(The Center Square) – Two school districts in Benton County, Washington, are looking at budget cuts after voters twice refused to renew operational levies that expire at the end of the year. Administrators at Kennewick and Finley school districts are crunching numbers to offset the loss not only of local tax dollars, but the accompanying state…

(The Center Square) – During legislative budget negotiations earlier this year, Tennessee Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson, R-Hixson, was asked about the Legislature removing $200 million from Gov. Bill Lee’s proposed budget amendment that was intended to relocate school buildings from flood-prone areas. Watson responded that the Tennessee Legislature doesn’t want to get into a…

(reimaginED) – Nearly 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education rewrote the rules of American K-12 education, pundits and academics are still debating its legacy. And despite nearly universal agreement over the shame and damage done by segregation and resistance to integration, some refuse to reflect deeply on the very flaws of the public institutions…

Fights over what parents can say during school board meetings – or whether they can say anything at all – are becoming commonplace.  Some parents, feeling unfairly and even unlawfully silenced, are taking legal action.   In one of the latest and most dramatic instances, the school board president was served with a lawsuit during the public…

(The Center Square) – The final days of school bring field trips, exams, teachers cleaning out classrooms, and lawsuits from Missouri Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt. Schmitt filed lawsuits on Thursday against six St. Louis-area school districts for reimposing mask mandates. Four districts – Special School District (SSD) of St. Louis County, Ladue, Webster Groves and…

(The Center Square) – Maine’s Department of Education has yanked a video for kindergartenders about same-sex relationships and transgenderism after it was used by Republicans in a political ad attacking Democratic Gov. Janet Mills. The video clip, posted on the Department of Education’s website, was one of hundreds of lesson plans that were developed by educators during…

Strict masking policies may have first caught their attention, but now alert parents in one Missouri school district are protesting divisive, even partisan “equity” curriculum, test questions and policies. As one parent puts it, such “equity” programs come “at the expense of learning.” The Wentzville School District, about 40 miles west of St. Louis, made national…

(The Center Square) – A reduction in achievement standards, the COVID-19 school lockdowns and a lack of transparency have contributed to a decline in student achievement in Virginia’s public education system, according to a report from the Virginia Department of Education. “Virginia’s public schools have long enjoyed a reputation for academic excellence,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin said…

(The Sentinel) – A nationwide study of 1,100 elementary teacher training programs, including 16 in Kansas, shows more than 20% fail to provide adequate instruction in math. The numbers are worse in The Sunflower State, where 9 of the 16 programs were judged substandard. The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) survey, two years in the…

Should a public school district declare itself “a champion and defender” of “reproductive freedom” and affirm the “fundamental right” to abortion? That’s exactly what the San Diego Unified School Board did this month in a resolution that passed unanimously. The resolution was prompted by the recently leaked draft opinion of the Supreme Court, indicating the court…