The webinar asked the question: “What’s next for the anti-abortion movement in this post-Roe moment?” with a focus on the ongoing anti-comprehensive sex ed movement, its overlap with the antiabortion and anti-trans/anti-lgbtq movements, and,…

The Aftermath of Scandal at Liberty University

I sometimes joke that Liberty University and I grew up together. My childhood home was about a mile from campus. While Liberty was getting on its feet, so was I. I started kindergarten at a Baptist school and stayed through 9th grade. I…

Christian Homeschooling and R.J. Rushdoony’s Legacy in the Age of COVID

On a March 2021 episode of the popular Christian radio show and podcast Stand in the Gap Today, a former Pennsylvania legislator exhorted Christian parents to “leave Egypt behind” and seek out the “Promised Land.”[1]…

School board meetings across the country have seen an influx of parents and community members over the last few months, many there to fight Critical Race Theory (CRT)—something that the majority of primary and secondary schools don’t teach, and a…

Watch Now: A PRA Roundtable Discussion

The myth of American Exceptionalism is well-understood to be just that, a myth. But the pandemic-induced national recession has thrown into high relief the true American Exceptionalism: life lived in a constant state of precarity. Precarity…

COVID-19 Opportunism and Betsy DeVos’s Education Agenda

Since her deeply contested confirmation hearings, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been criticized for incompetence and ignorance regarding the public education system. But this lens obscures the extent to which DeVos’s decisions as secretary…

Be Aware of Outreach by Evangelical Homeschooling Organizations

With so many schools closed across the country and so many parents working from home to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus, families are desperate for resources. In response, homeschool organizations like the conservative evangelical-affiliated…

When Gary Campbell enrolled in Baptist Bible College (now Clarks Summit University) in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, in 2001, he knew he was gay. He was among those students who, in an effort to repress their sexual orientation, choose the…

The Privatization Strategy of Pioneer Institute and Betsy Devos

On Wednesday, September 12 a federal judge ruled Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s delay of Obama-era regulation of for-profit colleges as “unlawful.” The regulations forgive federal student loans from “misleading, deceitful, and predatory” lending…

Alt Right Attacks on University Professors

In an effort to silence academics, right-wing activists, including many from the Alt Right, have doxed, threatened, and smeared professors across the country, without regard for academic hierarchy, type of institution, or discipline. They have…

Established in 2012, Turning Point USA (TPUSA)’s mission is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.” Claiming to have a presence on over 1,000 college campuses…

From “school choice” schemes and the neoliberal privatization movement to the influence of the Christian Right on curriculum and school policy, public education is a key battleground.

The DeVoses exert influence over state and national policy making.

Right-Wing Influence in APUSH Curriculum Update

On July 30, 2015, the College Board, creators of college-level curricula and testing for high school students, released an update to its Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) course. The revision came after what had already been a two-year battle…

The Rise & Fall of the Right's School Voucher Pioneer

Polly Williams, the Wisconsin African American lawmaker behind the nation’s first school voucher program, believed vouchers could help students of color in urban Milwaukee. Conservative donors and right-wing think tanks saw her program as opening…

Midterm elections present a particularly fruitful opportunity for the school privatization movement to maximize their investment. Since 1974, in mid-term or non-presidential election years, the federal election turnout has failed to reach 40% of…

Higher education is under attack by the neoliberal enterprise. While most colleges and universities are still nonprofit institutions, they have been overtaken by the neoliberal agenda.

The Threat of Free Market Ideology

The current crisis within higher ed is often discussed primarily in terms of rising tuition and student debt, but the debt crisis is just one particularly ugly manifestation of a larger trend involving increased corporate investment in college…

Neglecting Civil Rights Education in Schools

Too often, debates over public education sidestep discussions of how schools can teach students not only to master Common Core standards, but also to be active, thoughtful, justice-driven members of society.

The 2014 Creating Change Conference was held in Houston, Texas on January 29 - February 2 and included several panels led by staff and fellows of Political Research Associates. The following is a summary of my portion of the panel titled “Beyond…

Want to learn more about attacks on public education and keep up with developing stories? Check out these links.

Mothers overwhelmingly bear the burden of the “immense emotional, temporal, and physical workloads required to homeschool,” Lois explains. This, she devotes her ethnography to these mothers, bypassing the more commonly researched homeschooled …

Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) is a conservative youth activism organization that offers college students across the United States a variety of outlets for promoting Right-Wing ideology.

It looks like the Lone Star State’s reputation as a hotbed of anti-science fanaticism is about to be reinforced. At least six creationists/”intelligent design” proponents succeeded in getting invited to review high school biology textbooks that…

Across college campuses last week, students were faced with a full-page ad promoting “Islamic Apartheid Week”. Funded and placed by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, it appeared during the annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” organized by pro-…

From 2009 to 2010, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) set about the once-a-decade task of writing curriculum standards for Texas’ almost five million school children. Claiming that “Academia is skewed too far to the left,” right-wing Board…

The Virginia state legislature passed a bill yesterday that would allow religious and political student groups on college campuses to discriminate and still receive public funding. The bill, which would prevent universities from implementing wide-…

After the controversy surrounding Arizona’s S.B. 1070 immigration law and recent legislation banning abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, I’ve grown accustomed to controversial legislation from my home state. This month, the Arizona legislature is…

This week, Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield (R) re-introduced the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bans any discussion of homosexuality by elementary and middle school teachers in the state.

In June 1995, the economist Milton Friedman wrote an article for the Washington Post promoting the use of public education funds for private schools as a way to transfer the nation’s public school systems to the private sector. “Vouchers,” he wrote…

Curriculum from a Christian Nationalist Worldview

On May 21, Texas School Board member Cynthia Dunbar opened the board’s meeting with an invocation: “Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England, or the charter of Massachusetts Bay, or the Fundamental Orders of…

Commentary Dover is over, for now. Beginning in 2004, an elected school board attempted to change the Dover, PA, science curriculum so that it cast significant doubt on the evolutionary hypothesis. The board tried to substitute a textbook,…

Growing Pains or Arrested Development?

“A few years ago,” the Washington Times reported in a story last year, “Jeff O’Holleran said he began to realize that he was different from the other boys he knew…. Yesterday, he said, it was time to come out of the closet. In the middle…

Excerpt from Deliberate Differences: Progressive and Conservative Campus Activism in the United States, a Political Research Associates report by Pam Chamberlain (2005). Our findings are summarized as follows: 1. Energetic College Students…

Privatizing the Common Wealth

Foreword By Patricia Jehlen State Representative - Somerville, MA Ideas are powerful. The relentless, well-funded, and well-connected efforts of the Pioneer Institute to “change the direction of the wind” politically in Massachusetts are well…