Former President Donald Trump on Thursday outlined a plan to overhaul the American education system and restore parental rights.
Read MoreCategory: Education
California School District Partners with LGBTQ Center That Recommends Transgender Surgeries for Minors
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 MoreStudent Test Scores Continue to Plummet Despite Hundreds of Billions in Pandemic Aid for Education
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 MoreDEI, Critical Race Theory Pervades Military Trainings: Report
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 MoreCommentary: Harvard May Never Have to Face Accountability for Claudine Gay’s Actions
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 MoreCommentary: Cancel Culture Backfires on its Leftist Makers After Trump Assassination Attempt Remarks
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…
Read MoreFederal Court Halts Student Loan Payment Program in Another Blow to Biden Admin
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 MoreMedical Internship Program Under Fire for Rejecting Anyone Who Doesn’t ‘Identify’ as Black
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 MoreCommentary: The Four-Day School Weeks Are a Trend Across America Despite Questionable Results
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 MoreCalifornia Passes Law to Keep Students’ Gender Transitions Secret from Parents
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 MoreUniversity in Kentucky Suspends Instructor After ‘Offensive’ Trump Shooting Post
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 MoreDefense Department Hid DEI Relaunch in K-12 Schools, Emotionally Manipulates Students: Watchdog
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 MoreCommentary: The Huge American Sex-Abuse Scandal That Educators Scandalously Suppress
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 MoreUniversity ‘Decolonizes’ Art Collection Due to ‘Problematic’ Paintings and Sculptures
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 MoreMIT Grew Staff Size by 1,200 While Enrollment Barely Budged
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 MoreDuke University Dumped Doc Who Exposed Lack of Evidence for ‘Racism’ as a Public Health Crisis
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 MoreCalifornia Joins 26 States in Requiring Students Take Personal Finance Class
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 MoreFederal Court Halts Biden’s Title IX Regulations in Four New States
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 MoreCommentary: Don’t Let the Department of Education Silence Our Kids
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 MoreCommentary: Four Education Trends to Watch This 4th of July
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 MoreOne of Oldest Women’s Studies Departments in U.S. on Chopping Block, Citing ‘Low Student Interest’
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 MoreMean Speech Not Protected at Public Universities, Appeals Courts Rule
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 MoreCommentary: Single-Sex Education Is a Tradition to Reconsider
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 MoreCommentary: Honest Pros and Cons of Homeschooling
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 MoreOklahoma to Require Bible, Ten Commandments Be Taught in Public Schools
Oklahoma is now requiring that all schools include teachings centered around the Bible in curriculums for grades five through 12.
Read MoreObama-Appointed Judges Strike Down Parts of Biden’s Student Loan Repayment Plan
Obama-appointed federal judges blocked parts of the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan on Monday in response to Republican states’ lawsuits.
Judge John A. Ross of Missouri and Judge Daniel Crabtree of Kansas blocked parts of the administration’s SAVE plan, which was an income-driven repayment program intended to lower monthly costs for borrowers. The court rulings prohibit the Department of Education from further lowering payments or eliminating more debt through the program, Politico reported.
Read MoreOklahoma Supreme Court Rules Against First Publicly-Funded Religious Charter School
The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the approval of what would have been the nation’s first publicly-funded religious school was unconstitutional, according to court records.
Oklahoma’s Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve an application for a virtual religious charter school in June 2023, prompting state Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond to file a lawsuit in October to block the funding, calling it “an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty” and “an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately sided with Drummond on Tuesday, finding that “under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school” and that “as such, a charter school must be nonsectarian,” per court filings.
Read MoreNearly a Third of ‘Pro-Palestine’ Campus Protesters Had a Job Offer Rescinded, Survey Finds
A recent survey found that 3 in 10 college students or recent graduates had job offers rescinded as a result of their “pro-Palestine” activism.
Intelligent surveyed 672 students or recent college graduates who have engaged in anti-Israel activism and found that 29% of them had a job offer rescinded in the past six months and 55% believe there was bias against them in the hiring process because of their activism.
Read MoreCommentary: America Doesn’t Need Federal Homeschooling Standards
Some of you may remember that four years ago this week I debated Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet who called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling. The online event was hosted by the Cato Institute and drew thousands of participants, including many homeschooling families who were incensed by Bartholet’s proposal.
Now, Scientific American is joining the crowd of busybodies eager to constrain a family’s right to raise and educate their children how they choose. “The federal government must develop basic standards for safety and quality of education in homeschooling across the country,” read a recent editorial in the magazine.
Read MoreBecket Fund Lawyer Argues for Religious Liberty of Catholic School
A Catholic school’s ability to operate in accord with its faith is in jeopardy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit heard oral arguments June 11 in St. Joseph Parish v. Nessel. The case involves St. Joseph Catholic School in Saint Johns, Michigan, which is asking the court to protect its ability to hire staff who share the same faith.
