Tag: education

Abdul El-Sayed’s Imam Rails Against Homosexuality and Jews Teaching Islam: ‘Against Human Nature’

Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed frequently attends a mosque led by an imam who has railed against homosexuality and complained that all too often, Jews are teaching Islam in American universities, I report alongside my Free Beacon colleague Alana Goodman.

Abdelhamid Algizawi serves as the imam at the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, where El-Sayed typically prays, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Algizawi celebrated El-Sayed’s one-point Democratic primary victory over Haley Stevens in an August 7 sermon, calling it a “very big victory for the Muslims, Hamdillah, and for the Ummah, and for the Islamic nation” and noting that it is incumbent on Muslims to vote for El-Sayed in November. He also lamented that his own daughter said she wouldn’t vote for a Muslim “running for Senate” because “he’s working against women.”

Algizawi has also made inflammatory remarks about homosexuality, arguing Muslims must reject it because it is “against human nature” and “cannot bring stability to life.” El-Sayed, by contrast, has championed the “LGBTQ+ community,” saying he’ll “always fight for an America where all of us can live and thrive as we are.” Last month, in a primetime Fox News appearance, El-Sayed defended gender transition surgery for minors, likening the procedure to circumcision. In 2022, meanwhile, Algizawi, a graduate of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, criticized the number of Jewish scholars teaching Islam in America, describing it as “a problem” and accusing them of introducing “confusion” to students.

“Though El-Sayed usually prays at the MCA of Ann Arbor, he also attends the Islamic Center of Detroit and the Wayne State University Islamic Center of Detroit, the source told the Washington Free Beacon. Imam Imran Salha of the Islamic Center of Detroit has justified Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, posting to social media in September 2024 that ‘We can condemn Hezbollah atrocities in Syria while also recognizing that they *are* making sacrifices for the sake of Palestine and frustrating the illegal zionist regime in unprecedented ways esp with recent hits.’” Salha was also caught on video three days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks saying Israel “has left a fire in our hearts that will burn that state until its demise.”

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Trump Education Department Goes on the Warpath Against School Districts Enabling Teacher Sex Crimes

In a move to reduce the epidemic of teacher sexual misconduct, the Trump Administration has launched a nationwide crackdown on school districts that enable these disturbing offenses against children that continue to generate weekly headlines, Breitbart News has learned.

This week alone, three cases made the news:

  • New Jersey special education teacher, 45, a married mother of two, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for having sex with an 8th grader.
  • A 34-year-old Riverside, California teacher and swim coach pled guilty to two counts of sexual penetration and other sex crimes on a 14-year-old child.
  • And, a 26-year-old teacher in the tiny eastern Washington town of Warden was sentenced to 15 years for repeated sex with a 13-year-old and filming the encounters.

The new effort appears particularly focused on what is known as “passing the trash” — the act of concealing sexual offenses and assigning the teacher to another school or recommending him or her as a good hire in another district.

The Department of Education (ED), which is leading the new probe, said in a recent statement:

The Trump Administration has observed a troubling and recurring pattern in schools across the nation of credible reports of sexual abuse and harassment by adults in positions of authority going uninvestigated or of suspected offenders being transferred to new schools or roles in the district.

However, that announcement, like many of Trump’s official actions, was ignored by major news networks and legacy print media.

While incessant Trump critics have accused the president of narrowing investigations and outright killing the federal education department, his administration in fact ramped up “educational sexual misconduct” reporting near the end of his first term.

The new policy meant to get a better handle on the problem had to overcome a court challenge to the reporting rules by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Announcement of the new 2026 crackdown comes following a blistering “Dear Colleague” letter sent out to U.S. school districts by ED Secretary Linda McMahon last month, which has been obtained by Breitbart News.

McMahon cites the epidemic being enabled by “institutional silence and complacency” by school districts and teachers’ unions being committed “to shield their members from disciplinary actions.”

McMahon called such practices a failure of their “moral and legal responsibilities to parents and students.”

Two decades-old laws are in play in the effort, an ED source who asked for anonymity told Breitbart News:

  • A Title IX amendment in 1972 which requires schools with “knowledge of sexual harassment or sexual assault” to “promptly respond in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent.”
  • The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requires local districts receiving federal funds to prohibit schools from quietly removing perpetrators by helping them get jobs at other institutions — the practice known as “passing the trash,” the source said.

