Tag: education

Choice Tax Breaks: The GOP’s Federal Plan To Transform Education

Buried in the 940-page “big, beautiful” budget blueprint is an unprecedented tax credit that, if approved, will be a long-sought victory for the private school choice movement in its drive to expand and break into Democratic states that for decades have blocked its path.

The tax credit program, which would provide scholarships to K-12 students to pay for private schooling, would mark a significant shift in federal education policy. The scholarships would be the first major federal initiative designed to propel the nationwide growth of private school choice, a largely conservative and Christian movement championed by President Trump and suburban Republicans alike. It comes just as the Trump administration dismantles large parts of the U.S. Department of Education that support public schools attended by the vast majority of 50 million students.

The private school choice movement, which started in 1990 to give families more options aligned with their values and children’s learning needs, remains a small piece of the education landscape. It supports about 1.2 million students in private and home schools in 35 states, primarily in the South and West. Advocates expect that the proposed federal program would jump-start a new round of expansion by providing scholarships to families to make private school more affordable.

Beyond boosting participation, the program is also a wedge to crack into states controlled by Democrats. These blue-state lawmakers, backed by teachers’ unions, have long resisted private school choice as a threat to public school enrollment. The granting of scholarships, advocates say, would plant a seed of interest among families in Democratic enclaves at a time when enrollment and academic performance have been steadily declining at public schools.

“In terms of the number of students served and the geographic scope, it would be the most important piece of school choice legislation ever,” said Patrick Wolf, a prominent scholar of the movement at the University of Arkansas. “Advocates hope it will provide a proof of concept in blue states and show that if a few thousand kids get scholarships the public school system won’t crater.”

But the potential of the scholarship program to meet the advocates’ goals has been weakened this week in the Senate. The program was included in the massive budget bill because, as a standalone measure, it wouldn’t survive a filibuster by Senate Democrats. The budget bill can be passed by a simple Senate majority, provided it only addresses fiscal matters.

The Senate parliamentarian, however, objected to the scholarship program, ruling, to the dismay of Republicans, that it seeks to impose a policy on the states. In response, Republicans had to amend the initiative to allow states to decide whether to participate, a change that could hamper the movement’s efforts to breach liberal jurisdictions.

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HHS Cracks Down on Planned Parenthood’s Smut-Filled Sex Ed Programs with Defunding Warning

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took a major step toward cleaning house at Planned Parenthood and similar organizations, issuing a sweeping policy directive yesterday that will defund programs promoting radical gender ideology, sexually explicit material, and medically inaccurate information, currently funded under the cover of “teen pregnancy prevention.”

The grooming of teens and pre-teens by left-wing nonprofits and programs is under attack by the Department led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health issued Program Policy Notice 2025-01, which reaffirms parental rights, prioritizes medical accuracy, and mandates compliance with several recent Executive Orders, including those ending federal promotion of gender ideology, DEI, and what the administration calls “radical indoctrination.”

The move could wipe out millions in taxpayer funding for groups like Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, AccessMatters, Bridgercare, and dozens of other TPP grantees who have been pushing graphic sexual material to children as young as 11 under the federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program.

The government encourages 11 year olds to have sex, but just not to ever get pregnant. Pregnancy is treated by the left as a disease, but underage sex is treated as inevitable.

Among the federally funded lessons flagged for immediate defunding:

  • “Be Proud! Be Responsible!” (AccessMatters): Instructs children on how to “make condoms fun,” suggesting they “hide a condom on your body and ask your partner to find it,” “pretend you are different people,” and “wrap condoms as a present.”
  • “Making Proud Choices!” (Bridgercare): Teaches middle schoolers to practice putting condoms on penis models, with guidance to cut condoms into sheets for oral sex and discussion of flavored condoms for use during foreplay.
  • “Linking Families & Teens” (MOASH/AccessMatters): Includes gender pronoun identification sheets and materials normalizing gender transition and sexual activity among minors.

Planned Parenthood’s own entries are especially egregious. According to internal HHS review documents, Planned Parenthood’s programs often:

  • Promote hormone therapy for minors on affiliated websites.
  • Encourage preteen children to create a “plan to become sexually active.”
  • Include gender ideology that replaces biological terms with “internal” and “external” condoms.

“Effective immediately,” the new HHS policy states, “any content that fails to meet the standards of medical accuracy, age appropriateness, or relevance to teen pregnancy prevention will be deemed unallowable and subject to defunding.”

