Author: BelieveAgain

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up cases about a state constitutional provision barring aid to religious schools and the 2021 controversy about parent protests at school board meetings.As the justices opened their new term Oct. 7, they turned away hundreds of petitions for review that had piled up over their summer recess. The court has important cases of interest to educators on its docket, including about transgender rights and the federal E-rate program for schools. And they may yet take up other cases on gender identity in schools and state aid to religion.But here are the two…

Six states last school year launched private school choice programs that were open to all students, regardless of much their family earns or where they previously went to school.They joined two other states with existing “universal” programs. All told, 569,000 students enrolled in universal programs from those eight states, collectively costing $4 billion in state funds.That’s slightly more than $7,000 per student—compared with $7,700 per pupil that public schools got from state sources in 2022.Those are some of the key findings in a new analysis of private school choice programs from FutureEd, a research think tank based at Georgetown University’s…

Washington College in Maryland became the butt of the joke on late night TV last month after it changed its logo—George Washington’s cursive signature—because it was “difficult to read and not immediately recognizable for many prospective students,” according to a news release from the small liberal arts college. The move also reignited the question of whether K-12 schools should teach cursive.The gap in cursive education has been a source of debate in state legislatures across the country in recent years, with some researchers and historians advocating for its return. Researchers say that handwriting is linked to academic success, even if…

The former superintendent of one of North Carolina’s largest school districts will serve as the state’s next superintendent of public instruction, clinching what became the highest-profile state superintendent’s race of the 2024 election cycle.Democrat Mo Green, the former superintendent of the Guilford County schools and the former executive director of a philanthropic foundation, defeated Michele Morrow, a nurse and home schooling advocate. Green claimed 51 percent of the vote to Morrow’s 49 percent, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.Morrow, who has never held public office, narrowly prevailed in the GOP primary against the current state chief, Catherine…

With former President Donald Trump set to return to the White House, there will undoubtedly be an impact on the American education system.Trump was declared the winner early Wednesday morning. He is the second president in U.S. history to be elected to non-consecutive terms, and the first convicted felon to win the office.Trump spent little time on the campaign trail focused on education policy. In the little he did say on the topic, he reiterated longtime talking points, criticizing schools for spending too much, calling for the end of the U.S. Department of Education, and railing against “teaching woke.”Here are…

Florida voters opted to maintain nonpartisan school board elections, rejecting a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have required candidates to participate in party primaries and list their affiliations on the ballot.About 55 percent of voters supported Amendment 1, according to a count published by the Associated Press on Nov. 6. It needed 60 percent approval to pass. The state previously had partisan school board races before voters made them nonpartisan in 1998.Florida’s amendment—approved by the state’s Republican legislature and championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who began to endorse local school board candidates in 2022—was part of a push…

Plans to abolish the U.S. Department of Education—a key part of President-elect Donald Trump’s platform and a priority for his political allies—are a key concern for schools as he prepares to retake the White House in January.But can he—and will he—actually carry through on the promise? And what would it mean if he did?The short answer: Ending the agency would require approval from Congress and a great deal of political capital that Trump may want to target elsewhere, especially in the early days of his administration in which he will be under pressure to deliver promises around tax cuts and…

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos can’t wait to see a second Trump administration finish what she helped start.DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist and veteran school choice activist, joined former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet after a historically grueling confirmation process that required Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote in her favor. She hoped to help him deliver on a dramatic proliferation of school choice and a major rollback of the federal education bureaucracy.But the first Trump administration saw only modest progress on both fronts. And DeVos—who’d notched major policy victories as the founder of the American Federation…

Voters in three states, including two where Republicans won statewide and national races, on Tuesday decisively rejected efforts to expand or codify private school choice. But advocates for the movement for private school choice may yet have cause to cheer in the coming months.Two-thirds of Kentucky voters rejected amending the state constitution to pave the way for charter schools and private school choice options like education savings accounts. More than half of Nebraska voters approved repealing an existing program that gives parents state tax credits to spend on private school. And a narrow majority of voters in Colorado dismissed a…

Former President Donald Trump’s unexpectedly decisive victory in the presidential race doused political accelerant over his long-articulated plans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, slash K-12 spending, and enact a sweeping federal school choice program.Trump has “one of the largest mandates in presidential history,” said Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s elected superintendent of public instruction and a vocal Trump supporter who has been discussed as a potential education secretary. “He has definitively laid out a plan for education. It’s actually even better [than in the first term] because we’re seeing more specifics. We’re seeing more support. He has put himself in…