Author: BelieveAgain

Intensifying a policy clash with the Trump administration, California this week sued the U.S. Department of Education over the agency’s recent finding that the state is violating federal student privacy law by not requiring schools to disclose students’ gender transitions to parents.California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit Feb. 11 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against the department, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, and others. The suit is seeking to block the department’s demands that the state take multiple corrective actions to come into compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which guarantees…

Oklahoma’s charter school board on Monday rejected a proposal for a Jewish charter school, with several board members saying they supported the idea but felt constrained by legal decisions against religious charters.“If I could have voted for this school today without being bound, I would have voted yes,” Brian T. Shellem, the president of the Statewide Charter School Board, said during the meeting. “I think it would be great for the Jewish community and the Jewish kids to have this high-quality option of a school.”The proposed Ben Gamla Jewish charter school, which aims to offer an explicitly religious curriculum, was…

President Donald Trump last fall promised new legal guidance from the U.S. Department of Education that would ensure “total protection” for the right to pray in public schools.That guidance is now out, and it makes clear that students and teachers can pray in school as long as it’s not disruptive to other students and school activities and that no one is coerced into praying. The guidance also says teachers and school staff can pray at school as long as they’re not doing so in their professional capacity and requiring students to participate—though it’s OK to pray with willing students.In addition,…

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it’s an especially good time to reflect on the civic mission of democratic schooling. Today, Ashley Berner, the director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, and I discuss what the erosion of civil society means for students, educators, and school leaders—and what we can do about it.—RickAshley: I’ve been thinking a lot about civil society’s role in sustaining democracy and what that means for schools. Democratic theorists talk about the twin threats of an overbearing state and the isolated individual; in other words, extreme collectivism and extreme…

New efforts to establish religious charter schools are accelerating in several states, as advocates hope to return to the U.S. Supreme Court and finally get an answer about whether such schools pass constitutional muster.Last year, the justices deadlocked 4-4 in a case over the proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic virtual charter school in Oklahoma, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused. That outcome affirmed, without setting a nationwide precedent, a state supreme court decision that religious charter schools are barred in Oklahoma by the First Amendment’s prohibition against government establishment of religion.Advocates for religious charter schools have regarded the lack…

All but one of the nation’s 26 Republican governors are signing their states up for the first federal program that will fund private school scholarships through tax credits.Their Democratic counterparts, meanwhile, have been much more hesitant. A handful have already said no. Some who have shown interest have said they’d like public school students to benefit.In opting in last week, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis touted the federal tax-credit scholarship program as a chance to raise funds for “everything from meaningful summer school to tutoring to after-school activities to scholarships to schools.”And in North Carolina, Gov. Josh Stein said last August,…

After more than a year of uncertainty over how a Republican-controlled Congress under President Donald Trump would change federal education funding, lawmakers on Tuesday approved a fiscal 2026 budget that maintains level funding for virtually every existing K-12 program.The House voted 217-214 on Feb. 3 to approve a package of five spending bills the Senate had already voted to support, including for the U.S. departments of Education and Health and Human Services. Trump signed the budget bill into law shortly afterward.The latest House vote came after Democratic senators refused last week to support a previously agreed-upon version of the budget…

Two Minnesota school districts and the state’s teachers’ union filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to stop immigration agents from carrying out enforcement activity at or near schools.The suit challenges the Trump administration’s decision to revoke a long-standing policy that generally prohibited Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents from making immigration arrests and carrying out raids at schools and other “sensitive locations,” including places of worship and hospitals, without permission from agency headquarters.In Minnesota—the recent focus of a broad, intense immigration crackdown—Department of Homeland Security agents have detained people and staged immigration enforcement actions at or near schools, school…

Enrollment in private school choice programs have exploded in recent years, with Republican-led states collectively investing billions of dollars in subsidies for families to spend on private educational options of their choosing. Vouchers go toward private school tuition. Education savings accounts, or ESAs, cover a broader range of expenses, including tuition, fees, equipment and material costs, transportation, and more. Tax-credit scholarship programs reward donors who give to organizations that in turn issue scholarships to help cover students’ private education costs. And direct tax credits offer a more direct form of monetary relief for families’ private educational expenses.The list of state-level…

The U.S. Department of Education spent up to $38 million last year paying staffers from its office for civil rights to remain on administrative leave while the Trump administration’s efforts to lay them off were stymied by courts, according to a report from Congress’ investigative arm.The Government Accountability Office reached its cost estimate—a range of $28 million to $38 million—by ballparking the salaries and benefits for the staffers, who were removed from their jobs last March as part of the Trump administration’s push to dismantle the Education Department. In the civil rights office, that reduction in force—or RIF—affected 299 staffers,…