Bill Ackman, the highly successful investor and Harvard graduate whose criticism of Claudine Gay’s history of plagiarism led to her resignation as President of Harvard University, published a lengthy tweet on his X account Saturday evening responding to an article about him published by The Washington Post earlier in the day, “How a liberal billionaire became America’s leading anti-DEI crusader.”
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Virginia’s House of Delegates Education Committee voted on several influential bills Monday morning, including one on student bullying, the implications of which may be unclear.
The legislation was created with the belief that naming groups of students often targeted most by bullying would force schools to proactively develop a plan for responding to specific bullying situations quickly and appropriately.
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Although public colleges and universities operate under First Amendment guidelines and many private schools pledge to uphold the principles of free speech, a new report says most still enforce policies that restrict it in some way.
After reviewing the policies of 489 of America’s top colleges and universities, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, has released its Spotlight on Speech Codes 2024. The schools earned red, yellow, or green light ratings based on the extent to which their written regulations threaten free speech.
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In just three years, the number of states with universal or near-universal private school choice programs has grown from zero to 10, and the number of students eligible for these programs has increased by 60%. According to the latest ABCs of School Choice – EdChoice’s comprehensive report about all matters pertaining to educational freedom—32 states (plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico) are using school choice as of 2023. Additionally, policymakers in 40 states debated 111 educational choice bills last year alone. Overall, approximately 20 million students—or 36% of all kids—are now eligible for some kind of private-choice program.
But what’s good for children and their families is problematic for the teachers’ unions and their fellow travelers. As such, on January 22—not coincidentally the beginning of National School Choice Week—the Partnership for the Future of Learning released a toolkit, maintaining that “voucher programs are “deeply rooted in segregation, racism, and discrimination.” The PFL, which is comprised of predominantly left-wing outfits—the National Education Association, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Learning Policy Institute, etc.—adds that private schools “do not have necessary accountability measures.”
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Catholic University confirmed to The Daily Signal that it has terminated the contract of the professor who invited a self-declared “abortion doula” to speak to students about coaching women through abortions and “pregnant men” through a “seahorse birth.”
Catholic University President Peter Kilpatrick announced to students on Jan. 30 that the university “terminated our contract with the professor who invited the speaker” after obtaining “clear evidence that the content of the class did not align with our mission and identity.”
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Harvard University’s chief diversity and inclusion officer allegedly plagiarized some of her academic works, according to a complaint filed Monday with the university.
The complaint alleged that Sherri Charleston plagiarized 40 passages throughout her works, including in her 2009 dissertation and her single peer-reviewed paper, The Washington Free Beacon first reported. Charleston allegedly did not properly cite almost a dozen scholars when quoting or paraphrasing in her dissertation, and she is accused of re-using a portion of a 2012 study published by her husband, LaVar Charleston, in the peer-reviewed article, which was coauthored by LaVar, according to the complaint.
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Rhode Island convinced parents last month to drop their 2021 lawsuit against its gone-but-not-forgotten COVID-19 mask mandates in schools by pledging to hold public hearings should it seek to reimpose them.
Now the Ocean State is proposing a health regulation under which it could force kids to mask up again without justifying it through scientific evidence, allegedly violating the dismissal stipulation that ended the case Dec. 13.
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A conservative think tank will continue its annual “training academy” for judicial clerks this spring.
The Heritage Foundation’s Judicial Clerkship Training Academy will run from March 20-22. Attendees, often law students or recent graduates, will have an opportunity to hear from federal judges, law professors, and former clerks.
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A self-declared “abortion doula” spoke this week to Catholic University of America students about her experiences coaching women through delivering or aborting babies, as well as coaching “pregnant men” to deliver in what she called a “seahorse birth,” according to audio of the class lecture obtained by The Daily Signal.
A Catholic University nursing student described Tuesday’s lecture to The Daily Signal, saying the guest speaker said she also practices Reiki, a controversial Japanese method of spiritual healing and self-improvement.
