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Lawmakers in the Illinois state House of Representatives voted Wednesday to approve a plan that includes historical figures in the LGBT civil rights movement in K-12 textbooks, NPR reported. The measure, which now heads to Gov. J.B. Pritzker's (D) desk for a signature, requires schools to include "the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State" in official textbooks. Supporters of the rule say the measure is intended to reduce anti-LGBT bullying in schools by teaching students about the historical place of LGBT figures in American society.

Multnomah County Republican Party Chairman James Buchal announced that he has filed suit on behalf of Portland parents with students in the Portland Public Schools (PPS) for violations of their First Amendment rights arising from the massive anti-gun demonstrations PPS organized a year ago. "Every parent with children in the Portland Public Schools should download and read a copy of the Complaint (available here)," said Buchal, "because it demonstrates the extraordinary degree to which PPS officials have misused scarce educational resources for narrowly partisan and political objectives." The suit is based on thousands of documents recovered through a Public Records...

Tristan King yelled at administrators at Norton Elementary School in Snellville, Ga., in a Feb. 28 Facebook video because the school bus left behind his kindergartner, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “After them losing our daughter for the third time this year,” King wrote alongside the 6-minute 39-second video with 1.8 million views. “If you have adults all through the hallway, how did it happen for the third time?” the father said angrily to a female official and the assistant principal, Anthony Williams. “The first time I was calm, I was understanding. … The second time, I was mad but...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday that NYC's public schools will be going vegetarian one day per week in order to save the Earth. Local New York media reports that the "Meatless Mondays" pilot program, which brought vegetarian meals to around 15 Brooklyn schools, will expand city-wide for the 2019-2020 school year, and "all schools will serve vegetarian menus on Mondays" to the city's 1.1 million students. De Blasio told a press conference Monday that the change will help improve the health of New York's students, and will hopefully have an impact on climate change.

A former second-grade teacher In Jersey City admitted Wednesday she sexually assaulted a 15-year-old student in her Lyndhurst home more than three years ago. Lauren Coyle-Mitchell, 36, pleaded guilty in Bergen County Superior Court to aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, a court official said. Under a plea bargain, Coyle-Mitchell faces five years in state prison, parole supervision for life and will be required to register as a sex offender, according to a report on NorthJersey.com. She is also barred from public employment and must forfeit her teaching certificates, according to the report. Coyle-Mitchell worked at...

CNN) — A Florida sixth-grader who was arrested last month following a Pledge of Allegiance dispute at his school will not be prosecuted, his attorney said Wednesday night. The student at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland refused to take part in the Pledge of Allegiance on February 4, according to the Polk County School District. At the time, it said the student was arrested for becoming disruptive, not for refusing to participate. The case attracted national attention after Team Roc, a branch of the Roc Nation entertainment company founded by hip-hop artist Jay-Z, became involved. It raised awareness about...

Last Friday, Perry High School in Gilbert, Ariz., suspended student Logan Jones after a security officer reprimanded her as she posed for photos in a "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) sweater while holding a pro-Trump "Make America Great Again" flag. On Wednesday, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) sent a demand letter warning of legal action unless the school dropped the suspension. The school agreed to allow Jones to return to school that day but it refused to remove the suspension from her record. "Public schools have a duty to respect the legitimate free expression of students that the First Amendment guarantees...

FULL TITLE: Mother claims her son was 'forced to wet himself in front of his class and made to wear a trash bag over his urine soaked clothes' after a teacher at an LA elementary school 'refused him access to the bathroom' The mother of an eight-year-old boy has been left outraged after she says her son was forced to wet himself in-front of classmates after a teacher refused to let use the bathroom. Sonia Mongol held a press conference outside of Manhattan Place Elementary School in Los Angeles on Thursday, demanding answers from officials at the school. According to...

FULL TITLE: Utah teacher could face disciplinary action after forcing boy to remove Ash Wednesday cross from his forehead A Utah elementary school teacher may face disciplinary action after she made a fourth-grade boy wipe off the Ash Wednesday cross on his forehead. William McLeod arrived for class at Valley View Elementary School in Bountiful on Wednesday with the traditional Ash cross to commemorate the Christian holy day. But William said he was the only student in his class with the cross on his forehead and that his teacher quickly came up and asked him what it was. 'I was...

