Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law Wednesday that requires students to use school restrooms that correspond to their sex as indicated on their birth certificates.
Stitt signed the bill after the state Senate and House approved it, 38-7 and 69-14, respectively.
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According to a recent survey, over 1.2 million students have abandoned public schools in favor of other alternatives in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, where many public schools shut down in-person learning in favor of “remote” learning.
The Daily Caller reports that the survey, conducted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), discovered that over 1,268,000 students have fled public schooling since March of 2020. Enrollment initially fell by 2.5 percent in the Fall 2020 semester when lockdowns first began in the spring of that year. The following year, schools that returned to in-person learning restored some of those numbers, while the schools that remained on virtual learning continued to see steep declines.
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An opinion author at MSNBC has condemned homeschooling as a racist tool of evangelical Christians seeking to undermine public schools and policies that promote integration.
“It should come as no surprise that evangelicals, fundamentalists and other religious conservatives have fought against public education since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education,” Anthea Butler wrote at MSNBC in a column published Thursday.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he may challenge a longstanding Supreme Court decision that states U.S. states cannot prohibit illegal immigrant children from attending public schools.
The Republican governor said during a recent radio interview on a San Antonio talk show that he was mulling the action and agreed with the host of the program that the price of educating an expanding group of illegal immigrant children in many languages is “extraordinary.”
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A new documentary presented by actor and filmmaker Kirk Cameron urges American parents to embark on the journey of homeschooling in order to regain control of their children’s education and protect the future of America.
Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), CAMFAM Studios, and Fathom Events announced on Monday the debut of Kirk Cameron Presents: The Homeschool Awakening, which will be in theaters for two nights only, on June 13 and 14, at 7:00 p.m. local time.
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Reflecting on the meaning of Easter, the president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, questions how secularists can possibly doubt the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, “but not pregnant men.”
While faith is central to all religions, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue observes “it is not on faith alone that the account of Jesus’ resurrection is persuasive.”
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A video posted to the Libs of Tik Tok Twitter account features a self-described “trans demiboy non-binary” elementary school teacher who argues parents’ claims that pre-K through third grade children are not ready for indoctrination in gender ideology are signs of “internalized homophobia and transphobia.”
“Hi, I’m a queer teacher and I, 1,000 percent, do not support this bill,” states Amanda Tooley, who apparently now uses the name “Skye” and goes by “Mx. T” in her classroom at Saturn Street Elementary Arts and Media Magnet School in Los Angeles.
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Senior Education Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) Kerry McDonald told The Star News Network the time is ripe in America for greater innovation and entrepreneurship in providing new education models for parents exiting the government school system.
Many parents got an up-close look at what their children are learning in public schools for the first time during the pandemic school closures and subsequent remote learning, leading them to consider education alternatives.
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In an interview with The Star News Network, nationally known school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis said teachers’ unions would be incentivized to push for more student-focused policies in public schools if school funding followed the child and more states adopted school choice programs.
DeAngelis, the national director of research at the American Federation for Children, is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation.
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A new documentary exposes Critical Race Theory (CRT) as the “hidden agenda in America’s schools,” as it also emphasizes the “corrupting influence of teachers’ unions” and urges a return to the true education of American children.
Fathom Events, the film’s distributor, notes on its website Whose Children Are They? seeks to “pull back the curtain about what is truly happening in our public schools today.”
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As school districts start dropping the mask mandates, removing pornographic books from their libraries, and explicitly prohibiting critical race theory, it’s clear that the parent protests are working. School boards, even in progressive bastions like San Francisco, are currently being cleaned out and replaced by more pro-parent members. Moreover, politicians like the governor of Oklahoma are openly instituting a school choice model that would allow for different schooling models and have education dollars follow the student, not automatically go to the school.
Naturally, these developments invite more pushback (sometimes literally so) from those who believe they’re supporting public education. It was fine in the past to let various kooky parents carry on about the evils of teaching Harry Potter or sex ed; school boards and district leaders could simply yawn and carry on as before. However, now that it actually threatens their authority and influence, they can no longer ignore parents’ concerns..
In general, opponents of protesting parents make the same points over and over. They deny that public schools have problems, play semantic games with critical race theory (“it’s just an abstract legal theory taught in law school,” etc.), and accuse angry parents of being misguided racists. In their view, parents who demand a more wholesome and academic experience for their children are actually demanding an exclusively white and privileged experience. And for good measure, they will add an anecdote about a heroic public school teacher changing lives, proving beyond any doubt that public schools are still doing noble work and are essential for a healthy, diverse society.
