Reports on education reform, school choice, and classroom policies. The Daily Signal provides conservative commentary and opinion alongside education news.
George Mason University—located in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.—has been added to a list of dozens of institutions of higher education under federal investigation for antisemitism on campus since the Hamas massacre in Israel occurred in early October. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights announced on Dec. 22 that it…
American institutions of higher education won’t reform on their own. The recent explosion of antisemitism on college campuses has made many Americans—including high-profile donors—turn against modern academia. How could our schools be filled with so many frothing antisemites who hate Jews, hate America, and hate the West? This has prompted many to understand the depth…
Liberal activist Kirk Bangstad’s Minocqua Brewing Co. SuperPAC on Oct. 12 filed a petition with the Wisconsin Supreme Court that sought to dismantle the state’s popular school choice programs and shutter the state’s independent charter schools. Bangstad hired international law firm Perkins Coie LLP—armed with more than $1 billion in revenue and 1,120 attorneys—to take…
Criticism continues to mount against so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices on college campuses. And the list of state policymakers calling for defunding the offices and eliminating their discriminatory practices is also growing—just in time for state legislators to work on the issue in the new year. The latest lawmaker to prohibit the use of taxpayer spending on DEI…
Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee and an Indiana congressman, has issued a letter to Butler University demanding answers over its investigation into Butler’s College Republicans chapter. “Your investigation not only risks having a chilling effect on students’ free speech, but reasonably could lead outside observers, including…
A California transgender volleyball player may become the first biological male recipient of a collegiate Division 1 athletic scholarship designated for women. Tate Drageset, 17, verbally committed to the University of Washington, where Drageset is poised to claim one of 12 Division 1 volleyball scholarships designated for female players, Reduxx first reported on Dec. 13. …
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, is backtracking on its decision to allow men who identify as transgender women to enroll in the formerly all-female, Catholic institution. The Daily Signal reported in November that Saint Mary’s College would allow men who identify as women to enroll at the college…
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Missouri school district is providing elementary-school teachers with coloring pages, asking children as young as kindergartners to choose their pronouns and draw the corresponding hair and clothing. Webster Groves School District Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Shane Williamson emailed administrators a resource list of “Gender Identity and Expression Activities”…
A local school district in Pennsylvania acted to forbid school bus drivers from putting up Christmas decorations. On Friday, just over a week before Christmas, the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, issued a memo to school bus drivers saying: “If you have decorated your bus with anything specific to the Christmas holiday or any other…
Napoleon said that to master the art of war, you must “read over and over again” the campaigns of history’s most successful generals. The same advice applies if you want to master the art of legislating: You must study the strategies of the most successful legislators. To that end, any lawmaker that wants to thwart…
While other universities, including Rutgers, have suspended a group called Students for Justice in Palestine over violations of discrimination and harassment policies, Butler University apparently is investigating anyone who dares to condemn the pro-Palestine organization. Indianapolis-based Butler University launched an investigation of the school’s College Republicans chapter Oct. 30, according to an email obtained by…
Just in time for Christmas, new data finds good news on education: Average graduation rates nationwide are up two percentage points. Before celebrating, though, research reminds us that students still are posting low scores in national and international comparisons, and a troubling share of college students need remedial work. Graduation rates may not represent what…
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: A Missouri school district’s procedure on overnight trips stipulates that students will be assigned to room with others of the sex they identify with, meaning that biological males who identify as female will be assigned to sleep in the same room as girls. Room assignments for field trips should be…
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: A Florida high school has been fined and placed on administrative probation for violating the state’s bylaws by allowing a biologically male student to participate on a female sports team, The Daily Signal has learned. The move appears to be the first time that a public school has been punished…
The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT appeared before a House committee last Tuesday to answer for their shameful inaction in the face of antisemitic rhetoric and attacks on their campuses. Their craven responses were as noncommittal as their handlers obviously wanted, which served only to indict their institutions. Indeed, the whole nation has…
Our most prestigious institutions of higher education have devolved into know-nothing hate factories operating in an unaccountable cocoon of ideological conformity and reinforcement. That’s what was revealed Tuesday at a House hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were brought before Congress…
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,…
The new president of one of Pennsylvania’s largest school districts was sworn into office with her hand on sexually-explicit LGBT propaganda and “banned” books. Democrat Karen Smith took up her new position Monday night as the head of the Central Bucks School District and immediately moved to undo Republican-led, pro-parent, and pro-family policies. For the swearing-in ceremony,…
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley used a leftist slur Wednesday evening to describe a Florida bill that bans classroom discussions of gender and sexuality for children. At a presidential debate, Haley responded Wednesday to criticism from Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis about her remarks made to “CBS Mornings” back in June. “It wasn’t about the…