Tag: public schools

MD School District That Lost Queer Sex Ed Case At SCOTUS Keeps Pushing Trans Ideology On Kids

The same Maryland school district the Supreme Court rebuked for exposing children to sexually explicit material is still forcing children as young as 12 to decipher numerous gender ideology terms in a vocabulary lesson, without parental knowledge, permission, or the ability to opt out.

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is a far-left school district on the periphery of Washington, D.C., perhaps most (in)famous for blocking parents from opting their children out of highly sexual material, including advocacy for homosexuality and transgenderism.

However, even after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling stating the district had to allow parents to opt their children out of the coursework, the county is still trying to force-feed young teenagers and preteens “transgender” propaganda, according to a document obtained by Defending Education from a parent.

“This vocabulary lesson requires that students buy into an ideology that many reject,” DE Senior Director of Communications Erika Sanzi told The Federalist. “Does MCPS require that students subscribe to gender ideology in order to fulfill the district’s family life requirements for middle schoolers? Because if so, that seems like viewpoint discrimination in a public school.”

The seventh grade vocabulary assignment, given the week of Oct. 13, 2025, was part of a “Family Life” (a.k.a. sexual education) lesson in which students were told to define “Sex Assigned at Birth,” “Gender Identity,” “Transgender,” “Gender Expression,” and “Cisgender.”

The worksheet appears to be a district-wide lesson, as a stamp at the bottom states “Middle School Health Education-MCPS 2023.”

It does not appear any opt out was available for this in-class assignment, ostensibly so that parents did not find out about the content.

“Gender identity,” according to the definitions provided, “refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female, or transgender” and “How you feel. Girl, boy, both or neither.”

It also maintains that sex is “assigned at birth” instead of being immutable, and goes on to say that it can be changed because “transgender” is “when your gender identity (how you feel) is different than what doctors/midwives assigned to you when you were born (girl/boy or sex assigned at birth).”

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Wyoming Parent Wins Free Speech Lawsuits Against Sweetwater County School Officials

It’s one thing to bake cupcakes for the school fundraiser. It’s another to find yourself explaining your Facebook posts to a judge. Yet that’s precisely where Kari Cochran, a Wyoming mother with a stubborn streak and a social media account, ended up. Twice.

For the uninitiated, Kari isn’t your run-of-the-mill parent who just grumbles in the car line. She once sat on the Sweetwater County School Board, where she learned that speaking your mind can make you the most talked-about person in the faculty lounge.

Her habit of asking uncomfortable questions about district leadership might have made her unpopular, but it also made her the kind of parent who doesn’t disappear quietly when things get messy.

Cochran’s online posts, sharp enough to make a superintendent wince, were her way of keeping the school district accountable. “Publicly accused [the] petitioner of unprofessional and unethical conduct,” one court filing complained.

In other words, she said things out loud that people in small towns usually only whisper over coffee at the diner.

Her criticism didn’t sit well with everyone. Two people connected to the district, Assistant Superintendent Nicole Bolton and Laura Libby Vinger, the wife of Superintendent Josh Libby, decided the comments had crossed into stalking. They filed civil petitions to try to stop her from speaking.

It didn’t work. Both cases were tossed out this year. Circuit Court Judge Michael Greer dismissed Bolton’s petition in August, reminding everyone that public officials are “subjected to public scrutiny.” (If you’re paid by taxpayers, you don’t get to hide from them.) A magistrate later dismissed Vinger’s case, too.

Cochran was, understandably, relieved. “Parents, students, or staff members should never feel that they should be silenced or punished for standing up for what’s right,” she said to The Center Square.

Her lawyer, Parker Jackson of the Goldwater Institute, had a less sentimental view.

If Cochran had lost, he explained, she might have been banned from attending district events or even school board meetings. “It essentially would’ve turned these school officials into roaming censors where, wherever they didn’t want Kari to be, they could show up and force her to leave,” Jackson said.

Cochran’s battle didn’t begin with Facebook posts. It began with heartbreak. Her son Joran, a graduate of Rock Springs High School, died by suicide in 2023 after being bullied.

It’s the kind of loss that rearranges your life completely. She resigned from the school board afterward, but she didn’t stop pushing for better mental health support and accountability in the district.

When she asked to see her son’s school records, the district refused. Then, as if to make her point for her, the board introduced a rule restricting what topics citizens could address during public comment. So Cochran did what most parents do when the microphone is taken away: she turned to Facebook.

Her posts gained traction. They also drew ire. The day a sheriff showed up with not one but two stalking petitions, Cochran said she felt “complete fear,” unsure what she’d done wrong.

