Category Archives: US education

US girl who graduated from college at 15: ‘We are the invisible Black scholars’

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Shania Muhammad earned bachelor of arts degree from Langston University in Oklahoma and plans career in public speaking

Among the millions who are celebrating having received their university diplomas in the US this spring is a 15-year-old girl from Oklahoma, one of the youngest ever American college graduates.

Shania Muhammad graduated from Oklahoma’s Langston University with a bachelor of arts degree as well as a 4.0 grade-point average that was the highest in her class, according to a recent report from the local news media outlet KOCO-TV. She said she plans to pursue a career in public speaking and publish a book about her experience in school titled Read, Write, Listen: 13 in College.

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High schooler who won record $10m in scholarship offers heads to Ivy League

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Dennis Maliq Barnes of New Orleans announces he will attend Cornell University this fall to study computer science

The 16-year-old American high schooler who set what is believed to be a US record after collecting more than $10m in college scholarship offers is bound for the Ivy League.

Dennis Maliq Barnes announced on Friday that he plans to enroll at Cornell University for the fall semester to study computer science after his 24 May graduation from New Orleans’s International high school. The Ithaca, New York, university only accepts 9% of applicants, and just 7% of its 15,000 or so students are Black like Barnes, according to the US News & World Report.

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The conservative scholar who lit a match to the US right’s education wars

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Stanley Kurtz’s crusade against ‘woke civics’ in schools has shaped Republican bills across the US

When two US senators – a Texas Republican and a Delaware Democrat – introduced a bill in June 2022 to expand grants for civics education, most observers saw it as something of an olive branch between the parties.

But despite initial momentum, three now-familiar letters stopped the bill in its tracks: CRT.

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Florida principal who lost job over ‘pornographic’ David statue visits Italy

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Hope Carrasquilla, forced to resign after parents condemned Michelangelo’s statue as pornography, invited to Florence

A Florida principal who resigned after parents at her school decried Michelangelo’s David statue as pornography has traveled to Florence, Italy, following invitations from the museum director and mayor of Florence.

Hope Carrasquilla, the former principal of Florida’s Tallahassee Classical school, touched down in Florence on Friday and visited the Accademia Gallery with her family where David’s statue resides.

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Florida school superintendent who criticized DeSantis could lose job

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Rocky Hanna is accused of ignoring Florida governor’s directives in latest move against those who oppose Republicans’ politics

Florida officials are threatening to revoke the teaching license of a school superintendent who criticized the governor, Ron DeSantis.

The educator is accused of violating several statutes and DeSantis directives and allowing his “personal political views” to guide his leadership.

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US high schooler earns ‘incredible’ $9m in scholarship offers

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Dennis Barnes’s offers from 125 colleges and universities approach a national record

A high school student in Louisiana has received more than $9m in scholarship offers, an amount that leaves him at least close to clinching what is believed to be a US record.

Dennis Barnes has been offered aid from 125 colleges and universities, after maintaining a cumulative grade point average of 4.98, among other academic accomplishments, at International high school in New Orleans.

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Democrats bid to use censorship law against DeSantis and ban his book

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Opponents say memoir The Courage to be Free, published in February, violates law governor signed last year

Democrats in Florida are attempting to use a state law that censors books in public schools against the governor who signed it, Ron DeSantis, by asking schools to review or ban the Republican governor’s own book, The Courage to be Free.

“The very trap he set for others is the one that he set for himself,” Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic minority leader in the Florida state house, told the Daily Beast.

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Nashville school shooter carefully plotted attack that killed six, say police

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A former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday, armed with two “assault-style” weapons and a handgun after elaborately planning the massacre by drawing a detailed map and conducting surveillance of the building, police said.

Nashville chief of police John Drake told NBC News the shooter had planned to attack several different places, saying a manifesto belonging to the suspect “indicates that there was going to be shootings at multiple locations, and the school was one of them”.

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US teens say they have new proof for 2,000-year-old mathematical theorem

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New Orleans students Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson recently presented their findings on the Pythagorean theorem

Two New Orleans high school seniors who say they have proven Pythagoras’s theorem by using trigonometry – which academics for two millennia have thought to be impossible – are being encouraged by a prominent US mathematical research organization to submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal.

Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, who are students of St Mary’s Academy, recently gave a presentation of their findings at the American Mathematical Society south-eastern chapter’s semi-annual meeting in Georgia.

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Half a million kids out of class as LA school workers strike for better pay

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Strike joined by teachers over better wages and increased staffing closes nation’s second-largest school system

Tens of thousands of workers in the Los Angeles unified school district, accompanied by teachers, walked off the job on Tuesday over stalled contract talks for higher pay and better working conditions, shutting down the nation’s second-largest school system.

The strike, which is expected to last three days, upended the lives of more than 500,000 students and their families from schools in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, as bus drivers, cafeteria workers and teachers demanded more support at a time when educators in the city and elsewhere are struggling to afford to live where they work.

