Author: BelieveAgain

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet, but already supporters and opponents of his promise to make it easier for families to use public dollars to pay for private schools a big focus of his second-term K-12 agenda are previewing their arguments.Supporters of more choice—both within private and public education—contend that the policy has strong public support. The yes. every kid. foundation, a nonprofit that backs expanding all types of school choice, released a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults on Dec. 12 that showed a majority of Americans—and even higher percentages of K-12 parents—favor tax…

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to serve as the secretary of the Department of Education is an unconventional one. Linda McMahon, who for more than 25 years held key executive positions with World Wrestling Entertainment, has little formal experience in education. She has not been a teacher, a school administrator, or an elected official with responsibility for schools (though she did serve for a little more than a year on the Connecticut state school board). What she does have, on the other hand, is extensive management and business-leadership experience, including as the head of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first…

Is TikTok actually going to get banned? The threat that the wildly popular social media platform will be banned in the United States has been lurking for more than a year.Now, though, it seems a ban is on the verge of happening after a ruling by a federal appeals court panel has cleared the way.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Dec. 6 denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law that requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance Ltd. or be banned by mid-January.In response, TikTok on Dec. 9 asked the…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, over a strong dissent by two justices, declined to take up a case about a school district’s facially race-neutral admissions policy for selective magnet high schools that sought to increase the schools’ racial, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity.In a case involving Boston’s three competitive “exam” schools, the court declined to disturb a ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, in Boston, that the coalition of parents and students challenging the admissions plan that was in effect for one school year had failed to show that it had discriminatory effects…

I’ve been getting a surprising number of stressed-out emails from college students and teachers asking about what’ll happen to them if President-elect Donald Trump shuts down the U.S. Department of Education. They want to know what’ll happen to their Pell Grants, their schools, or their retirement benefits. The level of concern is remarkable for a 44-year-old Republican promise to close a big, distant federal bureaucracy. Given such reactions, it’s worth explaining what’s going on with Trump’s promise to abolish the department—and why a lot of the breathless coverage may be missing the forest for the trees.First, yes, Sen. Mike Rounds…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case about a school district’s policy to support students undergoing gender transitions. But three justices said they would have taken up the challenge by a group of parents who contend the policy unconstitutionally excludes them from important decisions about their children.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in a dissent from the denial of review joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said the case “presents a question of great and growing national importance: whether a public school district violates parents’ fundamental constitutional right to make decisions concerning the rearing of their children ……

How many days should school be in session each year? It depends on where the school is located. And the difference between the shortest and longest academic year in the United States could be as many as 150 hours.Over the course of a typical 13-year, K-12 academic career, those differences mean that students in some states end up receiving one-and-a-half years more of instructional time than their counterparts elsewhere.That’s a key takeaway from new research that examines the findings from 74 studies related to instructional time and student achievement, as well as class time requirements in each state.While American students…

President-elect Donald Trump will come into the White House in January with Republicans in control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, along with a friendly Supreme Court—greasing the skids for him to begin implementing education priorities he and allies laid out in the runup to last month’s election.“We’re now beginning to see the scaffolding, the framework” for much of that to take place, said Kenneth Wong, professor of education policy at Brown University.Wong sees the influence of President Ronald Reagan’s legacy on Trump as he begins his second term: calls for deregulation and sending decisionmaking authority…

The foundation run by Linda McMahon has directed millions of dollars toward education causes over the past two decades, offering a glimpse into the personal priorities of the businesswoman President-elect Donald Trump has chosen to serve as secretary of education.Aside from her university alma mater and a Catholic university in Connecticut where she’s long served on the board of trustees, a charter school network with schools in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island,;and the local Boys and Girls Club that runs after-school and student enrichment programs in Stamford, Conn., have been among the recipients of funds from the foundation run…

Calling for a focus on civics and history in public schools, a House of Representatives education subcommittee on Wednesday laid the groundwork of what could be a Republican Party focus when it controls both chambers of Congress and the White House in January—taking aim, in part, at teaching about racism and gender and sexuality, while eyeing an expansion of private school choice.The hearing—held by the subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education—highlighted continued priorities for the GOP that have played out for years now at the state level, with many Republican-controlled states restricting how teachers can talk about race,…