Virginia school boards are issuing cellphone free mandates in their local communities, after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin ordered schools to draft plans for cell phone-free education in K-12 public schools.
Read the full story
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares filed an amicus brief Thursday on behalf of the Hanover County School Board, which barred a middle school male student identifying as a transgender girl from playing on the girls’ tennis team.
“Neither the federal Constitution nor any federal statute require Virginia school boards to allow biological males to play on a girls sports team,” Miyares said in a statement. “Rather, civil rights law is meant to protect female equity in athletics. I urge the court to ensure that women’s rights and opportunities remain protected in Virginia.”
Read the full story
A revolution is underway. Parents, physicians, and principals have seen the devastation inflicted on an entire generation of children raised on screens, and they are taking bold steps to end “phone-based childhood.” Politicians are joining the cause, too, with Congress on the brink of passing bi-partisan legislation to protect kids online – the first significant law of its kind in nearly 30 years. The catalyst for this revolution is Jonathan Haidt’s new bestselling book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
Read the full story
“These universities are so arrogant and so disrespectful of their taxpayers’ wishes and, quite frankly, their money, that it’s infuriating.”
So says Michael Thad Allen, once a tenured history professor who found a second career as a lawyer defending college students and faculty against “hallucinatory” accusations from what he calls “Campus Cloudcuckooland.”
Read the full story
A Fisk University professor decried the fact that Nashville’s population oof “whites” increased last year.
“Yes, the Nashville demographics are changing,” Shirley Rainey-Brown, the dean of Fisk University’s School of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences, told The Tennessean. “We are seeing an influx of whites over other minorities, and I think it has to do with the type of jobs and industries that are coming here.”
Read the full story
The majority of likely voters say artificial intelligence shouldn’t be in schools because it makes it too easy to cheat, new poll results show.
The Center Square Voter’s Voice Poll conducted by Noble Predictive Insights found that over two-thirds of likely voters say they think AI should stay out of schools.
Read the full story
An education organization that administers a nationwide assessment has found that students are still not performing as well as they were immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic and that students’ achievement gap worsened in the 2023-24 school year as compared to before COVID.
NWEA, which issues the Measures of Academic Progress, said in a report this week that some middle school students are still an entire school year behind where they were before the pandemic in almost every grade as schools are slated to run out of federal relief this fall.
Read the full story
Ohio school districts must adopt a policy to accommodate students’ sincerely held religious beliefs.
The new law, signed Friday by Gov. Mike DeWine, was introduced more than a year ago. It requires the district to adopt a policy prohibiting the encouraging of students, employees, and applicants to specific beliefs or ideas about political movements or ideology.
Read the full story
The College Board recently made changes to the Advanced Placement (AP) tests that have resulted in more student test-takers receiving higher scores, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The AP tests’ scoring changes involve replacing a panel of experts with a large-scale data analysis to determine skills students learned throughout the courses, the WSJ reported. Educators and test-prep companies are skeptical of the changes, alleging it is another form of grade inflation and a way to increase College Board’s business.
Read the full story
The Broward County School Board on Tuesday unanimously voted to restrict students’ use of cellphones in an effort to keep them focused and off social media during school hours.
Although the school district said restrictions on cell phone use were already part of the Student Code of Conduct, there will now be some changes that will go into effect when classes start on August 12.
Read the full story
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday outlined a plan to overhaul the American education system and restore parental rights.
Read the full story
A California high school refers students to an LGBTQ+ nonprofit that helps minors get transgender surgery referrals, documents obtained by The Daily Signal reveal.
The high school in the Newport Mesa Unified School District in Southern California has scannable QR codes in its hallways that take students to a number of “LGBTQ+ Resources,” including the LGBTQ Center of Orange County’s website, according to photos shared with The Daily Signal.
Read the full story
Student test scores are continuing to fall four years after schools moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study released Tuesday by testing company Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).
The paper found gaps in academic performance between today’s students and their pre-pandemic counterparts are widening, despite the record $190 billion in federal aid distributed to schools since the pandemic began. The findings — which were divulged from an analysis of test results from the 2023-24 school year for approximately 7.7 million students between the third and eighth grades — also come two years after experts had claimed a recovery in education was underway.
Read the full story
Diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory topics now pervade U.S. Armed Forces educational trainings and programs, according to newly published research.
The recent report out of Arizona State University’s Center for American Institutions detailed the extensiveness of DEI training throughout the branches of the military and military academies, as well as highlighted an increasing budget for DEI training.
