Education Policy & School Reform News

This section covers K12 policy, school board elections, curriculum transparency, parental rights, school choice, charter and voucher programs, and state and federal rules that shape classrooms. The Daily Signal includes news reports, analysis, commentary, and opinion pieces to explain how these decisions affect students, families, and educators.
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  • opinion

    Hollywood Is Protecting Its Children. Why Aren’t We?
    Hollywood is limiting screens. As ironic as it may seem, the Los Angeles Unified School District, which encompasses Hollywood, will limit student screen time in schools this academic year. More schools need to follow suit and implement policies aimed at reducing children’s screen time—even for educational purposes. In its announcement earlier this year, the LAUSD’s…
    ​​​​Emma Maslar | Annie Chestnut Tutor
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  • news

    Texas Approves Classic Learning Test for Public College Admissions
    The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has approved the use of the Classic Learning Test, or CLT, for admissions at Texas public colleges and universities. In a July 23 letter to university chancellors and presidents, Commissioner of Higher Education Wynn Rosser informed them that institutions may consider the CLT as a factor when admitting students….
    Emily Medeiros
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  • opinion

    Florida Takes Bolds Step in Teacher Preparation Standards
    Eight months after becoming the first state in the nation to formally adopt the Phoenix Declaration, Florida’s State Board of Education has taken its most concrete step yet toward turning that document’s seven guiding principles into classroom practice. At its July 22 meeting, the board approved sweeping revisions to the state’s teacher preparation framework—amending the…
    Jason Bedrick
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  • opinion

    The American Bar Association’s Not-So-Separate Law School Accrediting Council
    The American Bar Association president, Michelle Behnke, gave a disastrous performance at a House Oversight Committee Task Force hearing last week. She doubled down on DEI and couldn’t answer even straightforward questions. In one emperor-has-no-clothes moment, she refused to answer what her implicit biases might be—even though the ABA proclaims that everyone has them. In…
    Zack Smith
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  • opinion

    Why Is Virginia’s Largest Public School District Spending so Much on Lawyers?
    In just seven years, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) has spent nearly $60 million on lawyers. During fiscal year 2026 alone, the district set a new record, spending $14.4 million on legal fees. Fiscal Year Legal Fees 2020 $6,401,078 2021 $5,066,049 2022 $6,312,989 2023 $6,925,475 2024 $11,619,332 2025 $7,656,968 2026 $14,440,784 Total $58,422,675 Source: Freedom…
    Stephanie Lundquist-Arora
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  • opinion

    What the Nation’s Report Card Teaches Us About Repairing the Human Soul 
    Stories bemoaning U.S. student test scores have become a bromide. But some reports on student achievement offer a glimpse into the reasons why achievement is so poor. So it is with the latest Long Term Trend report from the Nation’s Report Card, the National Assessment of Education Progress.   First, the results: Reading and math scores among 9-year-olds improved slightly over scores from 2022,…
    Jonathan Butcher
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  • opinion

    Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders Shows Education Can Be Fixed 
    Amid celebrations of our nation’s 250th birthday, Gallup serves up a sobering portrait of general dissatisfaction with our nation’s core institutions.  “Confidence in U.S. institutions Remains Near All-Time Low,” reports Gallup.   Of 14 core institutions—banks, big business, labor, the presidency, Congress, schools, health care, etc.—only 27% say they have “a great deal/quite a lot of…
    Star Parker
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  • opinion

    Want to Rebuild Higher Education? Here Is the Guidebook
    The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America—a boom in its boom-and-bust cycle, as my colleague Robert Stilson calls it—has many political observers on the right and the left analyzing the conditions that led to an embrace of that group’s radicalism. And it is radical. As Stilson points out, “[i]n its newly updated platform, the DSA…
    Sarah Lee
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  • news

    Democrat Gov. Denied: Kids’ Educational Scholarships Are Saved 
    Pennsylvania’s Republican-led Legislature has successfully pushed back against Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposal to cut two scholarship programs from the 2026–27 budget. Shapiro’s original budget proposal, HB 2632, called for eliminating two programs: the Educational Improvement Tax Credit and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit.  The Pennsylvania Legislature successfully amended the budget to maintain the original scholarships and…
    Karly Tucker
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  • opinion

