#education-policy

#education-policy

A new vision for the United States is being forced into place - one rooted not in liberty or justice, but in subjugation and the quiet normalization and acceptance of fascism. You can see it in the memes, the slogans, and the curated nostalgia flooding social media accounts aligned with the Trump administration. You can see it in the way frontier and 1950s iconographies have returned not as history but as aspiration.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.

As teachers and professors reel over how generative AI is ruining education, one expert is suggesting that the true technological menace in the classroom has been staring us in the face for decades: laptops. It would explain, writes psychology professor at San Diego State University Jean M. Twenge in an opinion piece for The New York Times, why standardized test scores for American students have plunged to their lowest point in twenty years in 2023 and 2024.

This week, the Education Department said it would break off several of its main offices and hand over their responsibilities to agencies like the Department of Labor and the Department of the Interior. Under the plan, those two agencies will run several programs that fund and oversee the education of Native American children and college students. Tribal leaders and Native education organizations said the move will add to budgetary confusion and a possible breakdown ins services.

The Trump administration has sued California for providing in-state college tuition, scholarships, and state-funded financial aid to students who aren't legally in the United States. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleges the practice harms U.S. citizens and encourages illegal immigration. Among the defendants are the state, top state officials, and the state's two public university systems, the University of California and California State.

Overthe past few years, a huge number of schools in the United States and around the world have banned cell phone use among their students. It's a divisive topic, and the effects are only starting to come into focus. Just look at New York State, where governor Kathy Hocul and lawmakers put a ban into the state budget last spring in an effort to give kids a break from distractions at school.

Childhood doesn't end the day you turn five, Ruth Lue-Quee said to me on the phone as she shepherded her son to the playground this half term. Playing is what children are born to do. It's innate in them. It is how they learn. The former deputy headteacher's petition to make play-based pedagogy a core part of the key stage 1 (KS1) national curriculum in England has garnered almost the required 100,000 signatures for debate in parliament.

Education Minister Paul Calandra says if an Ontario school board doesn't restore prom plans for three of its high schools that cancelled them, he will step in and do it. Three schools in the Durham District School Board decided to cancel the traditional event due to what the principals called growing liabilities and risks connected to school-run proms. Students reacted with anger and disappointment that they would not be able to celebrate in the way so many other students have

New vocational courses called V-levels will be rolled out for 16-year-olds under government plans to simplify a "confusing landscape" of qualifications in England. They are set to replace Level 3 BTecs and other post-16 technical qualifications. Ministers also plan to reduce the number of teenagers resitting maths and English GCSEs by introducing an alternative qualification. The Sixth Form Colleges Association warned that V-levels may not fill the gap left by BTecs.

Students with dyslexia will find out this month if extra time to complete state examinations will be added to the Race scheme for 2026

Recently, the Administration for Children and Families sent letters to health departments in states and territories across the United States, requiring them to remove "all references to gender ideology"from the Personal Responsibility Education Program that provides federal funding for sex education. It's a disturbing move that mirrors how, from the 1980s through the early 2000s, the Bush administrations threatened to and did cut federal funding to states and schools that refused to teach abstinence-only sex education as part of the Purity Culture Movement.

When students arrive in the morning, I.S. 27 collects the phones for the full school day, even during lunch and free periods. Kids adjusted quickly. One of Sepulveda's students, with no phone for distraction, brought a SpongeBob LEGO Set to use during recess. The activity got the girl and her classmates talking, so much so that they ran out of time to build it that first day.

I'm anticipating a teachers' strike very quickly after winning the next general election, he said during a question and answer session at the event last month. They are poisoning our kids. They are telling them to be ashamed of their country. They are telling little Johnny, who's eight, who is black, that he is a victim and little Oliver, who is white, who is eight, that he is an oppressor. They are dividing us, not uniting us. They are feeding this negative culture in.

The Trump administration can try to blackmail us, they can try to starve our schools of funding, but we will not cower or bend before them, said Councilmember Tiffany Caban, who co-chairs the LGBTQIA+ Caucus. The Trump administration sent letters demanding that New York City and other school districts rescind policies protecting transgender individuals by Sept. 23. When that deadline came and went, the White House said it would cut about $36 million in total funding for Magnet Schools Assistance Program funding in New York City alone, though cuts were also made to school districts in Chicago, Illinois, and Fairfax, Virginia.

Here are some of the worst. '27 genders' "You're not going to come in here and teach that there's 27 genders," he said in July while announcing a test to be given to teachers who come to Oklahoma from liberal states to make sure they're not "woke." Most likely, no one believes there are 27 genders - or teaches that.

For a guy in charge of local schools, Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters generates an unusual amount of national news. This week, Walters announced a plan to create chapters of Turning Point USA, the conservative organization co-founded by Charlie Kirk, at every Oklahoma high school. Earlier this month, Walters had ordered a moment of silence in honor of the death of Kirk at all Oklahoma public schools, and now the State Department of Education says it's investigating claims that some districts did not comply.

NEW YORK - On Thursday, thousands of students, teachers and parents flooded the streets of Brooklyn to press the case for charter schools in New York City, home to the nation's largest school system.

There are more than 1.7 million children and young people in England's schools who are recognised as having special educational needs and disabilities (or Send). When you factor in their parents and carers, it highlights the huge number of people who anxiously watch this area of policy. All of them know that the systems those kids depend on are dysfunctional and broken. And they are also keenly aware of something else: that whereas their experiences once tended to be ignored and overlooked, they have now crossed from the online world into Radio 4's Woman's Hour, The One Show, Good Morning Britain and all the rest, as a huge conversation about the politics of all this gets louder and louder.