Author: BelieveAgain
Penny Schwinn, a former teacher, charter school founder, and state commissioner of education, has been named by President-elect Donald Trump as his pick for deputy secretary of education at the U.S. Department of Education.Schwinn, a strong supporter of school choice, would serve as the #2 official in the agengy, working under Linda McMahon, Trump’s choice for the top job at the Education Department. Schwinn’s extensive experience in K-12 stands in contrast to that of McMahon, a wealthy business executive who founded and served as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. Trump announced his choice of Schwinn on Truth Social late Jan.…
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of parents who object on religious grounds to a Maryland school district’s policy of preventing them from opting their children out of LGBTQ+ inclusive “storybooks” used in elementary English/language arts classes.Lower courts had refused to block the policy of the 160,000-student Montgomery County school district, and the parents’ case has become a rallying point among groups fighting sexual orientation- and gender identity-inclusive school policies.A federal appeals court’s ruling “that parents essentially surrender their right to direct the religious upbringing of their children by sending them to public schools … contradicts…
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Jan. 17 decision upholding a federal law to shut down TikTok or force its China-controlled parent company to sell it throws uncertainty into how educators will continue to use the platform to share ideas, learn new teaching skills, and build their social media influencer reputations.The platform, which is highly popular among many educators and students, has also prompted frustration from others, who have seen it used by kids to spread dangerous viral challenges, such as vandalizing schools; distract students from learning in school; and contribute to kids’ mental health problems. That’s why many educators are not…
During elementary school in Long Island, N.Y., Luisa Sanchez was thriving in a school full of English learners like herself. In particular, she excelled at math.But just before Sanchez entered 6th grade, she and her parents moved to rural Danville, Ky. Sanchez quickly realized that two American public schools could look vastly different. She was the only Hispanic student, and the only immigrant, in any of her classes. Instead of a dedicated classroom space for English learners, her school sent those students to the library for instruction.Most devastating, she said, her teachers never gave her a math placement exam. She…
A federal appeals court has declared that the Tucson, Ariz., school district, after nearly 50 years under a court-supervised desegregation plan, has reached the point where it’s considered legally desegregated.A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, unanimously upheld a 2022 decision by a federal district judge in Tucson that court supervision was no longer necessary.“Today we conclude that the district court’s work is done,” the appeals court said in its Jan. 15 decision in Mendoza v. Tucson Unified School District. “We agree that the district is now operating in unitary status…
In his last week as education secretary, Miguel Cardona told a room full of Education Department staff and guests that he could sense a lot of apprehension for what may come under the incoming Trump administration.“Will the investments we made be slashed or sustained? Will the new grants we stood up be canceled or continue? Will the recovery we began be abandoned or built upon? We can’t spend too much time wallowing in uncertainty. We can’t spend too much time feeling sad,” he said on Tuesday during an event recounting the agency’s four years under President Joe Biden. “The truth…
With one week to go until Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term, many are already looking ahead to what the president-elect’s proposed Cabinet picks could mean for K-12 education, and educators themselves are no exception. With the announcement of Linda McMahon as the presumptive nominee for education secretary, educator Robert Barnett responded with a message for the former World Wrestling Entertainment executive: “Education is not entertainment.”“When I trained to become a teacher,” he reminisced in a recent opinion essay, “I was told quite clearly that my job was to put on a show. I should stand at the board…
Later this month, President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of education will take office and confront a whirlwind of challenges. Just for starters, American students have continued to experience a worrisome decline in academic performance; meanwhile, the Department of Education is still struggling to recover from the FAFSA fiasco and has to restart student-loan payments for millions of borrowers. And that’s all before we get to programs, budgets, efforts to downsize the department, or anything else. To get a sense of the challenges awaiting the next secretary of education, I thought it worth seeking some insight from someone who’s been there—namely, Trump’s…
Private school choice has taken hold across the United States and shows few signs of slowing down. GOP lawmakers in close to a dozen states are signaling that it’s among their top legislative priorities in 2025.Even so, elected officials and education advocates across the political spectrum continue to debate these policies’ effects on state budgets, student learning, and the public school system.At the start of the year, 28 states and the District of Columbia each had at least one program that supplies public funds for parents to spend on educational options outside of public schools. Twelve of those states make,…
In my experience, what K–12 educators want from research is stuff that’s useful. They want strategies rooted in evidence and frank appraisals of whether instructional practices actually do what they say. They want researchers who kick the tires and fair-mindedly report on the strengths and weaknesses of pedagogies, practices, and policies.That’s not what educators are getting. On a range of sensitive questions—from restorative justice to social-emotional learning to culturally responsive education to gender identity to affirmative action—the education research community has, in recent years, operated as if its role is to help advance a morally correct set of nostrums.This matters…