In particular, a proposal to eliminate funding for the Special Olympics came in for censure. By Thursday, Donald Trump reversed that recommendation, saying he would support funding the program after all.

What the education secretary gets wrong about workforce training in public schools

At least four panels are expected to challenge DeVos on her most polarizing policies, among them her overhaul of campus sexual assault rules and her rollback of for-profit college regulations.

...carrying out an Obama-era policy that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had fought to kill.

A Washington federal court judge on Wednesday ruled the department’s postponement of the so-called Borrower Defense rule was procedurally improper.

“It looks like the administration is simply shielding these companies from liability”

In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn't confirm one.

The Education Department could face a legal challenge if it moves forward with a plan allowing states to spend federal funds on guns for school employees.

Such a move would reverse a longstanding position taken by the federal government that it should not pay to outfit schools with weaponry.

Americans are quite favorable to a set of policies that the Koch network opposes.

“It would be an easy choice, wouldn't it?”

The leaders of the two largest teachers unions in the country are coming out swinging after a Supreme Court ruling that dealt a blow to labor organizations’ ability to collect fees.

DeVos is also expected to rewrite rules requiring for-profit schools to equip students with minimal employment skills to qualify for federal aid.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) suggested Friday that children were physically harmed because they were at home during the statewide teacher strikes, when teachers gathered at the capitol to protest school funding.

'What he gave us today was just a proposal, it wasn't legislation, and we don't know where the money's coming from and we don't know if he's talking about everybody involved in education or just classroom teachers'

Simpson placed the gun on the handrail of the bathroom stall, then left it behind as he went to wash his hands at a sink inside the stall

“I think a bat could disarm a pistol with a nice swing”

Hundreds of schools closed Monday as teachers demanded $150 million more to replace dilapidated, decades-old textbooks and fund elective courses. They also want higher raises for support staff and themselves.

Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky walked off the job today to demand higher wages and additional funding for school resources.

Many GOP-led states are feeling the pushback after years of tax cuts that have slashed funding for core government services such as public schools

...rejecting her attempt to spend more than $1 billion promoting choice-friendly policies and private school vouchers.

In recent weeks, Ms. DeVos has clashed fiercely with department staff members over the plan, which they say she tried to withhold from Congress as she imposed on the department what they call an illegal collective bargaining agreement.

Last week, the department notified Council 252, which represents Education employees, that the agency was unilaterally imposing a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which union members had overwhelming rejected, effective Monday of this week.

The reality is that the United States is now learning to live without a functional president or government.

The STOP School Violence Act, a bill that doesn’t address guns in any substantive way but provides an annual $50 million grant to schools for training programs and revamped reporting systems to bolster school safety, passed 407-10 Wednesday.

The nationally organized walkouts, most of which were expected to last 17 minutes in symbolic tribute to the Florida victims, are unprecedented in recent American history.

...during a class devoted to public safety.

Trump’s top education advocate was responding to a question during an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” about whether she had seen the struggling schools in her home state of Michigan, considered among the worst in the country.

"I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them"

DeVos, President Trump's polarizing education secretary, gave a cringe-worthy interview Sunday on 60 Minutes, in which she fumbled through questions about school safety, sexual assault on campus, inequality, and school choice, the agenda she has fastened her reputation and expertise upon.

@ArmMeWith school supplies. Literally. I should not be single-handedly keeping Target in business.

“You give them a little bit of a bonus, so practically for free, you have now made the school into a hardened target,” Mr. Trump said. The president estimated that 10 percent to 40 percent of school employees would be qualified to handle a weapon — he offered no data for the claim — and said he would devote federal money to training them.

In a letter on Friday, all 17 Democrats on the House Education Committee urged Representative Virginia Foxx, the committee’s chairwoman, to convene hearings on school shootings, describing them as a “public health epidemic.”

The culprit, they said, is the inflammatory president Ms. DeVos works for, who paralyzed efforts at cooperation and whose language and policies are seen as antagonistic toward low-income minority communities

This means that M.I.T. graduate students would be responsible for paying taxes on an $80,000 annual salary, when we actually earn $33,000 a year. That’s an increase of our tax burden by at least $10,000 annually.

"If there’s one thing DeVos has learned so far, it’s that getting your way in Washington requires time, patience and government savvy — three things she does not have"

For 200 days, India Landry remained seated in protest during the Pledge of Allegiance at her Texas high school. Then, last week, the school’s principal informed her that she would have to stand for the pledge or be forced to leave school.

The rules ... will now permit colleges and universities to raise their evidence requirements to a “clear and convincing standard” of proof. The Obama administration had demanded colleges use a lower “preponderance of evidence” standard.

Ms. DeVos did not say what changes she had in mind. But in a strongly worded speech, she made clear she believed that in an effort to protect victims, the previous administration had gone too far and forced colleges to adopt procedures that sometimes deprived accused students of their rights.

DeVos has hired a former official at the for-profit college DeVry University to run a unit that investigates for-profit college fraud

...and said it would come up with a new proposal aimed at improving customer service for student loan payments.

DeVos, a devout Christian, stands accused of quietly privatising schools, rescinding discrimination guidelines and neutering her own department’s civil rights office.

Today, for the first time on a question asked since 2010, a majority (58%) of Republicans say colleges and universities are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, while 36% say they have a positive effect.