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This year marks the completion of high school for two of my children. Navigating the high school years has been both exciting and challenging. By the time our children had reached high school age, two things were apparent. First, homeschooling had allowed my kids to find and pursue their special interests—ones that had future career potential.
Second, while mastery of most subjects had been relatively easy, math and science were a bit more difficult. Despite overall higher testing outcomes within the homeschool community, there is a documented math gap for many homeschoolers. In other words, most homeschoolers score slightly lower than their non-homeschooled peers in math and science. (This is understandable, of course: I don’t know many mothers qualified to teach high-level math or science, and most of us don’t want our kitchens being turned into chemistry labs.)
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The Virginia Senate unanimously passed on Tuesday a bill that would ban colleges and universities in the state from giving preferential treatment or consideration to legacy admissions, which are typically the family members of graduates.
Passed with 39 votes in favor and one senator not voting, the summary for SB 46 reveals the lawmakers voted to prohibit “any public institution of higher education from providing any manner of preferential treatment in the admissions decision to any student application on the basis of such student’s legacy status,” which the bill defines as those students with a familial connection to either an alumnus or a donor.
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Call it the big reset – downward – in public education.
The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.
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Nearly 90 percent of Ivy League graduates support the “strict” rationing of gas, meat and electricity to fight climate change, according to a new poll.
The conservative Committee to Unleash Prosperity, in a survey that sought to measure the beliefs of “elites,” stated the findings reveal climate change “is clearly an obsession of the very rich and highly educated.”
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The school choice policies sweeping the nation may be among the most innovative—and promising—enacted in recent memory. Yet they also embody a return to principles first enshrined in American law nearly 400 years ago.
In 1642, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony crafted the nation’s first education law, its objective was clear: Parents must educate their children.
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A Harvard Medical School affiliate is planning to retract six studies and correct 31 papers due to an ongoing investigation into several senior cancer researchers and administrators, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The investigation involves more than 50 papers, four of which are co-authored by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute CEO and President Dr. Laurie Glimcher, according to the WSJ. The institute has not determined whether research misconduct occurred, although several requests for retractions and corrections have been sent to journals.
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The University of Virginia employs one full-time administrator for every three undergraduates at the school, according to an analysis conducted by The College Fix.
This is roughly a 9.3 percent increase from the 2013-14 school year, according to the analysis, which used data provided by UVA to the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
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Harvard University detailed its handling of the controversy surrounding former President Claudine Gay’s alleged plagiarism in a new report submitted to Congress on Friday.
Harvard’s report, which was submitted to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, details how a university subcommittee appointed an independent panel of “three of the country’s most prominent political scientists” that found “virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings that are not President Gay’s.” The independent panel did not review all accusations of plagiarism against Gay, only the 25 allegations flagged by the New York Post, 16 of which the panel said were “trivial,” used “commonly used language” or regarded a previous publication that “they devoted ‘less attention.’”
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Grade inflation is rampant and has been so for many years. Back in 2011, an in-depth study by three Ivy League economists looked at how the quality of individual teachers affects their students over the long term. The paper, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia, tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years and, using a value-added approach, found that teachers who help students raise their standardized test scores have a lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage pregnancy rates, greater college matriculation, and higher adult earnings. The authors of the study define “value added” as the average test-score gain for a teacher’s students “…adjusted for differences across classrooms in student characteristics such as prior scores.”
But to those who believe in equity über alles, quality is an afterthought, and many states are ditching any objective criteria for entry into the teaching field. In California, teachers traditionally have had to pass the ridiculously easy California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) to gain entry into the profession, but the test is now under fire.
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A higher education watchdog group has filed a complaint with the organization that accredits Harvard University over campus leaders’ probe into plagiarism accusations against former President Claudine Gay.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) filed a 12-page complaint with the New England Commission of Higher Education that calls on the group to launch a probe into “Harvard’s apparent violation of its own established procedures in the investigation of the alleged plagiarism committed by Dr. Gay,” ACTA stated in a Jan. 12 news release.