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As backlash grows against so-called “diversity” programs in public schools, some districts throughout the country have been canceling plans to implement such programs.
According to ABC News, one such program was in Colorado Springs School District 11, a district that serves over 26,000 students. In May of 2020, shortly after the accidental fentanyl overdose death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, the district was among the first in the nation to push for an “equity policy.”
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There is a lot to be frustrated about as 2021 concludes. Some places are back in lockdown over rising coronavirus cases, while others are re-imposing previous restrictions and introducing new ones—including my city.
But at this joyful time of the year, I choose to be optimistic and focus on all the good things happening right now, particularly in the world of education.
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Between 2012 and 2019, student ridership on school district buses declined nationally by 3.8 million riders. The drop is owed to various factors, especially increased demand for drivers in private industry. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified the trend, via a combination of even more demand for drivers with Commercial Drivers Licenses and reluctance of older drivers to return to work after the shutdown. A nationwide bus driver shortage has been in the headlines this fall, with stories focusing on stranded students and; most dramatically, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker called out the national guard to drive buses.
The decline of the yellow bus system presents an equity challenge for students. In a choice-based education system, lack of bus transport in certain areas means that children in those areas will have fewer schooling options. The problem will require an urgent effort to modernize. Nationwide, only about a third of students took buses to school in 2017, but in some states the figure is considerably lower – such as Arizona, where it had 23% by 2019.
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Los Angeles Unified School District will hold off enforcement until the start of the Fall 2022 semester for a vaccine mandate that would have moved thousands of students out of the classroom and into remote learning.
The LAUSD’s Board of Education voted Tuesday to suspend enforcement of a vaccine mandate for all students 12 and older until the fall. The original mandate, which passed in September, required students to show proof of full vaccination or obtain an exemption by Jan. 10, 2022, to continue attending in-person classes.
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This week’s Golden Horseshoe Award goes to the U.S. Department of Education for approving pandemic relief spending plans by school districts that include millions for upgrading athletic facilities, installing security cameras, purchasing floor shiners and other non-pandemic related projects.
Approximately $190 billion in pandemic funding under both the Trump and Biden administrations was allocated to schools to safely reopen and protect teachers and students.
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Minnesota schools are struggling with an increase in student violence, yet Gov. Tim Walz’s Department of Education (MDE) lobbied against a measure to quell the chaos.
Rochester schools are “taken over with violence,” a fight between students at Hopkins High School recently left three staff members with injuries, and ISD 728 is accused of not cracking down on student-on-student sexual abuse. Meanwhile, Rochester is banning parents who don’t wear masks from school grounds for a year, a St. Louis Park Catholic school has rolled out a new “social justice algebra” class, and some other schools are moving back to “distance learning.” Critics say that spending time and money on initiatives like these distracts from what schools should be focused on: stopping classroom violence.
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California’s largest teacher’s union instructed members at a meeting in October about the best ways to undermine parents and conservative communities regarding gender identity and sexual orientation issues, according to leaked documents and audio obtained by Abigail Shrier.
The California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference on Oct. 29-31 in Palm Springs, California. During workshops, teachers said they surveilled students’ Google searches, online chats and hallway conversations to identify and personally invite sixth grade students to join LGBTQ school clubs, according to the leaked documents and audio reviewed by Abigail Shrier, which were authenticated by three conference attendees.
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Woke K-12 teachers ranting about their leftist agendas are ubiquitous on social media, particularly the Twitter account “Libs of TikTok.”
As universities ramp up their efforts to train K-12 educators on how to teach components of leftist and woke ideologies, Campus Reform decided to give parents and community members a look in the classroom with information on the higher education programs and academic theories that trained some of teachers behind those infamous videos.
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Until recently, I was a California teacher working in two charter schools, one as a full-time classroom teacher of Government/Economics and sometimes U.S. History, and the other as a part-time independent study teacher who assists families with a program primarily based around homeschooling. I have taught for about five years and love teaching.