Read the full story
by David Huber In a perfect world, people like Alison Scott, a teacher in the Oklahoma-based Ardmore City Schools district would have the self-control not to post stupid stuff on social media after a U.S. presidential candidate is almost assassinated. The high school music teacher responded to a Facebook user’s post saying they were going to donate $500 to would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks for “tryin’ to save us,” according to a screenshot obtained by Libs of TikTok. “Same!” wrote the teacher. “Wish they had a better scope” — followed by an “oh well” emoji. Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters subsequently posted on X that the teacher’s comments were “unacceptable” and added: “We will not allow teachers to cheer on violence” against President Trump. Later the same day Walters posted “I have investigated it enough. I will be taking [the teacher’s] teaching certificate. She will no longer be teaching in Oklahoma.” As of Friday, the Ardmore school district website had a pop-window notice of a district news release which stated officials had started a “thorough and swift” investigation, and that the district “strongly condemns acts of physical violence and any words that seek to encourage it.” According to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, the Ardmore staff “Master…
Read the full story
In an ideal world, wrongdoers face swift and exact justice for their misdeeds. In reality, the legal system is costly. Justice comes at a steep price, one that I, and others whose works were allegedly plagiarized by Harvard’s Claudine Gay and others cannot afford.
After months of turmoil and legal back and forth, it is with a heavy heart that I announce that my intended copyright infringement case against former Harvard President Claudine Gay and the Harvard Corporation — a legal complaint that would have requested a jury trial — cannot be filed as planned in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. The inability to raise sufficient funds for a trial (a steep minimum of $100,000 to $250,000) and the knowledge that the losing party could be ordered to cover the legal expenses of the victors, to which no limits exist under federal copyright law, gave me pause.
Read the full story
A medical internship program is under fire for allegedly racially discriminating against otherwise qualified applicants, requiring that applicants must “identify” as black or African American.
Do No Harm filed a complaint on behalf of a member on Thursday requesting the federal government investigate an internship offered by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM). The anonymous member was qualified academically and met all other requirements but was rejected because of his race.
Read the full story
A federal appeals court issued a temporary halt on Thursday on President Joe Biden’s income-driven repayment program for student loans due to challenges to its legality.
The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which was introduced in 2023, seeks to provide new repayment methods for student loan borrowers, including lowering monthly payments based on income and minimizing interest payments. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals halted the plan in its entirety in order to give the court time to issue a final ruling after also issuing a partial injunction in June.
Read the full story
Next month, the Huntsville School District in Arkansas will join the wave of public schools switching to a four-day week.
The shorter school week, which first emerged in a few rural areas decades ago, is now expanding into suburbs and smaller cities. At least 2,100 schools in half the states have embraced the three-day weekend mostly as an incentive to hire and keep teachers, prompting cheers of support from instructors, unions, and many families.
Read the full story
One year after the Virginia Department of Education rolled out new model policies for the treatment of transgender students, the ACLU has undertaken several lawsuits on behalf of students identifying as transgender, saying the policies violate state and federal law.
One lawsuit was dismissed Monday, and the other two will be heard on Aug. 6 and 20, one in federal court and the other in state circuit court.
Read the full story
One Minnesota school system has found itself at the center of controversy over staff trainings regarding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), along with social justice.
“Rochester Public Schools provides training that has staff participate in a “Social Justice Stretch” [and] staff are taught to embrace LGBTQ ideology with the ‘Genderbread Person,’ [and] staff are told not to tell parents about their children’s gender identity,” according to a watchdog group called Parents Defending Education (PDE).
Read the full story
The Catholic University of Dayton “recently renovated and rededicated” its “LGBTQ+ Lounge” in honor of a male donor’s “husband.”
But a Catholic higher education group said the Ohio university errs by promoting behavior at odds with Catholic Church teaching.
Read the full story
On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) signed a controversial bill into law that would forbid schools from notifying parents if their children have decided to “transition” their gender.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, polling has suggested that the law is widely unpopular with voters nationwide as well as within California. A poll from Rasmussen in June of 2023 shows that over 60 percent of likely voters in California support schools informing the parents about a child’s desire to “transition.” A national poll by the Center Square in November saw two-thirds of respondents say that schools should let parents know.
Read the full story
A college in Louisville has placed an instructor on unpaid leave after posting on social media he wished the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump succeeded.
“If you’re gonna shoot, man, don’t miss,” John James wrote in all caps on a post discovered Sunday by Libsoftiktok. The statement was made above a screenshot of a news story on the Saturday shooting during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that left the former president and current Republican nominee injured after a bullet grazed his ear.