Secretary McMahon in her letter promised those who fail to follow federal laws will face the loss of federal funding, which virtually all school districts depend on for various local programs.

“This epidemic of nationwide sexual abuse in our schools must end,” she concluded.

In short, though schools are largely controlled by local school boards, the Trump administration and ED appear to be on the warpath.

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Donald Trump Just Proved the Federal Government Spent $3 Trillion to Make Your Kids Dumber

America spent $3 trillion on a federal education bureaucracy.

But only three in ten kids can read or do math.

That’s why Linda McMahon is doing what Ronald Reagan couldn’t do with education – but Democrats are trying to stop her.

The Numbers Washington, DC Doesn’t Want You to See

The Department of Education was born in 1980 under Jimmy Carter.

Ronald Reagan called it a “bureaucratic boondoggle” from day one.

He pledged to kill it.

He couldn’t.

Then George H.W. Bush came along and declared he wanted to be “the Education President.”

Spending went up.

Achievement stayed flat.

Bill Clinton expanded it.

George W. Bush gave us No Child Left Behind and threw more billions at the problem.

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Study: Homeschool Kids Outperformed National Averages Across Five Subjects

Homeschooled students scored substantially above national norms in reading, language, mathematics, social studies, and science, according to the first peer-reviewed nationwide homeschool achievement study of its kind in approximately 15 years.

The findings arrive as homeschooling remains above pre-pandemic levels nationwide and Texas expands financial and extracurricular opportunities for participating families. Researchers cautioned, however, that the results demonstrate an association—not proof that homeschooling caused the higher scores.

The study, “A Nationwide Study on the Academic Achievement of Homeschool Students and Parents’ Reasons for Homeschooling,” was published online on May 21, 2026, in the peer-reviewed Peabody Journal of Education.

Researchers Brian D. Ray and Braden Hoelzle analyzed standardized achievement scores from homeschool students across the United States. The results were compared with the national norm groups used by the tests, whose midpoints are at the 50th percentile.

The homeschool students’ average scores were:

  • 29 percentile points above the norm in reading;
  • 25 points above the norm in language;
  • 25 points above the norm in mathematics;
  • 26 points above the norm in social studies; and
  • 27 points above the norm in science.

Those figures mean, for example, that the study’s average homeschool reading score was approximately at the 79th percentile. They do not mean students answered 29% more questions correctly.

The researchers also examined whether achievement varied with family income, parents’ education, or state teacher certification. Those factors generally had little or no practical relationship with students’ scores, according to the paper.

Ray is president of the National Home Education Research Institute, while Hoelzle has been affiliated with NHERI and Frisco Independent School District.

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16 Facts About The Shocking Decline Of Public Education In The U.S. That Every American Should Know

Virtually everyone agrees that our public schools are in a state of decline. Needless to say, it isn’t because we aren’t spending enough money. The federal government, our state governments and our local governments are collectively spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on public education. That is a colossal pile of money. Since 1960, spending per student has increased by 350 percent. That is even after adjusting for inflation. At this stage, we spend more money per student than any other nation on the entire planet other than Luxembourg. Anyone that believes that we can solve our education crisis by spending even more money is simply being delusional.

For nearly a trillion dollars a year, we should be getting a world class education system.

But we aren’t.

In fact, students in the U.S. just keep dropping down the global rankings.

Urgent action is required if we are going to turn this around.

Gallup conducted a survey that discovered that an all-time low 35 percent of U.S. adults are satisfied with the quality of public education in the United States.

There appears to be a growing consensus that we have a major national crisis on our hands, and those that are responsible for this crisis need to be held accountable. The following are 16 facts about the shocking decline of public education in the U.S. that every American should know…

#1 Nearly one-fifth of all high school graduates in the United States cannot even read at a functional level…

National statistics indicate that close to one-fifth of high school graduates are unable to read at a functional level. This means they cannot effectively comprehend and use written information in daily life or work settings.

