Category: Education & Schools

Rubio says at least 300 foreign students’ visas have been revoked.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that at least 300 foreign students have had their visas revoked amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, a far higher number than was previously known.

“Maybe more, it might be more than 300 at this point,” Rubio said at a press conference in Guyana when asked to confirm Axios reporting on the topic.

“We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” he added, saying he hopes it’s even more than the 300 estimate.

“I hope at some point we run out because we have gotten rid of all of them, but we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.”

Axios was the first to report that 300 foreign students’ visas had been revoked and that administration officials are looking to block some colleges that have too many “pro-Hamas” foreign students from admitting any international individuals.

The Hill has reached out to the State Department for comment.

Multiple high-profile cases have come out of Columbia University, Tufts and the University of Alabama as the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian foreign students escalates.

Marco Rubio on Rumeysa Ozturk, the Turkish student who was detained:

“We revoked her visa. It’s an F-1 visa, I believe. We revoked it, and here’s why—I’ve said it everywhere, and I’ll say it again.

Let me be abundantly clear: If you apply for a student visa to come to the United States and you say you’re coming not just to study, but to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos—we’re not giving you that visa.

If you lie, get the visa, and then engage in that kind of behavior once you’re here, we’re going to revoke it. And once your visa is revoked, you’re no longer legally in the United States. Like every country, we have the right to remove you. It’s that simple.

It’s crazy—stupid, even—for any country to let people in who say, ‘I’m going to your universities to riot, take over libraries, and harass people.’ I don’t care what movement you’re with. Why would any country allow that?

We gave you a visa to study and earn a degree—not to become a social activist tearing up our campuses. If you use your visa to do that, we’ll take it away. And I encourage every country to do the same.

Every country has the right to decide who enters as a visitor. If you invite me to your house for dinner and I start putting mud on your couch and spray-painting your kitchen, you’re going to kick me out. We’ll do the same if you come to the U.S. and cause a ruckus.

We don’t want that here. Go do it in your own country—but not in ours.”

Trump Signs Executive Order Dismantling Department of Education.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday shuttering the Department of Education, fulfilling a long-standing conservative wish to do away with the agency.

Trump’s order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take the “necessary steps” to close the $268 billion agency and transfer its authority back to the states. The order does not immediately shutter the agency, and it will require programs and services to continue uninterrupted.

“Everybody knows it’s right,” Trump said moments before signing the order, which he said was 45 years in the making. “We have to get our children educated.”

The long-expected executive order will likely face significant legal challenges over whether Trump has the authority to dismantle the agency. Fully closing down the Department of Education will require congressional approval.

Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, Republicans have sought to eliminate the Department of Education, created in 1979 under former President Jimmy Carter, for its role in promoting left-wing ideology and encroaching on state authority. The Education Department’s responsibilities primarily consist of allocating grant money, administering student loans, and enforcing federal civil rights laws

Continue reading “”

Bill Allowing Armed Teachers, Staff Moving in West Virginia House

Legislation to allow armed teachers and staff for classroom defense is set to come before the West Virginia House.

The bill, HB 2187, passed the West Virginia House Education Committee, according to WSAZ.  It is next scheduled for the House Judiciary Committee.

HB 2187 amends the language of current West Virginia law “relating to possessing deadly weapons on premises of educational facilities; authorizing teachers, administrators, or support personnel in elementary or secondary schools to carry concealed firearms and be designated as a school protection officer (SPO).”

The bill also sets forth “information” and “certain qualifications” that must be met in order for a teacher or staff member to become an SPO.

In addition to concealed firearms, SPOs would be able to carry “stun guns or tasers.”

LootPress pointed out that SPO applicants must already have a concealed carry permit and will undergo additional training under the auspices of the “Security Protection Officer Training Program.” The training program includes “firearms training, de-escalation techniques, crisis intervention, active shooter response, trauma care, and other security-related topics.”

Rand.org noted that “at least 28 states allow schools to arm teachers or staff (not just trained guards or peace officers) in at least some cases or as part of specific programs,” as of January 1, 2024.

CNN observed that on April 26, 2024, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed legislation allowing armed teachers in the Volunteer State. This puta the number of states allowing armed teachers for classroom defense up to at least 29.

Tennessee moved to arm teachers after Nashville Metropolitan Police Chief John Drake indicated the March 27, 2023, school shooter originally planned to hit another target, but chose the Christian school instead because it had less security. Six innocents were killed in the school, where no one was armed for classroom defense.

Arkansas public school students will soon be required to take gun safety courses

Loading...

The Arkansas state Senate passed a bill to provide age-appropriate firearms safety instruction to students last week and the Arkansas Department of Education will be working with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to develop a plan.

