Category: Education

Rick Santorum Says 2024 GOP Presidential Campaigns Are Seeking His Advice Ahead of Iowa Caucus

Virginia Star Staff

Former Republican presidential candidate and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said 2024 GOP campaigns have reached out to him ahead of the Jan. 15 Iowa caucus, Politico reported Thursday.

Santorum narrowly won Iowa in 2012 after polling in the low-single digits for much of his campaign, inching out ahead of the eventual GOP nominee, Mitt Romney. The former candidate told Politico that at least two Republican presidential campaigns have sought his advice in recent weeks as candidates are running out of time to take down former President Donald Trump, who is currently leading the field by nearly 50 points nationally.

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YoungkinWatch: Governor Wants $448 Million to Fund Childcare, After School Programs as Federal Funding Dwindles

Tom Pappert

Governor Glenn Youngkin announced his new Building Blocks for Virginia Families initiative a press event on Thursday, declaring the plan will allow the commonwealth to continue funding childcare and early childhood education after pandemic-era funding from the federal government is gone.

Promoting the initiative as part of his administration’s efforts to empower parents, raise the commonwealth’s educational standards, and bring more Virginians into the workforce, the governor promised during a Thursday press conference that the initiative will be “the great underpinnings to having the very best childcare and early education system in the nation.”

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Commentary: If Your Kids Aren’t Happy at School, Find Them Another One

Virginia Star Staff

“I hated going to school when I was a kid,” said Elon Musk in a 2015 interview. “It was torture.”

When deciding how his own children would be educated, Musk rejected traditional schooling and created his own project-based microschool, Ad Astra, in 2014, on his SpaceX campus. “The kids really love going to school,” said Musk about Ad Astra in that same interview, adding that “they actually think vacations are too long as they want to go back to school.” In 2020, Ad Astra evolved into the fully online school, Astra Nova, and its popular math enrichment spin-off, Synthesis.

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Commentary: Charter Schools Rise to the Challenge

Virginia Star Staff

Due to pandemic-related issues, declining birthrates, inferior education, radical curricula, etc., government-run schools are bleeding students. Whereas traditional public schools (TPS) had 50.8 million students enrolled in 2019, the number had shrunk to 49.4 million one year later. The federal government now projects that public school enrollment will fall even further – to 47.3 million – by 2030, an almost 7% drop in 11 years.

Where are the kids going? The U.S. Census Bureau reports that families are moving to private schools and setting up home schools at a great rate. But what can parents do if they can’t home-school or afford a private school and there are no educational freedom laws on the books? Their option then would be charter schools, which are independently operated public schools of choice that aren’t shackled by the litany of rules and regs that TPS are encumbered with and, importantly, are rarely unionized.

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Math Scores Around the U.S. Plunge as Students Suffer from Learning Loss

Virginia Star Staff

U.S. students are lagging behind other industrialized students in math in a global assessment released Tuesday, according to Axios.

Students in the U.S. saw a 13-point fall in their 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) score compared to their 2018 results, according to Axios. The score was “among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics” and comes as U.S. students are suffering learning loss following the pandemic.

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Greatest Number of State Legislatures Pass School Choice Bills in 2023

The Center Square
Students and Teacher

Multiple legislatures across the country attempted to pass or passed some form of school choice legislation this year.

“Policymakers in 40 states debated 111 educational choice bills – 79 percent of which related to ESAs,” Robert Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice, said when announcing the findings of a newly published EdChoice report, the “ABC’s of School Choice.”

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YoungkinWatch: UVA Did Not Promote, Advertise ‘Summit on Free Speech’ Governor Reportedly Spent Over a Year Planning

Tom Pappert

The University of Virginia (UVA) did little to promote Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) on Wednesday, even as he gathered officials from every public college in the commonwealth at for his “Higher Education Summit on Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity” at the school’s Newcomb Hall to discuss the importance of differing opinions in higher education.

Youngkin told attendees that, “when it comes to freedom of expression, we have to create an environment that protects the ability to challenge conventional thinking,” according to UVA Today. The governor added, “Challenging beliefs and fostering an environment for these debates is exactly why we all exist.”