“Complete fear” seems like an understatement for having your free speech hauled into court by the very people you’re criticizing.

The rulings didn’t erase the months of stress. Cochran said the ordeal drained her and took away time she wanted to spend with her daughter before high school began.

But her victory sends a message: criticizing your school district may make you unpopular, but it isn’t a crime.

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Huge win for Wisconsin mom who was sued for calling a teacher woke

A Wisconsin mom who was sued for defamation after calling an English teacher woke has won her free speech case.

Mother-of-five Scarlett Johnson took to social media in October 2022 to criticize Mary MacCudden for serving as Mequon-Thiensville School District’s social justice coordinator.

‘Why the hell am I paying for a “Social Justice Coordinator” in my school district?’ Johnson tweeted alongside a screenshot of MacCudden’s LinkedIn profile.

‘This is just what @mtschools needs; more woke, White women w/ a god complex. Thank you, White savior.’ 

Johnson, who is affiliated with education lobby group Moms for Liberty, in other social media posts, also referred to DEI specialists as ‘woke lunatics’ who ‘bully’ parents ‘into silence and compliance’.

MacCudden, who had resigned from her position at Homestead High School in January 2022, filed a defamation suit against Johnson in response.

She won her case against Johnson in lower court, but the Moms for Liberty activist’s legal team appealed the ruling.

The Wisconsin appeals court on Tuesday ruled to reverse the circuit courts ruling after determining that her statements ‘do not constitute defamation’.

MacCudden resigned from the school district in January 2022 but did not update her LinkedIn profile, according to a press release from Johnson’s lawyers.

Roughly 10 months later, Johnson discovered the profile, which listed MacCudden as the district’s ‘Social Justice Coordinator’, and started criticizing the district online.

MacCudden responded with a defamation suit, which went to trial.  

An appeals court has now ruled Johnson did not defame the former teacher because her statements ‘cannot be proven true or false.’

‘Free speech belongs to every mom, dad, and citizen who demands answers and accountability from their government,’ Johnson said in a statement by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL).

‘I am grateful that WILL stood alongside me in this legal battle. Parents across the country are speaking out against radical ideology in our schools, and our fight does not stop today.’

Johnson’s lawyers argued that while Johnson’s social media posts were ‘pervasive’, her words were ‘more restrained than a lot of online speech’.

Her legal counsel added that her posts could not be defamatory because they were ‘statements of opinion that are not provably false’.

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Why It’s Impossible For Public Schools To Be ‘Neutral’ About Politics And Religion

Robert Pondiscio had a superb piece recently that’s circulating widely, both on the left and the right. In it, he points out that many public school teachers are trained to see themselves as agents of societal change. The examples he gives are almost exclusively liberal or left-wing: teachers as “change agents” challenging alleged “systems of oppression” to “transform society,” commit to “diversity,” and adopting a “social justice orientation” that turns the classroom into a “platform for identity.” He also chides as equally-misguided recent Republican responses attempting to, as he sees it, fight fire with fire.

Besides the most fundamental and correct point of his piece — that humility is a necessary virtue for teachers — Pondiscio suggests that teachers (and policymakers) should aim above all for neutrality. But, I’d argue, this is mistaken. Properly understood, public schools are not, cannot, and, in fact, should not be neutral.

A Brief History Lesson

In the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention was drafting a new form of government in Philadelphia. At the same time, the original U.S. Congress was still governing, and on the 13 of July they passed the Northwest Ordinance to govern much of what is now the American Great Lakes region. Besides facilitating the orderly transfer of federal lands to American farmer-settlers and outlawing slavery, the Northwest Ordinance established that “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

To support the education of American children, the Northwest Ordinance built upon the Land Ordinance of 1785 which had guaranteed a plot of land in each township to be set aside “for the maintenance of public schools.” Public education dated back to colonial New England, but this marked a national prioritization of the institution. Indeed, the Land Ordinance made public education “go national.” Since then, public schooling has been as American as apple pie. We have the American founders to thank.

Why did they do this?

To teach those things (in this case, “religion, morality, and knowledge”) “necessary to good government.”

Pondiscio rightly echoes this purpose for public education, arguing that teachers are “not to change society but to sustain it,” and “to transmit the shared knowledge, language, habits, and civic norms upon which self-government depends [emphasis added].” Teachers must acknowledge “that their authority rests not on self-expression, but on self-restraint [emphasis added].” Indeed, as Pondiscio says, “Public schools are not platforms. They are civic institutions.” Public schools are the government and teachers are “state actors.”

