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Search Results for: We have the children

Commentary on taxpayer supported Madison Schools Governance and Safety Climate

Elizabeth Beyer: Travis Dobson, a parent of two East students and an assistant varsity football coach, said the school is out of control and the building administration is under an all-hands-on-deck situation constantly. He said he has another child who is nearing high school age but he is considering taking his children out of the […]

A new national curriculum sparks a backlash in Pakistan

The Economist: Few in pakistan would deny that something needs to be done to improve its education system. The country is well behind Bangladesh, India and Iran, and just barely above Afghanistan, in un education rankings. Less than 60% of people over 15 can read and write, having attended school on average for 5.2 years. […]

Scottsdale Unified Assures Parents Of Privacy In Aftermath Of Secret Dossier Discovery, Parents Call For Greenburg Resignation

Terri Jo Neff: The Scottsdale Unified School District’s administration is scrambling to do damage control after a group of mothers discovered Governing Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg had access to a Google Drive full of personal information, documents, and photos of about 47 people, including children. An email sent out Wednesday evening by the SUSD’s Communications […]

Bangladesh moves away from cramming

The Economist: ew in bangladesh would deny that their country has had remarkable success at getting kids into classrooms. Four decades ago less than a third of children finished primary school. Today, 80% do. Before the pandemic, more Bangladeshi girls than boys attended high school. In India and Pakistan, the reverse is true. Improving the […]

Commentary on London County, VA K-12 Governance

Stephanie Saul: Some teachers objected to a chart in their training that listed different groups as either “experiences privilege” or “experiences oppression.” Christians were privileged, for instance, while non-Christians were oppressed. Monica Gill, an American history teacher at Loudoun County High School, also objected to an animated video called “The Unequal Opportunity Race,” in which […]

K-12 Curricular activism

Pedro Gonzalez As parents militated, the school district issued a weak statement that copped to stupidity rather than malice: “There was no indication from the book’s description that it contained graphic illustrations.” In other words, not a single librarian and or administrator had actually peeked at the pages. Little wonder why “I don’t think parents […]

Michigan Governor Whitmer vetoes GOP scholarship bills Dems call ‘voucher plan’

Samuel Robinson: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed several Republican-sponsored bills Friday that would have granted tax credits for contributions to scholarship programs that could be used for nonpublic schooling. The governor had promised last month to veto the proposed scholarship program that Democratic critics said would have incentivized sending kids to private schools. Republican supporters of […]

Crossing one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes has significant psychological consequences for unaccompanied minors.

MSF: “They are playing now, they smile and befriend each other, they seem like any other young people,” says Julie Melichar, humanitarian affairs officer on board MSF’s search and rescue vessel Geo Barents. “But they are no longer just children or teenagers – not after what they have been through.”   Melichar is talking about the youngest […]

Mayor Breed backs recall of three San Francisco school board members: ‘Our kids must come first’

Jill Tucker: San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed is backing the effort to recall three school board members, saying she is supporting “the parents’ call for change.” Breed’s endorsement Tuesday of the recall of board President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga and commissioner Alison Collins counters critics who have argued the recall is a Republican-led […]

A dangerous attack on efforts to measure learning

Matthew Yglesias: The last few years have seen a demagogic conservative push against the use of “critical race theory” in schools. This effort has featured some obvious villains, including policy entrepreneurs exploiting the issue for gain and racist parents getting mad about children learning the story of Ruby Bridges.  If you are so inclined (and many […]

Filial Intelligence and Family Social Class, 1947 to 2012

Lindsay Paterson Intelligence, or cognitive ability, is a key variable in reproducing social inequality. On the one hand, it is associated with the social class in which a child grows up. On the other, it is a predictor of educational attainment, labor-market experiences, social mobility, health and well-being, and length of life. Therefore measured intelligence […]

“California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way”

Signatories: 1,105 as of November 5, 2021 California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way. Its proposed Mathematics Curriculum Framework is presented as a step toward social justice and racial equity, but its effect would be the opposite—to rob all Californians, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, who always suffer most […]

These Parents Built a School App. Then the City Called the Cops

Matt Burgess: Christian Landgren’s patience was running out. Every day the separated father of three was wasting precious time trying to get the City of Stockholm’s official school system, Skolplattform, to work properly. Landgren would dig through endless convoluted menus to find out what his children were doing at school. If working out what his […]

School issues are pitting Americans against one another, but they aren’t surefire winners for either party.