As homeschooling rapidly grows, so too are state-level efforts to "oversee" families. Oregon, Washington state, and even Iowa are trailblazing another assault on constitutionally protected individual rights. The state legislature in Oregon is currently mulling over a bill that “directs Oregon Health Authority to study home visiting by licensed health care providers.” The bill contends that home visits are “necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety.” There’s a similar scheme being conjured up in Washington. In January, Gov. Jay Inslee (now a 2020 Democrat presidential contender) declared: “My budget would also offer universal home visits....

When New Jersey schools begin teaching students about LGBTQ history, it will be easy enough to say “Walt Whitman was a great poet, who, by the way, also happened to be gay.” But that’s not the point of a new state law, and the stakes are so much higher than a token reference, historians and advocates say. If done right, New Jersey will help set the national agenda for teaching kids about gender and sexuality throughout history and across all subjects, exposing students to a past that’s largely been ignored. “This isn’t about rainbow pompoms and cheering for gay people...

In my school, law and order have gone the way of the slide rule. I am a math teacher at a middle school in Flushing, Queens, and two months ago, I was helping one of my students work out an arithmetic problem when he called me a “f–--ing’ a--hole.” When I asked for an apology, he shoved a chair at me and stormed out. Five minutes later, an administrator brought the student back to class. She informed me that she had called his parents and that he could return. And what did I do? I went on teaching. In my...

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development is in the process of revamping its science standards. It hopes to have a draft released by March. But for the past 13 years, teachers have been working with a curriculum that gives little guidance on how to explain the science behind one of Alaska’s most pressing problems: climate change. This week, we’re going inside two Alaska classrooms to learn how teachers and students are navigating these difficult conversations. Bryan Smith is the kind of teacher who goes by his first name in his classroom at Polaris K-12 School in Anchorage. You...

CHARLESTON, W. Va - UPDATE: 2/20/19 @ 7:30 p.m. Union leaders have announced that the teacher work stoppage has ended and that schools will reopen Thursday across the state.

If somebody wanted to fundamentally transform a society to its roots, where would he or she start? The most logical starting point would be education. And if there were one part of the educational system that would produce this transformation most broadly, effectively, and efficiently, it would most likely be at our schools of education that train teachers for the K-12 classroom. That’s where ideas from the rest of academia are inserted into the curriculum for elementary and high school students, and where politically unsophisticated young people are turned into classroom teachers. Control the schools of education, and the education...

A sure sign that leftist lawmakers in Springfield are obsessively driven by the desire to use government money and power to advance an absurd, science-denying ideology is House Bill 922 sponsored by State Representative Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora) that, if passed, will require every public middle and high school in the state to make tampons and sanitary napkins available for free in every boys’ bathroom. You read that right. Every middle and high school in the state will have to add feminine hygiene dispensers to every boys’ restroom for all the menstruating boys. #AnotherUnfundedMandate.

Hours after the WV Teachers Unions announced a statewide strike, the Omnibus Education Bill passed through the Senate, 18-16. Last week, the House of Delegates made major changes to the bill but on Monday an amendment by the Senate washed away many of those changes. The new version of the bill reintroduced ESAs, with 1,000 for special needs and bullied students. It also took the number of charter schools from two to seven, with a limit of two introduced per year. Senate President Mitch Carmichael reacted to the strike on Twitter Monday night," After years of ruining our state’s public...

A high-level panel commissioned by Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the city to adopt a sweeping measure to address entrenched segregation in education: create diversity targets for all 1,800 schools so that their population reflects the racial and economic makeup of the surrounding areas. Over the next five years, the panel recommended, elementary and middle schools should reflect the racial makeup of their local school district, and high schools should look as much like their local borough as possible, in terms of race, income level, disability and proficiency in English. New York’s schools have become increasingly divided along racial...

Bad teaching is a common explanation given for the disastrously inadequate public education received by America’s most vulnerable populations. This is a myth. Aside from a few lemons who were notable for their rarity, the majority of teachers I worked with for nine years in New York City’s public school system were dedicated, talented professionals. Before joining the system I was mystified by the schools’ abysmal results. I too assumed there must be something wrong with the teaching. This could not have been farther from the truth. Teaching French and Italian in NYC high schools I finally figured out why...

CLAYTON CO., GA (WSB/CNN) - An Atlanta-area school district says it is investigating after a teacher got into a fight with a high school student. The altercation was captured on cell phone video. The video shows a football coach at Charles R. Drew High School punching a student in class Friday. The teen's legal guardian, Yaquanda Lucas, called it hard to watch. The coach's face is blurred in the footage because he hasn't been charged with a crime. "That didn't look like restraining him to me, it looked like you beat my child," Lucas said. She says she's the godmother...