public schools

Was a Utah District's Decision to Remove the Bible from Shelves a Win for the Anti-Anti-Woke? History Says Maybe Not

by Matthew Smith

When citizens invoked Utah's new "sensitive content" law to force the district to remove the Bible from school libraries, some hoped they had achieved a coup demonstrating the folly of the law. But the Bible has long been a part of cultural conflicts focused on schools, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon. 

Texas Schools to get Chaplains and the Ten Commandments under Legislation

After a Supreme Court ruling favored explicitly Christian prayer led by school officials at school functions, Texas conservatives feel empowered to put more religion into public schools. 

Those "Local" School Battles in Texas are Part of a Decades-Long Statewide Plan to Undermine Public Schools

Advocates of privatizing public schools have bankrolled and organized parents' groups around a range of values issues with the goal of undermining confidence in local schools. In Texas, it seems to be working to break down the longstanding opposition of rural families to voucher programs. 

The Culture War on Public Education

by Peter Greene

The multifront culture war beseiging schools has one unifying principle: undermining trust in public schools so they can be privatized, without regard for the best interests of children. 

"They Want Your Children!": Right-Wing School Panics Seek to Repeal Modernity

by Rick Perlstein

"Reactionary panics about what children learn in school are about as old as time. And they won’t ever go away."

America's School Funding is Kleptocracy in Action

by Esther Cyna

The American system of funding schools largely through local property taxes contributes to inequalities both obvious and subtle that amount to legal dispossession of poor and minority students by denying them access to quality education. 

Affluent White Parents Don't Understand the "Public" in Public Schools

by Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz

Are parents' rights movements aimed at ensuring quality education, or at destroying the potential of public schools to support both learning and a democratic culture across lines of race and class? 

When Culture War Politics Consume School Boards, Basic Functions Suffer

"there is a striking disconnect between the crises that have consumed school board meetings for well more than a year and the emergencies that teachers, nurses, custodians, secretaries and other staff members say they are facing when they show up at school each morning."

Can the Democrats Take Schools Out of Politics?

by Michelle Goldberg

Times Columnist Michelle Goldberg says that the CRT controversy is obscuring the ways that Virginia's public schools are part of a long political movement to undermine public schools that got a boost from the COVID pandemic. 

What’s at Stake in the Fight Over Reopening Schools

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

In cities like Chicago, parents anxious to return children to school have blamed teachers' unions. The historian and New Yorker columnist argues that some proponents of reopening are using racial equity arguments in bad faith while ignoring the gross racial inequalities that characterized schooling-as-usual before the pandemic and the work of teachers' unions to fight it.

Students Protest Firing of Arkansas Teacher Who Called Lawmakers Out Over 1619 Project Curriculum

"Your recent bill is an appalling attempt to FURTHER whitewash history. It is absolutely nothing less than an attempt to codify white supremacy in Arkansas schools. Stay the f*** out of my curriculum," teacher Josh Depner wrote. 

How Past Crises Changed America’s Public Schools — ‘And so too Will COVID-19’

by Ann Marie Ryan and Charles Tocci

While this certainly feels unprecedented, the history of American public schooling shows us it's not.

Open Forum: Are public schools ‘inclusive’? Not for those who oppose abortion

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Children need to learn how to discuss abortion — and other controversial political questions — in a fair and mutually respectful way. And that won’t happen if the adults in the room tell them the right answers, right off the bat.