Adam Harris: And it’s not all about CRT. Although that fight has garnered a lot of attention, the current animus toward school boards, and the members who sit on them, goes back to the start of the pandemic, when many schools shut down, prompting intense anger from some parents. Pamela Lindberg, a six-year Robbinsdale, Minnesota, […]

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Governor Evers: TO THE HONORABLE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE:I am vetoing Senate Bill 454 in its entirety. The bill would mandate school boards and independent charter schools to assess the early literacy skill of pupils in four-year-old kindergarten to second grade using repeated screening assessments throughout the year and to create a personal reading plan […]

Why education was a top voter priority this election (….)

Anya Kamenetz: Instead, the parents she talks to are upset that their children are still struggling, socially and emotionally as well as academically. She likens extended remote schooling to a form of “solitary confinement.” Fights are breaking out at school. Bus driver shortages have parents summoned to pick their kids up unpredictably. There are substitutes covering classes. […]

Fearful educators, conflicting priorities, & vulnerable kids: Nashville Public Radio’s Meribah Knight on schools and juvenile justice

Alexander Russo: Why did you decide to open the story with the scene of officers pressuring Principal Garrett to deliver her students to them? MK: We decided to open the story in this chaotic moment because it was so compelling. So fast paced, and so riveting, we figured it wouldn’t lose any readers. Plus, it […]

Taxpayers Take School Board to Court for Trying to Silence Parents’ Criticism

Kevin Mooney: Four taxpayers in Pennsylvania have decided enough is enough after footing the bill for a school board attorney who told them that the school system could limit their First Amendment rights. The taxpayers filed a free speech lawsuit in federal court that could set a precedent for invalidating policies that shield both school […]

Taxpayer funded education, the political/media class and elections

Joanne Jacobs: When schools closed and classes went online, parents were asked to be much more involved in their children’s education, writes Robby Soave on Reason. Parents trying to earn a living, supervise remote lessons, provide tech support, coach and tutor their children were under tremendous stress. Some of them did not like what they saw, and have […]

Vouchers sped up integration, while teachers unions fought them to preserve segregation.

Phillip Magness: Is the school choice movement historically tainted by racism? American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten described vouchers in 2017 as “slightly more polite cousins of segregation.” Historian Nancy MacLean recently depicted vouchers as a product of an unholy alliance between economist Milton Friedman and segregationists after Brown v. Board of Education. According […]

School Choice Showdown in Michigan

Wall Street Journal: Students with disabilities, in foster care, or in families making no more than 200% of the income cap for reduced-price lunches—nearly $100,000 for a family of four—would be eligible. Individuals or businesses that donate to the scholarship funds would receive a tax credit equal to their donation. The legislation allows up to […]

Parents sue over policies that segregate students and chill speech.

Wall Street Journal: “Nearly seven decades of Supreme Court precedent have made two things clear: Public schools cannot segregate students by race, and students do not abandon their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” says the suit filed in federal court Tuesday afternoon by the nonprofit Parents Defending Education. The suit says Wellesley Public […]

About Those Domestic-Terrorist Parents

Wall Street Journal: It took a few weeks, but the National School Boards Association has apologized for sending a letter to President Biden suggesting that “threats and acts of violence” at school board meetings might be “domestic terrorism.” The NSBA now admits there was “no justification for some of the language included in the letter,” […]

More failing grades for the ‘Education Governor’

MD Kittle: The latest woeful proficiency numbers show what conservative lawmakers have been saying for a long time: It’s not about dumping more money on the problem. These are failing grades a long time in the making, and they have much to do with the failings of the “Education Governor.” Before winning election in 2018, […]

Mission vs Organization: Wisconsin DPI punts on reading, again

An unidentified DPI writer: We can improve children’s literacy through authentic family engagement, not increased assessment To create students who stay curious and inquisitive throughout their lives – active participants in democracy, critical consumers of information, creative contributors to our communities – we need to ensure our students are literate. When it comes to literacy […]

Is the Public School System Constitutional?