Which brings us back to the present purpose of America’s public schools: to provide education that is necessary for citizens to have a “good government,” to “sustain” society, to “transmit” that “upon which self-government depends.” In other words, the very raison d’être of America’s public schools is to support the government, i.e., the government established by the U.S. Constitution and the principles and civic norms upon which it rests.

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Trans Teen Confesses to Planned Valentine’s Day Mass Shooting in Honor of Parkland Shooter

A transgender teenager has admitted to planning a mass shooting attack at an Indiana high school back in February meant to take place on Valentine’s Day.

Trinity Shockley, 18, is planning to plead guilty to felony conspiracy to commit murder and will receive 12 and a half years in prison, along with five years of probation, The New York Post reported.

Police said Shockley was arrested after they received a tip that she had an AR-15 and had bought a bulletproof vest.

The tipster added that Shockley was obsessed with the idea of mass shootings.

Shockley identifies as a man and uses the name “Jamie,” according to The New York Post.

Authorities performed a search of her home and found a bizarre shrine dedicated to Parkland, Florida shooter Nikolas Cruz, among other gunmen.

They also discovered she chose Valentine’s Day for the attack because it synced up with the day the Parkland massacre occurred, back in 2018.

The Post reported that Shockley will be “barred from researching school shooters for life” and will have “all her electronic devices” monitored by special software.

In addition, she will be unable to ever own a gun and must pay for counseling.

Shockley is expected to make an official plea on Nov. 24.

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Black Principal’s Race-Only Assembly Sparks Outrage at Dallas High School. Claims Black Students Must be the “Priority” Over Everyone Else

A Dallas, Texas, Principal has been removed from her position after Grant Stinchfield obtained an email that exposed the principal at Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas for engaging in what can only be described as discriminatory behavior towards White and Hispanic students.

The black Principal is accused of holding a “Black-only” assembly, where she allegedly told students she was “valuing the well-being of African American students over the others at this moment.”

That’s, according to one outraged Black student who wrote an email to the school administration calling out the discriminatory meeting.

Today on “Stinchfield,” Grant reads the email where the student whistleblower claims his black Principal even boasted about “only hiring Black staff.” That declaration appears to be a proud admission of the discrimination.

It is the latest example of the disgusting use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) that only leads to poor outcomes and lots of controversy.

Grant Stinchfield calls this what it is — a blatant act of woke victimhood ideology gone too far. It’s the twisted belief that you can fix racism with more racism. By prioritizing one group over another, this principal didn’t lift anyone up. Instead, she sent a dangerous message that minority students are victims and that everyone else doesn’t matter.

It’s a moral and educational failure at every level.

In a letter to parents on Monday morning, the DISD confirmed the Principal has been replaced, telling parents the principal’s actions “do not reflect the values or expectations of our school community.”  And late Monday Morning the Principal issued an apology, insisting in a letter to parents, that she takes, “full ownership and responsibility for what occurred.”  and it was never her “intent to single out or cause harm to any group of students.”

It is unclear if the Principal will return or not.

Statements and suspensions are not enough. Grant demands immediate accountability from the Dallas Independent School District, insisting that school leaders make it clear this kind of divisive, race-based policy will never happen again.

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New York High Court Blocks Race-Grifters From Using Courts To Indoctrinate Children

our years ago, a group of race-grifter activists in New York City tried to sue their way into government-enforced racial quotas and race-centric curricula. But New York state’s highest court just decided they are not allowed to use the judicial system to mandate the indoctrination of children.

According to Defending Education (DE), which intervened in the case in 2021, far-left group IntegrateNYC’s attempt to abuse courts to create racial quotas for students and blame the racial make-up of school staff and a “white and Eurocentric curriculum” for poor education outcomes among the city’s black and Latino populations was put to an end Friday when the New York Court of Appeals dismissed the case.

The Education Article in the New York state constitution “does not permit judges to micromanage matters of educational policy, which are broadly entrusted to local control,” wrote Judge Michael J. Garcia, an appointee of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y.

As laid out by Garcia, IntegrateNYC alleged that the city’s public education system “discriminates against and disproportionately affects Black and Latino students, leading to unequal educational opportunities and negative outcomes for those students” because of its systems for admissions and screening, the content of curricula, and the purported lack of diversity among teachers.

They claimed further that the school system was segregated because black and Latino students underperform on admissions exams because of “discriminatory standardized testing policies,” shuttling them to “inferior schools that are deficient in terms of physical facilities and instrumentalities of learning, resulting in poor educational outcomes.”

