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

    EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Mike Lee Introduces ACE Act to Promote School Choice

    Later today, Sen. Mike Lee will introduce in the Senate the Achieving Choice in Education (ACE) Act, legislation that will bolster parental rights. The ACE Act increases tax exemptions for families to make private school or homeschooling more affordable for parents and encourages states to adopt school choice programs. The move comes as more states…
    Jacob Adams
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    • News

    Why Is the Department of Education Still Offering a ‘Nonbinary’ Gender Marker on Student Aid Applications?

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that there are two sexes, male and female, and the federal government will operate by that truth. Yet the Department of Education is still hosting the Free Application for Federal Student Aid with options for students to select a “nonbinary" gender identity. A source sent The Daily…
    Tyler O’Neil
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    • Opinion

    2025 Will Be the Tipping Point for School Choice

    As the nation celebrates National School Choice Week, the school choice movement is on the cusp of hitting a major milestone. By the end of 2025, it is likely that more than half of K-12 students nationwide will be eligible for private school choice. In the past five years, the number of students benefitting from…
    Jason Bedrick
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    • Opinion

    3 Crucial Ways to Avoid Poverty Should Be Taught in Schools

    Americans have forgotten how to form families. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the U.S. population will begin to shrink in eight years, which The Wall Street Journal noted is seven years earlier than the CBO projected in 2024. Radical social interest groups and the outgoing Joe Biden administration have been steering youth away from…
    Jonathan Butcher
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    • Opinion

    Why Public Schools Struggle to Teach: A Substitute’s Perspective

    For the past three years, I was a substitute teacher in the public schools of Warren County, Virginia. I served both as an aide in classrooms with a regular full-time teacher and as a substitute alone in the classroom.  Warren County schools are probably typical of public schools everywhere: Most teachers love the students and…
    Connie Marshner
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    • Opinion

    Education Department Cancels Loan Cancellation Scheme

    The U.S. Department of Education announced that it will be withdrawing both parts of its Plan C for student loan cancellation. One part involves various ways the department would have declared that a borrower has a “hardship” deserving of complete loan cancellation. The other part would have identified additional categories for waivers of loan repayments,…
    Adam Kissel
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    • News

    Christian School Shooter Manifesto Documents Family Breakdown

    Just days before Christian students’ scheduled vacation to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a lonely and radicalized high school student opened fire inside Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, killing two people and wounding six more. Police say 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name “Samantha,” opened fire with a 9mm handgun during study…
    Ben Johnson
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    • Opinion

    Missing the Public School ‘Segregation’ Forest for the Trees

    ProPublica recently published “Segregation Academies Across the South Are Getting Millions in Taxpayer Dollars.” The article focuses on 20 private schools in North Carolina founded during the civil rights era with student bodies that are 85% or more white. “Segregation academies that remain vastly white continue to play an integral role in perpetuating school segregation—and,…
    Matthew Ladner
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    • Opinion

    Technocratic Education Reform Is Dead. Long Live School Choice.

    A recent study showing that test-score-driven school turnaround models fail to yield long-term improvements may be the final nail in the coffin for technocratic education reform strategies. Going forward, education reform will thrive by empowering parents with choices, rather than by ordering them to obey self-appointed experts. Technocratic reform strategies typically rely upon experts using…
    Jay Greene
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    • Opinion

    Nation’s Second-Largest School District Revises Race-Based Grant Program

    In August, the nation’s second-largest school district announced a major policy shift that caused the soon-to-be-unemployed minds at the Los Angeles Times editorial board to collectively explode last month. Why? Because in the wake of a federal civil rights complaint filed by Parents Defending Education in 2023, the U.S. Department of Education forced the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to open up its $120 million…
    Nicole Neily
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    • Opinion

    Democrats Once Owned the Education Issue—Not Anymore

    DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s campaigns were defined by sweeping education reform, improving public K-12 education for students across the nation. By 2024, the Democratic platform had largely abandoned this sentiment, and the education scene has increasingly been shaped by culture war issues that have Republicans winning with parents….
    Jaryn Crouson
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    • Opinion

    In Shocking Video, Tim Walz’s Education Adviser Urges Overthrow of America

    In a stunning video brought to public attention by National Review, Brian Lozenski, a leading authority on critical race theory who is Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s most important education adviser, calls explicitly for the “overthrow” of America. Here are the highlights of what Lozenski says in the video flagged by National Review contributing editor Stanley…
    Tom Klingenstein
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    • News

    Christian School Punished for Forfeiting Game With ‘Transgender’ Player, Though a Dozen Women’s Teams Won’t Play Biological Males

    At least a dozen women’s and girls sports teams have forfeited games against teams with biological male players without consequences, but one team has been kicked out of its league for almost a year for refusing to play a team with a transgender-identifying player. Mid Vermont Christian School in Burlington, Vermont, forfeited a girls’ high…
    Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
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    • Opinion

    Could Tim Walz’s Progressive Education Policies Doom Harris?

    Donald Trump currently holds a razor-thin 0.6% lead over Kamala Harris in the RealClearPolitics polling average for Pennsylvania. With this key swing state potentially deciding the outcome of the Electoral College, Democrats can only wonder how different the polls might look if Pennsylvania’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro—once considered a front-runner for Harris’ VP pick—were on the ticket…
    Nathan Harden
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    • Opinion

    The Myth of Underfunded Public Schools

    Do you know how much you spend per student in your local public school? Surveys find that most Americans cannot answer this question. And public education interest groups such as teachers unions benefit from this knowledge gap because then they can ask for more spending and few, if any, taxpayers and voters know what the…
    Jonathan Butcher
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    • News

    EXCLUSIVE: Informing Parents of Gender Identity ‘Jeopardizes’ Students, NH School District Teaches Staff

    FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A New Hampshire public school district allowed a radical LGBTQ group to teach staff that student safety is “jeopardized” when teachers share gender identity issues with parents. GLSEN, which is known for promoting LGBTQ ideology to young children and schools, provided trainings to staff of School Administrative Unit 53 in 2021, as…
    Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
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    • News

    Kamala Harris Admitted to Law School Through ‘Adverse Experiences’ Program, Though Parents Were Tenured Professors

    Vice President Kamala Harris was admitted to law school through University of California-San Francisco’s Legal Education Opportunity Program for students with “educational disadvantage, economic hardship, or disability,” according to the law school’s magazine. Democratic nominee Harris is a 1989 graduate of the program, according to a 2018 article in UC Law SF Magazine. “LEOP offers…
    Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
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    • Opinion

    School Choice on the Ballot in 3 States

    This November, education choice is on the ballot. Voters in three states—Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska—will decide Nov. 5 whether families should be able to choose the learning environments that work best for their children and have public funds follow their child. Two states are considering amendments to clarify that school choice is constitutional, while one…
    Jason Bedrick
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    • Opinion

    Pay No Attention to the Gender Activist Behind the Public School Curtain

    As if Nevada parents didn’t already have their hands full, including helping their children navigate the waters of adolescent sexuality. Now gender activists increasingly are using the public schools to lead students down a path their parents may know nothing about. And the Biden-Harris administration is making it worse. Nevada is hardly alone. Nearly 20,000…
    Thomas Jipping
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    • Opinion

    The Culture of Moral Relativism Is Destroying Our Kids’ Education

    What issue could be more important to a nation’s future than education? A country is about people. How Americans act, work, think, choose—and live—reflects their values. K-12 education, of course, is about learning to read and do math. This is what we measure in test scores. But education is a lot more than acquisition of…
    Star Parker
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