Asian Parents Do Everything American Experts Warn Against, and It Works
The research is settled, and it is awkward. Asian-American kids win on effort, not IQ, because their immigrant parents do the opposite of what American experts advise: high expectations, ability treated as built rather than born, and a second classroom at home.
By Dyson Wu
A Mississippi School Strip-Searched Seven Boys and Found Nothing
A vape detector beeped in a boys' bathroom at a Mississippi school. Because of that alarm, seven boys were ordered to strip. Nothing was found. A school can borrow your authority to teach your child. It never receives dominion over his body.
By Tabby Parker
Albemarle Let a Counselor Meet Kids Alone, Then Hid It From Parents for Months
The county's pandemic era wellness coaches got private access to children with no cameras and no real notification rule, and the one keeping the records was the counselor himself.
California's New All-Gender Bathroom Requirement Is Unfair to Small Schools
California's new all-gender bathroom law exempts small schools from the mandate, then takes the exemption back through the money: apply for state building funds and you must build one anyway. The campuses with the least get the rawest deal, and here is what to ask.
By Bridget Hill
New York Made the Regents Exam Optional Without Deciding What Comes Next
New York's Board of Regents just eliminated the Regents exam requirement for a diploma. The state has not said what will replace it, even though a rigorous, working alternative has existed in New York City for almost thirty years.
By Dyson Wu
Sacramento Moves to Make State Superintendent Powerless, Weeks After a Conservative Placed First in the Primary
For a decade, California's establishment called the elected schools superintendent a powerless figurehead. The week a Chino Valley parent led the primary to win it, Sacramento moved to gut the office in seventy-two hours. Follow the power, and you learn who really runs the state's schools.
Sunnyvale Gave These Parents an Opt-Out From Its Gender Lessons, Then Took It Back
Two Sunnyvale parents asked to keep their first and third graders out of lessons on gender and sexuality that clash with their faith. The district agreed, then reversed itself and called the lessons "not optional." Why an opt-out was never the real victory.
By Tabby Parker
Your School Board Election Is the Cheapest One in America to Steal, Just Ask Hempstead
A sitting Hempstead trustee finished third at the voting machines and first once the absentee ballots were counted, and the votes that flipped it were later found shredded in a dumpster. The clerk who ran the election worked for the board she helped pick. That is the real scandal.
A Portland School Teaches Five-Year-Olds Their Parents Are Optional
A Portland school counselor wrote a cheerful picture book teaching kids as young as five that family is something you pick. "Chosen family" was built for the truly abandoned. Aimed at kindergartners who are loved at home, it quietly teaches that mom and dad are optional.
Gentle Parenting Is Wearing Moms Out
The method literally called "gentle" is burning out the moms doing it, and even Dr. Becky is backing away. Here is why warmth was never the problem, why it is the same no-consequences idea you fight at the school board, and the warm-but-firm fix the research has favored for fifty years.
By Bridget Hill
New York Elementary School Made Fifth Graders Rehearse Being Shot by Police
On Multicultural Day, fifth graders at P.S. 75 on the Upper West Side mimed being shot by police and held adults' political signs. The deepest harm was not that parents got no notice. It was what the stage rehearsed into a ten-year-old's heart.
By Tabby Parker
Once You Are Paid to Find Struggling Children, You Find Them Everywhere
A federal account named for school safety now routes most of its money to mental-health programs, and Congress made the spending legally binding, for programs no study shows make children safer or smarter. Follow the incentives and you see why the crisis never ends.
By Dyson Wu
A Third of Oregon's Kids Are Chronically Absent, So the State Wants to Repeal Compulsory Attendance
Oregon's own report recommends repealing the compulsory attendance statutes, renaming "unexcused" absences, and recasting attendance as a "performance growth indicator." When the scoreboard says a third of kids are missing, the managerial class does not get better. It unplugs the scoreboard.
Killing Gifted Programs for Equity Punishes the Poor Kids It Claims to Protect
Seattle and New York are scrapping gifted programs in the name of equity. A Nobel laureate's new research shows those programs are the strongest ladder poor kids have, and the children who lose them were never the privileged ones.
Kiddle, the 'Kid-Safe' Search Engine Schools Trust, Won't Say Who Runs It
The kid-safe search engine your child's school recommends will not name a single person who runs it: no CEO, no founder, no owner. That matters, because the same anonymous site is quietly teaching kids that Hamas grew out of a charity.
By Bridget Hill
Three Universities Promised to End DEI. The Same People Are Still in Charge.
UNC raised the flag and kept the DEI chief. Texas created a watchdog that investigates almost nothing. Michigan shut down DEI offices and rebranded the same programs. Three universities, three gestures, zero actual change.
By Dyson Wu
Four Kansas Districts Hid Kids' Gender Transitions From Their Own Parents
Four Kansas districts let schools keep a child's new name, pronouns, and gender transition from her own parents, even when a mother asked. Here is what the federal findings mean, and the one email every parent can send this week.
By Tabby Parker
Your Teachers' Union Spent $669 Million on Politics, Not Classrooms
The teachers' unions say they fight for educators and for the kids. So why, since 2015, did the NEA and AFT route over $669 million in dues and PAC money to political campaigns, activist nonprofits, and the fight against school choice? It is not a leak. It is in their own federal filings.
A Permission Slip for the Zoo, a Secret for Your Daughter
A Wisconsin school that needs your signature for a field trip decided it needed no permission to give your daughter a new name. Here is what that certainty costs, and the court that finally overruled it.