As DE put it, activists “sought to use the courts to inject race into all aspects of the city’s education system. … Plaintiffs claimed that the city’s school system is discriminatory because, in their eyes, not enough students from their preferred races are admitted to the city’s selective academic programs.”

Sarah Parshall Perry, DE’s vice president and legal fellow, noted that “the challengers to New York’s gifted and talented program had demanded consideration of race in order to prevent race discrimination.”

However, suing into existence a wide variety of political and policy preferences is a tried and true left-wing political tactic used in places where their political movement is incapable of getting their candidates elected to bodies — like legislatures or city councils — that should actually be responsible for dealing with these issues.

The fact that New York City, and more broadly the state of New York, is run by people who largely agree with IntegrateNYC’s premise means that the high court’s ruling against them is at the very least a credit to the state’s ability to maintain separation of powers (in this instance) — but also a testament to how weak the group’s claims were.

IntegrateNYC could not prove any kind of systematic racism or injustice, and they could not point to an operational law or ordinance that blocked black or Latino students from attending the schools they wanted to “integrate.” Rather, they essentially tried to blame poor student outcomes on racism.

Those students are also apparently negatively affected because they are apparently subjected to a “white and Eurocentric curriculum.”

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AI Security System Mistakes Bag of Doritos for Gun, Triggers Police Response to School in Baltimore

This situation could have ended up far worse than it did.

An artificial intelligence system at a high school in Baltimore mistook a bag of Doritos as a gun.

On Monday, Taki Allen was waiting for his ride outside of Kenwood when all the sudden police officers wth their weapons drawn demanded Allen to get on the ground.

Allen completely confused by the situation heeded the officers commands and was searched by the officers only to find no weapon on him rather only a bag of Doritos.

The teen told WBRC,  “They said that an AI detector or something detected that I had a gun. He showed me a picture. I was just holding a Doritos bag like this.”

In a letter to parents the principal of Kenwood Highschool wrote, “At approximately 7 p.m., school administration received an alert that an individual on school grounds may have been in possession of a weapon. The Department of School Safety and Security quickly reviewed and canceled the initial alert after confirming there was no weapon.”

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Teachers’ Lounges Turned Into Political War Rooms

A whistleblower inside the Los Angeles Unified School District has come forward with shocking evidence — stacks of left-wing flyers, posters, and propaganda pulled straight from teachers’ lounges across the district. These weren’t lesson plans or student materials… they were political rally cries — “No Kings,” “Workers Unite,” “Protest!” — the kind of radical messaging you’d expect from activist groups, not classrooms.

Grant Stinchfield exposes how these angry liberal educators are using taxpayer-funded schools to push their ideology, not teach America’s kids. This is a deep dive into the political indoctrination hiding behind classroom doors — and why parents must take back control of what’s being taught in our schools.

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Alaska Schools’ Social Studies Standards Omit Washington, Lincoln, And Christianity 

Alaska’s new social studies standards don’t mention the Nome Gold Rush. They don’t mention the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. They don’t mention William Egan, the state of Alaska’s first governor, and they don’t mention Sarah Palin, who ran for Vice President of the United States. There’s a lot more that’s missing in the Alaska social studies standards, but you can tell right away that something is wrong when Alaska’s social studies standards leave Alaska’s children ignorant of the headlines of Alaska’s history and the most famous Alaskans.

Education departments in every state are on radical autopilot when they make social studies standards. Americans expect blue states to use their state social studies standards to impose identity politics ideology and action civics (vocational training in progressive activism) on schools and students, strip out factual content, and ignore or slander the history of Western civilization and America, and call it “social studies instruction” — that’s what you get in states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Minnesota. But radical activists embedded in state education departments do the same thing in red states whenever policymakers and citizens aren’t looking. That’s what just happened in Alaska.

The Alaska Social Studies Standards (2024), produced by Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development, avoided the worst of the blue-state social studies standards’ extreme politicization, unprofessional vocabulary, and ideologically extreme content. That’s because there’s hardly any historical content. The standards’ absences include basic facts of American history, much of how our government works, and our foundational documents of liberty. The standards also introduced substantial new amounts of politicized material.

How did Alaska’s Department get its curriculum so badly wrong?

The department outsourced much of the standards to the radical activists who have captured the national social studies establishment. Alaska’s standards take their structure and emphases from the National Council for the Social Studies’ (NCSS) ideologically extreme definition of social studies, as well as from its College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. The C3 Framework replaces content knowledge with insubstantial and opaque “inquiry”; lards social studies with identity politics ideologies such as Critical Race Theory; and inserts ideologically extreme activism pedagogies such as Action Civics.

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