LGBT advocates are looking to reach and persuade conservative voters tonight with a prime-time TV ad about transgender discrimination that’s set to air on Fox News around the time Donald Trump is accepting the Republican party’s nomination for president. The ad features a transgender woman from North Carolina who is prevented from using a restroom that corresponds...

By Kirsten Schmitz Donald Trump has promised to make America great again. One thing he says he won’t look to change? Social Security. While maintaining the Social Security status quo might seem at the very least unobtrusive, it neglects an opportunity to extend coverage to the over 1 million teachers and 6.5 million government workers whose jobs...

Letter details opposition to federal proposal defining student success on tests A University of Southern California professor has collected dozens of academicians’ signatures on a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education John King criticizing how the federal government proposes to measure student scores on standardized tests. California’s top state education officials agree with him and may...

For the second year, the California Teachers Summit is holding what they call the state’s largest teacher training to encourage and inspire fellow educators. The free summit is planned at 38 locations throughout the state on Friday, July 29, and is expected to attract 15,000 traditional, private and charter school teachers for lectures, seminars and individualized smaller breakout...

A groundbreaking summit that plans to share best practices between LA Unified traditional school and charter school educators is at capacity with more than 350 people signed up for the Saturday event planned by Superintendent Michelle King. From the moment she was appointed to the position in January, King said she planned to find ways to...

By Peter Cunningham  In the spring of 2009, newly-elected President Barack Obama took a meeting in the Oval Office with civil rights leader Al Sharpton. Reverend Sharpton told the White House he wanted to talk about education so Education Secretary Arne Duncan also attended. Sharpton also brought along an unlikely guest: former House Speaker and GOP...

(Cleveland, Ohio) — During a special forum organized around the Republican National Convention, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker offered some unexpected advice on the best way to sell school choice measures – talk about improving traditional schools too. “People who truly believe in education, they recognize greatness whether it’s coming from a charter school, a choice...

 Kids in crisis: One-third of California 11th-graders surveyed say they are chronically sad In a potential crisis crossing demographic lines, one-third of California’s 11th-graders and one-quarter of seventh-graders reported feeling chronically sad or hopeless over the past 12 months, a survey showed. The California Healthy Kids Survey also found that about 19 percent of both...

Where books are all but nonexistent Forty-five million. That’s how many words a typical child in a white-collar family will hear before age 4. The number is striking, not because it’s a lot of words for such a small human—the vast majority of a person’s neural connections, after all, are formed by age 3—but because...

By Max Marchitello The Veep-stakes are over! The pick is in. Mike Pence, the sitting governor of Indiana, will run as Donald Trump’s vice president. Although he has only been governor for a few years, Pence also served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Putting those records together, Bellwether Education Partners’ Max Marchitello takes stock of what...