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The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) created its new Office of Behavioral Health and Wellness on Friday, and the agency explained it will operate using resources made available by the Right Help, Right Now program created at the behest of Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) last year.
A press release from the Virginia agency explained the new office seeks to “address the unprecedented rise in mental health and behavioral challenges facing Virginia students post pandemic” with what one spokesman called “wraparound services” to keep students emotionally capable of learning in school.
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Hedge fund founder Bill Ackman announced on Friday he would launch an AI plagiarism review of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s faculty and leaders with possible plans to extend the probe to other elite universities.
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It’s no secret that America’s students are struggling. The latest Nation’s Report Cards have not been flattering, with average scores in both math and reading declining over recent years.
It’s also no secret that pandemic restrictions have only exacerbated the learning decline in the U.S. However, scores have been falling since before the pandemic, signaling that there are more systemic problems holding back young people. In fact, this educational decline comes from a deeper philosophical brokenness about the notion of truth itself.
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Jack Fredericks is investing in new teachers because he wants to help them stay in the classroom for the long haul.
He serves as the program coordinator for the new teacher mentorship program in the West Tallahatchie School District, something he worked with his superintendent to create after researching mentorship as a Teach Plus Mississippi policy fellow.
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Harvard may assume the forced resignation of its president, Claudine Gay, has finally ended its month-long scandal over her tenure.
Gay stepped down, remember, amid serious allegations of serial plagiarism—without refuting the charges. She proved either unable or unwilling to discipline those on her campus who were defiantly anti-Semitic in speech and action.
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President Joe Biden’s signature $5 billion program to convert the nation’s school buses to an electric fleet has collided with a formidable challenge: a lack of charging infrastructure and power generation from local utilities.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog issued a report just before the New Year’s holiday that offered the latest evidence of a cart-before-horse dynamic in the Democratic push for green energy.
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The American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation is offering students at least two scholarships on the basis of race, according to its website.
One of the scholarships is for black, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian and native Alaskan medical students, and the other is for black students only, according to its website. Similar scholarships have come under fire from conservative legal organizations, and one legal scholar said that scholarships selective on the basis of race may violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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Higher education is making news these days. In Congressional testimony, the Presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn couldn’t tell whether calling for the genocide of the Jews constituted harassment without knowing the context. The effects of their testimony reverberate.
Days later, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a lengthy report condemning “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System.” Prominently featured was a detailed complaint about New College of Florida, where I serve as admissions director.
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The Virginia Theological Seminary renamed six of its buildings this fall in what its leaders say is an effort to address the Episcopal institution’s “legacies of slavery and racism.”
The move by the seminary, which celebrated its 200th anniversary this year, comes as part of a larger effort to ensure the campus “welcomes all,” according to its website.
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The Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking aim at the largest Christian university in the U.S. in a new lawsuit.
Grand Canyon University (GCU) is the largest Christian university in the U.S. with over 100,000 students enrolled and over 85,000 online students as of fall 2022, according to their website. The FTC alleges that GCU engaged in deceptive business practices with its doctoral programs and that it also engaged in illegal telemarketing practices, according to the federal complaint filed in the District of Arizona.
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Virginia Delegate Sam Rasoul (D-Roanoke), who was tapped by House Speaker-designee Don Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) to serve as the Chair of the House Education Committee, predicted Democrats will find some “accord” with Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) in a Thursday interview. Still, Rasoul said he wants more funding for Virginia’s students, particularly those learning English as a second language.
Rasoul said he expects “common accord” with Youngkin on “mental health and some student mental health work” in remarks made to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, calling them “[p]laces where we can work together.”
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The University of California San Diego does not require students to take courses in literature, foreign language, economics or U.S. government and history, receiving a “C” rating from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni for its general education requirements.
Students haven’t been able to graduate for 10 years now without a diversity, equity and inclusion course, however, and next fall’s incoming class will have another arguably ideological obligation to fulfill: climate change.
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America’s prestigious business schools regularly push leftist ideologies, including critical race theory and environmental, social, and governance standards, according to a new report.