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Convicted sex offender from Kenya avoids deportation, lands state job

A Kenyan national convicted of sexually assaulting a sleeping woman in Minnesota wasn’t deported after his prison sentence — he was promoted.

Wilson Tindi holds a director position at the Minnesota Department of Education, where he audits taxpayer spending and oversees internal accountability.

Court records show Tindi was convicted in 2016 of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct after breaking into a woman’s home and assaulting her in bed where she slept. He pleaded guilty to the sex assault charge in exchange for prosecutors dropping a first-degree burglary charge.

Tindi was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to register as a predatory offender. His sentence was stayed for five years, but he was also sentenced to 210 days in the workhouse, records show.

However, despite the felony conviction and offender status, Tindi serves as Director of Internal Audit and Advisory Services at MDE, according to public records and his LinkedIn profile.

A former prosecutor with direct knowledge of Tindi’s case told Alpha News they were disturbed to learn he now holds a leadership role in state government.

“I don’t know how he would have passed a background check,” the attorney said. “He’s a felon and a registered sex offender—how is he employed?”

The attorney said that in addition to the 2016 conviction, Tindi was also accused of a similar crime in 2012, as court documents state. Although the case was never charged, prosecutors filed a Spreigl notice—a legal move to introduce evidence of prior misconduct—citing the 2012 allegation as evidence of a disturbing pattern.

“He is dangerous,” the attorney said. “He has no business being paid out of our taxpayer dollars and should be back with ICE.”

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CU Boulder class teaches ‘queering literacy’ methods for high school teachers

Aspiring high school English and social studies teachers can learn “queering literacy” methods at the University of Colorado at Boulder this upcoming fall semester.

“Queering Literacy in Secondary Classrooms” teaches students using “theories and practices of literacy teaching and learning that challenge multiple forms of oppression,” according to the course description.

“Using the tools of queer pedagogy,” this course will prepare education majors to “develop, and enact strategies for planning and implementing literacy instruction that moves beyond inclusion of differences in the English/language arts and social studies curriculum,” the course description states.

A professor who regularly teaches the course provided further insights on the content in a phone interview with The College Fix.

Professor Sara Staley described education as facing a “highly polarized political moment right now, especially around topics like DEI.” The current listed professor for the fall 2025 semester is Ashley Cartun.

Staley said she wants to support “teachers and students” who are “trying to create spaces of belonging in every classroom.” She said Colorado “laws and policies” require teachers to “create a safe, respectful, inclusive learning environment for a diverse population of students.”

She said, “a lot of research” shows teachers are not trained enough in “gender and sexual diversity.” Staley also co-runs the Queer Endeavor, a CU-Boulder program that works in “close collaboration with district and school leaders, K-12 teachers, and counselors” for LGBTQ education.

There is also “a lot of research that shows that school can be a pretty unwelcoming place for students who are different” especially for “queer and trans youths,” Staley said.

The class she teaches helps students learn about “diverse identities” and “what it looks like to read a book with a queer character in it” without reinforcing “negative stereotypes.”

Staley said, “queer pedagogy” is about “supporting students to think critically by asking questions of what they read.”

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California ordered to clean trans ideology out of classroom materials

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a letter to California on June 20 ordering it to remove gender ideology references from educational curriculum and programs funded by a federal sexual education grant or face the loss of funding.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) reviewed materials created through California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), a federally-funded sexual education program, and uncovered “egregious content” teaching young students they can change their sex. HHS noted the PREP program has mission of providing minors with medically accurate education rather than ideological agendas.

“After requesting, receiving, and reviewing California’s PREP materials, ACF uncovered egregious content teaching young students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex and that boys can identify as girls,” states an HHS press release. “The educational materials promoting gender ideology have nothing to do with Personal Responsibility Education and are outside the scope of PREP’s authorizing statute.”

The California Department of Public Health didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Primary School Children Being “Sexualised” by Lessons on the “300 Flags of Pride”

Leaflets handed out at primary schools by the charity Swindon and Wiltshire Pride claim there are more flags representing sexuality and gender identity than there are for countries.

The material, signposted by the local council on social media, goes into detail about a “small selection” of 29 varieties.

It says: “While some might think [300] is too many, it’s all part of a drive to be more inclusive of the expansive breadth of identity within the community.”

