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The entire Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball team, as well as coach John Calipari, took a knee during the national anthem on Saturday before their 76-58 win against Florida. In previous home games this season, the Wildcats had stayed in the locker room while the anthem played in Rupp Arena, according to The Athletic's Kyle Tucker. Calipari had previously said Kentucky would decide how to carry out any protests as a team, and that either all would participate or nobody would. The Wildcats stuck to that line of thought in their first public protest. The protest comes on the heels of...

All teachers in Illinois would be required to “be aware of the effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and social action …” under the “Systems of Oppression” standard. Teachers would additionally be required to “implement and integrate the wide spectrum of fluidity in identities in the curriculum.” Further, they would be required to “assess how their biases and perceptions affect their teaching practice and how they access tools to mitigate their own behavior” including on such concepts as “unearned privilege.” These standards ignore what is most important for our students — that is, increasing the...

America’s public schools are owned lock, stock and barrel by the Democratic Party, so it is no surprise that they are now echoing their party’s line on last week’s events. I have seen several partisan emails from school districts; this one comes from my own district:

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) will take the helm of the Senate committee that oversees education as Democrats effectively take control of that chamber with a 50-50 split with Republicans. Murray will replace retired Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), with whom she wrote the massive legislation called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced the Bush-era No Child Left Behind.

“It’s a tragedy that this anti-intellectual movement of canceling the classics is gaining traction among educators and the mainstream publishing industry. Erasing the history of great works only limits the ability of children to become literate.” It is really a crime, and—0ne way or another—it must be purged from education.

The woke left rejects Homer, and the rest of the Western canon, because they hate any art that doesn’t reinforce their narrow-minded ideology.The woke are succeeding where Plato failed. In Plato’s most famous dialogue, the “Republic,” the character of Socrates argues the ideal polity will exclude Homer and the rest of the Greek poets and dramatists. But Plato, who loved the poets, leaves the door open for their return. As with much else in Plato’s work, the proposed ban on Homer should perhaps be taken seriously, not literally. Today’s cultural radicals, however, have no such subtlety. When they say we...

As an adult who teaches, I got to choose an open school. Union politics have now barred millions of families from a similar privilege.I don’t blame schools for closing in March. Very little was known about COVID-19 then, so closures seemed the safest decision amid the uncertainty. Neither do I blame schools for a meager showing that semester. My own district threw together online curricula and instructional materials practically overnight. The results were dismal, but it’s the best many could have done given the situation. However, we’ve now had nine months to understand this virus, and all the evidence favors...

From our first day at school to our last day of work, we are told not to be entrepreneurs or think for ourselves, but instead to do what others tell us. Rather than playing a pickup game of whiffle ball on the neighborhood corner, we play organized tee ball with coaches and uniforms. Rather than studying what we are interested in while in college, we take classes that will “lead to a good job at an established company.” Instead of starting a company, we work as a nameless drone for a corporate behemoth. Rather than explore the woods, we follow...

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden reaffirmed that some higher education will be free if he becomes the president. “In the 21st century, twelve years of school isn’t enough. That’s why under the Biden-Harris plan, community college will be free—and public colleges and universities will be tuition-free for families earning less than $125,000 a year,” he wrote Thursday in a Twitter post. In a string of Twitter posts, the former vice president promoted Miguel Cardona, his education secretary pick, addressed reopening schools safely amid the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. He also mentioned doubling the number of school psychologists, counselors,...

Pernicious grading practices start out as pernicious pedagogy. ... Think of grading as the output: If your programming code is bad, the output of the program will always be bad. ... One thing we understand from Universal Design for Learning is that there are multiple ways a kid can express their knowing. And so if you know 2+2=4, one way you can express your knowing is by writing it. Another way you can express your knowing is by discussing it. A third way is by creating a model that shows it. A fourth way is by illustrating it and a...

The University of Michigan has been blasted as 'moronic' for launching a task force which has branded the words 'picnic,' 'brown bag' and 'blacklist' as offensive terms which could harm morale. The 'Words Matter Task Force' - set up by the school's Information and Technology Services department - listed more than two dozen words and phrases that could be perceived as offensive to some people, and provided an alternative term that could be used instead. 'To effectively communicate with customers, it is important for ITS to evaluate the terms and language conventions that may hinder effective communication, harm morale, and...

