The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday told The Tennessee Star Penny Schwinn remains the White House nominee to serve as the Deputy Secretary of Education, stating that contrary information given to The Star is false.
This suggests Schwinn, the former Tennessee Commissioner of Education, has been waiting more than four months for approval by the U.S. Senate. She was nominated to serve under Education Secretary Linda McMahon on January 18.
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A massive influx in non-English speaking students in Pennsylvania is overwhelming school districts across the state, and the logistical strain on administrators could be leaving other students behind.
The number of English Language Learners (ELL) in school districts in Pennsylvania has surged nearly 40% since 2021, forcing public schools to shell out more cash to try and meet the needs of these students, according to documents obtained via records requests and open-source information reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The surge for many schools began in the 2021-2022 academic school year, coinciding with the onset of the Biden-Harris administration and the subsequent border crisis.
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Tennessee State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) said the Tennessee House version of the universal school choice bill that failed to pass the General Assembly earlier this year is “eerily similar” to the Wisconsin school choice bill that passed the state’s legislature nearly 14 years ago.
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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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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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From Boston to Los Angeles, teachers’ unions and their progressive counterparts have quietly devised an unprecedented method to bypass the legislative process by embedding unrelated policy issues deep within the intricate terms of teacher contracts.
This new, covert strategy, hidden in plain sight, allows state and municipal officials to create sweeping policy changes that evade the scrutiny typically associated with customary legislative procedures, which include publicly available draft legislation, committee hearings, amendments and comprehensive floor debates.
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A proposal that recently cleared the House Education Committee would consider mental health days as excused absences for students.
The bill was one of three approved Thursday after lawmakers fielded testimony about the public education system’s struggle to offer comprehensive mental health support to students.
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Call it the big reset – downward – in public education.
The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.
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There has been, for some time now, optimism about a post-Covid recovery for American public school students, but sadly, there is no good news to be had.
Looking through a long lens, government-run education has been an enterprise rife with failure. The National Commission on Excellence in Education released a report in 1983 titled “A Nation at Risk,” which used dire language, asserting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.”
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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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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Phil Schwenk with American Classical Education charter schools in studio to discuss the next steps in the American Classical Education Charter School’s new Rutherford County location.
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In an email exchange late Wednesday night into Thursday morning, American Classical Education (ACE) CEO Joel Schellhammer called into question the originality of Maury County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Lisa Ventura’s report assessing American Classical Academy Maury’s (ACAM) application. As a result, says Mr. Schellhammer, ACE is “highly concerned about the integrity of the Maury County School Review Committee’s evaluation of [its] application.”
Maury County School Board Member Steve McGee told The Tennessee Star that “there’s a good possibility it could have affected the outcome [of the vote] had we known everything that was available.”
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Professional Educators of Tennessee, like other organizations, values being non-partisan. We have seen the damage done by other organizations that are hyper-partisan. Political contributions have consequences and ultimately hurt the profession. We have seen this firsthand in public education. Our members are adamant they do not want their dues going to political candidates or endorsement of candidates. We must work together with all policymakers for shared success.
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A public policy group in Tennessee released a report this week showing a massive uptick in charter school growth in the Volunteer State.
According the report by The Beacon Center of Tennessee, charter schools in Tennessee have increased in number from fewer than 20 in 2010 to more than 110 in 2019. Such schools have only become more popular since 2019, and more than 44,000 students in the state are enrolled in a charter school.
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A brief filed this week in Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court by a Harrisburg think tank argues the school-funding system the court recently found unconstitutional must change to provide educational choice.
In the amicus curiae filing, the center-right Commonwealth Foundation (CF) notes it has frequently studied K-12 education spending in the Keystone State since CF’s founding 35 years ago. The foundation’s analyses have determined that increases in spending don’t necessarily improve learning outcomes. CF posits policymakers should consider this finding in light of the recent court ruling deeming numerous districts underfunded and instructing a new system that funds them more bountifully.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-TN-Culleoka) in studio to discuss legislation victory with TennCare and bringing common sense to third-grade retention law.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-TN-Culleoka) in studio to discuss working on the education committee in the Tennessee General Assembly and turning around public school education.
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Reducing school violence is a national imperative. Frequently school officials and police officials have different perceptions of the role of law enforcement in public education. Policing in an educational setting truly is a unique challenge.
Tennessee has historically done a good job ensuring the safety and security of school employees and students. However, we continue to have incidents. The key is to keep vigilant. Tennessee should invite two great resources Mo Canady of the National Association of School Resource Officers and Phil Keith, the former head of community policing for the Department of Justice to testify on school safety prior to the passage of any legislation.
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In his latest offensive to rid Florida’s educational system of revolutionary Marxism, Governor Ron DeSantis announced what amounts to a new direction for one of the most liberal educational institutions in the state: the New College of Florida. DeSantis appointed a slew of new trustees to the college, including the anti-Marxist journalist Christopher Rufo, Claremont Review of Books Editor and political scientist Charles R. Kesler, and Matthew Spalding of Hillsdale College. The president of the New College, Patricia Okker, appeared before the board and said that she could not cooperate with the board or with DeSantis’ plan for the institution, and she was promptly terminated.