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Commentary: Teaching Your Child to Read Is the Gateway to All Learning

Virginia Star Staff
Father Reading to Son

When my husband and I decided we were going to homeschool, we puzzled over what might be his contribution. Our division of labor as a married couple included me as a stay-at-home mom and him as the primary breadwinner. Nevertheless, we wanted to find a way for him to be involved in the educational aspects of raising our children, despite his being gone all day at work. After giving it some thought, my husband decided on reading to our children at night as part of their bedtime ritual.

As soon as our first born could sit still enough to listen to a story, he began reading to her. As we added more children to the household, the bedtime ritual, already well established with our first, continued with each subsequent child. My husband sat and read his way through all of the books that had captured us as children, while our own children snuggled into their beds, listening attentively.

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Democrats Versus Muslims: Liberal States Back School District’s Ban on Opt-Outs for LGBTQ Lessons

Just the News

A wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C., doesn’t inherently object to shielding even older students from sexually mature material. It just doesn’t want to give the choice to parents.

Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools pulled a novel that celebrates a promiscuous gay teen sex columnist from high school libraries even as the district was arguing in court that parents cannot opt out their pre-kindergarten children from LGBTQ “storybooks” that portray sex workers, kink, drag, elementary-age romance and gender-identity transitions.

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Seattle Middle School Students Send Pro-LGBTQ Cards to Conservative Moms Group as Part of Class Assignment

Virginia Star Staff

Seattle middle school students sent a group of conservative moms pro-LGBTQ nastygrams as part of a recent assignment.

The parental rights group Moms for Liberty posted pictures of the hate mail they received from the Jane Addams Middle School class on Saturday.

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Northern Virginia’s Stafford County Public Schools Includes ‘Palestine’ While Excluding Israel in Multicultural Fair

The Center Square
'Palestine' poster at Stafford County Public School Multicultural Fair

A Northern Virginia middle school chose “Palestine” as their country to represent as part of a school district-wide multicultural fair, omitting any recognition of the State of Israel – including maps.

The fair was recently presented by the Stafford County Public Schools “to empower multicultural awareness” for students and the community. All 33 schools in the district participated, with nearly 1,000 in attendance. Schools “were able to choose the country they wanted to represent,” according to the school district.

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Denver Schools Adopt ‘Language Justice’ Policy with Goal to Support Native Languages

The Center Square
Denver Publish School students in class

The Denver school district is among the first in the country to adopt a “language justice” policy as a “long term goal.”

The district would encourage non-English speaking students to be able to use their native language to learn as opposed to being educated in English, which advocates say is oppressive and rooted in racism.

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Analysis: States Are Gearing Up for a School Choice Showdown in 2024

Virginia Star Staff
Teacher with classroom of students

School choice is going to be a hot-button issue next year as several states are set to propose legislation expanding education options, while others are gearing up to defend against lawsuits claiming voucher programs are unconstitutional and an “existential threat” to public schools.

School choice advocates passed legislation in Nebraska, Florida, Ohio and other states in 2023, with a major victory in Oklahoma as well after the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved an application for a Catholic online school in June, the first religious charter school in the country. Several states are looking to follow their lead in 2024 and expand education options for parents, while others have become the target of lawsuits by public education advocates, who argue that voucher programs are unconstitutional.

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Catholic All-Girls College Will Admit Men Who Identify as Trans Women

Virginia Star Staff

Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, will begin allowing men who identify as women to enroll at the college in the fall of 2024, an email obtained by The Daily Signal shows.

President Katie Conboy told faculty in an email sent Tuesday afternoon that “Saint Mary’s will consider undergraduate applicants whose sex assigned at birth is female or who consistently live and identify as women.” That news was first reported by the Notre Dame student newspaper, The Observer.

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YoungkinWatch: More Than 80 Percent of Virginia School Divisions Join Governor’s ‘ALL In’ Plan to Fight Pandemic Learning Loss

Tom Pappert

More than 80 percent of Virginia school divisions have submitted plans to receive funding from the “ALL In” plan unveiled by Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) earlier this year. Youngkin created the funding opportunity with the Virginia General Assembly as schools as students continue to struggle, even years after the pandemic forced schools to go digital.

Superintendent of Public Education Lisa Coons said in a press release on Wednesday that Virginia’s education administrators in 110 school divisions “are making major efforts to find specific and meaningful ways to help their students tackle learning loss.” The agency reported the 110 participating school divisions “cover all regions of the commonwealth,” and include “large divisions such as Fairfax County and Virginia Beach,” and “some of the smallest such as Highland County schools.”