Philip Hamburger: The public school system weighs on parents. It burdens them not simply with poor teaching and discipline, but with political bias, hostility toward religion, and now even sexual and racial indoctrination. Schools often seek openly to shape the very identity of children. What can parents do about it? “I don’t think parents should […]

A recently published paper explains how “concept creep” in the field of psychology has reshaped many aspects of modern society.

Conor Friedersdorf How did American culture arrive at these moments? A new research paper by Nick Haslam, a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, offers as useful a framework for understanding what’s going on as any I’ve seen. In “Concept Creep: Psychology’s Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology,” Haslam argues that concepts […]

Wisconsin Senate SB454 reading readiness assessments: DPI Testimony

I believe the DPI presenters were Barbara Novak and Tom McCarthy. mp3 audio [Transcript: machine generated] Written testimony (PDF): Thank you Chairwoman Darling and committee members for holding a hearing on Senate Bill 154 today. In Wisconsin, 64% of fourth graders are not proficient readers, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, with 34% […]

Taxpayer funded lobbying: National Association of School Boards

Matt Beienburg: Educational leaders around the country are disavowing the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) inflammatory claim that the parents of school children are perpetrating a form of “domestic terrorism,” just for daring to stand up to the rise of politicized curriculum in their kids’ classrooms. But in Arizona, school leaders who wish to distance themselves from […]

Civics: The Washington Post & Waukesha School Board

Dan O’Donnell: Rajnicek never actually said that students would become spoiled by free lunches.  While speaking ahead of the board’s decision to exit the Seamless Summer Option, she wondered aloud whether she and other upper middle-class parents like her might unfairly take advantage of a program for low-income families that was never intended to include them. […]

Notes & Commentary on the Mequon-Thiensville School Board Recall

MD Kittle: The “extremists” in question are the friends and neighbors of the recall opponents who have grown increasingly frustrated by a school board and administrators they say have refused to listen to their concerns. Many are sick of the district’s stringent COVID-19 mitigation policies. Others have had it with radical curriculum and race-obsessed indoctrination […]

The Art Institute of Chicago fires all 122 of its (unpaid and volunteer) docents because they aren’t sufficiently “diverse”

Link: This is a story that, for obvious reasons, has gotten almost no airplay in Chicago, and none nationally, with no reporting in the major media. So let me tell you about it. The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), one of the world’s finest art museums, harbors (or rather, harbored) 122 highly skilled docents, 82 active […]

Lawfare, politics, curriculum, parents and school boards…

Peter Kirsanow and J Christian Adams: We have combed the internet for signs that parents petitioning school boards are anything approaching a national problem. Nearly all of what we have seen so far makes us proud to be Americans: Parents care about the education of their children, and they are not willing to allow them […]

Poll: Voters reject hypocritical politicians on school choice

David Bass: A new national poll from the pro-school choice organization the American Federation for Children shows most voters dislike politicians who deny school choice to other families while practicing it for their own. The poll of more than 2,000 registered voters found that 62% said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate […]

In Defense of Sandra Stotsky

Richard Phelps: In a review essay appearing in the Fall 2019 issue of AQ, James Shuls criticized author Sandra Stotsky for suggesting in her 2018 book Changing the Course of Failure that the federal government should take control of the education of low-achieving students by establishing something resembling boarding schools. “That’s a dangerous belief,” Shuls […]

This Drop Came So Quickly’: Shrinking Schools Add to Hong Kong Exodus

Vivian Wang: Long before the school year began, Chim Hon Ming, a primary school principal in Hong Kong, knew this year’s student body would be smaller. The city’s birthrate had already been falling, and families were increasingly frustrated by Hong Kong’s strict pandemic restrictions and the political turmoil. Even he was not prepared for the […]

Parents and the education establishment

LARA LOGAN: “[FIRST AMENDMENT] is not a left-right issue. Parents across this country . . . want to have a say in their children’s education, and they are paying for it, so they should. It is their right.” via .@JudgeJeanine https://t.co/FgQDq4pS0J #NoAgendaLara pic.twitter.com/lhKPxsedEh — Lara Logan (@laralogan) October 12, 2021 “An emphasis on adult employment”. […]