#2 Only 35 percent of high school seniors are proficient at reading, and only 22 percent of high school seniors are proficient at math…

The scale of the crisis is staggering. Only 35% of high school seniors read at a proficient level. One-third lack basic reading comprehension skills. In mathematics, the picture is even bleaker. Only 22% achieved proficiency. Alarmingly, 45% can’t even manage basic math. Around 2/3 are academically unprepared for college in math and reading. Even prestigious universities like Harvard must offer remedial courses for incoming freshmen lacking foundational skills.

#3 For high school seniors in the United States, math scores have fallen to the lowest level since 2005 and reading scores have fallen to the lowest level since 1992…

The latest report card on American education is in, and it’s devastating. The 2025 National Assessment of Educational Progress, released last month, revealed that the nation’s 12th-graders hit a historic performance low. Math scores cratered to levels not seen since 2005. Reading scores plummeted to their lowest level since testing began in 1992.

#4 According to the most recent NAEP assessment, only 28 percent of 8th grade students in the United States are proficient at math…

Only 28% of 8th graders scored proficient in math on the latest NAEP assessment. The effects are most severe in low-income districts, where school closures, chronic absenteeism, and staffing instability have compounded over time.

#5 In just one decade, the percentage of 13-year-olds enrolled in algebra dropped from 34 percent to 24 percent…

According to the OECD, our average student is almost a full year behind the average student from other countries. Singapore’s students are three years ahead of ours. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), our students are also developing slower than in previous years. In 2023, only 24% of America’s 13-year-olds were enrolled in algebra. A decade earlier, that number was 34%.

#6 It appears that the pandemic had a substantial negative impact on both the reading skills and the math skills of our fourth-grade students…

In spring 2023, just 56 percent of American fourth-graders were performing on grade level in math, down from 69 percent in 2019, according to just one example of test score data cited in the report.

Declines in reading were less stark but still concerning, and concentrated in earlier grades, with 65 percent of third-graders performing on grade level, compared with 72 percent in 2019. Recovery in reading has also been slower, with some researchers finding essentially no rebound since students returned to the classroom.

#7 At this point, only 26 percent of U.S. adults can name all three branches of government…

Only 26% of American adults can name the three branches of government. Less than one-quarter of college graduates knew that the First Amendment prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion. Most adults have no idea how many Justices serve on the Supreme Court. Tragically, Princeton University found that barely one-third (36%) of adults could pass a multiple-choice test consisting of questions taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test.

#8 Almost two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 are not able to identify the United Kingdom on a map of the world…

Sixty percent of students could not identify the countries the United States fought in World War II. Only 24% knew why the colonists fought against the British. Only 24% could identify Benjamin Franklin as a Founder with more students (37%) believing that he invented the light bulb. Our students fared no better in basic geography. A National Geographic study found that nearly two-thirds of Americans (ages 18-24) were unable to identify the United Kingdom (one of our most dependable foreign allies) on a world map. Closer to home, most young Americans were unable to identify the state of Ohio on a map.

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America’s Largest Teacher Union Now Calling for Boycott of Target Stores Over Their Supposed Inaction Against ICE

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, the largest union of its kind in America, is now urging parents not to buy back-to-school supplies at Target because in the union’s opinion, the retail chain has not been loud enough in the left’s battle against ICE.

What does this have to do with schools or educating children? Nothing, in fact. It’s just left wing activism because that’s what teacher unions do now.

The teacher unions are nothing more than an extension of the Democrat Party.

FOX News reports:

American Federation of Teachers launches boycott against Target, claims retailer ‘remained silent’ on ICE

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten promoted a nationwide back-to-school boycott of retail giant Target over the weekend because the company had not condemned ICE operations in Minnesota — the location of its headquarters — prompting criticism from education advocates and a call for federal scrutiny.

“We gave Target ample time to stand with the communities in which they operate and help their neighbors, but its silence about federal immigration abuses has been deafening,” Weingarten said in a statement.

“The issue could not be more pressing: Seven months since the murders of Alex Pretti and Renée Good, masked ICE agents are still in our streets, our schools and our communities, terrorizing families in the name of Donald Trump’s illegal and immoral assault on immigrants striving for their American Dream,” she continued. “That’s why we’re urging our members to avoid Target and patronize more ethical shopping alternatives this back-to-school season.”