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Faithful Catholic Colleges See ‘Unprecedented’ Enrollment Numbers, Financial Support

Virginia Star Staff
Catholic University of America

As most collegiate institutions grapple with disappointing enrollment, a slew of faithful Catholic colleges are reporting surprising enrollment numbers and financial support.

Their success is heralded by the Newman Guide, a list of higher education options consulted by Catholic parents throughout the world, as evidence of the positive impact that authentic Catholic education has upon society. The Newman Guide recognizes colleges that are determined to provide a thoroughly faithful Catholic education (and removes colleges from the list when they fall short).

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Moms for Liberty Revenue Grows by 500 Percent in One Year

Virginia Star Staff
Tina Descovich/ Moms for Liberty

The parental rights group Moms for Liberty’s revenue has grown by more than 500% in its second year, according to the Form 990 it filed with the IRS.

According to the Form 990, exclusively provided first to The Daily Signal, Moms for Liberty brought in $2.14 million in total revenue in 2022, while it brought in $370,029 in total revenue the year before. A significant majority of that money (92.3%) came from donations—contributions and grants. Expenses for 2021 totaled a mere $163,647, while in 2022 they rose to $1.7 million.

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Students Across the U.S. Are Absent Much More than Before the Pandemic

Virginia Star Staff
Teacher Classroom

Nearly 70% of students attended schools that experienced chronic absenteeism during the 2021-2022 academic year, according to data compiled by Attendance Works and Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University.

Before the pandemic, 25% of students attended a school with high levels of chronic absenteeism, but during the 2021-2022 academic year at the percentage rose to 66%, according to the report from Attendance Works, a nonprofit focusing on absenteeism, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, which focuses on high school graduation. Nearly 14.7 million students, or 29.7%, were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year.

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University of Virginia Hosted Lecture Teaching Med Students How to Open Gender Clinics

Virginia Star Staff

The University of Virginia (UVA) Medical School hosted an educational session on April 13, 2022, about starting a “gender-affirming” health program and offered a continuing education credit to healthcare professionals who participated, according to a video recording obtained through a public records request by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The session, “Starting a Gender Affirming Surgery Program,” was presented by the UVA School of Medicine Center for Health Humanities and Ethics and featured a lecture from “gender-affirming” surgeon, Dr. Rachel Bluebond-Langner. In the lecture, Bluebond-Langner described principles that led to the rapid growth of the transgender surgery program at NYU Langone Health and articulated the need for more gender health programs, saying that “more centers are needed to meet the demand.”

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Commentary: Let the Donor Revolution Begin

RealClearWire

The donor revolts at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and elsewhere are the long-overdue wake up calls that their faculty and administrators needed. The overwhelming majority of politically progressive faculty and administrators have long guarded their right to advance their cherished political causes inside and outside the classroom, while punishment has awaited those who challenge the shibboleths. Instead of the free exchange of ideas and the intellectual capaciousness that ultimately advance social justice, it is now clearer than ever that it is not social justice they have fostered but mindless ideology and hate.

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Biden Admin Unveils New Tools to Counter Antisemitism, Islamophobia in Schools

Virginia Star Staff

The Biden administration announced new resources on Tuesday to counter antisemitism and Islamophobia at schools across the U.S. following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, according to a White House press release.

College students signed letters blaming Israel for the Hamas terrorist attacks and multiple student groups led pro-Palestinian protests with imagery associated with violence against Israel. The White House released a series of guides and resources to “help protect students, engage school and university leaders, and foster safe and supportive learning environments.”

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Commentary: The General Education Act Renews Liberal Education in America

RealClearWire

On Nov. 16, the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal in North Carolina, and the National Association of Scholars in New York City (I serve on the board) will host online, Recentering our Universities, to release to the public The General Education Act. The GEA is a detailed model bill directing the establishment of Schools of General Education at public universities. Written by EPPC’s Stanley Kurtz, the Martin Center’s Jenna Robinson, and NAS’s David Randall, the model legislation sets forth guiding principles, basic courses, institutional structure, funding exigencies, and a timetable for implementation of centers of true liberal education.

