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Author: BelieveAgain
When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz quickly rose to prominence in national Democratic politics this summer and then was chosen by Vice President Kamala Harris as her running mate on the presidential ticket, high school coaches around the country paid attention.“That was pretty cool for most coaches in America,” said Gary Rankin, the head football coach at Boyd Buchanan School, a private high school in Chattanooga, Tenn. “Regardless of one’s politics, this is exciting for a lot of us.”Joe Aresimowicz, the head football coach at Berlin High School in Berlin, Conn., said he quickly learned what he could about Walz, including…
Arne Duncan served as U.S. secretary of education under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2016, following a seven-year tenure as the superintendent of the Chicago public schools. During his time at the U.S. Department of Education, we often didn’t see eye to eye when it came to Race to the Top, NCLB waivers, the Common Core, college lending, and more. But these were debates over policy and principle. I understood that Duncan was doing what he thought best and I like to think he took my critiques in that same spirit. With that kind of respectful disagreement in short…
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…