Last week, I was fired from one school and put on unpaid administrative leave at the other because of my refusal either to take and demonstrate proof of the COVID-19 vaccine or test weekly. I even filed a religious exemption stating the following that was rejected:
“As a committed follower of Christ, I religiously and philosophically cannot submit to either a government vaccine mandate or weekly testing.
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Diversity, equity and inclusion consultants are getting paid millions of dollars by public schools “to push divisive ideologies” to transform American schools “from institutions of education to places of woke indoctrination,” according to a conservative education advocacy group.
Parents Defending Education (PDE) spent four months compiling data for its “Consultant Report Card” released Thursday, which investigates 543 public school districts and agencies across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
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All my life I’ve felt a bond with places and with people.
Growing up in Boonville, North Carolina, population then about 600, I went to elementary school and the Methodist church, knew many of the merchants in town—Harvey Smith, grocer and mayor for many years, Donald the barber, Mr. Weatherwax who owned the pharmacy and was kind enough to let me read comic books on the premises, and a dozen more adults—and relished my friends and their families. Boonville’s red clay and rolling hills are as much a part of me as any genetic code.
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The Pennsylvania House of Representatives approved a measure this week that would require schools to post curriculum online.
Prime sponsor Rep. Andrew Lewis, R-Harrisburg, said it’s only an extension of what some districts already do – and gives parents access to what their kids are learning without having to visit a school building in person.
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New Jersey teachers said they were instructed during a teachers union training to log conversations regarding the COVID-19 vaccine with parents and students, Fox News reported.
The training provided by Made to Save, a vaccine “equity” nonprofit, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) directed instructors to “follow up and track” conversations with parents and teachers regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, Fox News reported. They were told to log their conversations into the Democrat campaign app, “Reach,” and were incentivized with gift cards to be active users.
Campaign operative Jake DeGroot devised Reach, which New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez utilized in her 2018 campaign, Fox News reported.
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A Florida mom called for a “mass exodus” from the public school system as the “only thing” left to do to fight indoctrination in public schools during a Family Research Council event Thursday.
The event, titled “Fighting Indoctrination on a National Scale,” from the annual Pray Vote Stand Summit in Leesburg, Virginia, featured remarks from Quisha King, who works for Moms for Liberty and drew national attention in June for comments she made in opposition to Critical Race Theory (CRT).
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Like religion, the traditional family poses a rival authority to liberalism’s arrogant conception of the state. Consequently, liberals view religious freedom and parental authority with suspicion and often hostility. Liberals are keenly aware that the fulfillment of their statist goals — pushing propaganda about abortion, transgenderism, critical race theory, socialism, and so on — depends upon isolating children from the influences of religion and family.
It is this view that drives liberalism’s opposition to parental consent and notification laws and its distaste for private education and homeschooling. Last year, a Harvard law professor argued for a ban on homeschooling, saying that it represents a danger to a “democratic society.”
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A North Carolina county school board has passed a policy that will discipline or fire teachers who undermine the U.S. Constitution, tell students that American historical figures weren’t heroes or portray racism as systemic in America.
The vote Friday by the Johnston County school board is part of a larger campaign to stamp out critical race theory from American schools.
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The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block New York City’s vaccine mandate for public schools following a petition brought by a group of teachers.
According to The Hill, the group of New York City teachers asked for an emergency injunction on Thursday, following a lower court’s ruling that permitted the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate to take effect this coming Monday.
The group argued that many teachers would lose their jobs if the Supreme Court didn’t intervene.
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Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) introduced the Defending Students’ Civil Rights Act of 2021 to prohibit the indoctrination of racially divisive curriculum within our nation’s schools. Good’s bill would prohibit the use of Critical Race Theory or (CRT) critical race pedagogy in any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Any attempt to teach or implement critical race theory in federally funded institutions would be a violation of a student’s civil rights, punishable by law.
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President Joe Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the approval of a COVID-19 vaccine for children would be a “game changer” for students in the U.S.’s public school system, U.S. News reported.
Pfizer announced Monday that a smaller dose of its vaccine has generated an immune response in 5 to 11-year-old children during the clinical trial. The company said it plans to submit data for approval in the next few weeks.
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The Los Angeles public schools opened last month with some of the strictest coronavirus control measures in the country. Students and staff are required to wear masks inside and outside, participate in weekly virus testing, and obey social distancing protocols. District staff are also required to get the COVID-19 shot, and now all Los Angeles public school students ages 12 and over are forced to get the vaccine.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles school board voted to pass the student vaccine mandate, with one board member stating: “So I do not see this as your choice or my choice or about my great nieces and nephews and grandchildren or your children. I see this as a community necessity to protect the children under 12 who cannot be vaccinated.”