Proposed Changes in the Child Tax Credit

Greg Mankiw: A new paper by Kevin Corinth, Bruce Meyer, Matthew Stadnicki, and Derek Wu finds the following (emphasis added).  The proposed change under the American Families Plan (AFP) to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) Child Tax Credit (CTC) would increase maximum benefit amounts to $3,000 or $3,600 per child (up from $2,000 per child) […]

School board meetings show only that freedom is messy

Selma Zito: When Carson used a media platform in discussions about school district issues, as he did last year when the children in the Pittsburgh Public Schools went for months without in-person education, he said he had to be “profoundly cautious” in expressing his views. School board meetings have been around forever, and they have always […]

School quality in cities commentary

Tyler Cowen: On your podcast recently you asked Ed Glaeser for his political economy model to explain why schools in cities are so bad. I think it may just be schools in American cities that are bad rather than schools in cities in general, and the political economy reason why is probably local control over […]

Civics: Lawfare, Citizen Activism and taxpayer funded schools

Bradley Thompson: Garland’s letter is a moral, political, and constitutional abomination. To say there are serious problems with the Attorney General’s Orwellian letter would be an understatement. The letter asserts, for instance, that “there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” It […]

Chicago had a long list of disengaged students. Did efforts to reel them in pay off?

Mila Koumpilova: On the eve of the school year’s start, schools had reached out to roughly 90% of those students and connected with almost two-thirds of them, according to data obtained last month by Chalkbeat Chicago. But those outreach rates varied greatly across campuses, with some schools trying to contact only a small fraction of […]

De Blasio to Phase Out N.Y.C. Gifted and Talented Program

Eliza Shapiro: Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday he planned to overhaul New York City’s gifted and talented education system, a sea change for the nation’s largest public school system that may amount to the mayor’s most significant act in the waning months of his tenure. The mayor’s action attempts to address what the city has known […]

Priced Out of Public Schools: District Lines, Housing Access, and Inequitable Educational Options

Bellwether Education: Public schools are designed to provide every student with an equal opportunity to achieve the American dream. In reality, that ideal is removed from the lives of millions of K-12 schoolchildren. Geographic school district boundaries and the rental housing market limit options for students with the highest needs while benefiting more affluent families […]

K-12 Lawfare, continued: Virginia Moms

Timothy Sandefur: The Goldwater Institute filed a motion with a Virginia judge today to defend the rights of two moms in Fairfax County, Virginia, who are under attack by their local school district for exercising their freedom of speech. It’s just the latest example of a growing trend of school districts nationwide aggressively persecuting parents […]

The Great Barrington Declaration One Year On

Phil Magness and Phillip W. Magness: From October 2-4, 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research hosted a small conference for scientists to discuss the harms of the Covid-19 lockdowns, and maybe hint at a path back to normal life. Organized by Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, the conference made a scientific case for shifting […]

Joint Statement In Response to National School Board Association Accusation of Parents Engaging in ‘Domestic Terrorism’

Parents Defending Education: Dear Ms. Garcia and Mr. Slaven, On behalf of our 427,000 members, the undersigned organizations write in response to your September 29th letter to President Biden requesting “federal assistance to stop threats and acts of violence” against school board members, school officials, and teachers. In that letter you requested that the federal […]

Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar Over Instagram’s Effect on Teens

Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel and Ryan Mac: Facebook has been in an uproar over the past few weeks, which the meetings were held to quell. The tumult began after The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles last month that showed Facebook knew about the harms of its services, including teenage girls saying that […]

Education Secretary Cardona Misrepresents Wisconsin School Mask Study

Will Flanders: Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona recently attempted to make the case for masking in schools by citing a number of different studies that purported to show their positive effects in a series of tweets. However, his use of one study out of Wisconsin shows either a willful misrepresentation of the data, or an ineptitude in […]

Supreme Court REJECTS NYC teachers’ request to stop Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine mandate – meaning 14,800 school employees could be out work Monday

Rachel Sharp: The Supreme Court has denied a challenge from New York City public school teachers to block Mayor Bill de Blasio’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate from going into effect today. US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ruled in favor of the city Friday – allowing the mandate to go ahead and paving the way for […]

