Education Policy & School Reform News

There are four steps schools can take to prevent tragedies like the one in Uvalde, Texas, Steven Bucci, a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow, says. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) “[I]t doesn’t have to be like this,” Bucci says. “We can mitigate the risk of these kind of things happening. I…

In the 2018-2019 school year, the government-run schools in Washington, D.C., beat the government-run schools in every state in the union in at least one measurable category: They spent the most money per pupil. That year, according to Table 236.75 published by the National Center for Education Statistics, the public elementary and secondary schools in…

Beginning with the 2021 gubernatorial election in Virginia—in which Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe for all practical purposes vowed to keep parents out of the classroom, saying, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”—parents began to realize the Democratic Party wanted to leave them behind. President Joe Biden echoed that sentiment…

After making it big in the entertainment industry, a young Sam Sorbo was struggling to find purpose.  “I guess I figured out that the game was to make a lot of money,” she recalls. “That’s what I was taught growing up. And I made a lot of money and it wasn’t enough for me.”  Sorbo’s…

If one leftist teachers group gets its way, reading literature in school will be replaced by reading internet memes and Twitter posts.    A powerful group of educators called the National Council of Teachers of English recently released a statement calling on schools to “decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language…

Across America, states have gone on the offensive, targeting the radical sex and “gender” curriculums in grade schools. These proposals follow increasing calls from parents to reject sexually explicit content unearthed in public school classrooms. The Parental Rights in Education law, recently signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, sparked heated conversations throughout the nation regarding…

In 2008, when coach Joseph Kennedy knelt in silent prayer at the 50-yard line of the Bremerton High School football field after a game, he likely never anticipated his subsequent firing would take him all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  And it’s been a long journey, to say the least.  First Liberty Institute,…

Any working mom can attest that work never quite turns off.   We don’t necessarily get to sleep in on the weekends or kick back and sip wine when we get home from our jobs.   Most likely, we’re cooking dinner, giving baths, refereeing fights, negotiating on bedtime or television, reading stories, and trying to accomplish the…

Being a wife and mother while working full time is a lot. Add homeschooling to the mix? Now you have entered superhero status in our book.  Marguerite Bowling, a senior communications manager at The Heritage Foundation, is actually no superhero, but she and her husband are committed to their children’s education and upbringing. When Bowling…

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Those were the famous words of Terry McAuliffe’s failed gubernatorial campaign in Virginia last fall. The past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic exposed just how little control parents have over their children’s public school education. And their powerlessness did not end when…

As in so many other places around the country, the public education system in Baltimore is failing the city’s children. Public schools have been failing American students for decades, but the issue is pronounced in Maryland’s biggest city.  Stories abound of Baltimore’s momentous failures to teach its kids. One report details how a student graduated…

Parents have spent the last two years dealing with lawmakers’ and school officials’ indecisions about school reopenings, a nightmare for many. Public officials have constantly alternated between remote and in-person learning, masking and unmasking, social distancing and not. Now, many families are rejoicing as they see states lift their remaining COVID-19 restrictions. Getting their children caught…

Accusations of left-wing free speech authoritarianism—whether through corporate restrictions, the state targeting “misinformation,” the shouting down of dissent in universities, or the canceling of dissenting voices—are well-documented. Attempting to even the ledger, liberals have begun alleging that conservatives are engaging in “book bans” in public school districts. The newest outrage on this front comes from…

Last month’s attempted assassination of a Jewish politician in Louisville, Kentucky, by a Black Lives Matter activist has gone largely unreported by the press. The incident and the general reaction to it speaks volumes about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. The shooter, Quintez Brown, was open about his views. In an op-ed, he…

Abigail Martinez called the pain of losing her daughter a pain with no name. “Even when you breathe, it hurts,” she said during an event on radical gender ideology in schools. Her daughter, Yaeli, began struggling with depression in the seventh and eighth grades after classmates criticized her appearance. Abigail described her daughter as a…