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Historically, the Federal Government had limited involvement in Public Education. That changed in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law.
ESEA doubled federal expenditures for K-12 education and gave the federal government much more input into education. That has been the debate ever since, central control of education versus state/local control.
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During the last few years, most conservatives have become at least dimly aware that leftist ideology, in the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), has infected public education. It’s unlikely, however, that many Americans realize just how far the disease has advanced. It has long since spread beyond a few courses embedded into the social studies curricula of secondary schools and elite colleges. Public school students as young as 9 and 10 years of age effortlessly recite leftist shibboleths even as they descend into functional illiteracy in reading, writing, math, and science.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Senior Editor at The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson to talk about his recent article in which he calls conservatives to action to retake their woke local community institutions back.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Professional Educators of Tennessee Executive Director and CEO J.C. Bowman in studio to discuss the factors that pertain to a successful public school system and national educational reports.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Visiting Fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum, Angela Morabito to the newsmaker line to explain how white Democratic liberals are trapping minority students in failing schools.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Gulbransen welcomed Corey DeAngelis National Director of Research at School Choice to the newsmaker line to discuss the divide between parents and how they want to educate their children.
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A recent viral video from the YouTube channel Fleccas Talks showed several man-on-the-street interviews testing young people in New York City on their knowledge of basic facts. Some of the questions focused on American history and civics, while others were simple, numerical-based ones. The results were depressing, as the following samples demonstrate:
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A regulatory review panel on Monday approved numerous new administrative rules imposed by Pennsylvania’s executive branch on charter schools, a move the institutions did not welcome.
Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) Chair George Bedwick, Commissioner Murray Ufberg and Commissioner Dennis Watson, all appointed to the board by Democratic state officials, voted in favor of the new regulations. Vice Chair John Mizner and Commissioner John Soroko, both Republican appointees, voted in opposition.
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At its founding, American K-12 public education was meant to prepare young people to be active participants in our democratic republic. That should still be its highest purpose, especially when it comes to teaching civics.
Historically, public schools held fast to the principle that effective education must be non-partisan. Knowing they had great power to influence young minds, teachers used to be careful to choose content and pedagogies that restricted their ability to impose their personal political views on schoolchildren.
Today, maintaining non-partisanship is more important than ever in classrooms. Sadly, it’s increasingly dishonored. Civics has become a hot-button issue of late, particularly after remote learning allowed more parents to see what their children were actually being taught. Many were not happy with what they saw, and the debate over civics education is symptomatic of the larger divide that has become such a looming threat to American society.
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Sometimes we need time to pass and distance to extend to gain fuller perspective on what we did not see contemporaneously from too close. Indeed, G-d tells Moses that no person can see His face (which I teach as meaning an up-close encounter) and live, but people can see the back of G-d’s head (which I teach as meaning a more distant previous encounter, growing ever more distant). See Exodus 33:18-23.
In their October 22, 2012, debate, Obama mocked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for expressing concern about Russia and Vladimir Putin:
Gov. Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al Qaeda is a threat because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.
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Schools throughout the country are experiencing teacher shortages due to several factors. In some states, legislatures have responded by lowering substitute teaching standards. In others, schools are calling on parents to fill the gap or are simply closing schools because they don’t have enough staff.
School choice advocates say it’s time to start funding students instead of government-run public school systems.
Nationwide, according to Burbio.com’s school closure tracker, 7,164 schools were “actively disrupted (not offering in-person learning) on one or more days during the week beginning January 10th.” Accompanying the tracker is a map, which shows which schools nationwide are closed or are providing no in-person instruction by day and week. The site, an industry leader in aggregating school, government, library and community information, tracks school closures and mask policies.
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The Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF), a Vanderbilt University-based schooling-policy nonprofit, this week announced the creation of its first twelve-member “Teacherpreneur cohort” to consider solutions to what the organization sees as major challenges in education.
NPEF—which aligns itself with progressive causes like “culturally relevant curricula,” higher teacher pay and increased public-school funding—is creating its new program with financial support from the ubiquitous online merchant Amazon, which also owns the information-technology-platform company Amazon Web Services (AWS).
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed official guest Grant Henry in studio for another edition of Grant’s Rants.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz to the newsmakers line to discuss teacher union power over public school education and how parents are fighting back.
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A growing number of teachers across the state of Ohio have signed a pledge to continue to teach Critical Race Theory (CRT), even if the decision violates the law.
A petition published by the Zinn Education Project has collected over 5,000 signatures from teachers who commit to “teach the truth.”
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School groups throughout Ohio and around the nation have praised the recently signed Ohio state budget that expands education choice opportunities for parents and students.
The budget, signed late Wednesday night by Gov. Mike DeWine, increased the state’s voucher system, created a new tax-credit scholarship program and established the state’s first education savings accounts.