Read the full story
Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) last week earned a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Freedom (FIRE), a nonprofit organization that gained fame by defending freedom of speech on college campuses.
A FIRE press release confirms MTSU became the latest university to receive the rating, with the organization noting just 68 other institutions throughout the country have qualified for the “green light” rating it explains” is reserved for institutions with no written policies that seriously imperil student free speech rights.”
Read the full story
The group driving the Milwaukee school board recall is now looking to file a class-action lawsuit.
The MPS School Board Recall Collaborative said it has filed formal complaints against the city’s school board with the Wisconsin Board of Ethics, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, and the U.S. Department of Education against Milwaukee’s elected school board members. The group is alleging “malfeasance, illegal and unethical activities that cannot be denied by any of the Board members.”
Read the full story
As the Democrat-controlled Senate prepares to debate and consider amendments to the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which already passed the GOP-led House with several amendments supported by Anti-Woke Caucus members, a transparency group is shining a light on the curriculum and vendors in the Pentagon’s 70,000-student school system.
The K-12 Department of Defense Education Activity, probed in a January hearing on “progressive ideologies in the U.S. military,” simply reshuffled its “radical” diversity, equity and inclusion programs and staff after reassigning DEI chief Kelisa Wing and deleting its DEI Division page, according to a report by OpenTheBooks.com published Thursday.
Read the full story
A Minnesota school district is finally giving its students back the freedom to fail.
Rochester Public Schools implemented a “no credit” grading policy in 2020, in hopes of helping failing students who were struggling with virtual learning. Now, four years later, the district has overturned their policy to increase student accountability.
Read the full story
The Florida Auditor General’s office has released two reports that detail significant issues and financial trends in the Sunshine State’s charter schools, charter technical career centers and district school boards.
There are 720 charter schools and charter technical career centers operating in Florida, with the majority in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. State law requires these schools to be annually audited by an independent certified public accountant.
Read the full story
Corey DeAngelis, a school choice activist and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, applauded the 2024 Republican Party Platform for including universal school choice in its 20-point agenda released earlier this week.
On Monday, the Republican Party unveiled its 2024 platform, which consists of 20 promises Republicans intend to deliver on if Trump is elected back to the White House and Republicans obtain majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate.
Read the full story
Every day millions of parents put their children under the care of public school teachers, administrators, and support staff. Their trust, however, is frequently broken by predators in authority in what appears to be the largest ongoing sexual abuse scandal in our nation’s history.
Given the roughly 50 million students in U.S. K-12 schools each year, the number of students who have been victims of sexual misconduct by school employees is probably in the millions each decade, according to multiple studies. Such numbers would far exceed the high-profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America.
Read the full story
A Northern Virginia school district will teach kindergartners about gay parents and middle schoolers about transgenderism in the wake of a unanimous vote late last month—despite significant parental opposition.
The Fairfax County School Board unanimously approved changes to its Family Life Education Curriculum on June 27 that include “broadening examples of family structures to be more inclusive of the many different families in our schools.”
Read the full story
A raise of 10% and a retention bonus will lift Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin of the University of Wisconsin past $1 million in annual compensation.
University regents met Monday and approved the deal. Mnookin’s salary rises from $811,512 to $892,663 next year. The bonus is $150,000.
Read the full story
Earlier this year, students at a Pennsylvania middle school created over 20 TikTok accounts that impersonated teachers at their school.
Unfortunately, many of these ersatz Great Valley Middle School teacher accounts included “racist, homophobic, [and] sexually inappropriate content.”
Read the full story
What does an institution of higher learning do when it has a “problematic” collection of paintings and sculptures?
Answer: It “decolonizes” them. In other words, it replaces “white settler” works with those by Indigenous/Native/First Americans.
Read the full story
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology added more than 1,200 new administrative/support staff positions in less than a decade – including six “diversity, equity, and inclusion” assistant deans in one year, a College Fix analysis found.
Meanwhile, between 2013 and 2022, undergraduate student enrollment remained basically flat.
Read the full story
Two years ago this month, the University of Pennsylvania law school stopped accusing a tenured professor of making up statistics about black student performance, which she called defamatory, after ignoring requests for the supposedly correct statistics going back four years.
Dean Ted Ruger still sought “major sanctions” against Amy Wax for “intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic actions and statements,” and disgraced ex-President Liz Magill approved a hearing board’s recommended one-year suspension, slashed pay and mandatory scarlet letter in her public appearances.
