Tag: public schools

Trump Administration Teaming Up with TPUSA and Others to Promote Patriotism in Schools

As the United States approaches its 250th Anniversary, the Trump administration is making it a priority to promote patriotism in schools across the nation.

On Wednesday, a partnership with Turning Point USA and more than 40 organizations was formed to promote civics education to young people.

According to Fox News, “Partners in the American 250 Civics Education Coalition include conservative groups such as PragerU, Hillsdale College, Moms for Liberty, and the America First Policy Institute.”

Fox News reports:

The Department of Education called it a “landmark initiative” that is “dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.”

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With oversight from Education Secretary Linda E. McMahon, the initiative aims to foster conversations about citizenship and America’s values.

McMahon said Wednesday that young Americans need to be equipped with an understanding of American history and values.

The U.S. Department of Education shared details of the initiative as well as the organizations who will be participating. 

“With oversight from U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and the Department, the AFPI-led coalition will spearhead nationwide initiatives to engage students, educators, and communities in conversations about liberty, citizenship, and America’s enduring values.”

“As America approaches 250 years since its founding, we are proud to announce this coalition to ensure every young American understands the beauty of our nation and is equipped with the civic knowledge required to contribute meaningfully to its future,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

“A country cannot survive if its values are forgotten by its people. More than ever, we need to restore the vitality of the American spirit, and this coalition will take bold steps to educate, inspire, and mobilize youth toward active and informed citizenship.”

“AFPI is proud to stand with the Department of Education and partner with over 40 best-in-class organizations to form this coalition,” said Interim President of the American First Policy Institute Greg Sindelar. “Together, we are building a movement that will ensure the next generation understands America’s founding principles and carries them forward with confidence and pride.”

“Turning Point USA, which includes Turning Point Education, is more resolved than ever to advance God-centered, virtuous education for students flourishing across our nation,” said Dr. Hutz H. Hertzberg, Chief Education Officer of Turning Point Education. “With that in mind, we are honored to partner with the distinguished organizations that comprise the America 250 Civics Education Coalition to restore, revive, and reclaim robust American civics education for all students throughout our country.”

“We celebrate Lincoln for his greatness in recalling the nation to the principles of its birth, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the most beautiful political document in history,” said Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College. “It is time to repeat his work and the work of Jefferson and the Founders. We will work together to learn those principles, and for the love of them we will have a grand celebration.”

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Educational Crisis: Baltimore High School Fails To Produce A Single Proficient Math Student In Four Straight Years

President Trump’s executive order earlier this year to dismantle the Department of Education comes as the president highlighted a disturbing and inconvenient truth about Baltimore City’s Democratic Party-run “failure factory” school system: 40% of public high schools have zero students proficient in math. This damning statistic follows eight years of Fox45 investigative reporter Chris Papst’s coverage of the crime-ridden city’s education crisis. Keep in mind, the metro area is mainly controlled by leftists at City Hall, with virtually no diversity when it comes to Republicans holding positions of power.

A new report by Papst released this past week may catch the White House’s attention, highlighting yet another inconvenient truth about the stunning failure of Baltimore City Public Schools in terms of academic outcomes, proving that simply throwing more taxpayer funds at the problem is not a viable solution.

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Students from Rhode Island High School Attend School Board Meeting to Demand Teacher Who Went on Vile Rant Against Charlie Kirk Be Fired-” I do not feel comfortable or safe with our teachers supporting violence.

A group of outraged high school students from Rhode Island attended a school board meeting to demand action against a teacher after a vile rant that included calling Charlie Kirk a “piece of garbage.”

Benjamin Fillo, a teacher at Barrington High School, made the comments following the political assassination of Kirk while speaking to students in Utah.

During Fillo’s unhinged remarks in a video shared on social media he stated, “I have about as much sympathy for Charlie Kirk right now as I do for all those farmers across the country who want socialist handouts from the government right now.”

“This is a man who hated the LGBTQ community, who hated women’s rights, who hated democracy.”

“Who thought that he was a big man cause he went to college campuses, debated young college students and thought he proved how tough he was with his words that he studied ahead of time.”

“What a piece of garbage. This is what happens,” he said before smugly adding, “Bye, Charlie!”

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School district may have ‘intentionally deceived’ parents on girl’s gender transition, judge rules

AMichigan school district may have violated the due process rights of parents by “actively concealing” their daughter’s identification as a boy, referring to the girl by her given name with parents and her “masculine” name at school, a federal judge ruled, exacerbating conflicts in the lower courts that may trigger Supreme Court review.