“Governor Mike DeWine has signed a budget that expands existing school choice options and creates Ohio’s first-ever education savings account program helping parents afford desperately-needed resources and giving them the flexibility necessary to improve their children’s educational outcomes,” said Rea Hederman Jr., executive director of the Economic Research Center at The Buckeye Institute and vice president of policy. “These bold reforms are some of the most significant that Ohio’s families have seen in a decade.”
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American public education is so hard to reform because of its great size. The economy of K-12 education here is bigger than some countries, and we’re not talking rinky-dink countries either.
“Federal, state, and local governments spend $720.9 billion, or $14,840 per pupil, to fund K-12 public education,” reports the website Education Data.
By contrast, the annual gross domestic product of oil giant Saudi Arabia in 2017 was only $687 billion, according to World Bank statistics. That same year, Switzerland, with its banks, watches, cheese, and army knives, raked in only $679 billion.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed author Jenni White at The Federalist to the newsmakers line to discuss her recent article which gives five examples of how parents are responsible for the failure of public education.
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It’s hard to imagine a worse time for public education in America. The COVID-19 pandemic has cost millions of K-12 students a year of education, and Joe Biden has been elected president. At a time when innovation in public education is needed more than ever, Biden has appointed Miguel Cardona to serve as Secretary of Education.
To understand why Cardona, who previously served as Connecticut’s education commissioner, is not going to improve schooling in America, just consider the endorsements he’s received.
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Many families took one look at their school district’s remote or hybrid learning offerings this fall and said “no, thank you.” That’s the message gleaned from national and state-specific data on the surging number of homeschooled students this academic year.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed PJTN’s Laurie Cardoza-Moore to the newsmakers line to discuss her new position on the Tennessee Textbook Commission.
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State officials are asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to allow a school-choice program to move forward after being ruled unconstitutional by lower courts earlier this year.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon, appealing decisions of district and appeals courts.
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Three residents sued the Anoka-Hennepin School District and the local chapter of Education Minnesota to stop the “illegal subsidy of union political activities through teacher union business leave.”
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Anoka County District Court, the plaintiffs assert that the “Working Agreement” between the district and Anoka-Hennepin Education Minnesota requires schools to provide teachers with 100 days of paid leave per school year to conduct work for the union.
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A Pennsylvania high school student who claims she was sent home for wearing pro-Trump clothing filed a lawsuit against her school district in Federal court on Tuesday, accusing the district of violating her free speech rights, PennLive reported.
On October 1, the school district issued a new policy on clothing which banned students from wearing anything that contained political messaging.
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I read an advice article at Slate recently where a mom of a nearly five-year-old daughter wrote in to express concern that her child hasn’t seen any friends in five months, since COVID-19 lockdowns began.
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While the Tennessee Department of Education has said temporarily withdrawn guidance on child well-being checks was not intended to apply to every child, internal documents and emails sent in development of the guidance show officials have misrepresented the intended scope of the initiative in response to public outrage.
A guidance toolkit outlining statewide Child Wellbeing Checks was developed by the COVID-19 Child Wellbeing Task Force and released Aug. 11. Within three days, the department had withdrawn the program after uproar over perceived big-brother style government overreach.
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Teachers unions throughout the US claim to be looking out for the best interests of teachers and students, but they are deeply political organizations with significant influence over what, how, where, and with whom most children learn.
While the nation’s largest teachers unions have long been deeply connected to the Democratic Party and left-wing ideology, this political affiliation has become increasingly apparent in recent months. From hinging their support for reopening schools on outrageous policy demands to launching court battles, threatening strikes, and openly supporting disturbing actions during recent protests, today’s teachers unions are more powerful and dangerous than many parents may realize.
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The state’s largest school district has struck a deal with the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) union to return 51,000 students to school safely.
The four-page agreement lays out safety precautions for face-to-face instruction at the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD), including a 20-person cap on classes and desks separated by six feet.
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Results of a new Gallup poll released this week may give us the sharpest look yet at how the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted American education and what may lie ahead. According to the poll, parents’ overall satisfaction with their child’s education dropped 10 percent over last year, while at the same time the number of parents saying they will choose homeschooling doubled in 2020 to 10 percent.
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Normally when a business shuts its doors, it doesn’t still get to charge its customers for a product they can no longer access. It certainly doesn’t get to charge its customers twice for the privilege.
Yet, that’s exactly what we’re seeing from some public school districts. They refuse to open their doors for in-person learning—citing safety risks—but they are able to open these same school buildings to charge overworked and tired parents for day care.
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An assignment given to students at a Texas school included a political cartoon comparing police officers to slave owners and Klu Klux Klan members, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
The cartoon reportedly depicted five scenes, allegedly starting with a slave ship officer who was kneeling on a black man’s neck and ended with a police officer kneeling on a black man’s neck with text saying “I can’t breathe,” the Star-tribune reported.
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