Read the full story
Over half of U.S. states now require high school students to receive a financial literacy course before they graduate after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill passed by the California Legislature.
With the passage of California’s law requiring schools to offer a course in personal finance by the 2027-28 school year and requiring the class of 2031 to receive at least one class, a total of 26 states now require students to take a course on how to manage money, according to a nonprofit spearheading efforts to pass such laws.
Read the full story
The recently passed Michigan budget would guarantee tuition-free community college for all residents, and expands access to tuition-free preschool.
The tuition-free community college program is paid for by $330 million in taxpayer dollars, an increase of $30 million from last year. The new program gets rid of income caps, so any student can receive free tuition at an in-district community college.
Read the full story
Federal judge John Broomes ruled on the side of attorneys general in Kansas, Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming, claiming that Title IX was meant to protect biological women from discrimination in education.
A federal court in Kansas on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations from taking effect in four states, becoming the latest court to stop the new controversial rules from taking effect in August.
Read the full story
The Pennsylvania State Senate on Wednesday passed SB 1207, which seeks to amend the Public School Code of 1949 in order to establish a Cell Phone Lockable Bag Pilot Program that would encourage schools to restrict cell phone use among students.
Introduced by State Senator Ryan Aument (R-Lancaster), the legislation would “provide funding to cover the costs of purchasing secure cell phone lockable bags,” which will be available to schools throughout the commonwealth who establish a “policy that prohibits the use of cell phones during school time” and requires students to store their phones in “lockable bags.”
Read the full story
The Founding Fathers recognized that an educated citizenry was vital to the survival of our republic. Thomas Jefferson, for example, saw education as essential to giving every citizen the opportunity to participate meaningfully in a free society.
Writing in 1818, our third president described public education as “the means to give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business … to express and preserve his own ideas … to improve his morals and faculties … to understand his duties, and to exercise his rights.”
Read the full story
As we celebrate our independence on the Fourth of July, Americans would do well to reflect upon what’s necessary for a nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, to long endure.
Read the full story
Wichita State University is closing its women’s studies department, one of the oldest in the country, due to continuously low student interest.
The Department of Women, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Studies will be dissolved and its degree program will be merged with the English Department, according to an action plan approved earlier this month by the Kansas Board of Regents.
Read the full story
While waiting for Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature, Jewish leaders in the Ohio Legislature are praising passes of a bill that gives Ohio colleges and universities tools to promote student safety and inclusive environments.
Read the full story
Faculty at public universities in nine states may have fewer speech protections than they assume following federal appeals court rulings against professors on the political right and left who were punished for perceived lack of collegiality – strong words short of harassment.
But a private university has egg on its face after taking seven months to allegedly clear a professor of wrongdoing for telling anti-Israel campus protesters they are “ignorant” and “Hamas are murderers,” despite having immediate access to both viral video and its own surveillance.
Read the full story
Tennessee students showed math test scored improvements since hitting a pandemic low point in 2021, just as occurred in English language arts, according to new data released by the Tennessee Department of Education.
The Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program places results into four categories – exceed, met, approaching and below – compared to student comprehension expectations.
Read the full story
The last time I was a member of an officially male group, I was 12 and in the Little League. After that, I shied away from them. There was a nearly all-male Catholic high school I earned a scholarship to, but I chose another school and another scholarship. There were still several prestigious all-male colleges to choose from, but I had no desire to go to those places. Princeton got me instead.
But as I look back and as I’ve grown more aware of what colleges used to be like, I wonder why we take for granted the superiority of having boys and girls, or young men and women, together everywhere and all the time. Shouldn’t there be at least some places that are otherwise? Here, one of the tenets of the progressive creed, that people’s sexual proclivities ought to be championed no matter what they are, is in flat contradiction with another one of the tenets, that all-male institutions are to be eliminated.
Read the full story
It’s true. Sometimes homeschoolers do school in their pajamas.
But that wasn’t the norm in my home when I was growing up. Generally, my mother kept us to a set schedule. Piano practice was at 8:15 sharp. Math class started at 9:00. The other subjects fell into place around that. Often, we finished our work by lunchtime, after which my sister and I would go outside and play in the woods behind our house, read, draw, or work on some other personal hobby.
Read the full story
Ten bills passed during the most recent legislative session of the Tennessee General Assembly and signed by Governor Bill Lee concerning school safety will take effect on Monday, July 1.
Read the full story