Education in Focus

(The Center Square) — California schools are providing resources for students if immigration officials visit their campus. As students get ready to go back to school, Southern California schools are taking proactive measures to protect students from federal immigration agents on campus. After federal agents detained a 15-year-old boy outside his Los Angeles high school last week, many families are...

(The Center Square) - A California bill that aims to provide a solution to immigrant families poses a legal loophole for kidnapping children, says the California Family Council. Assembly Bill 495, known as the “Family Preparedness Plan Act of 2025,” authored by Assemblywoman Celeste Rodriguez, D-California, claims to give immigrant families that face deportation solutions in taking care of their c...

(The Center Square) – As Denver Public Schools move forward with finalizing a new teacher contract, parental rights groups are raising concerns about inclusion of diversity, equity, and inclusion provisions in the contract. Defending Education, Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, and Protect Kids Colorado joined to send a letter to Denver Public Schools and Denver Classroom Teachers Association expr...

After the Trump administration suspended research funding from the University of California, Los Angeles over claims of antisemitism, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the freeze “cruel manipulation.” Last week the Trump administration sent a notice to UCLA that it was suspending all science and medical research funding. This abrupt funding freeze comes after claims from the U.S. Department of Justice that...

(The Center Square) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order  to bring back the Presidential Fitness Test to American schools.  The fitness test was introduced in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, but was phased out in 2012 during the Obama administration. The fitness test requires students ages 10 to 17 to run, do sit-ups, pull-ups or push-ups and a sit-and-reach test. After 2012, it...

(The Center Square) — A new school-based app, Edefy, recently launched as part of another school choice alternative for parents. Edefy is an app that connects families to teachers of their choice at nearby host sites, a method known as Pod schooling. For the past two years, James Bisenius, the founder of Edefy, has been working on the development and software design. Though it has been tested for...

(The Center Square) — The Trump administration released $1.3 billion in education funding back to the states after bipartisan pushback. After the U.S. Department of Education announced it would withhold $6.8 billion in federal education funding, lawmakers and education officials across the country took steps in demanding the funds be released. Now $1.3 billion has been released with a caveat. The...

(The Center Square) — California, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada are part of a coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia, suing the Trump administration for withholding $6.8 billion in federal education funding. These states are calling this freeze unconstitutional, unlawful and an arbitrary decision. Each year on July 1, states receive their federal education funds Congress has allocated...

(The Center Square) — Colorado's K-12 safety anonymous reporting system surpassed over 30,000 reports in the 2024-2025 school year. The Safe2Tell system received 30,461 reports in total, with seven out of the last 10 months in the 2024-2025 school year receiving more reports than in the previous school year. The system, which was first implemented in 2004, continues to operate even in summer month...

(The Center Square) — The California Family Council joins law enforcement in revealing a new LGBTQ+ suicide hotline bill that could expose children to online predators. Assembly Bill 727 would require the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ suicide hotline, be printed on all public school student ID cards for grades 7 through college. The online website connected to the Trevor Project, known as TrevorSpace,...

(The Center Square) — The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision Friday, sided with parents in opting-out their children from school curriculum with LGBTQ storybooks. In the case Mahmoud v. Taylor, the court recognized parents have a constitutional right to opt their children out of, for religious reasons, content such as storybooks that push LGBTQ ideology. “We have long recognized the rights of p...

(The Center Square) — Following the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation being found in violation of Title IX by the U.S Department of Education, the governor's office is unfazed. Meanwhile, the debate over transgender athletes in girls' sports has extended beyond California and the Trump administration to include organizations representing the transgend...

(The Center Square) – Parents receiving taxpayer money for school choice won’t lose it immediately, as the state plans to appeal a ruling that declared Ohio’s EdChoice program unconstitutional. Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page ruled late Tuesday in favor of 200 of the state’s public school districts that sued over the voucher program, which was expanded to any Ohio family that wanted...

(The Center Square) – Tennessee lawmakers are questioning why two counties with virtual schools are reaping thousands in state funding at the expense of the state's other 93. Union and Johnson counties have the most significant percentage of the state's 59 virtual schools, according to information presented at Thursday's meeting of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations....

The FBI has arrested Yunqing Jian, a graduate student from China at the University of Michigan, on charges of conspiracy, smuggling goods into the United States, false statements, and visa fraud. Jian and her boyfriend, Zunyong Liu, are accused of smuggling a “dangerous biological pathogen” called fusarium graminearum into the United States to study. They also have arrested Chengxuan Han, a gradua...

(The Center Square) – U.S. House Democrats and Republicans shared opposing viewpoints Wednesday on ways to address the rising costs of college tuition in the U.S. In a House subcommittee hearing, Republican and Democrat members questioned a panel of witnesses on antitrust policies of Ivy League institutions. U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis., called attention to a lawsuit filed by a group of form...

(The Center Square) – The Texas House on Sunday passed a Parental Bill of Rights that includes a ban on social transitioning of children. In the House, the bill was carried by state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, The Center Square reported. It passed the House by a vote of 88-47 with three voting present, not voting, according to the unofficial tally. The bill affirms that parents are the primary decis...

(The Center Square) – States with universal school choice policies see more growth in educational options for families, according to a new report. EdChoice, a nonprofit organization that researches school choice policies, said roughly 30,000 private schools serve 4.4 million students across the country. Seventy-six subsidization programs exist in 35 states, with 18 offering support to all students...

(The Center Square) - A California federal judge issued a preliminary injunction requiring parental notification and opt-outs for gender identity topics in an elementary school’s buddy program pairing older elementary students with younger mentees, citing concerns from the program’s controversial lesson in which fifth graders were enlisted to teach kindergarteners about gender identity. At issue i...

(The Center Square) – About 30 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested late Monday night after occupying a University of Washington building and lighting dumpster fires. In a social media post, the “Super UW” group – Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return – stated that it occupied the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building to demand the university cut ties with Boeing, a major employ...

(The Center Square) – Legislation targeting harassment of Jewish students at higher education institutions will likely reach the U.S. House floor by May, intensifying the broader crackdown on antisemitism by the Trump administration. The Republican-led Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will vote on the Protecting Students on Campus Act and the Antisemitism Awareness Act on Ap...

(The Center Square) – After seeing billions of dollars in research funding frozen and facing multiple federal demands for internal reform, Harvard University is suing the Trump administration under the claim that it has violated the school’s First Amendment rights. On April 14, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was freezing $2.2 billion in taxpayer-funded federal grants to the school,...

(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of Education late Monday said it is freezing more than $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard University after its president said earlier in the day it would not comply with President Donald Trump's demands over antisemitism on campus and diversity, equity and inclusion policies. "Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset t...

(The Center Square) – As cellphone bans in schools are gaining steam in dozens of states, one lawmaker is taking it to the federal level by proposing legislation leading to cellphone-free schools. Freshman Virginia Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman has introduced the UNPLUGGED Act, which the lawmaker describes as the “first step in restoring quality education” by removing cellphones from classrooms....

(The Center Square) – Bills that would ban men from women's sports and establish new programs for school safety are now on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's desk as lawmakers wind down the 2025 session. House and Senate leaders merged Senate Bill 1 into the Riley Gaines Act proposed by the House. The legislation would allow the state to withhold funding from schools that fail to follow the provisions outl...