Notes and commentary Wisconsin’s curriculum transparency legislation

In defense of liberty: Under the legislation, prospective parents will no longer have to guess and gamble about whether a nearby school is informally slipping into the classroom content such as the New York Times 1619 Project, or assigning literature like Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist, which tells students, “The only remedy to past discrimination […]

Notes on Loudon County School Board policies

Matt Walsh: The Loudoun County school board in VA has imposed a radical trans policy allowing males access to girl’s restrooms and teams. Teachers are required to use preferred pronouns. To protest this madness, I’ll be leading a rally outside the school board meeting on September 28. Join us! The time for sitting on the […]

Vaccine mandates: a new form of ‘institutional segregation’

Peter Doshi and Aditi Bhargava: Increasingly, vaccination is no longer a matter of choice. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of workplaces and schools are instituting COVID-19 vaccine mandates, with more expected following formal FDA licensure of the vaccines. But mandating people and their children who have consciously chosen not to get vaccinated — a group that tends […]

How indoctrination shortchanges K-12 students.

Bonnie Snyder At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education(FIRE), our longstanding concerns about the deteriorating free speech culture in higher education led to the suspicion that many of these pernicious problems originate before students ever set foot on campus. This spurred us to expand our organizational aims to include high school outreach, in order to teach […]

Uncontrolled Spread: Science, Policy, Institutions, Infrastructure

Future: One thing’s for sure — with this COVID crisis, we’re at an inflection point between old and new technology — whether it’s in how we make vaccines, or how we apply the fields of synthetic biology and genetic epidemiology in public health response. So now’s the time to look both backward, and forward, to […]

COVID-19 and School Closures

UNICEF, via a kind reader: We are facing a COVID-19 education crisis. As this report finds, schools for more than 168 million children globally have been closed for almost a full year. With every day that goes by, these children will fall further behind and the most vulnerable will pay the heaviest price. The unique […]

Notes on Open scientific discourse at Stanford

Carl Heneghan and Martin Kulldorff: Open scientific discourse is especially critical during a public health crisis such as a pandemic. Academics should be free to pursue knowledge wherever it may lead, without undue or unreasonable interference. It is deeply troubling when scientists try to limit rather than engage in scientific debate. Last week, anonymous posters […]

Notes and Commentary on a 2021 NEA President’s Madison Visit

Elizabeth Beyer: Jenkins said he strongly encourages vaccination for adults, citing a plan to require the vaccine for teachers and staff that will be presented to the Madison School Board on Monday. For now, he said he prefers to leave the decision on vaccination for children up to parents. “I do think that we have […]

Scientists not backing Covid jabs for 12 to 15-year-olds

Philippa Roxby and Nick Triggle: The UK’s vaccine advisory body has refused to give the green light to vaccinating healthy children aged 12-15 years on health grounds alone. The JCVI said children were at such a low risk from the virus that jabs would offer only a marginal benefit. The UK’s four chief medical officers […]

China rolls out new textbooks on the supreme leader’s political philosophy

The Economist: Ask members of China’s elite—from senior officials to academics at leading universities, well-known commentators or bosses at big companies—to explain the beliefs of the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, and their replies are surprisingly unhelpful. Even simple questions elicit waffly answers. Take an ongoing campaign to clip the wings of some of China’s largest […]

Notes and Commentary on K-12 Curriculum

Goldwater Institute: Schools are keeping parents in the dark In too many of our nation’s classrooms, children are being taught that everything should be seen through the lens of race—a divisive and damaging worldview that negates the value of the individual. Instead of reading our country’s founding documents, students are being told that America was […]

On China’s birthdate and economic conditions

George Soros: The underlying cause is that China’s birth rate is much lower than the statistics indicate. The officially reported figure overstates the population by a significant amount. Xi inherited these demographics, but his attempts to change them have made matters worse. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top […]

Notes on Open Enrollment

Matthew Ladner: In the process, Arizona districts became choice operators themselves. Scottsdale Unified, for example, currently has about a fifth of their students coming into the district through open enrollment. The key to spurring open enrollment wasn’t laws. It was incentives. The bureaucracies needed the money, and as some suburban districts got more active in […]

The Pandemic’s Youth Mental-Health Crisis Swamps Schools, Community Programs

Andrew Peterson: JR Dzubak was breaking up a fistfight between a group of high-school boys in July when he had a moment of doubt. What if he wasn’t doing enough? The chief executive of a Boys & Girls Club in Los Angeles County has spent the past 18 months watching the pandemic wreak havoc on […]

More than forty years of academic feminism died in the sands of Afghanistan.