Along with the rainbow LGBT Pride flag are a variety of offshoots, from the “intersex-inclusive Pride flag” to the “polyamory Pride flag” and even a black and white “heterosexual flag” for straight people, which it says can include transgender people.

The materials make up part of a free annual support guide produced by the charity, which also points to websites providing advice on controversial practices such as wearing a “binder to reduce apparent size of breasts”, the use of cross-sex hormones in under-18s, and information on “fetish spectrums”.

Parents of children at the primary schools told the Telegraph their concerns had been ignored by the local Labour council. …

One mother, a former teacher, said the guide being given out in primary schools was “really concerning”.

“Obviously the polyamory one, encouraging children to have multiple sex partners, they shouldn’t be sexualising children,” she said. “In the guide itself, under education, it states it is ‘for schools, teachers, and students’.

“A couple of sentences down, for example, it says ‘raise awareness of the lesser known identities across the fetish spectrum’,” she added, saying that was “inappropriate”.

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California Ordered to Cut ‘Gender Ideology’ From Sexual Education

The Trump administration has given California 60 days to remove all references to transgender or non-binary gender concepts from its federally funded sex education curriculum—or risk losing millions of dollars in federal funding.

In a letter sent on June 20, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) materials include “gender ideology” content not permitted under federal law.

Citing multiple lesson plans and teacher guides, the agency said the state’s curriculum teaches that gender identity is distinct from biological sex—something ACF says is outside the program’s statutory scope.

“The Trump Administration will not tolerate the use of federal funds for programs that indoctrinate our children,” ACF acting assistant secretary Andrew Gradison said in a statement. “The disturbing gender ideology content in California’s PREP materials is both unacceptable and well outside the program’s core purpose.”

Among the flagged material are lessons describing transgender, non-binary, gender-fluid identities, as well as references to social and medical gender transitions, including hormone therapy and “gender-affirming” surgeries.

ACF stated that these subjects fall outside the statutory framework of the PREP program, which is designed to educate youth on abstinence, contraception, and select adulthood preparation topics such as healthy relationships, financial literacy, and job readiness. Teaching about gender identity does not qualify, the agency says.

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Teachers Must Avert an AI-Facilitated Intellectual Dark Age

Iremember watching a YouTube interview with a highly intelligent and observant entrepreneur, who cheerfully predicted that the time would come when AI programmes would replace teachers, rendering their jobs obsolete. The commentator in question was an enthusiastic advocate of personal and economic freedom and a vocal critic of the excessive incursions of State agencies in our personal lives. Yet for some reason, he seemed relatively unconcerned at the prospect of machines teaching our children.

Of course, there are tasks that most would happily relegate to AI programmes to the benefit of humanity, such as certain forms of tedious clerical work, a large chunk of manual labour, and the synthesis of unwieldy amounts of data. However, there are other tasks that cannot be delegated to a machine without endangering invaluable dimensions of our lives as human beings.

One of those tasks is teaching and learning, through which people learn to think, interpret the world, make rational arguments, assess evidence, make rational and holistic choices, and reflect on the meaning of their lives. For better or for worse, teachers, from kindergarten right up to university level, form the minds of the next generation. The formation of the mind relies on apprenticeship, imitation of a worthy model, and intellectual practice and training. 

Much as an athlete fine-tunes his motor skills and muscle memory playing sport, and finds inspiration in an exemplary athlete, the student fine-tunes his mental skills thinking, reflecting, studying, analysing, and generating ideas and arguments, in dialogue with an inspiring teacher. There is both an interpersonal and “hands-on” dimension to human learning, both of which are indispensable. 

Yet Artificial Intelligence is reaching the point where it has the capacity to automate and mechanise certain aspects of teaching and learning, marginalising crucial aspects of the learning process, most notably the way a teacher can model intellectual activity for the student, and the intellectual tasks a teacher assigns to students in order to fine-tune their mental skills and imagination. Many tasks which, just a few years ago, had to be undertaken “manually,” by which I mean, through the laborious activity, imagination, and effort of a human being, can now be performed automatically by AI.

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How ‘Equity’ debases education

In the current backlash against DEI, most criticism is focused on the “D” — diversity — which replaces the principle of meritocracy with racial criteria in hiring, admissions, and promotions. Notorious examples of implementation include police and fire departments lowering requirements for education and physical fitness, or aviation authorities adopting  biographical assessment in place of traditional skill-based hiring evaluations.