Read MoreLouisiana Becomes First State to Require Public Schools Display Ten Commandments
Louisiana is set to become the first state to mandate the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms under a bill signed into law by Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.
Read MoreForeign Aid and Student Loan Forgiveness Behind Massive Increase in Deficit Estimate, Congressional Budget Office Says
America’s debt is growing faster than previously expected, largely due to actions taken by the Biden administration and recent legislation, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The United States’ projected deficit is $1.9 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year, $400 billion higher than it was projected to be in February, the CBO announced Tuesday. CBO analysts increased their estimate due in large part to the foreign aid package signed by President Joe Biden in April and his administration’s efforts to reduce student loan balances.
Read MoreReview: New Book Confronts Anti-White Racism
A new book confronts the longstanding problem of “anti-white racism.”
Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Jeremy Carl discussed his new book, “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart,” during a virtual event hosted by the think tank.
Read MoreBiden Rule Extending Title IX to Trans Students Blocked in More GOP States
A federal judge in Louisiana has temporarily blocked four more states from expanding the Biden administration’s new Title IX policy to protect LGBTQ+ students.
The Biden administration’s new Title IX policy outlined federal protections for LGBTQ+ students and victims of sexual assault while expanding the definition of sexual harassment for schools and universities. The new Title IX provisions collide with Louisiana’s “Women’s Safety and Protection Act” which requires individuals to use the bathroom based on their sex, prohibiting transgender people from using bathrooms and other close-quartered facilities corresponding with their gender identity, according to the court documents.
Read MoreCommentary: The Parallel Education System Can Fix America’s Education Problem
Millions of Americans have woken up to the fact that their education system is rotten to the core. As elite universities are engulfed by antisemitic riots, their veil of prestige has been torn to shreds. It is by now clear to many that, in the words of Christopher Rufo, the radical left has conquered everything.
What, then, is to be done? Many, Rufo included, are doing their best to stem the tide of revolutionary ideology through direct political engagement. Their hard work is paying off. In recent months, universities are beginning to move away from mandatory diversity statements. This is just the beginning.
Read MoreTeachers Union Issues List of Climate Demands as Students Struggle to Read at Grade Level
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is making climate-related demands in contract negotiations as the city’s students continue to struggle mightily in the classroom, according to E&E News.
The CTU will push the city to include initiatives like electric school buses, green jobs training programs for students and reducing emissions from buildings with solar panels and other retrofits, among other initiatives, according to E&E News. Those demands are being made while 2023 testing data shows that about 75% of Chicago’s public school students were unable to read at grade level and 83% of students were behind grade level proficiency in math, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.
Read MoreColorado Discriminated Against Catholic Preschools by Starving Them of Funding, Court Rules
A federal court ruled Wednesday that Colorado discriminated against Catholic preschools by refusing to allow them to participate in the state’s school voucher program over their faith.
St. Mary’s Catholic Parish and St. Bernadette’s Catholic Parish filed a lawsuit against the state in August 2023 after Colorado denied its application to the state’s universal preschool (UPK) program because the schools consider religious beliefs when deciding whether or not a student can attend the school. Judge John Kane Jr., a Jimmy Carter appointee, of the District Court of Colorado determined that the state had erred in allowing “faith-based providers” to receive exemptions in similar cases but not the preschool, according to the 101-page opinion.
Read MoreAnalysis: Ibram Kendi’s ‘Antiracist’ Center Is Racist by His Own Standards
Ibram Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research is racist – according to the founder’s own definition.
The College Fix analyzed the remaining team at his Boston University center, which has shrunk since last year due to budgetary problems.
Read MoreCommentary: Parental Freedom is Flourishing
It’s no secret that the government’s monopoly on education is in trouble. Across the country, public schools are emptying while parental choice is flourishing. Florida, perhaps the national leader in this movement, has four different private school choice programs: one education savings account (ESA), one voucher program, and two tax-credit scholarships.
One of the results of Florida’s success is that many of the state’s public schools are shutting down. Florida’s Broward County, the sixth largest school district in the country, housing some 320 K-12 schools, could see 42 of them shut down, including 32 elementary schools, eight middle schools, and two high schools.
Read More‘Deeply Regressive’: Riley Gaines Slams Biden’s Title IX Rules at Pro-Women Sports Rally
The Biden administration’s changes to Title IX will reverse 50 years of progress for female athletes by allowing biological men to keep competing in women’s sports, pro-women’s sports leaders said Friday at an Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition rally.
The event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was one of the first stops on the coalition’s Take Back Title IX bus tour, which calls on America’s leaders to ensure equal protections for female athletes under the federal regulation.
Read MoreFree Speech Group Files Lawsuit Against Indiana University over ‘Bias Response Team’
Indiana University is violating students’ First and 14th Amendment rights through its “far-reaching” bias reporting policy, a civil rights organization alleges.