Sumantra Maitra: There were no Hollywood “I got this sis” girlboss videos, or “empowered” bands of amazons on daredevil missions to save women and children from those misogynist dinosaurs. The best we got was an open letter from Kate Winslet and Amanda Gorman, and a half-hearted Jacinda Ardern begging the Taliban to honour women’s rights, who now as the […]

Civics: on the US “ideological rot”

Zoe Strimpel: Weiss stresses that the battle will be long. When her friends complain to her in secret that there isn’t “a single university left where I would send my child”, she asks: “what are you going to do to fix it? Are you going to keep your mouth shut and just shove them off […]

“many states that send data to the agency can’t determine how many of their hospitalized Covid patients had been vaccinated, Politico has found, making it hard to assess how dangerous breakthrough infections can be”

Zeynep Tufekci: Why this stumbling in the fog? It may seem like we’re drowning in data: Dashboards and charts are everywhere. However, not all data is equal in its power to illuminate, and worse, sometimes it can even be misleading. Few things have been as lacking in clarity as the risks for children. Testing in […]

K—12 Governance Priorities & Effectiveness

Contrast the experience of schoolchildren in the Netherlands—no mask mandates or distancing for kids <12, ever—to the widespread US belief that we absolutely must mask kindergartners all day in school for their safety. You owe it to yourself to read the entire thing, I promise. pic.twitter.com/QrLaJSRph5 — Genève Campbell (@bergerbell) August 23, 2021 Related: Catholic schools will sue […]

Fear of COVID-19 in Kids Is Getting Ahead of the Data

Lucy McBride: A recent peer-reviewed study in Britain of nearly 260,000 children (1,700 of whom showed symptoms) reminds us that for most kids, a coronavirus infection will manifest as the common cold—if anything. Also reassuring is that only 4.4 percent of children diagnosed with COVID-19 in this study had symptoms after 28 days (and 1.8 percent after […]

The Science of Masking Kids at School Remains Uncertain

David Zweig: Many of America’s peer nations around the world — including the U.K., Ireland, all of Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy — have exempted kids, with varying age cutoffs, from wearing masks in classrooms. Conspicuously, there’s no evidence of more outbreaks in schools in those countries relative to schools in the U.S., […]

Notes on school and parental choice climate

Jason Bedrock and Ed Tarnowski: With 18 states enacting seven new educational choice programs and expanding 21 existing ones, 2021 has rightly been declared a “breakthrough year” for school choice. In the wake of all this progress, the one question we at EdChoice are most frequently asked is: how many students are newly eligible to […]

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Child Cognitive Development: Initial Findings in a Longitudinal Observational Study of Child Health

Deoni, S., Beauchemin, J., Volpe, A., D’Sa, V. Since the first reports of novel coronavirus in the 2020, public health organizations have advocated preventative policies to limit virus, including stay-at-home orders that closed businesses, daycares, schools, playgrounds, and limited child learning and typical activities. Fear of infection and possible employment loss has placed stress on […]

Notes on the Parent Revolt

Katherine Gorka: Others are engaging because of the content being taught. Whether it’s age-inappropriate sex education, critical race theory, or anti-American history, parents are seeing more of what their children are learning—thanks to COVID’s virtual learning—and they don’t like it. As a result, parents are organizing, speaking out, and pushing back, and they are having […]

Civics: notes on hospital data:

Ed Richards: All of the financial benefits of being a hospital without any of the responsibilities. So we get women’s hospitals, orthopedic hospitals, etc., sucking the profitable work from community hospitals, without taking any of the burden of community care for the indigent. General hospitals are even allowed to close their ERs in Louisiana. The […]

Parents of Pearland students file lawsuit against district

Xavier Walton: “Our children have struggles, and they’re going to overcome them,” said Heidi Simpson, a Pearland ISD parent. Three Pearland parents have different stories but similar struggles. Special education advocates say the district is failing students who need help most. “We are greatly concerned,” said Karen Mayer Cunningham, the special education advocate who is […]

Kindergarten curriculum commentary

Zaid Jilani: From school boards to state legislatures, a battle is raging over how public schools should teach students about race and racism in the United States. Much of the debate has centered around opposition to “critical race theory,” which many have pointed out is based on a body of legal scholarship that is rarely, […]

Three San Francisco school board members are targeted for a recall.