The Legal Insurrection Foundation launched the project through its CriticalRace.org database. It details the CRT and environmental, social, and governance initiatives at the top 10 business schools in the country, including minority scholarship programs, discriminatory admissions practices, and “anti-racism” trainings required for faculty members.
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Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, is backtracking on its decision to allow men who identify as transgender women to enroll in the formerly all-female, Catholic institution.
The Daily Signal reported in November that Saint Mary’s College would allow men who identify as women to enroll at the college in the fall of 2024. That news was first reported by the Notre Dame student newspaper, The Observer.
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A federally funded program in Virginia to provide coaching and academic recovery to the commonwealth’s students is set to conclude this year, with state officials pointing toward Governor Glenn Youngkin’s ALL in VA plan as a possible way to bridge the gap in resources as pandemic-era federal funding runs dry.
The Engage Virginia program unveiled the the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) in February is set to conclude on December 31, reported the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Tuesday, explaining that Youngkin’s administration said “the one-time federal funding for the program has been exhausted, and the program is wrapping up.” However, the outlet noted the governor’s office suggested “school divisions could individually engage with the program by using their allocations from the governor’s ALL in VA plan.”
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As a result of the Janus decision in 2018, no teacher or any public employee has to pay a penny to a union as a condition of employment. The good news is that since then, 20% of workers in non-right-to-work states have dropped out of their unions, according to a report from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The not-so-good news is that 70% of teachers nationwide are still willingly paying union dues, a great deal of which goes to politics, specifically to progressive candidates and causes.
The California Teachers Association has the honor of being the biggest political-spending teachers’ union in the country. A recent report reveals that between 1999 and 2020, the 300,000+ member union spent an astonishing $222,940,629 on politics – about $6 million was spent on the federal level, while almost $217 million stayed in the state – with 98.2% of all spending going to Democrats. The top advocacy issues for CTA include regulating charter schools, immigration reform, social justice, and a slew of almost exclusively left-wing causes.
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Parents Joe and Serena Wailes were shocked and horrified to discover that their 11-year-old daughter had been assigned to not only room with, but also share a bed with, a boy on her school trip.
That boy identified as a transgender girl, the Wailes say, and his parents had allegedly told the school district that he was operating under “stealth mode”—meaning that his gender identity was to be kept secret.
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Oklahoma’s top education official proposed rules on Thursday that will eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, prevent drag queen performers from becoming teachers and will protect religious liberty in schools.
Republican Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters will be proposing the new rules at Thursday’s Oklahoma Board of Education meeting. One proposed rule allows for the dismissal of teachers who have “engaged in sexual acts” in front of children, the second rule would eliminate funding for DEI programs in K-12 schools and the final proposed rule would ensure that students are allowed to participate in voluntary prayer.
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Harvard President Claudine Gay will request three new corrections to her Ph.D. dissertation following multiple plagiarism allegations, according to The Harvard Crimson.
Gay submitted two corrections to academic articles Friday involving “quotation marks and citations” but was the subject of fresh plagiarism allegations on Tuesday. Now, Gay is submitting additional corrections following a review undertaken by the Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing board; however, the Corporation said Gay’s actions did not constitute serious wrongdoing, according to the Crimson.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) celebrated on Monday as all 131 Virginia school divisions finalized and submitted their “ALL in VA” plans with the governor’s office. Youngkin originally challenged Virginia’s schools to finish their plans by October 16.
In a statement, Youngkin said he is “pleased all of Virginia’s school divisions have heeded my call to urgently and aggressively take action to help our students recover” from the learning loss suffered as a result of pandemic-era restrictions. Youngkin said the submissions mean Virginia schools “embraced that challenge and are committed to getting our students back on track academically.”
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Harvard University scrubbed several web pages from the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) department’s website, according to the web archive.
Two web pages, titled “Heritage Months and Identity Recognitions” and “Gender Identity and Pronouns at Harvard,” appear to have been deleted, according to the archives. Both links now route directly to the Diversity and Inclusion homepage.
