Education Policy & School Reform News

Editor's note: This sampling of The Daily Signal's mailbag features letters about the Texas school massacre, election reform, and the general state of America. Don't forget to write to [email protected].—Ken McIntyre Dear Daily Signal: I truly appreciate Virginia Allen’s article on school safety summarizing Heritage Foundation visiting fellow Steve Bucci's well-informed, four-point plan to lessen…

Special-interest groups and some members of Congress claim public schools across the country are suffering from crisis-level teacher shortages in the wake of COVID-19, and they are demanding more money from taxpayers as a solution. The reality, however, is a much different story: Most schools have enough teachers, and money that could be used to…

For the past two years, 14 parents have been fighting to protect their children and retain their rightful authority over them within the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin over the district’s secretive transgender policy. The policy ordered teachers to hide children’s gender identity issues from their parents and to affirm the children’s chosen identities…

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…

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…