Speech First filed a federal lawsuit against Indiana University on Wednesday arguing that the school is violating the rights of students by enacting a speech policy that “is designed solely to deter, discourage, and otherwise ‘prevent’ students from expressing disfavored views about the political and social issues of the day.” Under the policy, students can report others for “any conduct, speech, or expression, motivated in whole or in part by bias or prejudice meant to intimidate, demean, mock, degrade, marginalize, or threaten individuals or groups” on some aspect of their identity, like race or gender identity, according to Indiana University’s website.
Read MoreCommentary: Teachers Also Think American Public Schools Are in Decline
Eighty-two percent of teachers say that the general state of public K-12 education has gotten worse over the past five years. This is according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in October and November of 2023. That’s not the only shocking statistic from the survey, either, which overall offers a grim statistical map of the fault lines fracturing our education system. However, these trends may offer some insight into how to fix our schools.
First, the teachers. Most teachers (77 percent) find their job frequently stressful, and a large majority (70 percent) say their school is understaffed, which may contribute to the fact that over 80 percent of teachers say they do not have enough time in the work day to complete all necessary tasks.
Read MorePublic Schools Push ‘Climate Crisis’ Narrative, as Skeptics Try to Offer Other Perspectives
Paul Tice, senior fellow for the National Center for Energy Analytics, took the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal to criticize the climate change curriculum in New Jersey public schools.
The educational materials, Tice explained, are not just found in sections of science courses, but in all school subjects. Districts are encouraged to insert lessons on climate change into English language arts and mathematics. In foreign language classes, students discuss the impacts of climate change “on the target language of the world.”
Read MoreUCLA Med School DEI Leader Accused of Major Plagiarism Refuses to Address Allegations
Another university diversity, equity, and inclusion administrator is facing allegations of plagiarism – but neither she nor her employer, the University of California at Los Angeles, has responded publicly to the report.
Natalie Perry, the leader of the Cultural North Star program at the UCLA School of Medicine, and UCLA did not answer multiple requests for comment from The College Fix since a recent investigation alleged she plagiarized large portions of her doctoral dissertation.
Read MoreCommentary: Abiding Child Abuse in Schools
The stories of pedophile teachers not being held accountable for their abominable crimes are endless. In an in-depth piece, reporter Matt Drange investigates the issue and what he finds is positively revolting.
A case in North Carolina is typical. In Durham County, a student at Neal Middle School said her chorus teacher, Troy Pickens, had groped her, only disclosing a few years later that he’d raped her. James Key, the school’s principal, didn’t open an investigation until the child’s mother got involved, and even then, according to a subsequent civil suit that settled out of court, the principal “failed to report the groping allegation to law enforcement or child protective services, as required by state law.” Instead, Key allowed Pickens to resign, paving the way for him to remain in the field.
Read MoreAmerican Tax Dollars Fund Laundry List of Left-Wing Books
American tax dollars are funding an array of book projects covering topics like “trans reproduction” and the “neglected queer history” of homosexuality in post-colonial Ireland, federal records show.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) spends hundreds of thousands of tax dollars a year funding academics to write full-length books on a variety of subjects, according to grant records. While many of the books center on innocuous topics, like the history of criminal procedure in China or philosopher Immanuel Kant, others the NEH funded in 2023 and 2024 veer into left-wing topics.
Read MoreState of Oregon Attempts to Force Christian Ministry to Remove Christian Beliefs in Order to Receive Funding
The state government of Oregon enacted a new restriction on a Christian youth ministry group, withholding crucial funding on the condition that the group specifically hire non-Christians or people who otherwise don’t agree with the group’s beliefs.
As reported by Fox News, the group, 71Five Ministries, is struggling with a large budget deficit following the Oregon Department of Education’s decision to revoke its funding due to its Christian beliefs. The ministry filed a lawsuit against the state in March, with the support of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), declaring the state’s decision to be a violation of their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Oral arguments in the case ended last week, and both sides are now waiting for the judge’s decision.
Read MoreConservative College Professor Investigated for Racism After Accusing Black Student of Plagiarism
A Claremont McKenna College professor was dragged through a yearlong investigation over racism allegations — and ultimately cleared — after he accused a black student of plagiarism, according to a recently published report.
Professor William Ascher, a distinguished scholar whose CV notes he has worked as a professor of government and economics at the conservative college for nearly 25 years and also previously served as dean of faculty, faced the probe after he reported the student to the school’s Academic Standards Committee.
Read MoreCommentary: A Tumultuous School Year Winds Down
As the school year nears completion, a quick look at recent developments shows an education system in turmoil. The unions are more political than ever, their demands are shameless, lawsuits against the establishment abound, and school choice is rapidly expanding.
Read MoreNorthwestern University President Admits to Getting an ‘F’ from ADL with Combatting Antisemitism
Northwestern University President Michael Schill admitted Thursday that he got an “F” rating from the Anti-Defamation League during a back and forth between him and Rep. Elise Stafanik, R-N.Y. during a hearing to address antisemitism.
“Isn’t it also true that Northwestern earned an ‘F’ for your failure to respond and combat antisemitism and they called for your resignation?” Stefanik asked Schill.
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