The lawsuit ... accuses DeVos of illegally delaying the regulations aimed at predatory colleges, which were finalized by the Obama administration and had been set to take effect on July 1.

The rules that Ms. DeVos wants to repeal are called the gainful employment regulations. ... if students borrow lots of money and can’t get well-paying jobs — the program is deemed “failing.”

The education secretary repeatedly said that any school "receiving federal funding is required to follow federal law," but said federal law is unclear on protections for LGBTQ students.

"Would you in this case say we are going to overrule and you cannot discriminate, whether it be on sexual orientation, race, or special needs in our voucher programs?" Clark added. "Will that be a guarantee from you to our students?" DeVos sidestepped the question.

...states should have the right to decide whether private schools that accept publicly funded voucher students should be allowed to discriminate against students for whatever reason they want.

James Runcie, head of the agency's student aid office, submitted his resignation Tuesday night, effective immediately.

If passed by Congress, the proposal could channel billions of public dollars to working class families to help them pay for private schools, including religious schools.

The past four months have seen the food industry seize onto President Trump's anti-regulatory agenda, arguing for the delay or suspension of rules that Mrs. Obama encouraged.

Another group that would be hit hard by the bill are children who rely on special education programs.

...students who attended a private school through the program performed worse on standardized tests than their public school counterparts who did not use the vouchers.

On at least two separate ocassions now, her department has scrapped Obama-era reforms that were designed to protect borrowers from being gouged or misled by the companies responsible for collecting their loans.

“Secretary of Educatuon Betsy DeVos”

The government has for years relied on a patchwork of nine loan servicing companies to send bills to borrowers, collect their payments and handle any problems that arise.

“It is utterly baffling that Secretary DeVos would undo guidance that asks servicers to do the basic things that anyone – literally anyone – would expect a loan servicer to do, like respond to questions and help people access repayment plans they have a legal right to use”

Federal marshals are protecting Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at a cost to her agency of nearly $8 million over nearly eight months

The Education Department is ordering guarantee agencies ... to disregard a memo former President Barack Obama’s administration issued on the old bank-based federal lending program

The numbers — while not yet final — are provoking anxiety in some programs that rely on international students, who bring more than $32 billion a year into the United States economy.

The proposed cuts at the Education Department include plans to ax several programs that aid primarily low-income and minority students, while increasing spending for school-choice programs in elementary and secondary education.

"My husband and I have decided the local parks just aren't good enough for our kids. We'd rather use the country club, and we're hoping state tax dollars will pay for it."

Education secretary's remarks astound many advocates for colleges that were created because black students were denied choices.

The National School Lunch Program and the National School Breakfast Program are under the authority of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, not the Education Department.

Three consecutive reports, each studying one of the largest new state voucher programs, found that vouchers hurt student learning.

Sessions went to President Trump about the dispute, and he told DeVos he wanted her to go along. And in her first big policy move, she did.

...while she personally opposed the Trump administration’s rollback of the ... guidance protecting the right of transgender students ..., she did not say so publicly and was unable to persuade them to leave the guidance in place.

She encountered an immediate display of the type of fierce resistance she will face as she tries to set new policies for the Education Department.

“JA teachers are not in a ‘receive mode,'” the tweets concluded. “Unless you mean we ‘receive’ students at a 2nd grade level and move them to an 8th grade level.”

The five-page document [...] calls for a “restoration of education in America” that would minimize the federal role, promote religious schools and home schooling and enshrine “historic Judeo-Christian principles” as a basis for instruction.

Post updated – our deepest apologizes for the earlier typo. — US Dept of Education

The website was set up under President George W. Bush so educators, advocates and parents could get a "one-stop" explanation on the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), as well as know their rights under the disability law.

Washington has long designed education policy to deal with urban and suburban challenges, often overlooking the unique problems that face rural schools like this one.

Parents holding signs greeted DeVos when she arrived at Jefferson Middle School Academy in southwest Washington, not far from the Department of Education building.

"If YOU work in education, YOU buy the pencils, the paper, &, sometimes, a kid’s shoes."

Teachers unions, civil rights advocates and others have vowed to make DeVos' job difficult going forward, especially if the Education Department decides to back away from the Obama administration's strong focus on civil rights enforcement work.

It cost her $115,000 in personal donations to sitting Republican senators; $950,000 more has flowed in from the DeVos family over the last three-and-a-half decades.

I don't understand evolution, and I have to protect my kids from understanding it. We will not give in to the thinkers!

“But it’s more likely we’ll now hear the same trashing of public schools that the disrupters, the privatizers and the austerity hawks have used for the last two decades. That makes this a sad day for children.”

The vote ended an uncharacteristically contentious confirmation process for a secretary of education. Typically, the position is confirmed without major opposition.

DeVos, a wealthy GOP donor, has devoted herself to boosting alternatives to public education and sparked concerns among educators that she won’t be a strong champion for public schools.

A final vote is expected Tuesday, and as it stands, Vice President Mike Pence is expected to be summoned to the Capitol to push DeVos over the top.

They are the first two Republicans to break with Trump on any of his Cabinet picks, and the votes could make it difficult for DeVos to win confirmation.

Ah, Betsy. Education. Right?