Author: BelieveAgain

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden didn’t mention K-12 education in their first debate in the 2024 election cycle.With no questions on the topic during the 90-minute debate at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta on Thursday, neither candidate took any clear stance on the issue even at times when they chose to stray from the moderators’ questions.Historically, education has not been a major factor in voters’ decisions in presidential elections. Policies and priorities for K-12 schools are likely to hold even less weight this year as the economy, immigration, foreign policy, Biden’s age, and Trump’s status as a convicted…

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the plan for a religious charter school that would receive state funds but be controlled by two Roman Catholic dioceses in the state violated the state and federal constitutions.The court voted 6-2 against the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, sponsored by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and Diocese of Tulsa, which was set to begin its contract on July 1 with some 400 to 500 students in its first year, receiving some $2.5 million in state education aid in its first year.“Although a public charter school, St. Isidore is…

Civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit Monday to block Louisiana’s new law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, a measure they contend is unconstitutional.Plaintiffs in the suit include parents of Louisiana public school children, represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.Under the legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry last week, all public K-12 classrooms and state-funded universities will be required to display a poster-sized version of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font”…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether a state law that bars medical treatment for gender dysphoria in transgender adolescents violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal-protection clause. The court’s decision will likely hold implications for equal-protection claims for transgender and other LGBTQ+ students in schools.Separately, the justices turned away the appeal of two groups and several parents who sued over Connecticut’s 2021 decision to end religious exemptions to vaccination requirements for students to attend school.In the transgender-care case, United States v. Skrmetti, the court agreed to hear the appeal of the Biden administration, which had intervened in lawsuits…

In polls of teachers, parents, and employers, creativity regularly tops the lists of the most valued skills for students to develop . The largest international assessment of creativity to date shows how classroom practices can spur students to generate novel ideas and grapple with challenging social and academic problems.The 2022 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, measured the creative thinking of 15-year-olds across 64 countries and education systems in or partnered with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in data released on Tuesday. This is the third set of results from the 2022 PISA; results of the 2022…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up a potentially important case involving the $4.5 billion federal E-rate program that provides discounted internet and other telecommunications services to schools. The court agreed to hear the appeal of a Wisconsin telecom provider facing a civil trial under a federal fraud statute for allegedly overcharging schools under the program.Meanwhile, the court declined to hear the appeal of a former student with an intellectual disability who was Tased by a school resource officer after a violent outburst at his high school.The telecom case, Wisconsin Bell Inc. v. United States ex rel.…

The U.S. surgeon general is calling for a warning label on social media alerting users that “social media is associated with significant mental health harms in adolescents.”In a New York Times opinion piece, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said there is enough evidence mounting that shows a connection between social media and adolescents’ deteriorating mental health that a surgeon general’s warning label—similar to what appears on cigarette packages—is warranted.“One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information,” Murthy wrote in the New York…

Candidates with no experience teaching in or leading schools are at the center of two state superintendent races this fall as culture war debates linger in K-12 politics.In North Carolina, Michele Morrow, a nurse and homeschooling advocate who has called for the public execution of Democrats, including President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, won the state’s Republican primary over the current superintendent, Catherine Truitt, a former teacher. In November, Morrow will face Democrat Mo Green, the former superintendent of the Guilford County school district who is now the executive director of a philanthropic foundation.In North Dakota, the country’s…

The Biden administration’s new Title IX rule, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, won’t go into effect in four states in August after a federal judge temporarily blocked it.The June 13 preliminary injunction applies to Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Montana and is the first legal blow to the U.S. Department of Education’s April rewrite of Title IX regulations. The Education Department has said schools must comply with the revised rule by Aug. 1, but at least seven lawsuits involving 26 states aim to prevent it from taking effect. The legal challenges take issue…

School finance policies don’t just affect the present-day classroom experience for students. They have a direct and measurable effect on how much those students learn and how much money they make later in life.That’s the takeaway from new research showing that Jim Crow-era school funding laws in 20th-century Mississippi cost Black families significantly in terms of educational attainment and income decades after those policies were deemed illegal and immoral.Researchers examined a system of school finance in the first half of the 20th century called an “equalization fund” that had a far different effect than the name suggests. Mississippi lawmakers offered…