U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney, known for siding with a school district that banned students from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts, greenlit Dan and Jennifer Mead‘s Fourteenth Amendment claims against Rockford Public School District for violating their “fundamental rights as parents” and “deprivation of liberty without due process.”

He dismissed the Meads’ free exercise claim, however, saying surreptitious social transitions don’t “compel students (or their parents) to believe or do anything,” contrary to the mandatory exposure to LGBTQ “storybooks,” compelled school attendance and flag-salute requirement struck down by the Supreme Court in precedents from the 1940s to this year.

The President George W. Bush nominee noted the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is binding on him, last month upheld an Ohio gender identity school restroom policy as “facially neutral” in a challenge by Muslim and Christian students. (Their only potential relief was damages, since Ohio mandated restroom access by sex during the case.)

The 1st Circuit, which oversees Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island and has no Republican-nominated judges, reached the opposite conclusion as Maloney on parental rights and due process earlier this year, prompting parents Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri to petition the Supreme Court.

Several friend-of-the-court briefs are backing the Massachusetts parents, including detransitioners who abandoned transgender identities after medicalization and a prominent transgender child psychologist who argues parents are integral to transitions.

The 3rd Circuit, covering Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, heard a similar case this summer and already has precedents upholding parental authority, including an opinion joined by future Justice Samuel Alito on “actions that strike at the heart of parental decision-making authority on matters of the greatest importance.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called Maloney’s ruling “potentially precedent-setting” on parental rights in public schools. He highlighted Maloney’s finding that the Meads’ allegations “show some amount of coercion or interference” from the district, implicating their right to make “fundamental decisions” for the girl.

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Ohio School Board to Debate Whether Two Teachers Who Mocked Charlie Kirk’s Death Should Be Fired

The Miamisburg school board in Ohio is meeting on Thursday night to debate whether two teachers should remain employed after appearing to mock Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who was horrifically assassinated at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. 

Band teacher Steve Aylward allegedly posted a comment on his Facebook page about 31-year-old Kirk’s death, appearing to suggest he called for his own assassination, and social studies teacher Rachel O’Connor was caught on video allegedly telling students Kirk was a “terrible person.” A video of her comments subsequently went viral on social media, WDTN reported. 

Petitions have reportedly been made, both for and against the educators continuing to hold state-funded positions of influence over young minds.

Parent and Miamisburg alum Tony Huey, who had O’Connor as a teacher, created an online petition calling for the teachers to be terminated. He told the local outlet that her remarks about Kirk “isn’t something that shocks me coming from her.” He said many parents like him do not want teachers who make derisive comments about a man who was publicly assassinated influencing their children. He said he hopes the school board makes the right call.

“If they don’t, this is definitely something, you know, I’m going to take further,” he said. “Maybe the next Miamisburg City Council meeting that they have and even further than that if we need to.”

The Miamisburg school board will meet Thursday night at 6 p.m. The public will be given a chance to speak at the end of the meeting.

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Twelfth Grade Math And Reading Scores Are Worse Than Ever, Thanks To ‘Equity’  

The U.S. Department of Education recently released test results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, showing that American high school seniors’ math and reading scores have dropped to a new historical low.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Twelfth-graders’ average math score was the worst since the current test began in 2005, and reading was below any point since that assessment started in 1992.” Among these high school seniors, only 35 percent of high school seniors are proficient in reading, and a mere 22 percent in math. These troubling statistics contribute to an ongoing downward trend in educational outcomes that we have witnessed in recent years.

Extensive research confirms that extended school closures and remote learning during the Covid pandemic — largely influenced by the demands of teachers’ unions — have played a major role in the significant learning loss students are grappling with today. However, it’s crucial to recognize, as noted by the Journal, that declines in reading and math scores were already evident before the pandemic, and school closures only intensified an already alarming trend. The root cause of the troubling test scores among American youth lies in progressive education policies that undermine merit, favor ideological indoctrination over substantive learning, and promote the reduction of discipline in schools. These policies led to a crisis in education that we now must address.

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Teacher LIES About High School Student Who Was Suspended After Being Assaulted For Wearing MAGA Hat in Honor of Charlie Kirk

A high school boy in Laguna Beach, California, was suspended after being accosted for wearing a MAGA hat in honor of Charlie Kirk.

Laguna Beach is a liberal enclave in mostly conservative Orange County, California.

