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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    • News

    LifeWise Academy Brings Bible-based Education to Public School Students During School Hours

    Bethany Sanidad, a mom from Ohio, credits LifeWise Academy with changing her son Christian’s life—and by extension her whole family’s outlook on faith. “I imagine Christian and his family sitting in church one day and thinking it all started with LifeWise,” Sanidad told The Daily Signal. “If we didn't have LifeWise offered, we wouldn't be…
    Robert B. Bluey
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    • News

    North Carolina’s Democrat Governor Declares Emergency Over School Choice ‘Scheme’

    North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency Monday because the state Legislature is expected to override his veto of a school choice bill. “I’m declaring the state of emergency because you need to know what’s happening,” Cooper said during an address in the state capital of Raleigh. “If you care…
    Tony Kinnett
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    • Opinion

    Why Junior ROTC Programs in US High Schools Are Needed Now More Than Ever

    Based on allegations of sex abuse at the hands of instructors, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., late last year called on the Pentagon to “shut down” the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program. That sentiment is echoed by critics who further claim JROTC “brainwashes” students with militarism and violence. By way of background, JROTC is…
    Thomas Spoehr
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    • News

    ‘I Would Like to Have My Job Back’: School Counselor Sues After Being Fired for Disagreeing With Transgender Policy

    PENDLETON, Ind.—An Indiana school district violated a guidance counselor’s right to free speech by retaliating against and ultimately firing her for saying parents should know about their teenage children’s interest in “transitioning” to the opposite sex, the former counselor argues in a lawsuit filed Thursday.   Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that protects religious liberty…
    Tony Kinnett
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    • News

    Democratic Attorney General Targets School for Policy Notifying Parents If Their Child Tries to Change Their Gender

    New Jersey’s attorney general filed a civil rights complaint Wednesday against Hanover Township Board of Education challenging a policy that advises educators to notify parents if their child is transitioning genders at school. The Hanover Township Board of Education adopted a “Parental Notice of Material Circumstances” policy on Tuesday that requires educators to “say something to the…
    Reagan Reese
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    • News

    This School District Teaches Middle School Sex Ed Based on Planned Parenthood Guide

    Warning: This report includes graphic language and references to such language, which some readers may find offensive. A Virginia school district is using a teacher’s guide for middle school sex education, co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood, that promotes student “role-plays,” urges normalizing of certain behavior, and refers to sterilization as “permanent birth control.”  The teachers guide…
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    School System’s Decision Against Flying ‘Pride’ Flags Outside Buildings Angers LGBTQ+ Activists

    School board meetings in one New Jersey district have turned into a toxic fiasco as LGBTQ+ protesters screamed and cursed at board members over a policy to fly only the American and New Jersey flags in front of schools. The last two scheduled school board meetings of the Westwood Regional School District in Bergen County,…
    Tony Kinnett
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    • Opinion

    School Choice Chalking Up More Wins Across Country

    The momentum for school choice is continuing to build nationwide. Eight states have enacted new education choice policies or have expanded existing ones so far this year, including Indiana, Montana, and South Carolina earlier this month alone. Of the eight, four states—Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, and Utah—enacted school choice policies that will be available to all…
    Jason Bedrick
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    • Opinion

    Are School Libraries Banning Thousands of Books? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Trust the Left’s Narrative

    “What we’re seeing here is a resurgence of widespread censorship in America,” Nadine Farid Johnson recently told The Wall Street Journal. Johnson is the Washington director of PEN America and co-author of its report claiming to identify 2,532 books banned in public schools during the 2021-2022 school year. PEN America advocates on behalf of poets,…
    Jay Greene
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    • Opinion

    Biden’s ‘Transgender’ Rule Mandating Schools Treat Biological Males as Females Gets Tested

    Just when you thought Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools could not get any worse. Now, Biden’s Department of Education has launched an investigation into how the school system handled two 2021 sexual assaults against girls by a boy claiming to be “transgender.” Its investigation of those complaints will force the department to come to terms…
    Sarah Parshall Perry
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    • Opinion

