Author: BelieveAgain

Mike Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, recently launched a new Substack, SCHOOLED, that he hopes might help foster common ground on issues like accountability, charter schooling, gifted education, and school discipline. He explains that his not-so-secret agenda is to help reenergize the bipartisan “school reform” coalition. A one-time official in the Bush Department of Education and a co-founder of the Policy Innovators in Education Network, Mike has seen the ups and downs of “school reform” up close. Given that, I thought it’d be interesting to hear about this new endeavor and how he sees the broader…

When the U.S. Department of Education closed the office for civil rights’ regional outpost in Philadelphia, the complaints investigators there would have handled from schools in Pennsylvania and four neighboring states were instead shuffled to one of five remaining offices—in Georgia.The Philadelphia office was among seven that were shuttered when nearly half the Education Department’s civil rights investigation staff was laid off in March. Since then, the federal agency has announced 137 more layoffs from the civil rights office, which investigates discrimination complaints at schools and colleges and works to bring them into compliance with federal civil rights laws.Though the…

A divided federal appeals court in Ohio ruled against the state’s fourth largest school district in a case that pitted its gender pronoun policies against the rights of students who believe there are only two genders.The full Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Nov. 6 that the suburban Olentangy Local School District, in the Columbus area, cannot prohibit students from using gender-related language deemed offensive by others, siding with Parents Defending Education, which had argued the policies were unconstitutional.The national membership organization first filed suit against Olentangy in 2023, saying the district’s policies requiring the use of peers’ “preferred…

The U.S. Department of Education violated employees’ freedom of speech rights when it inserted language to their out-of-office emails blaming “Democrat Senators” for the federal government shutdown, a judge in Washington decided Friday.Calling the Trump administration’s conduct a “multifront campaign to assign blame for the government shutdown,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper sided with the union representing furloughed Education Department staff in his late Friday opinion, which sued in early October over the partisan language.“Nonpartisanship is the bedrock of the federal civil service; it ensures that career government employees serve the public, not the politicians. But by commandeering its employees’…

Although education wasn’t the main focus of high-profile races that dominated ballots Tuesday in New Jersey, New York City, and Virginia, the outcomes of those contests will have implications for schools—and for how much resistance President Donald Trump’s education policies encounter as his second term continues.Elsewhere, voters selected school board candidates, directly shaping the course for their local schools.Here are four education-related takeaways from the election. 1. There could be one more state joining multistate coalitions challenging Trump’s education policies. Democrats will take two key offices in Virginia from Republicans, with voters electing Abigail Spanberger as governor and Jay Jones…

A jury in Virginia on Thursday awarded $10 million to a former teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student and later accused an ex-administrator in a lawsuit of ignoring repeated warnings that the child had a gun.The jury returned its decision against Ebony Parker, a former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va.Abby Zwerner was shot in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her 1st grade classroom. She had sought $40 million against Parker in the lawsuit.Zwerner spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, underwent six surgeries, and does not have the…

A majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices voiced skepticism on Wednesday about the legality of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which are being challenged by two educational toy companies and others who say the measures will raise costs for school districts.During more than two hours of arguments in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the tariffs were an “imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been the core power of Congress.”Justice Neil M. Gorsuch warned of “a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and…

Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at 84.Cheney died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said Tuesday in a statement.The quietly forceful Cheney served father and son presidents, leading the armed forces as defense chief during the Persian Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son George W. Bush.Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger…

When state education chiefs have met at conferences or talked on the phone in recent months, the National Blue Ribbon Schools program has been a common topic of conversation.The 43-year-old federal program recognized hundreds of schools each year for academic excellence or narrowing gaps in student performance. But the Trump administration ended its role in it over the summer, “in the spirit of returning education to the states.”In the months since, a number of states have rolled out their own Blue Ribbon programs. At least 18 have created their own recognition programs, and at least four have honored the schools…

A federal appeals court has reversed the discipline of a New York state high school student over an off-campus social media post that mocked the 2020 death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police officers.While the student’s post was “ill-advised” and “offensive,” schools “cannot—and should not—protect the school community from hearing viewpoints with which they disagree or engaging in discourse with those who have offended them,” said a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in New York City, that was unanimous in its bottom-line judgment.The decision in Leroy v. Livingston Manor Central…