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

    Do Student Suspensions Really Cause a ‘School-to-Prison Pipeline’?

    The Biden administration is picking up where the Obama administration left off in trying to dictate to local school districts how they should best discipline students.  Its justification for acting as national school principal is based on the claim that suspending students harms them by excluding them from the learning environment and by stigmatizing them…
    Jay Greene
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    • Opinion

    Protecting Life on College Campuses

    The physical and psychological traumas associated with the chemical abortion regimen evince the unique horrors of the procedure—even beyond what we are used to in the abortion context.  Tammi, one victim of the abortion industry’s embrace of this practice, reflected on her chemical abortion as “savage” and “horrific.” She recalled extreme physical pain and fear throughout the…
    Travis Weber
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    • News

    Biological Male May Join Middle School Girls Cross Country Team, Judge Rules

    A middle school student who is a biological male may run on a girls cross country team this fall in spite of West Virginia’s new law banning biological males from women’s sports, a federal judge has ruled. Lawyers from the ACLU-West Virginia had argued to U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph R. Goodwin that HB 3293 would unfairly prevent the 11-year-old…
    Mary Margaret Olohan
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    • Opinion

    How Conservative College Students Can Gain a Voice on Campus

    Student activism “has to be loud,” Kristin Dobson, national field director for the Leadership Institute, says. Dobson trains young people across America how to have a voice on their college campus. Through practical tools, she and her team show young people how to promote freedom and conservative principles effectively at their universities. Dobson joins the “Problematic…
    Lauren Evans
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    • Opinion

    Why Are Defense Department Schools Transitioning Students’ Gender Behind Parents’ Backs?

    Our men and women in uniform are prepared to lay their lives on the line every day to uphold the Constitution and protect the nation from enemies who would do us harm, but what many service members may not realize is that a personal threat to their families exists much closer to home. As parental…
    Amy Haywood
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    • Opinion

    My Campus Canceled Me Because I Didn’t Post a Black Square on Instagram

    I love my university. I cherish the memories I have made and the friends I have met, but all good things have a blemish. I was told college is the time for maturing and growing to become who I am meant to be. Growing up, I was told college is an accepting place where I…
    Nicole Kiser
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    • Opinion

    2 Educators Fight for Their Jobs After Suggesting Commonsense Transgender Policies for School

    A school board in Oregon will decide whether to fire two educators at a middle school who were placed on leave after producing a video proposing that schools recognize a student’s biological sex, not his or her gender identity. Science teacher Katie Medart and assistant principal Rachel Damiano of North Middle School in Grants Pass,…
    Nicole Russell
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    • News

    Supreme Court Will Hear Case on Law Excluding Religious Schools From State Funding

    The Supreme Court decided Friday to hear a case regarding a Maine Department of Education law excluding religious schools from public tuition funding. The court announced it would hear Carson v. Makin, a case brought by Maine parents contesting a tuition assistance program that grants funds to parents without convenient access to public schools, enabling…
    Ailan Evans
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    • Opinion

    School Choice Only Option in Divided Nation

    The issue of critical race theory is raising a more fundamental question about our nation: education. Education is about more than teaching children to read and write. It is about transmitting values, transmitting a worldview, that will define how our youth think and how they will live. Per the Department of Education, in 2020, 56.4…
    Star Parker
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    • Opinion

    By Dodging School Bathrooms Case, Supreme Court Cements Earlier Win for Transgender Rights

    In a heartbreaking move for conservative court watchers, on Monday the Supreme Court denied a petition to review the case of Gavin Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board—an appeal from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over a biological girl’s access to the boy’s bathroom in one Virginia school district. In so doing, it…
    Sarah Parshall Perry
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    • Opinion

    New Jersey School District Eliminates Holidays’ Names to be ‘Inclusive’

    A New Jersey school district has voted to eliminate “the names of all religious and secular holidays from the school calendar … opting for the more generic description ‘Day Off,’” reports the Washington Times. You can guess the reason. They used those increasingly popular words — “inclusive” and “equitable.” No more Christmas, Hanukkah, Memorial Day,…
    Cal Thomas
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    • Opinion

    Education Secretary Prioritizes Transgender Students Over Biological Girls, Does What Supreme Court Hasn’t

    Americans can’t say they weren’t warned.   During his Senate committee confirmation hearing in February, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona affirmed his support for transgender athletes during a line of direct and intensive questioning by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.  Cardona stated, “I think that it’s critically important to have education systems and educators respect the rights of all students, including students who are…
    Sarah Parshall Perry
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    • News

    ‘Emotionally Abusing Our Children’: Mom Criticizes ‘Communist Values’ at School Board Meeting

    A parent criticized members of the Carmel Central School District school board for “emotionally abusing” the children and teaching them “communist values” in Putnam County, New York, at a school board business meeting Thursday. Tatiyana Ibrahim, whose child attends one of the schools in the district, criticized the school board for allowing teachers to allegedly…
    Kaylee Greenlee
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    • Opinion

    The 6th Circuit Was Right: My University Can’t Force Me to Endorse Ideas I Disagree With

    When I began teaching my political philosophy class at Shawnee State University in the spring of 2018, I had no idea that day’s discussion would bring me to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, but it did. On that day, a biologically male student raised his hand, and I responded with a simple…
    Nicholas Meriwether
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    • Opinion

    Teachers at Rebekah Randall’s Son’s School Are Fixated on Race. She Wants to Know, ‘What Is the Endgame?’

    A parent of two living in Texas, Rebekah Randall was furious when her son’s teacher implied that the only place her child could learn the answers to cultural questions involving racial identity was at school. They made the “implication that my children would never receive this education in our home,” Randall told me in an…
    Jonathan Butcher
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    • Opinion

    South Carolina Lawsuit Challenges State’s Blaine Amendment Bias Against Religious, Private Schools

    With American education turned upside down during the pandemic, the South Carolina Supreme Court barred Gov. Henry McMaster from distributing any of the funds that the state had received under the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act to private and religious schools.  But private and religious schools and colleges in the state aren’t…
    John G. Malcolm
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    • Opinion

    Catholic Schools Beat Public Schools in Reading and Math

    Here is one demonstrable fact about the difference between Catholic and public schools: Students who study at Catholic schools do better in reading and math. We know this because students who attended Catholic elementary schools in 2019 tested better in mathematics and reading than students who attended public schools. The latest issue of the Digest…
    Terence Jeffrey
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    • News

    Major School District Eyes ‘Anti-Racism’ Instead of Questioning Assumptions

    Parents in one of the nation’s largest school districts are being asked about how schools should teach their children about systemic racism, “multiple identities,” and ways to “challenge power and privilege.” Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools sent a survey Thursday to parents and teachers seeking input about the school system’s future “anti-racism” and “anti-bias” policy. …
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    PragerU Provides Antidote to Left’s Poisonous Education Agenda

    If you’re a conservative parent, you likely know that our schools are littered with leftist propaganda meant to penetrate the minds of our impressionable kids. Although it’s sometimes done subconsciously by teachers, too often it’s part of the left’s agenda to turn students against traditional American values. We’re seeing the consequences throughout our culture. Fortunately,…
    Robert B. Bluey
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    • Opinion

    Nebraska’s Education Choice Opportunity

    At first glance, Nebraska’s K-12 education system seems to be doing fairly well. On the fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading components of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, Nebraska students scored slightly above average overall. But a closer look shows a more worrisome picture. The Urban Institute reanalyzed the NAEP data while controlling…
    Jason Bedrick
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