Education Policy & School Reform News

It’s quite surprising how much dishonesty and disinformation you can pack into a 27-minute “documentary” film. (Twenty-five minutes, if you don’t count the two minutes of credits at the end.) But the dishonesty and disinformation in “The ABCs of Book Banning”—streaming now on Paramount+—is at least as much an act of omission as one of…

We know from history that Jew-hatred, the world’s oldest and once again most fashionable form of bigotry, is the chameleon of all hates—forever taking on new hues to suit the scapegoating needs of the day. It has always been thus, and it will always be thus. This is a cancer for which there is, sadly,…

Pop quiz time. “Teacher shortages have gotten worse.” True or false? False. And yet, that sentence was part of a recent Washington Post headline. And it’s far from uncommon. In fact, public schools have been on a hiring spree for decades. It began with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and has continued to the present…

In a nationally televised face-off, Govs. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., and Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., on Thursday night debated, among other things, whether school libraries should carry explicit content on their shelves. When two high-profile state officials spar over an issue on prime-time TV, policies related to that issue are likely to be a topic for other…

Diversity, equity, and inclusion policies have grown so diverse that they now include policies reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. A Chicago-area school district is attempting to boost academic achievement among black and Latino students by offering blacks-only and Latino-only classes. The segregated classes are called “affinity” classes, and they aim to reduce the so-called academic achievement…

Since she began serving on her local school board in Arizona in January, Heather Rooks has made it a practice to begin her meeting comments by reading a Scripture verse she found encouraging. Rooks says citing Scriptures such as Isaiah 41:10—“Do not fear for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for…

Online learning has revolutionized higher education, but a recent move by the federal Department of Education is threatening to tear down systems that are helping millions of students learn. An extremely wide diversity of students choose to take online courses or to get entire online degrees. Colleges that offer them need to be nimble as…

As state after state embraces policies that empower parents with more options in K-12 education, opponents of school choice are claiming that it is a “threat to democracy.” But if anything, school choice is better for democracy than government-run schooling. In Texas, the legislature is considering an education choice bill that would make every K-12…

Randi Weingarten, president of America’s second-largest teachers union, didn’t even wait for Banned Books Week to begin before posting on X: “Texas teacher fired for reading Diary of Anne Frank to class—THIS Speaks for itself!!!” Just the latest example of “book banning” in our schools, it seemed. But like almost every other aspect of overwrought book-banning claims,…

Does anything compare with having the peace of mind of knowing that your child is safe, happy, and learning during the school day? While a parent is working, knowing that your child is getting the care and attention he or she needs while apart from the family is invaluable. Many early-childhood education and care providers…