Education

Salon reports: School district officials in Hillsborough County, Fla., have implemented a newly designed curriculum guide for English teachers that will see students reading only selections from William Shakespeare plays. “There’s some raunchiness in Shakespeare. Because that’s what sold tickets during his time,” said Joseph Cool, a reading teacher at Gaither High School. “I think the rest of the nation …

ABC News reports: Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. has instructed Florida school officials to teach College Board’s AP Psychology course “in its entirety,” according to a letter obtained by ABC News from the state Department of Education. The letter follows the College Board’s announcement that Florida officials had effectively banned the course by instructing state superintendents “that teaching foundational …

The Orlando Sentinel reports: Florida will not allow public school students to take Advanced Placement psychology because the course includes lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity, topics forbidden by the state, the College Board said Thursday. If so, that would mean that a week before school starts in many districts, about 5,000 Central Florida students and about 27,000 statewide …

The Hill reports: Nine state residents and the Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee filed a lawsuit Monday to stop the nation’s first openly religious charter school from operating. The plaintiffs, represented by organizations including Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU, are arguing the board violated the Oklahoma Constitution, the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act and several …

The Guardian reports: The largest school district in Texas announced its libraries will be eliminated and replaced with discipline centers in the new school year. Houston independent school district announced earlier this summer that librarian and media-specialist positions in 28 schools will be eliminated as part of superintendent Mike Miles’s “new education system” initiative. Teachers at these schools will soon …

The Associated Press reports: Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors, a federal judge ruled Saturday. The measure, signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders earlier this year, was set to take effect Aug. 1. A coalition that included the Central Arkansas Library …

The Guardian reports: With the start of the 2023-24 academic year only six weeks away, senior officials at New College of Florida (NCF) made a startling announcement in mid-July: 36 of the small honors college’s approximately 100 full-time teaching positions were vacant. The provost, Bradley Thiessen, described the number of faculty openings as “ridiculously high”, and the disclosure was the …

The Daily Beast reports: A lone parent filed a complaint to a Florida school district that a book in the Arthur series—yes, the same Arthur from the beloved PBS animated show—contained references to Spin the Bottle, and now it’s possibly on the district’s chopping block. A member of the Clay County School District community filed the challenge on July 12 …

ABC News reports: A teachers association in Tennessee has filed a federal lawsuit against the state education department’s restrictions on curriculum regarding race and gender in public schools. The Tennessee Education Association and five Tennessee public school educators behind the lawsuit believe the Tennessee policy that bans certain concepts from being included in curriculum, programs or supplemental materials complicates how …

The Texas Tribune reports: Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic. The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick [photo] during the talk. In the few …

Florida Politics reports: The Chair of the Florida Democratic Party and state legislators will be in Tallahassee Saturday as part of a “banned bookmobile” gambit. Nikki Fried will be joined by Reps. Angie Nixon and Michele Rayner-Goolsby, activist Thomas Kennedy, and Jen Cousins, founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project. The event is part of MoveOn Political Action’s first …

The New York Times reports: Texas A&M University said on Friday that its president would retire “immediately” after fallout surrounding political pushback of a new director of its journalism program because of her work promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. The announcement came just days after the school’s faculty senate passed a resolution to create a fact-finding committee to look “into …

Axios reports: Former President Barack Obama on Monday denounced the spread of book bans across the country as “profoundly misguided.” Book bans have become a political flashpoint between conservatives and liberals, with several Republicans using them as a rallying cry ahead of the 2024 election. In a letter to the nation’s librarians, Obama praised them for being “on the front …

The Orlando Sentinel reports: The state will launch a formal investigation into Florida Atlantic University’s presidential search, rejecting the university’s request to end the matter quickly and increasing speculation that the ultimate goal is to place a political ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis into the role. The inspector general for the Board of Governors, the policy-making body for the state’s …

“Instead of allowing Biden and the unions to inject their ideology through graphic pornography like ‘Gender Queer’ and “Flamer,’ we want the Constitution, we want the bible in our schools where kids understand our nation’s history and what has made this country great. The reality is that the bible is a foundational document in our country’s history. Read the Founders, …

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports: Just days before the three finalists for Florida Atlantic University’s next president were set to speak at public forums, the search has been stopped in its tracks. State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues sent a letter to Brad Levine, chairman of both the FAU Board of Trustees and the Presidential Search Committee, citing …

The New Republic reports: Oklahoma’s far-right superintendent of public instruction thinks that schools should teach students about the Tulsa race massacre, so long as teachers don’t actually acknowledge that the white supremacist attack was about race. Walters held a public forum Thursday night, during which someone asked him how teaching about the Tulsa race massacre doesn’t violate his ban on …

The Hill reports: Harvard is facing a civil rights complaint over the school’s legacy admissions after the Supreme Court ruled against race-conscious admissions practices. “Each year, Harvard College grants special preference in its admissions process to hundreds of mostly white students — not because of anything they have accomplished, but rather solely because of who their relatives are,” according to …

ABC News reports: On Thursday, the Supreme Court set new limits on affirmative action programs in cases involving whether public and private colleges and universities can continue to use race as one factor among many in student admissions. A little more than half of Americans – 52% — approve of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on restricting the use of …

NPR reports: At the heart of the question is the 2003 HEROES Act, which passed in the wake of 9/11 and gave the education secretary broad power to “modify or waive” provisions of student loan programs in times of emergency. The Biden administration argues that the COVID-19 pandemic constituted one such emergency. Conservative opponents of the plan, however, argue that …