Los Angeles public school students have until the end of the calendar year to get fully vaccinated, unless they participate in extracurricular activities which requires full vaccination by October 31st. If they don’t comply, students will be pushed into a district-run online learning program. In 2015, California eliminated its religious vaccine exemption and now only recognizes medical exemptions for schoolchildren.
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Test scores of Michigan students fell dramatically after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) responded to the coronavirus pandemic by banning in-person learning for much of last school year.
Whitmer sided with union bosses in keeping schools closed for much of 2020, but then recommending reopening in 2021, only to suggest they go virtual again after spring break, according to ABC 13. Test results show the reversals and upheaval affected student performance:
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What is the deal with today’s K-12 teachers? They’re all over the place when it comes to Critical Race Theory, or CRT. On the one hand they vehemently deny even teaching it; on the other they defend its use in curricula.
Many of those in the latter group claim they just want to teach a “real” and “inclusive” history. They also assert that in these “real” and “inclusive” lessons, white people aren’t shamed and demonized.
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When a principal at an Atlanta public elementary school segregated students in classes based on their race, some parents supported it, says Kila Posey, mother of a student at the school.
Sharyn Briscoe, the principal of Mary Lin Elementary, who is black, segregated second-grade classes based on race in the 2020-2021 academic year, limiting black students to two classrooms to choose from while white students could choose between six different classrooms.
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When pressed Wednesday, the top health adviser to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) inadvertently admitted the governor is not “following the science,” per her opinion.
“Following the science” has been a staple of Whitmer’s talking points since the COVID pandemic began, but Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Whitmer’s chief medical adviser, was asked if she recommended Whitmer issue an order requiring masks in schools. Khaldun answered affirmatively, claiming, “it would likely decrease the spread of COVID-19 in schools.”
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As overreach in classrooms by progressive school administrators, nonprofits and the federal government has reached new heights, parents are stepping up to fight back.
Moms for Liberty, Informed Parents of California, EdFirstNC, NJ Parental Rights, No Left Turn in Education and Parents Against Critical Theory are just a few of the hundreds of new parent groups that have emerged across the country in recent months. Many parents have become education activists because of schools’ failure to bring children back into the classroom or their continued imposition of mask mandates.
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Michigan’s local health departments are plotting new restrictions as bureaucrats are alarmed by a rise in COVID-19 cases that apparently are not being blunted with vaccinations.
WZZM speculated another lockdown may be “in sight.”
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Denver spent twice as much money on its homeless population than it did on its students and police, a Common Sense Institute August report showed.
The city spent between $41,679 and $104,201 per person on its homeless population, compared to $19,202 per student in K-12 public schools in 2020, according to the report. In total it spent $481 million on healthcare, housing and other services for homeless people, over $100 million more than the Department of Public Safety’s budget.
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It has been revealed that the Fairfax County Public School district (FCPS) is encouraging second-graders to be anti-police, with a “Summer Learning Guide” that includes the phrase “I feel safe when there are no police,” according to an exclusive report by Breitbart.
The stunningly radical content was revealed by a document leaked to the nonprofit group Parents Defending Education (PDE). Fairfax is the most populous school district in the state of Virginia, and has widely been viewed as the epicenter of the battle over “Critical Race Theory” – the notion that all White people are automatically racist, and that America is a fundamentally racist nation – and other far-left ideas with which children are being indoctrinated.
The summer curriculum requires students to watch a far-left YouTube channel called “Woke Kindergarten,” and one video in particular called “Safe by Ki.” The video says, in part: “I feel safe when there are no police. And it’s no one’s job to tell me how I feel. But it’s everyone’s job to make sure that people who are being treated unfairly…feel safe too.” The “lesson” ends with several loaded questions, including “Why do some people feel safe with police and others don’t,” as well as “What can you do to make sure other people feel safe?”
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The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) issued updated recommendations for schools to help prevent transmission of COVID-19 within school buildings, reduce disruptions to in-person learning and help protect vulnerable individuals.
The guidance reflects guidelines by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on masking and prevention strategies to help operate schools more safely.
