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

    Discipline Suffers as San Diego Schools Adopt ‘Anti-Racism’ Grading System

    Equality is out and “equity” is in. The San Diego Unified School District has approved a change to its grading system that coincides with broader ideas of restorative justice and “anti-racism.” It will do this by no longer letting late assignments and bad behavior in the classroom affect grades. Students also won’t be penalized for…
    Jarrett Stepman
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    • Opinion

    What Happens When a High School Offers a Conservative Video

    As far as HuffPost and the rest of the American left are concerned, no non-left-wing idea should be allowed to enter an American school. Not even for five minutes. This past month, Maumee High School, a high school near Toledo, Ohio, offered its students a way to receive some extracurricular credit. In the words of…
    Dennis Prager
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    • News

    Harvard’s President Creates Committee to Weigh Removal of ‘Historical Figures’ From Campus

    Harvard University announced the creation of a committee Monday “to articulate general principles” for removing the names of “historical figures” from campus, according to a statement from the school president. Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said the committee should evaluate “the individual’s failings and flaws but also the individual’s positive contributions to the University and…
    Mary Rose Corkery
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    • Opinion

    The Despicable Teachings on College Campuses

    The ugliness that we have recently witnessed—including rioting, billions of dollars of property destruction, assaults, murders, and grossly stupid claims about our nation—has its origins on college campuses. Two websites, College Reform and College Fix, report on the despicable teachings on college campuses across the nation. Let us look at some of it. In response…
    Walter E. Williams
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    • Opinion

    What’s the Impact on Families and Kids If Schools Stay Closed?

    School districts are “losing contact with thousands of students, from Philadelphia to Houston to Los Angeles,” according to news reports. What is going on here?  Jonathan Butcher, senior policy analyst for the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, joins The “Daily Signal News” podcast to discuss the impact on families and children when…
    Rachel del Guidice
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    • Opinion

    Civil Society Can Usher in a New Era of Education

    Learning hasn’t been easy for Ayana Osborne’s family, who became homeless in December 2019. Mandatory school closures due to COVID-19 meant that her three children enrolled in D.C. public schools spent the spring semester trying to attend their virtual education on the two public computers in a hotel lobby. As D.C. schools began the fall semester…
    Jude Schwalbach
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    • Opinion

    Liberal Totalitarianism Is Dominating College Campuses

    American liberals once prided themselves on their fidelity to the First Amendment. Indeed, they had an expansive understanding of it. They defended unpopular speech and even the most provocative examples of “freedom of expression.” One could question their hesitation to set limits in these areas, but there was something admirable about their principled defense of…
    Daniel J. Mahoney
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    • Opinion

    How School Choice Is About Marriage and Family, Not Just ‘the 3 Rs’

    Nearly two decades ago, President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, ushering in a period of education “reform” laser-focused on reading and math achievement. That effort shined a bright light on academic achievement gaps, disaggregating student outcomes by race and income, and providing reams of data detailing all the…
    Lindsey Burke
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    • Opinion

    Plan for Higher Education Would Fuel ‘Degree Inflation,’ Further Federal Takeover

    When addressing the very real issues of rising student loan debt and unaffordable tuition prices, former Vice President Joe Biden’s policy solutions embrace the false promise of “free college.”   The Biden campaign recently released “The Biden Plan for Education Beyond High School,” which details many proposals the plan’s authors suggest are the cure for fixing…
    Mary Clare Amselem
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    • Opinion

    How ‘Systemic Liberalism’ Failed Public Education in America

    Liberalism and its big government underpinnings have become systemic in American culture and institutions, with a profound impact on the nation. In large part, an increasingly biased media, Hollywood, Big Tech, and academia have driven the left’s rise in prominence. Freedom of thought, tolerance, and inclusion, once foundational principles of liberalism, have been replaced by…
    Robert Basmadjian
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    • News

    Public Schools Across Country Promote Black Lives Matter, Organize Protests

    Public schools across the country have endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement and encouraged teachers, students, and parents to do the same, with some schools organizing their own BLM protests, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found. The Black Lives Matter movement has been linked to 91% of riots across the United States between May 24 and…
    Peter Hasson
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    • Opinion

    Why ‘A PLUS’ Would Be Better Than Yet Another Federal Education Bailout

    The Senate last week rejected a $500 billion “skinny stimulus” proposal addressing the coronavirus pandemic that included $105 billion in new federal education spending. The latter is a sum double what is spent annually by the federal Education Department on K-12 schools. The proposal would have continued a failed legacy of ever-increasing federal education spending….
    Jude Schwalbach
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    • News

    Maryland to Add LGBTQ Content to Public Schools’ History Curricula

    Maryland public school history teachers will add LGBTQ content to high school curricula in coming years, a lawmaker said. The Maryland State Department of Education agreed to add “expectations” and implement new standards for high school U.S. history curricula that includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and "queer" individuals, WUSA9 reported. The changes are expected to be…
    Mary Margaret Olohan
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    • Opinion

    Are ‘Nice White Parents’ to Blame for Failures in the Education System?

    A new podcast from The New York Times suggests that “Nice White Parents” are the reason for failures in the education system. The podcast, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Mary Clare Amselem, cites “examples of parents getting involved in the day-to-day operation of the school, and paints this involvement as an affront to public schooling,”…
    Rachel del Guidice
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    • Opinion

    Looking Back: Reclaiming Educational Excellence

    This article is an excerpt from the "2020 Mandate for Leadership: A Clear Vision for the Next Administration." It looks back at policy decisions made by the Trump administration over the past four years. You can purchase your copy of "Mandate 2020" here. Since publication of the last Mandate for Leadership, the Trump administration has…
    Lindsey Burke
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    • Opinion

    DC’s Opportunity Scholarship Program Giving Students Access to In-Class Education

    For many children living in the District of Columbia, the new school year begins much like the last one ended—at home. The unexpected onset of the coronavirus pandemic initiated an abrupt transition to crisis online learning. While some children perform well in their virtual classrooms, not all children respond the same. For instance, although D.C….
    Jude Schwalbach
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    • Opinion

    Some Schools Don’t Want You to Know What They Are Teaching Your Kids. That’s a Problem.

    Six months into the pandemic, some traditions will still not be upset by a virus. As approximately half of K-12 schools are only offering online instruction, parents will still know little, if anything, of what their children are being taught in school except by accident—or  unless they ask. Recent fallout from such asymmetric information comes…
    Jonathan Butcher
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    • Opinion

    1776 Initiative Is Helping Turn Civics Education Around

    Entrepreneur and civil rights movement veteran Robert L. Woodson Sr. believes that American civics can help save our country—and that’s the mission of 1776, a major initiative launched earlier this year by the Woodson Center, which Woodson founded to give local leaders the training they need to improve their communities. Featuring essays by notable scholars and writers…
    Mike Sabo
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    • Opinion

    University Shouldn’t Punish Me for Not Addressing Male Student as ‘Ms.’

    Returning from a sabbatical in my 21st year at Ohio’s Shawnee State University, I resumed teaching my regular political philosophy course. Taking questions in one such class at the end of my first day back, I acknowledged a male student with a “Yes, sir?” (It’s my practice to address my students in this way and…
    Nicholas Meriwether
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    • Opinion

    School Choice Shines This Week

    School choice was a policy star this week at the Republican National Convention. President Donald Trump capped off the week by stating his desire to “expand charter schools and provide school choice for every family in America” during his speech Thursday night, the final night of the convention. A slate of speakers throughout the week…
    Lindsey Burke
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