Act 229, also known as House Bill 1117, will require public school districts and open-enrollment public charter schools to annually provide students with instruction on firearm safety.

The bill’s sponsors say the idea came from conversations among neighbors.

Continue reading “”

The Schools Reviving Shop Class Offer a Hedge Against the AI Future
Hands-on skills are staging a comeback at leading-edge districts, driven by high college costs and demand for more career choices

In America’s most surprising cutting-edge classes, students pursue hands-on work with wood, metals and machinery, getting a jump on lucrative old-school careers.
School districts around the U.S. are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. They are betting on the future of manual skills overlooked in the digital age, offering vocational-education classes that school officials say give students a broader view of career prospects with or without college.
With higher-education costs soaring and white-collar workers under threat by generative AI, the timing couldn’t be better.
In a suburb of Madison, Wis., Middleton High School completed a $90 million campus overhaul in 2022 that included new technical-education facilities. The school’s shop classes, for years tucked away in a back corridor, are now on display. Fishbowl-style glass walls show off the new manufacturing lab, equipped with computer-controlled machine tools and robotic arms.
Interest in the classes is high. About a quarter of the school’s 2,300 students signed up for at least one of the courses in construction, manufacturing and woodworking at Middleton High, one of Wisconsin’s highest-rated campuses for academics.
“We want kids going to college to feel these courses fit on their transcripts along with AP and honors,” said Quincy Millerjohn, a former English teacher who is a welding instructor at the school. He shows his students local union pay scales for ironworkers, steamfitters and boilermakers, careers that can pay anywhere from $41 to $52 an hour.

Continue reading “”

‘Americans got tired of being ridiculed for values like equality, color-blindness, and responsibility,’ and now it’s backlash time.

Schools and colleges have two weeks to stop discriminating on the basis of race, warns a Feb. 7 “Dear Colleague” letter from the Education Department’s acting civil rights chief. If they don’t dump DEI, they’ll lose federal funding.

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision invalidating affirmative action in college admissions, the letter accuses educational institutions of embracing “repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination.” For example, DEI programs “frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.”

“The law is clear. Treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.”

The anti-DEI backlash is “fierce,” because so many people were forced to suppress their real feelings, writes Rick Hess in Education Next.

“Over the past half-decade or more, I repeatedly heard K–12 and higher education faculty tell of sitting silently through professional trainings replete with politicized groupthink,” he writes. They used words such as “re-education,” “Orwellian,” and “McCarthyite.” But quietly.

He also heard from “livid parents with tales of 3rd graders saying they were ashamed of their ‘whiteness’ or tut-tutting their parents for using outdated gender norms,” such as “boys” and “girls.”

“People got fed up with the drumbeat of land acknowledgements, pronoun mandates, trigger warnings, language policing, and hypocrisy,” Hess writes. “Most Americans got tired of being hectored, lectured, and ridiculed for embracing old-school values like equality, color-blindness, and responsibility.”

People were accused of “bigotry” for questioning whether lessons about sexuality and gender were age-appropriate, he writes. “Broadly popular policies, like reserving women’s locker rooms and sports teams for biological girls and women, were denounced as ‘anti-transgender’ (rather than, say, ‘pro-biology’).

Continue reading “”

Psychiatrist Says America Must ‘Dismantle the Cult of the Gun’

I’m often bemused when academics write about gun owners as if we’re some exotic species to be investigated and examined to see what makes us tick, as opposed to their friends, family members, and co-workers.

Dr. Tamir Rahman, an associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University is the latest to channel his inner Jane Goodall and unleash it on American gun owners. In a new piece at Psychology Today, Rahman says it’s time to shift our relationship with firearms.

America’s relationship with firearms has mutated into a paradox. What began as a practical right tied to hunting and self-defense has metastasized into a near-religious reverence, transforming firearms into sacred objects. For many, guns are no longer tools—they are symbols of identity, power, and defiance. While this cultural fixation has fostered community among gun owners, it has also exacerbated the nation’s inability to address the epidemic of gun violence. Reimagining this relationship is not merely an ideal—it is a necessity.

In contemporary America, guns are more than objects. They are badges of liberty, resistance, and power. This shift has been fueled by political rhetoric, cultural narratives, and media representation. For many, owning a firearm is a declaration of values, a statement that screams: “I am free. I am powerful.”

Rahman claims that in order to “address its gun violence epidemic”, the U.S. “must dismantle the cult of the gun”; reframing firearms from symbols of power to tools of responsibility. Rahman offers several suggestions on how to make that happen.

1. Empowering Parents, Educators, and Schools

Parents, educators, and schools are at the forefront of shaping how future generations perceive firearms. Instead of shunning discussions about guns, schools can foster informed and responsible attitudes by integrating firearm education into the curriculum. This approach does not advocate normalization but instead focuses on demystification and accountability.