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Wellesley College students vote to admit trans men and non-binary people

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Proposal also calls for gender neutral language at women’s college whose alumni include Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright

Students at the famed Wellesley College for women voted this week to extend admission to trans men and non-binary students, though campus administrators have said there is “no plan” to immediately change school policy.

In a non-binding election on Tuesday, students at the liberal arts college in Massachusetts voted to open admission to all non-binary and transgender students, including trans men, reported Wellesley News, the college’s student newspaper.

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Vermont school that boycotted game with trans player banned from tournaments

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  • Mid Vermont Christian School forfeited game on 21 February
  • Many conservatives have opposed trans athletes

A Vermont school that refused to play against an opposing basketball team with a trans player won’t be able to participate in future tournaments, the Vermont Principals’ Association announced on Monday.

Mid Vermont Christian School forfeited a game on 21 February in an out-of-state tournament against Long Trail school.

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Virginia boy who shot his teacher won’t face criminal charges, says prosecutor

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Six-year-old shot Abigail Zwerner on 6 January while she was teaching class, leaving her seriously injured

A six-year-old boy who shot his teacher in January will not face criminal charges, a prosecutor in Newport News, Virginia, said on Wednesday night.

On 6 January, the first-grader shot Abigail Zwerner while she was teaching class at Richneck elementary school, leaving her seriously injured.

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George Washington University accused of ‘colluding’ with rightwing pro-Israel group

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StadWithUs filed charge with US education department accusing Lara Sheehi of hate speech and discrimination against students

An Arab professor and lecturer in diversity has accused George Washington University of “colluding” with a rightwing pro-Israel group over a federal complaint accusing her of antisemitism.

The group, StandWithUs (SWU), filed a complaint with the US education department’s civil rights office claiming that Lara Sheehi, an assistant professor of clinical psychology, discriminated against Jewish students by refusing to accept their definitions of antisemitism.

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High costs and discrimination: US study details obstacles for Black students

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Research finds that Black students have lowest completion rates for post-secondary education than any other group

Black students have lower six-year completion rates for any kind of degree or certificate program than students in any other racial or ethnic group, a new study has found.

According to the study by Gallup and Lumina Foundation, which was released on Thursday, Black students must contend with various challenges to completing post-secondary programs including high costs and racial discrimination.

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Pennsylvania boy, 9, becomes one of the youngest ever high school graduates

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David Balogun, who loves science and computer programming, receives diploma after taking remote classes

A nine-year-old boy from Pennsylvania who loves science and computer programming has become one of the youngest ever high school graduates, and he has already started accumulating some credits toward his college degree.

David Balogun recently received a diploma from Reach cyber charter school – based in his state’s capital of Harrisburg – after taking classes remotely from his family home in the Philadelphia suburb of Bensalem, the local television station WGAL reported Saturday.

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New proposal sets limits on sugar in US school meals for first time

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Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack also seeks to significantly lower sodium in meals as part of fresh nutrition standards plan

US agriculture officials on Friday proposed new nutrition standards for school meals, including the first limits on added sugars, with a focus on limiting sweetened foods such as cereals, yogurt, flavored milk and breakfast pastries.

The plan announced by the agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, also seeks to significantly decrease sodium, making for less salty meals served to the nation’s school kids by 2029, while making the rules for foods made with whole grains more flexible.

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Outrage over alleged Nazi homeschooling group in Ohio

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Telegram channel reportedly distributed lessons plans which included writing exercises based on Hitler quotes

An alleged “Nazi homeschooling group” based in Ohio has been widely condemned, amid reports that it distributed lesson plans which included writing exercises based on quotes by Adolf Hitler.

A couple calling themselves “Mr and Mrs Saxon” established the “Dissident Homeschool” channel on Telegram in 2021, according to reporting by Anonymous Comrades Collective, an anti-fascist research group, verified by Huffpost and Vice.

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Ex-Trump aide Sanders defends critical race theory ban as Arkansas governor

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Sarah Sanders, a former Trump press secretary, says move is preventative and ‘to make sure we’re not indoctrinating our kids’

The new Republican governor of Arkansas, Sarah Sanders, said the move to ban critical race theory in public schools in her state was a preventative measure.

“It’s incredibly important that we do things to protect the students in our state,” she told Fox News Sunday. “We have to make sure that we are not indoctrinating our kids and that these policies and these ideas never see the light of day.”

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Hillary Clinton to join Columbia University as global affairs professor

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Ex-secretary of state will assume position on 1 February, working alongside the School of International and Public Affairs dean

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton will join Columbia University as a global affairs professor at its School of International and Public Affairs (Sipa), it was announced on Thursday.

The university president’s Lee Bollinger announced the new position for Clinton, who was secretary of state for Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013.

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