Zach Hornstein wore a MAGA hat on campus at Laguna Beach High School last Thursday to honor Charlie Kirk, just one day after the TPUSA founder was assassinated at an event at Utah Valley University.

Hornstein said a girl grabbed his MAGA hat and threw it into the trash in the girls’ restroom. The girl used profanities to attack Trump.

He then jokingly told a group of girls to leave the country if they didn’t like the US.

“I made a joke towards them and said, ‘If you don’t like it here, Canada’s open borders, feel free to go,’” Zach Hornstein told Fox 11.

This is when a teacher lied about what Zach Hornstein said to the group of girls.

“They’re saying I told a group of girls to go back to where they came from, which I never said that,” Hornstein told Fox 11. “When they called in the girl that was involved, she literally told them that I never said that.”

Hornstein’s mother blasted the school and said her son was targeted for his conservative political beliefs.

“I think it’s a double standard,” Hornstein’s mother, Janet Semenova, said. “I think kids who have certain political beliefs are held to a different standard than kids who have other political beliefs.”

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Stop Sending Your Kids To Schools Where Teachers Celebrate Murder

Last week, the leftist culture of death claimed another prize victim. A modern-day Socrates, Charlie Kirk bearded the lion in its den by going onto college campuses to challenge the ideas of students, professors, and anyone else who happened to be there through respectful dialogue. And like Socrates, Charlie was so successful in changing the hearts and minds of young people that the left had to kill him to shut him up.

On cue, Democratic leaders offered tepid denunciations of the political violence they inspire before deflecting to President Trump, Jan. 6, and, of course, gutting the Second Amendment. The Democrats’ radical base, on the other hand, was far more honest; they gleefully praised the murder of one of Western civilization’s greatest defenders.

At the forefront of these demonic celebrations were members of the educational establishment. While both school districts and state governments are taking action against these ghouls, the damage has already been done. Teachers do not just impart knowledge; they also shape our children’s characters. A system that has granted such power to murder-loving ideologues cannot be redeemed; it must be destroyed and remade.

The True Purpose of Education

Up until the modern era, the purpose of education went beyond mere economics. The early Renaissance writer Petrus Paulus Vergerius explained the moral nature of the liberal arts:

We call those studies liberal which are worthy of a free man; those studies by which we attain and practice virtue and wisdom; that education which calls forth, trains and develops those highest gifts of body and of mind which ennoble men, and which are rightly judged to rank next in dignity to virtue only. For to a vulgar temper gain and pleasure are the one aim of existence, to a lofty nature, moral worth and fame.

With the advent of mass public education in the industrial era, this ancient focus on “moral worth and fame” was supplanted by more practical concerns. Workers in the local factories needed to be more concerned about doing their jobs in the most efficient way possible rather than grappling with the great ideas of Western civilization.

The pragmatism of John Dewey, the godfather of modern American education, made his approach to moral education vague at best. For him and his pedagogical heirs, character is not established on timeless principles inculcated from youth but must be subject to constant re-interpretation to fit ever-changing modern contexts. This paradigm shift enshrined the poison of moral relativism at the center of American schooling, where it festers to this day.

In the 20th century, families, religion, and social associations were still strong enough to keep the “vulgar tempers” produced by these schools in check. As the left has chipped away at these institutions over the decades, the educational establishment has seized more and more responsibility over shaping the character of its charges, to the point where it actively hides its efforts from parents and seeks to punish those who dare to complain.

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Schools Make Kids Crazy

Almost one-third of government schools nationwide are now surveilling the mental health of students. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed a bill to bring “universal mental health screening” to two million Illinois students as part of his Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative. But this rescue effort will ravage many students and is a warning shot to parents across the nation. Manhattan Institute fellow Abigail Shrier warned that the new Illinois law will mean “tens of thousands of Illinois kids get shoved into the mental health funnel and convinced they are sick. Many or most will be false positives.”

If politicians want to help kids, they must recognize how government schools systematically undermine students’ mental health. 

The Covid school lockdowns nuked the mental health of millions of young Americans. A 2024 JAMA Original Investigation found that between 2018 and 2021, young people saw an almost 300% increase in the number of hospital emergency visits for eating disorders and suicidal ideation. Suicide attempts increased 250% during that time. Depression and anxiety skyrocketed among youth from the start of the pandemic, but politicians and policymakers ignored the mental carnage that Covid policies inflicted.

