit interested” in learning about the minutiae of the hundreds of ethnic cultures represented in the United States. Rather, “they care only about American culture — or, at least, how to erase it.”
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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) awarded 64 schools across six states in the southeast region grants ranging from $10,00 to $410,000 through the energy company’s School Uplift program, with 37 of the recipient schools in Tennessee.
TVA’s School Uplift program “supports public schools in the region by offering energy efficiency training and grants that reduce energy costs and improve the quality of the learning environment.”
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A lawsuit filed last week accuses the Rock Ridge school board of retaliating against an outspoken board member who was banned from all of her committee assignments for 17 months.
Director Pollyann Sorcan has served on the Rock Ridge Public Schools Board (formerly Eveleth and Eveleth-Gilbert) for more than 20 years without any issues, according to the lawsuit.
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Just 5% of Michigan students are rated “proficient” in a district with 99% of teachers rated “highly effective” or “effective.”
The classification of students for Detroit public schools comes from the latest national testing referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card.” The classification of their teachers is provided to the Michigan Department of Education by The Center for Educational Performance and Information.
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A Montgomery County elementary school went on immediate lockdown Tuesday morning after a student reported seeing a gun on the school’s campus.
According to reporting in ClarksvilleNow.com, Rossview Elementary School in Clarksville locked down after the early morning report, Rossview High School and Rossville Middle School were placed on “lockout,” which bars entry to the school.
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On Saturday, a student-led drag show was held at Tucson High School titled the “School is a Drag, Show,” as planned by the school’s Q Space, a club for LGBTQ+ students. In response, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne (R) said these shows should not be held in the schools.
“In my view, adults have first amendment rights to attend drag shows if they choose to, but they don’t belong in school,” Horne said via the phone to The Arizona Sun Times.
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The Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) Governing Board held a meeting Thursday night on whether or not to look into a policy limiting the use of restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex. The board rejected the proposal, agenda item 8.5, in a 3-2 vote. It had become an issue for the district due to a male student, who does not identify as transgender, entering the girls’ restrooms, watching them, and uploading videos he took to TikTok.
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The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing has received $406,250 in federal funds to study how to ensure equal health outcomes among ethnic groups using data from the outbreak of COVID-19.
The project, “Achieving Health Equity During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned From Nurses and High Performing Hospitals,” will rely on surveys of over 22,000 nurses to develop “innovative models of care delivery…that are associated with equitable outcomes,” according to an abstract.
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