Author: BelieveAgain

Schools in Louisiana may soon be required to display the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.In May, Louisiana lawmakers passed a bill that would require all public schools in the state to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom no later than this coming Jan. 1. The bill awaits Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s signature.The Pelican State is the first in recent years to pass a bill requiring schools to display the religious directives. But lawmakers in Arizona, Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia have all introduced similar bills, none of which has passed yet.The bills are a part of…

Classroom tools and technology are changing too fast for traditional research to keep up without significant support to identify best practices and get them into the classroom. That was the consensus of state education leaders, equity advocates, and ed-tech experts at a symposium on the future of education research and development, held to standing-room-only on Capitol Hill Thursday.“We know instinctively that what works to teach an 8th grader in Houston who is behind grade level in reading isn’t necessarily the same as what it takes to teach a 1st grader in rural New Mexico how to read, or that what…

A federal judge in Texas struck down a set of three-year-old U.S. Department of Education guidance documents that told schools the agency would use Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination, to protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.The practical effect of the June 11 ruling from U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor is limited to schools in Texas, to which the documents will no longer apply. It has no direct effect on the Education Department’s new Title IX regulation issued in April, which explicitly bars schools from discriminating based on sexual orientation and gender identity.But…

Rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z has entered the debate over establishing a school choice voucher system in Pennsylvania, a proposal that has caused a months-long budget feud in the politically divided legislature. The push to create private school vouchers has drawn some unlikely allies, including the state’s Democratic governor—a move at odds with much of his party and public school advocates.And now, Team Roc, the philanthropic arm of Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation, is putting its support behind the school voucher measure as the state legislature buckles down to pass a budget, due by the end of the month. Jay-Z’s philanthropy…

In an important ruling on student expression, a federal appeals court has upheld the authority of Massachusetts school administrators who barred a middle school student from wearing a T-shirt that said, “There Are Only Two Genders.”A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, in Boston, ruled unanimously that “precisely because the message was reasonably understood to be so demeaning of some other students’ gender identities, there was the potential for the back-and-forth of negative comments and slogans between factions of students” that could lead to “a deterioration in the school’s ability to educate its students.”Liam…

From 2001 to 2015, the country was focused as never before on the improvement of public elementary and secondary education, using a federal law, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, as the guide. In 2015, NCLB was replaced by a statute, the Every Student Succeeds Act, that reverted to more traditional state control of education.These reforms largely failed, but the problems calling for national action persist. As a longtime observer of the ways in which federal power can amp up state and local education improvement efforts, I’m persuaded that we need a new partnership now. This joint state-federal…

Republicans blamed President Joe Biden for causing “chaos” in K-12 schools through his immigration policies during a U.S. House of Representatives hearing this week.GOP lawmakers and their invited witnesses at the June 4 Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee hearing described a situation in which schools were overrun with migrant students. They claimed that educating these students takes away from other students’ education and argued that the influx of migrant youth poses safety concerns.“Educating illegal immigrant children requires substantial resources, altering the learning environment for all students,” subcommittee Chairman Aaron Bean, R-Fla., said in his opening statement. “Overcrowded classrooms,…

Missouri’s commissioner of education, Margie Vandeven, is no stranger to politics in education—even if she’d prefer to be one.In the 8 1/2 years she’s spent leading the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, she has survived a former governor’s ouster attempt, polarizing debates over the response to COVID-19, and a growing parents’ rights movement that has injected itself into debates on numerous topics, including social-emotional learning.Vandeven has navigated these challenges all while trying to maintain a nonpartisan approach to her position—which is officially nonpartisan and appointed by a state board of education designed to maintain partisan balance.Now, Vandeven is…

For the first time in U.S. history, a former president has been convicted of felony crimes, and K-12 teachers will likely have to contend with a few questions from students as the nation comes to terms with the verdict.On May 30, a New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to illegally influence the 2016 election. The conviction marks the conclusion of the first of four criminal trials Trump is facing.The former president’s sentencing date is July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention, where delegates are expected to formally nominate…

Policies that provide families with public money to cover the cost of private school, homeschooling, and other educational expenses outside of the public school system continue to grow in Republican-led states. As of May 31, 29 states and the District of Columbia had at least one private school choice policy, according to Education Week’s school choice tracker. Twelve had at least one private school choice program designed to be accessible by all or nearly all K-12 students in the state.Those numbers could continue to grow.Louisiana lawmakers recently advanced a bill to establish an Education Savings Account program, leaving many of…