Here’s more from the AFT press release:

AFT Launches ‘Shop Smart, Not Target’ Campaign for Back-to-School

As teachers and families head back to school, the AFT has launched a nationwide campaign to urge them to shop at retailers other than Target for their school supplies. The “Shop Smart, Support Working Families” campaign was created in response to Target’s refusal to condemn the unlawful Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity that continues to roil communities around the country. A new website, ShopSmart.AFT.org, along with an associated digital and print ad initiative, helps educators and families shop for school supplies at local stores and outlets that respect labor rights, instead of at Target.

The AFT’s 1.875 million members spend an average of $895 of their own money on school supplies each year and hold billions in Target stock via their pension accounts. In March, the union passed a resolution demanding the Minneapolis-based business speak up against the ICE atrocities in their own backyard and called for a comprehensive back-to-school campaign if it failed to take meaningful action.

These people are political activists who do not care about education.

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UC Berkeley Math Professor Makes a Startling Revelation About Her Students as She Blasts School’s Woke Admissions Policy, Which an Obama Admin. Official Implemented

One of the nation’s supposedly most rigorous colleges is completely infested with unqualified students, forcing a calculus teacher to come forward with a stunning revelation.

Zvezdelina Stankova, a professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley, wrote a damning op-ed in the San Francisco Standard last week excoriating the university’s woke admissions standards, which Then-President Janet Napolitano implemented.

Back in 2020, Napolitano, who served as Homeland Security Secretary under former President Barack Obama, overruled a task force that urged the school to phase out the SAT and ACT.

She argued that doing so was proper due to pandemic disruptions and ‘equity’ concerns.

The Regents voted later that year to make testing optional. Then, a court ruling focused on access for students with disabilities required UC to become test-blind through 2025.

Due to this policy, Stankova noted that because the kids are so far behind on mathematics, she has to spend her time teaching middle-school math to them.

Not high school. Middle school.

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Florida is Requiring Public Schools to Teach Students About the Dangers of Communism

Florida is now requiring schools to teach students about the dangers of communism. This is the way. Schools all over the country should have been doing this for years.

Instead, far left colleges and universities have been promoting the ideas of socialism and by extension, communism. It’s exactly why you see so many young people embracing the utterly backwards messages of Bernie Sanders and AOC.

History is very clear on the subject. Communism leads to starvation and death.

From WEAR News:

Last November, the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for an upcoming “History of Communism” curriculum coming to the state’s schools.

FDOE officials said the standards were “developed by Florida educators and content experts.” They’re set to be implemented to middle and high school students beginning in the 2026-27 school year.

“With the adoption of the History of Communism Standards, Florida is leading the nation by equipping students with a truthful, in-depth understanding of how communist ideologies suppress individual freedoms, abuse power, and inflict widespread suffering,” FDOE said…

Paul Fetsko serves on the Escambia County school board.

He says this isn’t the first time Florida has required students to learn about communism.

“It was an Americanism versus communism course,” Fetsko said. “It was a semester course [14 years ago] that was required of all seniors.”

“As the standards and benchmarks have changed, things get assumed into other courses or they are taken away because something else becomes a more pressing topic,” he added.

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The Decline Of Higher Education Continues

During my second career teaching high school English, I noticed several darkly funny but disturbing trends in “higher” education.  They were fueled by three primary drivers: abandoning merit, the federal government taking over the student loan industry, and DEI hysteria.

It was Barack Obama who federalized the student loan industry, pushing the idea that everyone should go to college.

To make that idea a reality, it was necessary for the government to guarantee student loans.

That had plenty of unfortunate and foreseeable effects. Because Colleges no longer had any financial skin in the game, they went on a mad administrator-hiring binge, which required enormous amounts of money, which required unprecedented numbers of students. 

Combined with a faux-religious devotion to DEI, colleges admitted all manner of people who in past years would have reasonably been found to be poorly suited to do college-level work. To cover this, it was necessary to do away with any sort of predictive testing like the SAT. All that was required for college admission was a student loan, unless one was a white male applying at an Ivy League school. Those guys, regardless of academic qualification, were often denied.

Enormous DEI departments with all manner of administrators and functionaries were established, and hundreds of millions were wasted on DEI gurus imported to inspire them.

