Author: BelieveAgain

Over the dissents of two justices, the U.S. Supreme Court is declining to take up a case about whether educational institutions’ bias-reporting policies targeting hateful or derogatory speech have a chilling effect on students.The case before the justices involved Indiana University’s bias-response teams, but one conservative advocacy group told the court that such policies and teams also “pervade K-12 schools,” which “are always eager to mimic their higher education comrades.”Such bias-response policies are meant to foster a safe and conducive learning environment, free from discriminatory language, but the “bias-response teams” of officials who carry out such policies have come under…

The nation’s largest teachers’ union is asking a federal court to halt the U.S. Department of Education’s enforcement of a directive that threatens to pull federal funding from schools that have race-based programming, arguing that it violates constitutional rights and laws that prohibit the federal government from interfering with curricula.The lawsuit, which the NEA filed along with its New Hampshire affiliate and the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday in federal court in New Hampshire, is the second to challenge the department’s Feb. 14 directive that came in the form of a “dear colleague” letter to school and college leaders.…

Biographical Information: McMahon grew up in New Bern, North Carolina. She attended East Carolina University and studied to become a French teacher, but never taught. Instead, she co-founded and led World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband. In 2009, she was appointed to the Connecticut board of education. She resigned a year later to begin her first of two unsuccessful campaigns to represent Connecticut in the U.S. Senate. McMahon previously led the Small Business Administration during President Donald Trump’s first term, serving from 2017 to 2019. She stepped down from the SBA to lead the America First Action PAC in support…

Organizations that support teacher-preparation programs nationwide sued the Trump administration on Monday, arguing that recent cuts and terminations of federal Education Department grants were illegal and should be reversed.If the cuts persist, the lawsuit says, hundreds of teachers in training will lose crucial funding to support their scholarships; schools in many states will lose valuable services provided by student teachers and their mentors; and several colleges and universities will no longer be able to manage teacher residency programs that put aspiring educators in K-12 classrooms.The National Center for Teacher Residencies, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, and the…

More than 100 organizations that represent researchers, K-12 administrators, school boards, and universities are urging top congressional lawmakers to help reinstate funding for dozens of education-related grants the Trump administration has terminated recently.The groups today sent a joint letter to six U.S. senators and three U.S. House of Representatives members, including the chairs of both chambers’ respective education and appropriations committees, calling on them to tell the acting U.S. secretary of education to “immediately reverse the cancellation” of three grant programs that have collectively enabled hundreds of college students across the country to pursue teaching careers.The letter addresses three sets…

Linda McMahon on Monday easily secured the votes in the U.S. Senate needed to serve as secretary of education, allowing her to take the helm of an agency President Donald Trump is already trying to significantly downsize and hopes to abolish.The Senate approved McMahon to lead the U.S. Department of Education in a 51-45 party-line vote. Though the Trump administration’s early moves to shrink the department and force schools to drop diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have sparked strident objections from Democrats, McMahon passed with relative ease compared to her predecessor in Trump’s first term, Betsy DeVos, who made history…

More than the usual transitions from one political party to the other, the arrival of the Trump administration requires critical strategic readjustments by education leaders who serve on the front lines. Among the extreme changes proposed by the administration are closing the U.S. Department of Education and sending federal education funds directly to the states.Many of these attacks on 50 years of education policy—from civil rights enforcement in schools to evidence-based research grants to universities to teacher professional development to teaching about systemic racism and human sexuality—are already underway though significant funding cuts or policy changes. The moment to take…

Public schools in the United States don’t track the number of undocumented students enrolled due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision granting these students the constitutional right to free, public education.Nevertheless, there have been efforts over the years by state and school district leaders to change that and to bar undocumented students’ access to public schools. Most recently, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s elected superintendent of public instruction, pushed forward a proposed rule requiring parents to provide proof of citizenship upon enrolling children in public schools.But Walters’ effort hit a snag when a fellow Republican, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, denounced the move…

The U.S. Department of Education is asking the public to report practices of diversity, equity, and inclusion in public schools, the Trump administration’s latest move to go after schools for what it calls “divisive ideologies” and “indoctrination.”The agency on Thursday launched a public portal—EndDEI.Ed.Gov—for parents, students, teachers, and the broader community to report practices of discrimination based on race or sex in publicly-funded K-12 schools.This new effort comes just before the Feb. 28 deadline that the Trump administration set for K-12 schools and universities to end DEI practices or risk losing federal funding.The portal webpage, titled “Students should be focused…

When Vianey secured a full ride to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher, it felt like a door had opened to her: full financial support so she could do something for her community, and become the teacher she had always wanted in school.But midway through her freshman year, she and 15 other students found out the federal grant funding Project RAÍCES, their teacher-training program, was among those terminated by the U.S. Department of Education in recent weeks, propelled by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.With no federal right to education in the U.S.…