The “E” — equity — is more complex. Equity has replaced the concept of equality, which progressive ideology in the U.S. deems discriminatory because of its emphasis on individual effort that may result in unequal outcomes. A symbolic definition is that the educational equity must provide every child with what he needs to achieve his full academic and social potential. This vision resembles Karl Marx’s idealistic communism that provides resources “to each according to his needs.” Although formulated in the Marxist sense, equity is more restrictive because it is supposed to benefit children from only “underprivileged” backgrounds. But, beyond empty reasoning, equity’s actual goal is absolute equality in the educational outcomes regardless of individual ability or effort. To accomplish this, curricula and teaching methodology are being drastically rewritten in many parts of the country.

The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields have come under increased scrutiny. Critics argue that these disciplines have historically been tools of nationalism, colonialism, and systemic inequity. As a result, some school districts across the country are scaling back advanced curricular offerings. Mathematics has especially faced pressure due to its perceived role in perpetuating discrimination and cultural dominance. Many equity-focused proposals aim to reduce the emphasis on mathematics in school programs.  Common suggestions include eliminating accelerated mathematical tracks in middle school, removing early-entry algebra for gifted students, and consolidating high school algebra and geometry into an “integrated math” course.

Aligned with these equity principles are significant changes in teaching methodology. Traditional grading practices are increasingly viewed as inequitable and are being reconsidered or eliminated in some districts. Proposals often include removing homework deadlines and allowing late work without penalty. In subjects such as reading and mathematics, achievement levels are being abolished, with all students placed in honors classes regardless of academic performance.

In terms of student discipline, many schools have adopted “restorative justice” approaches as an alternative to traditional punitive measures. This model focuses on mediation and rehabilitation rather than suspension, emphasizing support not only for the victim, but the offender too. More than 20 states have already enacted policies introducing restorative justice in schools. These practices involve allowing misbehaving students to avoid traditional consequences and even receive incentives such as snacks or breaks in quiet spaces. The restorative justice programs let misbehavers blame factors outside their control, that is, typically societal injustice.

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Grading for Equity coming to San Francisco high schools this fall

Without seeking approval of the San Francisco Board of Education, Superintendent of Schools Maria Su plans to unveil a new Grading for Equity plan on Tuesday that will go into effect this fall at 14 high schools and cover over 10,000 students. The school district is already negotiating with an outside consultant to train teachers in August in a system that awards a passing C grade to as low as a score of 41 on a 100-point exam. 

Were it not for an intrepid school board member, the drastic change in grading with implications for college admissions and career readiness would have gone unnoticed and unexplained. It is buried in a three-word phrase on the last page of a PowerPoint presentation embedded in the school board meeting’s 25-page agenda. The plan comes during the last week of the spring semester while parents are assessing the impact of over $100 million in budget reductions and deciding whether to remain in the public schools this fall. While the school district acknowledges that parent aversion to this grading approach is typically high and understands the need for “vigilant communication,” outreach to parents has been minimal and may be nonexistent. The school district’s Office of Equity homepage does not mention it and a page containing the SFUSD definition of equity has not been updated in almost three years.  

Grading for Equity eliminates homework or weekly tests from being counted in a student’s final semester grade. All that matters is how the student scores on a final examination, which can be taken multiple times. Students can be late turning in an assignment or showing up to class or not showing up at all without it affecting their academic grade. Currently, a student needs a 90 for an A and at least 61 for a D. Under the San Leandro Unified School District’s grading for equity system touted by the San Francisco Unified School District and its consultant, a student with a score as low as 80 can attain an A and as low as 21 can pass with a D.  

Joe Feldman, the consultant the school district plans to contract with to implement Grading for Equity, wrote in 2019 that in Placer County, another jurisdiction with the grading system, “students who did not qualify for free or reduced-price lunch had a sharper decrease in A’s, reflecting how traditional grading practices disproportionately benefit students with resources because of the inequitable inclusion of extra credit and other resource-dependent grading criteria.”   

Grading for Equity may reduce A and D/F grades and, according to Feldman, enable a school district to cut costs for remedial classes but what about student academic outcomes? The most recent data from both middle schools in San Leandro where grading reform started in 2016 document significant continued disparities among student populations when it comes to performance on statewide assessment tests. In both English and mathematics, the gaps ranged from twice to triple to even four times as many students meeting or exceeding the statewide standard in some subgroups compared to others. The children needing the most help and improvement are not getting it.

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