William McGurn: If the land of woke has a capital, it’s San Francisco. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that the City by the Bay has now become ground zero for a revolt by unwoke moms and dads. Part of this is Asian-Americans awakening to progressive plans to sacrifice their children in the name […]

K-12 School Governance and student health

Tyler Cowen: This “head in the sand” approach is highly imperfect. Still, it is preferable to panicking and closing the schools every year. It is difficult to calculate how many children have died of Covid, but perhaps the best estimate comes from England, where it caused 25 deaths of people younger than 18 in the […]

Germany’s largest newspaper BILD apologizes for harming society over its coverage of the covid-19 pandemic during the past 18 months

Daniel Levi: In a 5-minute YouTube video, BILD editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt said:“Millions of children in this country, for whom we are all responsible as a society, I would like to say what our Federal Government and our Chancellor have not dare to say so far: We ask your forgiveness. We ask your forgiveness for a […]

Teachers & Vaccine notes & Commentary

Jonathan Chait: Last week, two new reports confirmed the catastrophic damage caused by a year of remote schooling. Not only did American schoolchildren fall dramatically behind in the school year, the damage was substantially greater for low-income and minority schoolchildren, whose families tended to lack the resources to navigate the perils of turning their home into a virtual […]

Commentary on Government K-12 mask requirements

Scott Girard: “Simply put, these are not your children,” the letter states. “They are ours and they too, are Americans with rights. They are our responsibility and our most beloved. They are not yours.” A media contact for the group connected the Cap Times with a member of the Dane County chapter via email. After […]

California parent groups sue Gavin Newsom over COVID mask mandate for schools

Andrew Sheeler: Two parent advocacy organizations announced Thursday afternoon that they are suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s top health officials over the statewide mandate that children wear masks to school regardless of their vaccination status. The lawsuit, filed by Let Them Breathe and Reopen California Schools in San Diego County Superior Court, […]

Free for all? Freedom of expression in the digital age

Published by the Authority of the House of Lords: The right to speak one’s mind is a hallmark of free societies. Many people across the world are still deprived of that right, but in the UK it has long been treasured. However, it is not an unfettered right. Civilised societies have legal safeguards to protect […]

House Democrats call for cutting federal funding for charter schools

Katie Lobosco: A small provision tucked into a massive federal budget proposal put forth by the House Appropriations Committee would cut money for charter schools by $40 million and could potentially limit many charter schools from receiving federal funds altogether.  The National Alliance for Public Charters Schools is calling the cut “particularly egregious” and said […]

Small California school districts will refuse to follow mask mandate

Joe Hong: Some school officials are flouting the updated state rules, saying students will be allowed to return to the classroom with or without a mask. California’s smallest school districts say they will refuse to send kids home for not wearing a mask despite a new state mandate.  Superintendents in these tight-knit and typically more […]

Replace the Proposed New California Math Curriculum Framework

Independent Institute: California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way. Its proposed Mathematics Curriculum Framework is presented as a step toward social justice and racial equity, but its effect would be the opposite—to rob all Californians, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, who always suffer most when schools fail to teach […]

At the bottom, 10 states earned Fs, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Alaska.