    It’s a Problem When the Goal of School Meals Is No Longer Just to Serve Students in Need

    The White House wants every K-12 student to be part of the welfare system. And in its zeal to achieve that goal, pesky things like Congress or the risk of expanding already poorly performing programs pose no obstacles. President Joe Biden’s administration is continuing the work of President Barack Obama’s team and trying to put…
    Jonathan Butcher
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    • Opinion

    ‘He’s Wrong,’ Expert Says as Education Secretary Implies Book Banning Responsible for Falling Civics, History Scores

    The test results are in, and America’s children are failing history and civics. According to the “Nation’s Report Card,” just 13% of eighth graders are proficient in U.S. history, and only 22% are proficient in civics. Every four years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress captures how well America’s students are performing in major subjects….
    Virginia Allen
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    • Opinion

    Red States Ban Destructive Transgender Treatments as K-12 Schools Funnel Children to Dangerous Path

    Citing “very serious side effects” and a “lack of reliable scientific evidence for their efficacy and safety,” Missouri is clamping down on chemical and surgical gender transition interventions for both children and adults. The move comes as public schools across the nation push children toward transgenderism with organized efforts and intentional tactics that leave children’s…
    Keri D. Ingraham
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    • Opinion

    The School Choice Momentum Continues Nationwide

    Education choice is on the march. So far this year, four states have enacted education choice policies that will be available to all K-12 students. Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, and Utah have now joined Arizona and West Virginia in making every child eligible for education savings accounts or ESA-like policies that allow families to choose the…
    Jason Bedrick
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    • Opinion

    Parents Get Back in Charge of Their Children’s Education

    Parents in the pandemic era have asserted themselves with new vigor for the sake of their children. Parents no longer presume that the zoned public school is the right fit, or that the school puts students first. Nor do parents presume that most teachers wish to reproduce the values of the community. Since 2020, Americans’…
    Adam Kissel
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    • News

    School Allows Reading of LGBT Book to Second Graders Despite State Law Requiring Parental Consent 

    A Missouri elementary school allowed a parent to read the transgender-promoting children’s book “I Am Jazz” to a second-grade class without first informing other parents, although state law requires school districts to notify parents beforehand about lessons on sexuality.   Webster Groves School District, located in the suburbs of St. Louis, allowed the parent to read…
    Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
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    • News

    4 Highlights From Teachers Union Head Randi Weingarten’s Testimony on School Lockdowns

    Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, fielded lawmakers’ questions Wednesday about her powerful union’s role in school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Weingarten, who leads the nation’s second-largest teachers union, testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on why the AFT pushed school lockdowns.  The New York Post reported…
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    What Bud Light Scandal Could Teach Us About School Choice

    One of the most effective levers of influence in a free market system is the ability for consumers to take their business elsewhere.  When Gillette released a marketing campaign in 2019 designed around criticizing “toxic masculinity,” alienating millions of men around the country, consumers responded by taking their business (about $5 billion of it) elsewhere. …
    Tony Kinnett
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    • Opinion

    Marxian Education

    Some schools are ditching traditional grading. Instead, they use “labor-based grading,” an idea promoted by Arizona State University professor Asao Inoue. Labor-based grading means basing grades more on effort than the quality of work. In addition, Inoue lectured a conference of rhetoric professors “stop saying that we have to teach this dominant English. … If…
    John Stossel
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    • Opinion

    New Book Pulls Back Curtain on Public Schools’ ‘Mediocrity’ Sending Parents, Students to Exits

    Connor Boyack and Corey DeAngelis’ new book, “Mediocrity: 40 Ways Government Schools Are Failing Today’s Students,” provides a concise explanation for why Americans have begun abandoning the woefully inept public school system. Forty chapters rife with examples of failure paint the American public school system as a catalyst for the exodus to alternative options. Case…
    Tony Kinnett
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