K-12

Keri D. Ingraham appeared on The Silk or Joe Show to discuss the progress of shrinking the U.S. Department of Education since President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on March 20, 2025, Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities. She talks about the importance of returning power to local communities and parents in K-12 education, the fear-mongering of the teachers unions, and how free market solutions will improve education outcomes nationwide.

The U.S. Department of Education has spent more than $3 trillion since 1980, with little to show for it. Reading and math scores have barely budged, achievement gaps remain, and too many families are trapped in a system that fails their children. On March 20, 2025, President Trump took decisive action by signing an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the department and return authority to the states. A year later, the results are striking. The department has overhauled operations — cutting nearly half its staff, reducing administrative layers, and consolidating offices. Grants have been streamlined, programs merged, reporting reduced, and oversight of the $1.6 trillion student-loan portfolio shifted to a more capable agency. Critics predicted chaos. Read More ›

Earlier in March, the U.S. Supreme Court had to step in and reaffirm the basic reality that parents, not schools, must be the primary decision-makers for their children. In the Mirabelli v. Bonta ruling, the Court determined that the California law, which barred schools from telling parents about their child’s claimed gender identity, violated parents’ constitutional rights — both their First Amendment free exercise rights and their Fourteenth Amendment rights to make decisions about their children’s upbringing. For most of American history, parents were recognized as the primary authority in their children’s lives. Today, that authority is repeatedly under attack, especially in public schools. Across the country, families are being shut out of what their children learn, denied access to Read More ›

What if you could help a child receive a better education at no cost to yourself? Beginning in 2027, Americans will be able to do exactly that. Under the Education Freedom Tax Credit, taxpayers can contribute up to $1,700 annually to approved scholarship-granting organizations and, in return, receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit. Every dollar donated will be offset against the taxpayer’s debt to the federal government. Enacted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill signed into law on Independence Day last year, the policy establishes the first federal tax-credit scholarship program in U.S. history. Many states already have successful state-level tax-credit scholarship programs that can serve as a proof of concept. Nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations such as ACE Scholarships, which Read More ›

American public education has lost sight of its purpose. Too often, progressive political agendas take time away from teaching core academic learning to children. A glaring example is the anti-ICE agenda that has infiltrated classrooms, where students are encouraged — and even instructed — during learning time to make signs and stand on street corners to protest during the school day. Many of these children have little to no accurate understanding of the issue and have not been given objective facts or context to evaluate it critically. Instead of learning to think for themselves, students are guided toward a particular political viewpoint. This undermines critical thinking, erodes intellectual development, and wastes precious learning time that should be spent on core Read More ›

California’s Children’s Educational Opportunity (CEO) Act is a proposed statewide ballot measure for November 2026 that is currently gathering the required voter signatures to qualify. Led by former Thousand Oaks Mayor Kevin McNamee, it is positioned to become one of the most consequential school-choice initiatives in the country, as well as a potential template for other states seeking durable education reform through their constitutions rather than ordinary legislation. Supporters of the CEO Act begin with an indictment of California’s current K-12 performance: large numbers of 11th graders cannot read or do basic math proficiently, yet most still receive diplomas, and community colleges are forced to reteach core skills to recent graduates. This is happening even as the state spends roughly Read More ›

William A. Dembski and Alex Thomas released a new book, Defying Low Expectations: What Jaime Escalante Taught Us About Learning. The authors describe the book as follows: Jaime Escalante didn’t just teach calculus in East LA; he blew up the lie that poor, minority students can’t handle serious academics—and then watched the system quietly bury the evidence. Defying Low Expectations tells the story beyond Stand and Deliver, the 1988 film about Escalante starring Edward James Olmos that became a classroom staple. Here we learn about the immigrant teacher from Bolivia, the maverick principal Henry Gradillas who cleared a path for him, and the forces that dismantled their success once it became too threatening to the status quo. Drawing on fresh Read More ›

America’s workforce crisis is leaving too many young people and adults on the sidelines. According to Nick Moore, Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education at the U.S. Department of Education, “more than one in ten young people aged 16-24 are disconnected from both school and work, while many adults face barriers to reentry due to credential opacity, benefits cliffs, or misalignment between education and employer needs.” This reality underscores the need for a workforce system that delivers clear pathways to skills, credentials, and employment. Thankfully, the Trump administration is taking decisive action to address this through multifaceted measures that merge education and workforce development programs that will provide a brighter future for Americans. It Read More ›

As part of National School Choice Week, the White House hosted an important school choice roundtable event today with U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and American Center for Transforming Education Director Keri Ingraham was in attendance. The Trump Administration continues to recognize Ingraham’s significant contributions toward advancing education freedom in our nation through her leadership of the American Center for Transforming Education. School choice, empowering parents, and creating a free-market K-12 education are the much-needed solutions. Also, this week, Ingraham attended the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing titled “Empowering Families Through Educational Choice in America.” The committee is chaired by Senator Bill Cassidy, who opened the event, providing sound clarity. Read More ›

National School Choice Week is a great time to celebrate the opportunities and innovations taking place in America’s K-12 education system. At the core of school choice lies this belief: parents — not bureaucrats — know what’s best for their child’s education. Every year, there are school choice highlights, but this year is marked by extraordinary advances in education freedom. While school choice legislation at the state level is underway, there’s a brand-new, transformative law at the federal level: the Federal Tax Credit Scholarship. In a remarkably short period, 26 governors have opted their states into the Federal Tax Credit Scholarship, unlocking new opportunities for families and demonstrating nationwide confidence in policies that put parents in the driver’s seat of Read More ›

It’s National School Choice Week in America, and the advancement of education freedom is sweeping the country. Governors are opting-in their states to the new federal tax credit scholarship at rapid rates. The scholarship allows taxpayers to contribute up to $1,700 per year to a qualified non-profit scholarship-granting organization and receive a nonrefundable dollar-for-dollar tax credit. Organizations like ACE Scholarships award scholarships to K-12 students. Federal tax credit scholarships can be used for a variety of educational expenses, including tuition, fees, books, tutoring, transportation, and services for students with special needs. The landmark legislation was fittingly signed into law on Independence Day last year by President Donald Trump as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Already, nineteen states are set to participate in the federal Read More ›

For far too long, K-12 education has been dominated by monopolies — the public education system, state standardized testing, the SAT and ACT college entrance exams, Advanced Placement, and the International Baccalaureate program. The result has been soaring educational costs, declining quality, and a lack of innovation, all to the detriment of students nationwide. But one company, Classic Learning Test, is bent on bringing competitive alternatives to break up those monopolies, which have been watered down in quality and infused with woke ideologies. The Classic Learning Test (CLT) “exists to reconnect knowledge and virtue by providing meaningful assessments and connections to seekers of truth, goodness, and beauty.” To the surprise of many, the CLT isn’t just for students of classical Read More ›