A 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey found that 44% of high school students said they “persistently felt sad or hopeless in the past year.” Females were almost twice as likely to be depressed, with 57% “persistently felt sad and hopeless” versus 31% of male students. School shutdowns dismally failed to thwart the spread of Covid. After schools reopened, students were hassled to comply with idiotic mask mandates that did nothing except multiply anxiety. 

  Schools are subverting students’ mental health by endlessly hectoring them to doubt or despise their own bodies. These school antics reached epidemic level even before the start of the Covid pandemic. In 2019, the state of Maryland issued regulations to promote “viewing each student’s” “gender identity and expression” as “valuable.” Government officials and political appointees arrogated to themselves the prerogative to redefine gender in the state of Maryland. Montgomery County, the largest school system in the state, announced that it would choose books for the curriculum “through an ‘LGBTQ+ Lens’ and ask whether books ‘reinforced or disrupted’ ‘stereotypes,’ ‘cisnormativity,’ and ‘power hierarchies,’” according to a brief filed at the Supreme Court by parents who successfully challenged the school system. That brief also noted that “teachers are told to frame disagreement with [pro-LGBTQ] ideas as ‘hurtful,’ and to counter with examples of ‘men who paint their nails’ or ‘wear dresses.’” The goal is to instill in children “a new perspective not easily contravened by their parents,” as the county school board admitted. 

The indoctrination produced a 582% increase in the number of kids self-identifying as “non-binary” in Montgomery County schools. “Disrupting children’s thinking” has been so successful that almost half of the students identified themselves as non-binary. But non-binary kids are far more likely to suffer mental illness. One survey found that more than half of transgender and non-binary youth considered committing suicide in 2022. That has not stopped other school systems from openly or covertly campaigning to sway children to repent or revolt from how they were born. 

Schools have bludgeoned kids with “Chicken Little – The Sky is Falling!” environmental propaganda for decades. The result, according to the American Psychological Association, is that 58% of American youth are “very or extremely worried about climate change” and 43% said “climate change impacted their mental health.” Harvard Medical Magazine reports that for many young people, “worry over threats of future climate change results in panic attacks, insomnia, obsessive thinking, and other symptoms.”

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School district defends threatening girls if they object to males in their restroom, risking probe

AMaryland county known nationally for Navy football games is playing a much riskier game with the federal government, flaunting its school district’s threat to punish female students who protest males in their restrooms despite the Trump administration’s steps to yank federal funding from several districts across the Potomac with the same policies.

Libs of TikTok made viral what Anne Arundel County Public Schools says has been on the books for six years and on “signage” for a year: Students are allowed to use restrooms corresponding with their gender identity.

But it’s not clear whether the warnings appear in the boys’ restrooms, which if not would single out students for differential treatment based on sex and facially violate Title IX.

“In the girls bathroom at Old Mills HS [high school],” the Libs of TikTok tipster wrote. “I’m told there is not one in the boys bathroom. AACPS refuses to protect our girls.”

The sign is specific to Old Mills, and both its words and design – with three rainbow spectra – make clear students who disagree can be subject to discipline for purported bigotry.

Titled “AACPS Bathroom Use Policy,” the sign says in all caps “students have the right to use the bathroom that matches their expressed gender identity,” without limitation. 

“It is against AACPS policy for an AACPS student to engage in discrimination or harassment based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression,” the sign reads. Its motto: “Productive Respectful Inclusive Determined Engaged,” with the first letter of each word highlighted to spell the acronym PRIDE.

Threatening to punish students for protesting the opposite sex in their restroom is a ticket to a federal investigation, with the Department of Education concluding Tuesday that Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools violated Title IX by punishing boys who objected to a girl who identifies as a boy in their locker room and was recording them as they entered.

America’s richest county practiced a “sex-based double standard” by failing to “meaningfully investigate complaints of sexual harassment” by the boys “concerning the presence” of the girl in their locker room, while “thoroughly” investigating her complaint against them.

The department gave LCPS, about an hour from D.C., 10 days to rescind the boys’ suspensions, review its findings to verify the discipline is “warranted” and not disproportionate relative to “students who engaged in similar conduct and who had comparable disciplinary histories,” and formally apologize for its improper investigations of complaints.

LCPS must also train all high school and county staff “who receive or respond to reports of sexual harassment under Title IX,” the department said. It’s one of the five northern Virginia counties to refuse to change its gender identity policies following Trump administration demands and be placed on “reimbursement status” by the feds as a result.

The district did not respond to queries on how it plans to respond.

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