Author: BelieveAgain
Nearly half of all Americans, including many educators, are still working through their feelings about former President Donald Trump’s victory this week. This is particularly the case for those of us who work with immigrant students in our nation’s public schools.Here are some suggestions for how teachers, schools, and their leaders can move some of those feelings to action:Support StudentsIn theory, no one working in schools should challenge the idea of providing support to our students.However, as the saying goes, “The devil is in the details.”Research has documented the negative impact on mental health and academic achievement that occurs when…
President-elect Donald Trump is moving swiftly to staff his senior team and Cabinet positions, with news already broken about high-profile choices for secretary of state, EPA director, and ambassador to the United Nations.The brisk pace is fueling even more curiosity, speculation, and betting about who Trump may choose to be his education secretary and lead an agency that he has pledged to get rid of. Trump’s secretary will likely support slimming down if not dismantling the Education Department; expanding school choice; slashing K-12 spending; and attacking school districts’ diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.Plenty of GOP lawmakers, state education chiefs, and…
Following the election, those in and around K-12 should reflect shared values and turn down the heat. 2024-11-12 19:14:00 Source link
Half the country is celebrating that their presidential candidate won the election, and I respect the place those citizens are in right now. I, however, am writing this from the perspective of someone who is not on that winning side. As I process how we can move forward and begin to build more unity as a country, I am grieving. I sit in disbelief, with deep sadness and concern.My current work is related to helping education leaders and others decrease political polarization and human demonization. I cannot excuse the words and behaviors of the newly elected president. The rhetoric he…
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…