Why not advocate normalization? After all, as sociologist and gun owner David Yamane says, gun ownership is normal and normal people own guns. Demystifying guns is important, and there’s nothing objectionable about Rahman’s call to integrate firearm education into the curriculum, so long as its not aimed at making gun ownership and responsible gun use taboo.

2. Bridging the Polarization Through Shared Values

The polarizing debate over gun ownership often pits gun rights against gun control, creating an impasse. However, addressing the extreme overvalued beliefs surrounding firearms can provide common ground. Both sides can unite around shared values: responsibility, safety, and the prevention of violence.

Can we really, though? The gun control lobby’s foundational premise is that guns are bad, fewer guns are good, and criminalizing basic aspects of our Second Amendment rights is beneficial to society.

In theory Rahman is right that both sides should be able to come together on policies and practices that don’t involve putting new gun laws on the books, but so long as gun control groups view firearms themselves as a problem that needs to be solved I don’t think there’s much common ground to be found.

Rahman is guilty of that himself. Even when he discounts the push for gun bans, he does so in a way that’s not going to draw much support from gun owners and Second Amendment advocates.

While discussions about banning firearms often arise, such measures alone are not conducive to changing America’s deeply ingrained gun culture. Prohibition risks intensifying polarization and deepening the symbolic power of firearms as emblems of resistance. Instead, the focus should shift toward reshaping attitudes through education, accountability, and responsible ownership.

Fostering a culture that values the ethical use of firearms over their glorification addresses gun violence without alienating lawful owners. This collective action acknowledges complexity, cultivating respect and responsibility to transform perspectives sustainably.

Yes, prohibition intensifies polarization and helps to turn firearms into “emblems of resistance”. Rahman, however, fails to address why that is: banning guns is an abhorrent violation of a fundamental civil right that should be resisted.

Rahman seems very invested in the idea of changing the attitudes of gun owners, but he should be equally or more concerned about changing the mindset of anti-gun activists. I’m not convinced that there’s a “cult of the gun” in the United States, but I know there’s a cult of the gun prohibitionists, and any effort to shift the American relationship with firearms has to start with those trying to eradicate that relationship altogether.

Time and time and time again, “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” and other similar words are being used as excuses to dumb down educational standards. Here are 24 examples.

By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)

October 15, 2024

Time and time and time again, “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” and other similar words are being used as excuses to dumb down educational standards.

Here are 24 examples:

1) The New York Times wrote, “The Board of Regents on Monday eliminated a requirement that aspiring teachers in New York State pass a literacy test to become certified after the test proved controversial because black and Hispanic candidates passed it at significantly lower rates than white candidates.”

Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/nyregion/ny-regents-teacher-exams-alst.html?_r=0

Archive: https://archive.ph/GzyQM

2) The New York Times wrote, “A 2009 Princeton study showed Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks to have the same chance of admission to leading universities.”

Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-unfair-advantage-in-admissions.html

Archive: https://archive.ph/MEDXn

3) Patrick Henry High School, San Diego’s largest high school, cited “equity” as its reason for removing some of its classes in advanced English, advanced history, and advanced biology.

Original: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2022-04-10/san-diegos-largest-high-school-quietly-eliminated-several-honors-courses-parents-are-outraged

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20220410124259/https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2022-04-10/san-diegos-largest-high-school-quietly-eliminated-several-honors-courses-parents-are-outraged

4) The Vancouver School Board cited “equity and inclusion” for why it got rid of its honors courses in math and science at its high schools.

Continue reading “”

BLUF
Ultimately, there are no easy solutions to the complex problem of school shootings. But we can make our schools far safer without sacrificing our fundamental freedoms

The Best Way To Prevent School Shootings Is Armed Staff

In the wake of tragic school shootings like Apalachee High School in Georgia, our nation grapples with a critical question: How do we best protect our children?

Sadly, too often, the debate devolves quickly into partisan talking points. The Biden-Harris administration seized on this tragedy to call for more laws that would restrict Americans’ right to self-defense, but which would have done nothing to stop this shooting. In fact, at both the federal and state levels, it is already illegal for a 14-year-old to purchase and possess a firearm, but, neither those laws nor others, like the Gun-Free School Zones Act, deterred this evil.

More recently on the debate stage, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris attempted to amend her clear anti-gun record, despite previously voicing support for confiscating guns as a candidate in 2020.

It’s crucial to set politics aside and approach this debate with facts.

The reality is that many of our schools remain soft targets, vulnerable to those intent on causing harm. “Gun-free zone” signs offer false security, deterring only the law-abiding. We need a multifaceted strategy that hardens schools as targets while empowering responsible adults to protect themselves and those in their care.

Continue reading “”