Education in Focus

A Tennessee law meant to curb school violence has reportedly been used again to penalize younger students, allegedly leading a 10-year-old to be expelled for an entire year after making a finger gun gesture. The state’s zero-tolerance law for school violence, which was passed after a shooter killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville, has been invoked in several alleged instances where...

Some Arizona leaders are hoping cell phones will be banned throughout the school day as part of state law in next legislative session. “This is a real emergency, the problem of cell phones in the classroom,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said at a news conference on Thursday, arguing that the issue of students being distracted in classes continues to worsen. House Bill 2793, spons...

A federal judge in Virginia has ordered that a transgender middle school student can try out and play on the girls tennis team after the school board told the unnamed student she would not be able to be on the team. Last week's ruling comes as several courts are expected in the coming months to hear arguments on the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX, the federal statute prohibiting sex...

Utah has permanently removed over a dozen books from public schools per a new state law governing “sensitive instructional materials.” The targeted books include titles by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, Sarah J. Maas and Rupi Kaur. Critics have been outspoken against the new state law, which took effect July 1, which “requires the prioritization of protecting children from illicit pornography over o...

The United States Supreme Court ruled Friday that states involved in two lawsuits could not enforce the Biden administration’s updated Title IX rule in states continuing the multi legal battle over sex discrimination and gender identity. The high court ruled 5-4 to deny requests from the Department of Justice to stay injunctions issued by appellate courts which blocked the Department of Education’...

After recent escalations, Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma will use a state financial agency to investigate Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and the state’s Department of Education. State Rep. Kevin Wallace said he would ask the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT) to look into Walters and the Department of Education after lawmakers signed a petition calling for a comm...

As millions of students across the country prepare to go back to traditional public school, some estimates are that over three million K-12 students will soon begin their semesters at home for various reasons. Brian D. Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) — a non-profit group that collects data regarding homeschooling — shared with Chalkboard News that his “best...

A district court in California ruled that teachers and parents in the state may try to create a statewide class action lawsuit against school districts with policies requiring them to conceal a student’s gender or name change from parents. The proposed class action lawsuit allowed to continue by Judge Roger T. Benitez stems out of litigation brought by two substitute teachers against Escondido Uni...

A California school district says parents have the right to review the sex education their students receive, but it is silent about whether that policy applies to one high school’s student-created materials that reportedly discuss polyamory and gender identity. At Berkeley High School, students do teach other students about sex, according to a description of the school’s Sexual Health Information...

A Rhode Island mother is suing her child’s former school district after the school initially denied her public records requests about her child’s curriculum and other school policies, and the local teachers union sued her to try to get her to stop. Nicole Solas, who had a kindergartener enrolled in the South Kingstown School District in 2021, wanted to know more about what was being taught at her...

Students at a Detroit combined virtual school took their online credit recovery courses 20 times faster than the courseware provider suggests in the 2023-24 school year. According to a public records request filed with Detroit Public Community School District, students took their 11th and 12th-grade English language arts classes in about four hours, while the courseware provider Edgenuity recommen...

A Maryland school district says it will have to walk back its bold goals for an all-electric bus fleet after a highly critical watchdog report revealed wasteful spending and a lack of oversight with a clean-energy transportation vendor. Montgomery County Public Schools said it will likely fall short of its goals to have an emissions-free bus fleet after delays and setbacks highlighted in a recent...

As the presidential election heats up heading into the fall, experts say local school board races are becoming more politicized and partisan, eliciting various responses from states and districts. In Indiana, for example, a district ruled that a school board candidate who wanted to appear on the ballot with a Trump-themed nickname is disqualified. In Florida, however, voters are faced with an amen...

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Biden administration can’t implement its Title IX rules in an additional four states, bringing the total number of statewide injunctions to 26. With a recent block awarded in Oklahoma on Wednesday and then an emergency appeal granted by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, over half of the United States will be exempt from the Thur...

An education organization that administers a nationwide assessment has found that students are still not performing as well as they were immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic and that students' achievement gap worsened in the 2023-24 school year as compared to before COVID. NWEA, which issues the Measures of Academic Progress, said in a report this week that some middle school students are stil...

This week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas sent a letter to over 50 school districts in that state, claiming their dress codes are in violation of a state law aimed at protecting students from hair discrimination. In a press release, the ACLU of Texas announced it sent letters to 51 districts, demanding they update their policies to comply with the law. Earlier this year, however, a ju...

Several Oklahoma school leaders have reportedly signaled their opposition to the state’s top education official over a mandate to include the Bible in classroom instruction sent out last month. While several school leaders have said they are opposed to the mandate or will not implement it and instead rely on previous state standards, school districts have been hesitant to offer official positions....

New poll results show that the majority of likely voters say artificial intelligence shouldn’t be in schools because it makes it too easy to cheat. The Voter’s Voice Poll conducted by Noble Predictive Insights for The Center Square (which, like Chalkboard News, is owned and operated by the Franklin News Foundation) found that over two-thirds of likely voters say they think AI should stay out of sc...

A North Carolina school board passed a policy this week aligning itself with the Biden administration's expansion of Title IX which has faced numerous lawsuits and legal setbacks, including an injunction prohibiting its implementation in hundreds of K-12 schools, colleges and universities. The Wake County School Board voted Tuesday to adopt a policy echoing the Department of Education’s expanded d...

The Government Accountability Office, which acts as a watchdog for federal agencies, said in a recent report that male students of color with disabilities were more likely to be arrested than the average student. The GAO also reported that police in schools nearly doubled the number of arrests and that arrests were more frequent when police were involved in discipline. Critics of police in schools...

A government accountability nonprofit says the federal government’s school system has injected controversial topics and statements into classrooms and professional development at taxpayers’ expense. OpenTheBooks released a report on the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) this week and pointed to what it calls “extreme radical pedagogical practices under the umbrella of ‘Diversity, Eq...

Thousands of teachers have left their unions in recent years, and alternative organizations are offering services as alternatives to those provided by the largest teachers unions: the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The Freedom Foundation announced this week that it will be launching the Teacher Freedom Network in January 2025 for teachers who wa...

Arkansas is getting help from other states in its defense of an injunction that halted a portion of the LEARNS Act. U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky issued a ruling in May that keeps Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva and the Department of Education from enforcing a portion of the law that requires a review of items "that may purposely or otherwise, promote teaching that would indoctrinate s...

 Over half of U.S. states now require high school students to receive a financial literacy course before they graduate after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Tuesday passed by the California Legislature. With the passage of California’s law requiring schools to offer a course in personal finance by the 2027-28 school year and requiring the class of 2031 to receive at least one class, a total of 26...

Chicago Public Schools asked an HIV drug manufacturer to sponsor a district-wide event for LGBTQ+ students as young as 10 years old earlier this year in exchange for sponsorship benefits like logo placement and a shout out during the opening session. Global specialty pharmaceutical company Viiv Healthcare said it would give $10,000 to the district’s Galaxy Summit event earlier this year to qualify...