So unprepared were so many, colleges were forced to establish remedial high schools on campus. It was a great scam. Full tuition for no credit, and blame students’ lack of ability on high school teachers like me, who could have told them who wasn’t academically capable if anyone had bothered to ask.

Grade inflation was a direct result of these disasters. It was necessary to hide the scams, so professors were required not only to dumb down the content of their classes and to require far less work, but to award unearned grades. An entire generation of college students was conditioned to expect maximum grades for minimum and poor work. And God help any professor who gave a minority student the grade their lack of work deserved.

As a result, innumerable students took 6-7 years to get a 4-year degree at enormous cost, but many simply dropped out without a degree, bearing enormous debt they had no credentials or ability to pay off.

I’m certainly not arguing college should be denied to anyone. I’ve known many people who struggled greatly but managed to earn a degree and were better and more productive people for it. I am arguing for rational decision-making and fiscally sound, ethical colleges.

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ADF Demands Colorado District Scrap or Overhaul Sex-Ed Curriculum

A national religious-liberty legal organization has sent a formal letter to Colorado’s Roaring Fork School District demanding it discontinue its human sexuality curriculum or, at minimum, overhaul how parents are notified and allowed to exclude their children from it.

Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, sent the letter Tuesday to the Roaring Fork Schools Board of Education and Superintendent Anna Cole, escalating a dispute over the district’s “3Rs” curriculum – short for Rights, Respect, Responsibility – that has simmered in the Roaring Fork Valley for months.

What ADF is alleging

In the letter and in a subsequent social media statement, ADF argued the curriculum exposes children as young as 5 to graphic and ideologically driven material about human sexuality, including anatomical images that are followed by quizzes asking students to identify body parts such a nipple, vulva, and clitoris. The group also said lessons direct young children to discuss how they like to be touched and to reject a binary understanding of gender.

By sixth grade, according to ADF, students are directed to act as “Sex Ed Sleuths” who research sexual-education websites on their own, with parental permission or involvement only addressed after that research is complete.

The letter goes further in the upper grades. In a seventh-grade lesson titled “I Am Who I Am,” the curriculum teaches students that the idea of choosing one’s sexual orientation or gender identity is a myth, and students are required to affirm that concept on a worksheet, according to ADF.

Eighth graders, the letter states, fill out a separate worksheet rating how “LGBTQ-inclusive” their school is, using measures such as whether the school celebrates Valentine’s Day for LGBTQ couples, displays LGBTQ-themed posters in hallways, and uses the term “parent/guardian” rather than “mom and dad.”

High schoolers complete their own myth-or-fact worksheet affirming that a person cannot change his or her sexual orientation and are instructed to avoid terms like “homosexual” or “straight,” ADF’s letter states. The letter also says the high school curriculum favors gender-inclusive phrasing – using a term for female anatomy in place of “girl or woman” – as part of its approach to gender inclusivity.

ADF’s letter is also sharply critical of how the district structures parental notice and opt-outs. The group alleges Roaring Fork requires only two weeks’ notice before a 3Rs lesson is taught, that some parents receive even less, and that the district’s opt-out process is difficult to find – a paper opt-out letter placed in a student’s take-home folder, paired with a digital version the letter says is often buried among other announcements on the Remind app and labeled generically as “health education,” which obscures its content from parents. ADF argues this system was deliberately designed to preserve high participation rates rather than to give parents a genuine choice, contrasting it with the district’s own stated goal of ensuring students have access to health education.

The letter cites the case of a Crystal River Elementary School parent whose kindergartner brought home the “Understanding Our Bodies” lesson plan in January 2026. According to ADF, the opt-out form included in the folder did not specify a lesson date, only stating the lesson would occur “the following month,” and did not include the graphic slides that would accompany the lesson.

The school listed the curriculum under different names in different places, ADF’s letter states, referring to it as “Comprehensive Health Curriculum” in the take-home folder and simply “Health Curriculum” in a monthly online newsletter – where the announcement was mixed in with other school news and required parents to click through a link in the Remind app to find it.

ADF, which describes itself as the world’s largest legal organization focused on religious freedom, free speech, and parental rights, framed the core issue as a constitutional one: automatic enrollment in the lessons, combined with what it called inconsistent notice to parents and, in some cases, no meaningful opportunity to opt children out.

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