Tag Archives: education

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times. The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested ...

CBS News reports: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed legislation Friday requiring the state to give guidance to public schools about policies for transgender students, including blocking the schools from forcing the students from using bathrooms that conflict with their gender identities. The civil rights group Garden State Equality applauded the Republican governor for signing the measure saying that Christie ...

The Denver Post reports: Hundreds of people gathered at the Colorado statehouse Wednesday morning in protest of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her Denver speech Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council. “This needs to make a statement,” said Suzanne Ethredge, president of the Pueblo Education Association, a teachers union. Ethredge drove up from Pueblo with ...

Salt Lake City’s CBS affiliate reports: She is a life-long member of the LDS church with the needed ecclesiastical endorsement to hold a current temple recommend — her faith’s standard of being a believer in good standing. Now she has taught her final class at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, Idaho, after she declined to retract a Facebook statement supporting the LGBT ...

The Chicago Tribune reports: The president of the country’s largest labor union, Lily Eskelsen García of the National Education Association, told delegates at her organization’s annual gathering that they would not work with the Trump administration because the president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos could not be trusted to do what is in the best interests of children. Eskelsen García ...

Yesterday the Sesame Street team tweeted out the above image to their nearly two million followers, many of whom responded with utter joy. As you may know, last month Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney cited Big Bird in defense of his proposal to cut the entire budget for the Corporation For Public Broadcasting. And of course, he had it all ...

Oklahoma City’s CBS affiliate reports: A school district at the center of one of America’s most conservative states plans to join a gay pride celebration this weekend. According to OKCPride.org, the annual festival represents the unity between the LGBTQ community and its supporters. For the first time, Oklahoma City Public Schools will be involved in the festival. OKCPS plans to ...

Time Magazine reports: When Rhode Island’s teacher of the year posted a photo of his April meeting with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania at the White House Oval Office Thursday, it quickly went viral. The striking picture shows Nikos Giannopoulos holding a lacy fan and wearing a rainbow pin among other meaningful accessories. Giannopoulos says he picked strategic ...

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports: Donna Kikkert, 59, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, said she wanted to study the classics. When the professor of her Advanced Creative Writing Poetry course selected works other than those of Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe and others of interest to Kikkert, she said she asked faculty to reconsider ...

The Texas Tribune reports: Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday called a special session of the Texas Legislature starting July 18. Abbott asked lawmakers to first pass key legislation that would keep some state agencies from shuttering. That “will be the only legislation on the special session [call] until they pass out of the Senate in full,” Abbott said. Abbott laid ...

Mic.com reports: Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) slammed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Tuesday when she “refused to affirm” that her department would protect students from discrimination in her testimony before the Senate. “I think that’s very important for the public to know that today, the secretary of education, before this committee, refused to affirm that she would put forward a ...

Vox reports: A single student’s case has turned into a massive legal decision for all transgender Americans. On Tuesday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Kenosha Unified School District in Wisconsin violated the rights of a trans student, Ash Whitaker [photo, with his mother], when it refused to let him use the boys’ bathroom. According to the ...

Mashable reports: Speaker Ryan is one of the most unpopular politicians in the country — and he’s polling particularly poorly among one 8th grade class. Eighth grade students from South Orange Middle School in South Orange, New Jersey were on a school trip to Washington D.C. on Friday when they were given a very special opportunity: a photo-op with Speaker ...

Raw Story reports: President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos appeared on Wednesday before a House appropriations subcommittee to testify on behalf on Trump’s new budget proposal, which makes drastic cuts to public education funding and diverts “critical resources” to for-profit and religious charter schools. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) asked DeVos if she would consider sending her own children ...

The Dallas Morning News reports: The Texas House voted late Sunday on a bill that will keep transgender public school children from using the restroom that matches their gender identity. The measure, a Republican deal on the “bathroom bill,” passed the GOP-dominated chamber by a vote of 91-50. It needs one more vote to officially pass the House. If the ...

The Indianapolis Star reports: When Mike Pence took the stage at Notre Dame’s commencement on Saturday, more than 100 students quietly got up from their seats and left. There were a few cheers. Some boos. This was not a surprise, but rather a staged protest some students had been planning for weeks. When Notre Dame announced that the vice president ...

The Associated Press reports: First lady Melania Trump announced Monday that her son, Barron, will attend a private Episcopal school in Maryland, beginning this fall. The announcement answered one of the lingering questions surrounding the first family’s unusual living arrangement. Mrs. Trump and 11-year-old Barron have been living at Trump Tower in New York since Donald Trump took office in ...

The San Luis Obispo Tribune reports: A San Luis Obispo High School teacher has resigned in the face of widespread outrage over a letter he wrote to the school student newspaper that cited a Biblical passage saying those who commit homosexual acts “deserve to die.” Special education teacher Michael Stack did not show up to work Thursday but sent the ...

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was loudly booed by the students at Florida’s historically black Bethune-Cookman College today as she attempted to deliver the commencement address. The Washington Post reports: Many students and alumni had objected to having DeVos as speaker in part because they said the outreach by President Trump and the education secretary to historically black colleges is an ...

Via press release from the ACLU: An organization that filed a federal lawsuit last year to bar transgender students from using locker rooms consistent with their gender identity today announced that they have voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Minnesota had intervened in the case on behalf of a transgender girl, identified as ...