Fordham Institute: Is America a racist country? Or the greatest nation on earth? Or both or neither or some of each?For the sake of our children’s education (and for any number of other reasons), we need a more thoughtful and balanced starting point for the whole conversation—one that leaves space for nuance, mutual understanding, and […]

Violence and “resistance”

Ben Zeisloft: Some Canadian professors are trying to justify recent church burnings in the country by invoking “systemic injustice” and “civil disobedience.”  Over the past several weeks, several Canadian churches have been torched after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked Native American graves near former residential schools, which as the BBC explains, were intended to assimilate children […]

Families and Estrangement

Joshua Coleman: Many fathers and mothers tell me they feel betrayed by their children’s lack of availability or responsivity, especially those who provided their children with a life they see as enviable compared with their own childhoods. As the University of Virginia sociologist Joseph E. Davis told me, parents expect a “reciprocal bond of kinship” […]

I’m A Middle School Teacher And See How Critical Race Curriculum Is Creating Racial Hostility In School

Ramona Bessinger: I have been a public school teacher for the past 22 years, with the past seven in Providence, Rhode Island.  I have had the honor of serving public school children and their families as an English teacher first at the high school level, and currently at the middle school level. During my career […]

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ school choice veto shows he doesn’t care about education

Shannon Whitworth: School Choice advocates across the nation were given a gem of an opportunity this past year to prove the value of their programs when teachers unions refused to return teachers to classrooms when it was demonstrably safe to do so. In fact, across 30 states nearly 50 school choice bills were introduced this […]

John Lewis slams UK education system and offers staff literacy lessons

Sahar Nazir: // John Lewis to offer basic literacy and numeracy classes to young staff // Dame Sharon White said young staff members have been “completely failed” by the education system John Lewis Partnership chair Sharon White has said the company will provide basic literacy and numeracy classes to young staff because they have been […]

How Britain’s private schools lost their grip on Oxbridge

Brooke Masters: What should parents do when a policy that is good for society seems bad for their kids? I feel genuine sympathy for anyone concerned for their child’s future, but complaining about a loss of privilege comes across as tone deaf. At Eton, attended by 20 UK prime ministers including the current one, the […]

The War on Reality

Alex Gutentag: On March 13, 2020, the public school district where I teach announced that all classrooms and buildings would be closed for two weeks. Then two weeks turned into two months, and two months turned into over a full year without in-person instruction. My school serves a diverse population of low-income students in the […]

At Height of the 1918 Pandemic, NYC and Chicago Schools Stayed Open. Here’s Why

Sarah Pruitt: But for social and educational reformers, it wasn’t enough that children attend school—they also needed to stay safe and healthy when they got there. Schools were renovated and reorganized to allow better ventilation in classrooms and ensure access to fresh drinking water. Beginning in the 1890s, many cities launched medical inspection programs, with […]

American schools teach reading all wrong

The Economist: Mississippi, often a laggard in social policy, has set an example here. In a state once notorious for its low reading scores, the Mississippi state legislature passed new literacy standards in 2013. Since then Mississippi has seen remarkable gains. Its fourth graders have moved from 49th (out of 50 states) to 29th on […]

She Won Her School Board Race by Opposing Critical Race Theory

Virginia Allen: As a lawyer defending religious liberty, a wife, and a mother of four school-age children, Smith says, she was enjoying life and had plenty to keep her busy. But she felt compelled to run for school board to try to stop the agenda of critical race theory, which she says would “radically change […]

Political Posturing, interests and “adult employment” on taxpayer supported Dane County Madison public health ordering schools closed

Wisconsin Supreme Court: For the respondent, there was a brief filed by Remzy D. Bitar, Sadie R. Zurfluh, and Municipal and Litigation Group ̧ Waukesha. There was an oral argument by Remzy D. Bitar. For the petitioners Wisconsin Council of Religious and Independent Schools, et al., there was a reply brief filed by Richard M. […]

Survivor Of Mao’s China Stuns School Board With Chilling Warning About Critical Race Theory

Hank Berrien A Chinese woman who suffered under the brutal Communist Chinese regime of Mao Tse-Tung vehemently denounced Loudoun County’s School board in Virginia for its championing of Critical Race Theory, charging, “All of this seems very familiar … the only difference is they used class instead of race. … This is, indeed, the American […]

Why I spoke out against lockdowns

Martin Kulldorff: I had no choice but to speak out against lockdowns. As a public-health scientist with decades of experience working on infectious-disease outbreaks, I couldn’t stay silent. Not when basic principles of public health are thrown out of the window. Not when the working class is thrown under the bus. Not when lockdown opponents […]