Fearful of sending her two children back to school as the coronavirus pandemic raged in Mississippi, Angela Atkins decided to give virtual learning a chance this fall. Almost immediately, it was a struggle. Their district in Lafayette County didn’t offer live instruction to remote learners, and Atkins’ fourth grader became frustrated with doing worksheets all day and missed interacting with teachers and peers. Her seventh grader didn’t receive the extra support he did at school through his special education plan — and started getting failing grades. After nine weeks, Atkins switched to home schooling. By taking her children off the...

Minnesota educators and families all learned last week that students of elementary age would be returning to their school campuses next month. It hardly seems a coincidence that the return date is set as January 19, just a day in advance of Joe Biden's presumed swearing in. With everything else COVID-related taking on a political bent, why shouldn't the sudden resumption of in-person learning be at all different? Let's get the obvious out of the way first. Students should be in schools. They should have been there since September. The abrupt announcement, or rather the response to it, is not...

In the age of COVID, parents are taking a stand against public school identity politics and indoctrination by removing their kids. December 19, 2020 (FRC Action) — With school shutdowns, logistical complexities with online classes, and rampant uncertainty due to the coronavirus, it's been a monumentally difficult year for students, their parents, and teachers. But there has been a silver lining in all of this: more and more parents are having their eyes opened to the leftist agenda that has embedded itself in many of our nation's public schools. Just last week, a school board in Fairfax County in northern...

These demands by teachers at the $54,000 elite school are insane The Dalton School, an elite school in New York City, is reportedly experiencing a "race meltdown" over anti-racist demands by teachers that some are calling "extreme" and "insane." The Dalton School is an elite K-12 preparatory school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that has an exorbitant tuition of $54,180, but also prides itself on being extremely progressive. Jim Best, the head of the school, declared that he has "committed Dalton to becoming a visibly, vocally, structurally anti-racist institution." The school's website has a "Commitment to Anti-Racism" page,...

One of NYC’s poshest private schools is in an uproar over an anti-racist manifesto signed by dozens of faculty members with a sweeping list of demands. The Dalton School - which boasts stars Anderson Cooper, Christian Slater and Claire Danes as alumni - is wrestling with eight pages of “proposals” to overhaul the staffing, curriculum and treatment of black students. Yearly tuition for grades K-12 at the Upper East Side institution is $54,180 a year. The wide-ranging faculty demands include: -Hiring 12 full-time diversity officers, and multiple psychologists to support students “coping with race-based traumatic stress.” -Assigning a staffer dedicated...

US Senator Cory Booker (D, Thrace) has introduced a bill to “solve” the problem of college athletics, in much the same way that a healthy dose of arsenic might be proposed to solve a stomach ache. We have over 5000 colleges and universities in the United States. Every college, public and private, has a somewhat different approach to finance, with varying balances between tuition and endowments, scholarships, government grants and all kinds of partnerships. The colleges that offer competitive sports teams include the costs (coaching staffs, facilities, travel, player scholarships) and the profits (ticket sales, advertising and broadcast rights) of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a religious school in Kentucky that is challenging the state’s decision to limit in-school instruction as part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.The action by the justices is a loss for Danville Christian Academy. The school said the order violated its religious rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the free exercise of religion...

The Jefferson fiasco underscores how activist school leaders and alumni, from California to Massachusetts, are conspiring to recklessly overhaul school policies, education standards, and curriculum this year.FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. – After a crusade by educational arsonists targeting the nation’s No. 1 high school, America’s meritocracy is about to go up in flames. The Fairfax County School Board is set to vote Thursday night to gut the race-blind, merit-based admissions testing process at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. T.J. is a state-chartered magnet school legislated to serve academically gifted and advanced students. The school board plans to replace...

COLUMBIA — University of South Carolina students could be fined and suspended if they fail to get monthly COVID-19 tests the school is mandating in the spring semester. The state’s largest college is requiring monthly checks after it needed T-shirt giveaways and prize drawings at times to conduct nearly 50,000 student tests on campus since August. An unknown number of tests were conducted off campus.