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The Biden administration has sparked controversy for endorsing elements of critical race theory in education programs, and the latest polling reveals a source of that concern.
A poll released by Convention of States Action found that many Americans are opposed to critical race theory in curriculum, and are open to removing their kids from public schools to avoid it.
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An assistant professor at Appalachian State University recently argued that enforcing behavioral standards in public high schools is rooted in racism and unfairly affects Black students.
In the article “’Press Charges’: Art Class, White Feelings, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Albert Stabler writes that the desire to punish students for violating school rules, especially when the police are involved, is the result of “the overvaluation of White feelings” harming non-Whites.
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The push to create “equity” and more “social justice” in public schools in America’s largest state rests on this basic premise: “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” declares the current draft of the California Math Framework, which also states that it rejects “the cult of genius.”
Informed by that fundamental idea, the 800-page Framework calls for the elimination of accelerated classes and gifted programs for high-achieving students until at least the 11th grade.
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Utah is one of many states in America considering banning critical race theory in public schools.
Republican State Representative Steve Christiansen sponsored a bill that takes direct aim at critical race theory concepts being taught in public education. The bill passed the Utah House and is awaiting the signature of the Speaker to move onto the state Senate.
That bill, HR901, calls on the Utah Board of Education for a re-evaluation of guidelines to weed out critical race theory in publicly funded classrooms.
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Public school officials in Chicago will let each campus decide if it will keep school resource officers for the fall.
But at least some majority black schools have indicated they want the cops in the building, with one council being accused of “upholding white supremacy.”
Ahead of the discussions and votes that will likely take place throughout the coming months, Chicago Public School students rallied to demand that the police be removed from the schools. CPS board members are appointed by the mayor, but schools have councils that can make some decisions.
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Students often face punishment from parents when they get a bad report card. But what happens when our school system gets one?
The latest national “report card” is out, and it shows that our schools are failing Americans when it comes to science education. These most recent data come from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment.
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When President Biden signed an executive order on Inauguration Day calling for “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda,” he signaled that his administration would embrace the education agenda of the race-obsessed world of radical “social justice” politics. We now see further evidence of the president’s intentions in the Department of Education’s proposal to funnel grants to schools that teach critical race theory. This pernicious theory analyzes every aspect of American society and history through the belief that racism has been, and remains, central to American life, all while peddling revolutionary Marxist philosophy.
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With classrooms finally reopening and hundreds of billions of federal dollars earmarked for public schools, the issue of teacher pay will soon re-emerge. Before the pandemic, public school teachers were fighting against a widely perceived “teacher salary penalty.” President Biden vowed to “correct this wrong,” promising a dramatic increase in federal education funding to “give teachers a raise.” But what causes these pay differences? New Census Bureau data suggest that most teachers are paid roughly what they’d receive in other jobs. But if public schools wish to attract the best-qualified graduates to teaching, they need to stop paying the physics teacher the same as the gym teacher.
The Economic Policy Institute, a teacher-union-affiliated think tank, reports that public school teachers receive salaries about 20 percent lower than non-teachers with equal levels of experience and education.
But what does it mean for education to be “equal”? College graduates attended different institutions, majored in different fields, and received different GPAs, leading to different salaries later in life. That’s why parents encourage their children to attend more competitive colleges and, increasingly, to favor STEM fields over liberal arts majors.
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Faced with ongoing state lockdowns and changing school restrictions last year, frustrated parents increasingly pulled their children out of public schools nationwide and found other educational options for their children, one of which was home-schooling.
According to a new U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, a substantial increase in the number of parents who chose to home-school occurred in 2020 compared to 2019. The survey is the first data source to offer both a national and state-level look at the impact of COVID-19 on homeschooling rates, the report states.
Using a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. households, the survey found that home-schooling was notably higher than national benchmarks. It was conducted in phases to assess parental choices over different periods of the school year.
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In response to state and local government shutdowns reportedly designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, schools districts and local governments implemented different reopening guidelines and timelines – but did so more because of politics or competition with private schools than because of science, a new report published by Brown University found.
The EdWorking Paper published by The Annenberg Institute at Brown University authored by Michael T. Hartney from Boston College and Leslie K. Finger from the University of North Texas found that “the most critical decision facing the nation’s school boards – whether or not to re-open in person and to what degree – appears to be closely related to the partisanship of a local school district.”
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