Education Policy & School Reform News

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Denver high school allows students to take classes such as Queer Literature and Gender Studies to earn a “Seal of Diversity” award. Students can submit a short, five-minute application to be part of the program, then take “diversity, equity, and inclusion”-related classes and engage with a DEI-related club or organization…

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Students in a Southern California school district could be forced to choose between rooming with a transgender-identifying student or missing out on an overnight school field trip.  If parents complain about their child rooming with a transgender-identifying student of the opposite biological sex, staff in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District listen…

A Virginia court ruled Wednesday that students can challenge unconstitutional “transgender” pronoun and bathroom policies. “We are pleased with the court’s decision recognizing that students can, in fact, challenge unconstitutional policies implemented by school boards in Virginia,” America First Legal attorney Andrew Block told The Daily Signal. Fairfax County Public Schools in Northern Virginia requires…

Party platforms are a way of signaling to voters the policies that politicians are likely to pursue if they’re elected to office. But platforms also send a message to a party’s candidates about what policy positions the party expects them to support. If elected officials go against their own party’s platform, they might expect to…

Rep. Byron Donalds made a case for school choice in a speech Monday on the opening night of the Republican National Convention.  The Florida Republican talked about his own story of growing up poor, while his mother pushed to ensure he had a good education. But he said too many children today are trapped in…

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Southern California school district trains counselors to help students hide their transgender identity from their concerned parents, according to documents obtained by The Daily Signal. Capistrano Unified School District in southern Orange County, California, allows students to change their name and gender in school records without parental permission. The Individual…

The Founding Fathers recognized that an educated citizenry was vital to the survival of our republic. Thomas Jefferson, for example, saw education as essential to giving every citizen the opportunity to participate meaningfully in a free society. Writing in 1818, our third president described public education as “the means to give every citizen the information he…

School choice should empower parents to select education options that align with their values, but many charter schools fail in this regard, experts warn. “School choice should yield schools with values that are aligned with those of parents,” Jay Greene, senior research fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, told The Daily Signal…

A parental rights group successfully helped delay a Colorado school board’s vote on what parents call a radical transgender policy for students. The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network and its allies gathered 335 signatures in only six hours on its petition to delay the Douglas County Board of Education’s vote on the proposal to classify female-only…

The San Francisco public schools allow students to change their preferred name and pronouns at school without the knowledge or consent of their parents.  San Francisco United School District’s LGBTQ Student Services department offers guidance on “Changing Your Name and/or Gender” in the district’s systems. The document offers a note “for students to think about,”…

A Colorado school district uses a form asking staff whether a student’s parents know their child identifies as transgender and support that decision. St. Vrain Valley Schools, in a Denver suburb, developed a so-called Gender Identity Guidance form for “counselors, interventionists, and administrators to support students dealing with issues related to gender identification.” The document,…

A 16-year-old Minnesota girl forced to share private spaces with males under a public school transgender policy says that girls deserve privacy in their restrooms and locker rooms. “It’s really uncomfortable, because I was in gym class, and I was just about to change, but then I heard this voice, and I was, like, ‘That…

The Department of Education has given the Left dangerous power over schooling in the U.S., and the next president should aim to abolish the nearly 45-year-old federal agency.  So says Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts on this week’s edition of his podcast, “The Kevin Roberts Show.” Roberts, himself a former K-12 and college educator, made…

Hundreds of parents brought their children, as young as babies and toddlers, to wave rainbow flags, pose with a drag queen, and do LGBTQ-themed crafts at the “Kids’ Pride Parade and Street Fair” in Montgomery County, Maryland, on Sunday. “Pride is for everyone. That’s the whole point of Pride is to be inclusive of everybody,”…