Author: BelieveAgain

Even if education isn’t a marquee issue in this November’s presidential election, it’s likely to come up somehow—in a pithy debate quote, down-ballot as voters weigh gubernatorial and state legislative candidates, and locally as school boards wrestle with declining enrollment, the impact of new school choice programs, and sticky district budgets.Catch up on some of the core education issues in this curated set of Education Week explainers, written to give you the grounding you need in a friendly Q & A format. School choice This is a catch-all term for the various types of public and private school choice programs,…

Some key K-12 education topics got some airtime at the 2024 Democratic National Convention this week as speakers made repeated calls to reject Project 2025 and its proposal to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, school shooting survivors shared personal stories, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and others spoke about his background as a public school teacher and football coach. While other policy topics ultimately drew more attention at the Democrats’ four-day gathering in Chicago, K-12 education played a larger role at the DNC than at the Republican National Convention in July. Neither former President Donald Trump nor his running…

A key fault line in contemporary education is between those who see public schools as foundational to democracy and those who regard them as ineffectual and captive to union interests. In his new book Publicization: How Public and Private Interests Can Reinvent Education for the Common Good, Jonathan Gyurko sets out to bridge this divide. Jonathan is the president and co-founder of the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) and previously worked for the New York City school district, the United Federation of Teachers, and the Coalition of Public-Independent Charter Schools. I recently had a chance to talk with…

Former President Donald Trump next week will speak at the third annual summit of a group that rose to national prominence leveraging parent frustrations with schools’ COVID-19 safety precautions into success flipping school boards in much of the country to conservative control. Moms for Liberty announced Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, as the keynote speaker at its Joyful Warriors summit on Friday, Aug. 30 in Washington. Trump will join other speakers, including former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who served in the House of Representatives and ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat before becoming a Trump supporter, and Glenn…

Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates would push for universal prekindergarten, expanded career and technical education, a reduced emphasis on standardized testing, and efforts to improve teachers’ working conditions if elected later this year. Delegates to the Democratic National Convention voted to approve the party’s 2024 platform on Monday, the opening day of the party’s four-day gathering in Chicago. The platform doesn’t veer from the Biden administration’s approach to K-12. In fact, it passed without Democrats updating the document to reflect that Harris has replaced President Joe Biden as the top name on the ticket. Many of the…

Private school choice—using public funds to help families pay for private school tuition and homeschooling—figures prominently into Republican education priorities this election cycle. Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation, and the GOP’s official 2024 platform both call for “universal school choice,” painting school choice that’s available to all families regardless of income and other factors as a long-term goal that would ultimately have “schools serve parents, not the other way around,” as Project 2025 puts it. Twelve states have at least one private school choice program—whether vouchers, education savings accounts, or tax-credit scholarships—that is accessible…

GOP lawmakers in Oklahoma are calling for an investigation of the state’s Republican schools superintendent, Ryan Walters, over concerns about his stewardship of the department’s budget, spending priorities, and transparency. The letter, circulated on Tuesday, Aug. 13, by Republican state Rep. Mark McBride, who chairs the chamber’s education committee, alleges that Walters has refused or delayed answering inquiries from lawmakers, denied legislators entry to executive sessions of the state Board of Education, and is failing to perform the duties of his office, including complying with the General Assembly’s budgetary direction.The request will not advance unless 51 Republican lawmakers sign on…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday denied a request by the Biden administration to partially curb injunctions that are blocking its new Title IX regulation in 26 states and at least some schools in every other state.In an unsigned opinion, the court said that U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar had failed to show that the bulk of the new regulation could be separated from three challenged provisions that newly define sex discrimination to cover sexual orientation and gender identity.“On this limited record and in its emergency applications, the government has not provided this court a sufficient basis to disturb…

Jaime Green, superintendent of the Trinity Alps school district in rural northern California, doesn’t attend professional development conferences like most people in his role.Instead, he spends the vast majority of his travel time on Capitol Hill, urging members of Congress to pass the latest version of the Secure Rural Schools Act, which provides crucial funding for rural districts where abundant national forest land limits the amount of taxable property within district boundaries and thus the amount of funding they can draw from local taxpayers.Green estimates he’s met with 85 members of Congress during his six years leading the 700-student district.…

Most teachers don’t plan to address the 2024 presidential election in their classrooms, with many citing the possibility of parent complaints and disrespectful classroom discussions, according to a new nationally representative survey. Fifty-eight percent of K-12 teachers answered “no” when asked if they planned to talk about the election in an EdWeek Research Center survey of 678 educators, including 423 teachers. Of those respondents, 53 percent said they would avoid talking about the election because it “is entirely unrelated to the subject” they teach. But 22 percent said instruction about the election “could lead to parent complaints,” and 19 percent…