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University of North Dakota Hit with Civil Rights Complaints Alleging Tuition Programs Illegally Discriminate Based on Race

Virginia Star Staff

Two North Dakota higher education institutions were hit this week with civil rights complaints over tuition reduction programs open only to specific racial groups.

The Equal Protection Project (EPP) filed civil rights complaints against the University of North Dakota (UND) and UND School of Law for tuition reduction programs that are “only available to non-white applicants,” according to complaints obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. UND’s website cites the authority of North Dakota State Board of Higher Education (SBHE) policy that encourages institutions to use tuition waivers to “promote enrollment of a culturally diverse student body.”

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Poll: Americans Say Schools Should Focus on Math, Reading, and Writing

The Center Square

A large majority of voters say that public schools should focus on the basics – math, reading, writing, science and social studies – to improve the quality of public education in the country.

That’s according to the latest The Center Square’s Voters’ Voice poll conducted in late October in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights. The poll of 2,605 likely voters includes 1,035 Republicans, 1,074 Democrats, and 496 true Independents, and is among the most comprehensive in the country.

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Commentary: As Education Decentralizes, Those Who Like Control Are Nervous

Virginia Star Staff

As more parents gain the opportunity to abandon a compulsory schooling assignment for other options, including homeschooling and microschooling, it’s no surprise that those who favor top-down control of education feel anxious about this bottom-up education transformation. This nervousness is occurring on both ends of the political spectrum.

On the political left, The Washington Post did some pearl-clutching last week around the possibility that “no government official will ever check on what, or how well, [homeschoolers] are being taught.” On the political right, the Fordham Institute expressed similar concerns about hybrid homeschoolers and microschoolers: “To ensure that those children receive the education they deserve, it will require policymakers to craft smart laws to govern these new institutions….”

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Poll: Voters Satisfied with Local Schools but Not Public Schools in General

The Center Square

A new poll shows a large disparity between how voters think of their local public school system and the nation’s school system as a whole, signaling frustration with larger education issues as opposed to more area-specific ones.

Respondents’ approval of their local schools held constant in the most recent The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, which was conducted by Noble Predictive Insights.

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Commentary: If Public Education Were a Business, It Would Be Bankrupt

Virginia Star Staff

There has been, for some time now, optimism about a post-Covid recovery for American public school students, but sadly, there is no good news to be had.

Looking through a long lens, government-run education has been an enterprise rife with failure. The National Commission on Excellence in Education released a report in 1983 titled “A Nation at Risk,” which used dire language, asserting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.”

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Trump Proposes Free Online College, Says Ones Now Turning Students into ‘Communists and Terrorists’

Just the News

Former President Trump is making a reelection pledge that if he elected he would create a federally funded online university that awards free degrees, in response to those now in the U.S. that are “turning our students into communists and terrorists.”

Trump makes the pledge in a campaign video obtained by Politico.

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Virginia Students Walk Out over Continuing Policy of Allowing Biological Males in Girl’s Bathrooms

Just the News

High school students in a northern Virginia County on Wednesday protested a school policy that allows biological males in girl’s locker rooms and restrooms.

The protest occurred in Loudoun County, which in recent years has become a focal point over school policies regarding transgender students and the transparency of those policies.

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Undergrad Enrollment Increases for First Time Since Pandemic, Number of Freshmen Decline

Virginia Star Staff

Undergraduate enrollment numbers increased during the fall semester for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic while the number of freshmen enrolling in colleges and universities declined, according to the National Student Research Clearinghouse Center (NSRCC).

Undergraduate enrollment at colleges and universities increased 2.1% compared to 2022 and 1.2% compared to 2021, with community colleges accounting for nearly 59% of the increase, according to the NSRCC. Freshmen enrollment declined by 3.6%, with bachelor programs seeing a 6.9% and 4.7% decline, respectively, at public and private four-year nonprofit institutions.

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Elite Universities That Defended Free Speech for Hamas Supporters Have Long Record of Canceling Conservatives

Virginia Star Staff

Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) released statements defending students’ pro-Hamas speech after campus protests, but in the past have muzzled conservatives for speech and online statements.

Harvard University President Claudine Gay and UPenn President Elizabeth Magill both said their respective universities support “free expression” in statements made after pro-Palestinian rallies at the colleges following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel. In the past, however, conservative speakers and professors at the universities have frequently been shouted down, and some have been canceled for online statements.