    New Kentucky Audit Shows Why Families Need Education Freedom
    Kentucky State Auditor Allison Ball’s recent report on Jefferson County Public Schools should alarm every taxpayer and parent in the state. Not only because of the report’s contents, but also because JCPS is the state’s largest school district, serving 1 in 7 students in Kentucky. The audit not only highlights the dire financial situation the…
    Madison Marino Doan
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  • opinion

    In Texas, Parental Rights Are Only as Strong as the Parents Willing to Enforce Them
    In 2025, Texas did something parents had spent years demanding: It wrote parents back into their own children’s education. In a single session, lawmakers passed a package of parental rights bills, handed parents real control over the books that sit on school library shelves, and ordered the state to spell out those rights in plain…
    Courtney Corbello
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  • opinion

    Indiana Watchdog Releases DEI Audit. This Is a Model for States Across the US.
    Last year, many Indiana public school teachers promised to end racist diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in schools. If successful, such assurances and the policies that follow would be models for other states. How’s it going? Turns out, the racism in public education runs deep. This week, the Indiana Family Institute released an audit of…
    Jonathan Butcher | Ella Jackson
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  • news

    Education Committee Vows to Shift Remaining Ed Dept. Tasks, Programs to HHS, DOJ
    A key House committee has rolled out plans to delegate some of the Department of Education’s remaining tasks to other federal agencies, and the measure could reach the chamber floor for a vote as soon as Wednesday. The 10 bills included in the legislative package, released last week by House Education and the Workforce Committee…
    Pedro Rodriguez
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  • news

    Truman Scholarship, a Democrat ‘Talent Pipeline,’ on Path to Reform
    A key House committee is moving forward with efforts to reform a federally funded scholarship program after extensive reporting from The College Fix uncovered the program’s overwhelming liberal bias. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce advanced New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s Truman Scholarship Clean House Act, which could soon be brought before the…
    Pedro Rodriguez
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  • opinion

    Head Start Isn’t Really Giving Kids a Head Start. Here’s How to Deal With It. 
    For many families, summer often means scoping out childcare options while parents continue to work. Some families in low-income neighborhoods turn to Head Start, a program whose very name suggests children should expect to finish their time at one of these centers better prepared for school. But today, after more than 60 years and over $240 billion in spending, the program has fallen well short of that goal.    A new Heritage Foundation report reveals a harsh reality: Head Start centers are overregulated, unsafe, expensive, and fail to deliver lasting…
    Madison Marino Doan | Jonathan Butcher
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  • news

    The Mountain States Policy Center: Teaching Liberty Through Competition 
    On May 2, 2026, teams from Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Wyoming came together at the Idaho State Capitol to battle for the “We the Students: Mountain West Civics Cup.” The event was a regional high school competition aimed at engaging students in the study of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.    Mountain States Policy Center staged the event with the help of a $50,000 grant from…
    Katherine Matt
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  • opinion

    Oregon Has Civil Rights Problems in Education. This Congresswoman Is Trying to Distract Voters.
    Education Secretary Linda McMahon is downsizing an ineffective government bureaucracy, so, naturally, progressive lawmakers are howling. The latest theatrics come from Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., who introduced articles of impeachment against McMahon last week. Bonamici’s attempt is baseless—McMahon has continued to fulfill the law while downsizing the U.S. Department of Education—which raises the question of…
    Jonathan Butcher
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  • opinion

    One Small Step for School Choice
    When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act came up for a vote on the Senate floor on July 1 of last year, 50 senators voted for it, and 50 senators voted against it. Vice President JD Vance had to cast the tie-breaking vote in that chamber—so the bill could go back to the House for…
    Terence Jeffrey
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  • news

    Heritage Foundation Awards $1M in Prizes to Nonprofits
    The Heritage Foundation on Thursday announced the recipients of its annual “Innovation Prizes,” a program that awards $1 million in prizes to nonprofit organizations for their work to strengthen society. This is the sixth year that Heritage has given the awards to organizations that put conservative principles into action. Recipients of this year’s prizes include…
    Francesca Cella
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  • opinion

    I Ran Arizona’s ESA Program. Here’s What the Critics Won’t Tell You.
    I ran Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account Program as its executive director, and I am here to tell you that the public conversation about this program is missing something critical: the truth about how it actually works. You have heard the claims of school choice opponents: fraud, waste, lack of accountability. What you have not heard…
    Christine Accurso
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