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According to the latest ABCs of School Choice – EdChoice’s comprehensive report about all matters pertaining to education freedom – policymakers in 40 states have debated 111 educational choice bills in 2023, 79 percent of which related to education savings accounts. (ESAs allow parents to receive a deposit of public funds into a government-authorized savings account with restricted, but multiple uses. Those funds can cover private school tuition and fees, online learning programs, private tutoring, community college costs, higher education expenses, and other approved customized learning services and materials).
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The great classical scholar Edith Hamilton noted that the ancient Greeks frowned upon their Roman counterparts in regards to education. The former adopted public (government) schooling while the Romans left education to the family in the home. The snooty Greeks thought Romans were backward and unsophisticated. The Romans, of course, conquered the Greeks.
For most of the five centuries of the Republic, Romans were schooled at home where virtues of honor, character, and citizenship were emphasized. Not until the Republic’s last century or so did anything resembling government schooling emerge. Moreover, it was never so centralized, universal, and mandatory as it is in our society today. The English academic and cleric Teresa Morgan, in a 2020 paper titled “Assessment in Roman Education,” writes, “In no stage of its history did Rome ever legally require its people to be educated on any level.”
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A federal judge ruled Thursday against an injunction that would have temporarily halted the Naval Academy’s race-based admissions policies, according to Reuters.
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed a lawsuit against West Point in September and launched a second against the Naval Academy in October after winning two cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina on the same issue at the Supreme Court in June. U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett, however, ruled against SFFA’s request for an injunction, claiming that he felt the group had not proven the military’s use of race-based admissions for its academies was discriminatory, according to Reuters.
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Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) revealed on Monday he will seek $90 million in his December 20 budget to fund new research at three Virginia universities that have all suffered from antisemitic protests and demonstrations on their campuses, accusations of antisemitic posts from faculty, or claims of failing to accurately reflect Israel’s position in its defensive war against Hamas at university events.
Youngkin announced in a press release Monday that he is seeking “a total of $90 million in one-time funds to the University of Virginia’s Manning Institute for Biotechnology, Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, and the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medicines for All Institute” that will require them to work with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority to increase “commercialization and startup support” for the institutions.
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The Harvard board on Tuesday said Claudine Gay would remain as president of the university despite calls for her ousting following her answers about antisemitism before Congress last week as well as allegations she plagiarized parts of her Ph.D. thesis. “As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University,” the board, known as the Harvard Corporation, said in a statement signed by all members except for Gay. “Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.”
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Over 500 Harvard University faculty members signed a letter Sunday following a scheduled meeting of the Harvard Corporation, calling on the board not to remove Harvard President Claudine Gay from her position, according to The Harvard Crimson.
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Dr. Carol M. Swain has responded to alleged documentation obtained by writer and political activist Christopher Rufo accusing Harvard University President Claudine Gay of plagiarizing “multiple sections” of her Ph.D. thesis from 1997.
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The earliest documented cases of dyslexia, or a language processing disorder that makes it difficult to read, date back more than a century. For decades, it was considered a relatively rare occurrence, but today it is estimated that up to 20 percent of the US population is dyslexic. What is going on?
Advances in childhood diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia have certainly led to higher rates, but that is only part of the story. A national effort over the past two decades to push children to read at ever earlier ages—before many of them may be developmentally ready to do so—is also a likely culprit.
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All across the country, school teachers are beginning to resign due to a rising fear of violence from students, with many acts largely going unpunished by authorities.
As reported by the New York Post, student behavior has gotten progressively worse after the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic, with fights breaking out more frequently, and some altercations leading to teachers sustaining injuries in the process of trying to break up the fighting.
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The House Education and Workforce Committee is opening an investigation into Harvard University, MIT, University of Pennsylvania and other schools, following a recent congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses.
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik R-N.Y., called the testimony of the universities’ presidents “morally bankrupt.” Democrats and Republicans have condemned the universities’ presidents’ responses to questions about how their respective schools combat hate speech and antisemitism on campus.
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