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Memo Reveals How Teachers Union Worked on Bill to Keep Sexually Explicit Books in Schools

Virginia Star Staff

Democratic lawmakers privately negotiated with the nation’s largest teachers union to craft a bill intended to combat bans of sexually explicit books in schools, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Right To Read Act was reintroduced by Democratic Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva and Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed in April 2023, and is intended to rebuff efforts by parents and Republican lawmakers to remove sexually explicit content from school libraries, according to a press release from the lawmakers. The bill also authorized $500 million in funding for school libraries and provides liability protections to school librarians and educators providing sexually explicit books to students.

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Commentary: Teaching Children to Self-Entertain

Virginia Star Staff

Teaching children to self-entertain is key to traditional parenting. While I totally understand the desire to occasionally use technology and screens as “babysitters,” shouldn’t parents aim to instill more sustainable and healthier alternatives? In comes teaching children to self-entertain!

Essentially, self-entertainment means kids keeping themselves appropriately occupied while a parent’s attention is elsewhere. As much as this benefits children when they are small, it also plants the seed for healthy, independent adulthood. Children who know how to self-entertain won’t need to depend on television, video games, social media, or other technology to keep busy in their free time. They will already know how to pursue worthier and healthier activities.

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Oregon Suspends Basic Skills Graduation Requirement in the Name of Equity

Virginia Star Staff

In the state of Oregon, high school students will no longer need to display basic comprehension of reading, math, or writing in order to graduate, with state officials claiming that such a change is necessary to guarantee higher graduation rates for minority students.

As reported by Fox News, the pause on such basic graduation requirements had first been implemented during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic. But last week, the Oregon State Board of Education voted unanimously to extend the requirement suspension at least until the end of the 2027-2028 school year.

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Commentary: 25 Traditionalist Books to Read with Your Children

Virginia Star Staff

One of the best things parents can do for their children is read with them. Even reading a few minutes a day makes a world of difference.

Literacy is not only the key skill required by almost all education formats but also one of the most influential factors in any learning endeavor. Even children too young to read independently garner an incredible amount from listening to books read aloud. They significantly increase their language skills, attention span, memory, visual awareness, and emotional response and regulation. And, of course, reading together offers children time to cuddle up with parents for quality bonding time.

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Alan Dershowitz Commentary: Harvard Must Condemn Pro-Hamas Students

Virginia Star Staff
Outside of Harvard Law School

There’s an ongoing debate on university campuses about whether and how to respond to students who support, defend or even praise what Hamas terrorists deliberately did to innocent Israeli children, the elderly and other civilians.

On the one hand, there are free-speech and academic-freedom considerations.

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Commentary: The Reason the Department of Education Is Afraid of Innovation in Higher Ed

Virginia Star Staff

Online learning has revolutionized higher education, but a recent move by the federal Department of Education is threatening to tear down systems that are helping millions of students learn.

An extremely wide diversity of students choose to take online courses or to get entire online degrees. Colleges that offer them need to be nimble as the economy changes, yet traditional colleges are slow to change, and they often lack the expertise and funding to develop and manage online courses independently.

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Campus Speech Codes Used Against Students Who Dismiss Hamas Terrorism as Israel’s Fault

Just the News

A mile and a half from the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, a free speech battle is raging over the worst terrorist attack on Israeli soil.

New York University is under fire from critics of Israel and civil libertarians for its response to pro-Palestine student activism in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas slaughter and kidnapping of Israeli civilians and Israel’s resulting Gaza offensive.

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Miyares and Other Attorneys General Side with Parental Rights over School Board

The Center Square

Leading a group of 23 attorneys general, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares filed an amicus brief on Wednesday on behalf of the plaintiffs in Mahmoud v. McKnight, a lawsuit involving Maryland parents and the Montgomery County School Board. 

Along with over 30 other states, Maryland law includes an opt-out provision that allows parents to excuse their children from sex education courses or lectures. About half the states require parents to be notified when their children will receive sex education, including Maryland.

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As Colleges Belatedly Condemn Hamas Terrorism, Campus Attacks on Pro-Life Activists Ignored

Virginia Star Staff

Elite universities that rushed to condemn the killing of George Floyd and Jan. 6 Capitol riot saw no need to denounce Hamas for terrorism against Israeli women, children and partiers – until wealthy donors called them out and even demanded the firing of top brass.

Another oft-marginalized group on campus doesn’t have titans of hedge funds, private equity firms and the “Law & Order” franchise to plead their case, however.

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Jewish Groups: Students for Justice in Palestine Is Terror-Affiliated Organization Protected by U.S. Universities

M.D. Kittle

In the aftermath of Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel, Arizona State University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) declared “Palestinian freedom fighters are not terrorists!”

The message was a theme in the group’s anti-Israel “Day of Resistance” in solidarity with Palestine — and, by extension, Hamas.

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Commentary: Troubling Ballot Chicanery in Virginia Elections Requires Immediate Action

Admin

In a chilling reminder that the integrity of our voting process is under constant attack, there is a serious violation of electoral law under way right now in the Elections Office of Fairfax County, Virginia. The Fairfax County Registrar, Eric Spicer, has allowed a candidate for school board to appear on the ballot although she failed to submit proper petitions with sufficient signatures.  Immediate action is required by the county Electoral Board to disqualify her.

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ACT Test Scores Fall to 30-Year-Low

Virginia Star Staff

A new report shows that the average high school student’s ACT college admissions test scores have fallen to their lowest point in 30 years, reflecting an ongoing decline in the quality of education in the United States after the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.

As Fox News reports, the average scores for the American College Testing (ACT) exams have fallen for the last six years in a row, with the decline becoming noticeably faster in the years during and after COVID. The average score in 2023 was 19.5 out of 36, which comes out to a percentage of 54%. In 2022, the average score was 19.8.

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Commentary: Thales College Restores True Education to the University

Virginia Star Staff

I am delighted to say that I will be joining the new Thales College, as a professor of humanities. What that means, I shall try to describe by way of contrast.

Let us suppose I am at almost any other American or Canadian college. I am considering Caravaggio’s painting of Mary Magdalen. Right there, I’m skating on thin ice. That isn’t just because the painting has a religious theme. It’s because I can depend upon almost nothing, among even the brightest college students, when it comes to knowledge of the history of art, or of the Renaissance in particular; no understanding of why such a painting was impossible to be executed two centuries before, or of why no one would have conceived the desire to paint such a figure, alone as she is, in a moment of intense introspection, careless of the baubles of her trade that lie scattered about her on the floor — baubles that yet have considerable dramatic power, because Caravaggio supposes that we know, as she does not, what they signify, and what momentous events are in store for her.

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American Colleges Are Partnered with Palestinian University That Praised Hamas as ‘Righteous Martyrs’

Virginia Star Staff

Several American colleges are partnered with Al-Quds Open University, a Palestinian university that called the Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel “righteous martyrs,” according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of university web pages.

Al-Quds Open University declared Sunday, Oct. 8 as a day to “mourn the souls of the righteous martyrs and to denounce the occupation’s continuing crimes against our people in the West Bank and Gaza,” following Hamas’ invasion of Israel. Al-Quds Open University ended its announcement by stating “glory and eternity to our martyrs.”

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Virginia School Board Adopts GOP Gov’s Parental Rights Policy After Parents Slap It with Lawsuit

Virginia Star Staff

The Virginia Beach School Board approved Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s gender transition notification policy Tuesday after being hit with a lawsuit from parents, according to The Virginia Pilot.

In August, the board voted on the policy but was deadlocked with five votes in favor and five against, effectively stalling the proposal, which prompted several parents to file a lawsuit in September demanding the district protect parental rights. The board took up the issue again this week, however, and voted 9 to 1 in favor of adopting Youngkin’s policy, with one member abstaining, according to The Virginia Pilot.

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Commentary: As Families Take to Charter Schools, Cities and Their Teacher Unions Throw Up Obstacles

RealClearWire

A vote by the Los Angeles board of education vote last month to ban charter schools from sharing space at 300 district campuses is the latest big-city attack against alternatives to struggling traditional public schools.

With the strong support of United Teachers Los Angeles, school board members say the ban will protect black and Latino students from the disruption and harm that occurs when charters are placed in buildings used by other public schools. But charter advocates reject the board’s reasoning. Far from hurting disadvantaged students, charters in LA and other cities have established an outstanding track record in accelerating their academic performance compared with traditional schools, according to researchers.

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