Classroom Ideology

American students are falling further behind their peers around the world, and one education researcher says DEI policies are making the problem worse. Lance Izumi, senior director at the Pacific Research Institute and author of “The Great Equity Epidemic,” joins John Bickley and Georgia Howe to discuss how equity-based grading, ...

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies have become embedded in American education despite President Trump’s efforts to eliminate them and some schools’ attempts to rebrand them. A 2025 investigation found that nearly 24,000 schools in 46 states and the District of Columbia were implementing DEI through policies, strategic plans, or ...

SACRAMENTO – Students, parents, teachers, school board members and college professors across the country are challenging controversial so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies (DEI) and winning.  Their stories are at the heart of a new book released today by the nonpartisan, California-based, free-market think tank, the Pacific Research Institute. The ...

Civics, according to education writer and longtime Los Angeles teacher Larry Sand, is “the study of what it means to be a citizen, focusing on the rights, duties, and responsibilities of community members,” and also “understanding how government functions, including citizens’ roles in voting, obeying laws, and participating in the ...

America’s military schools are ranked the best in the nation. California should take note. The U.S. Department of Defense, through its Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) program, operates 160 K-12 schools in the U.S. and overseas. These schools at American military installations serve around 67,000 very diverse students who ...

While San Francisco’s recently halted equity grading scheme sparked national uproar and derision, the real lesson of this fiasco is the near-total lack of transparency in the school district’s education decision-making process. Equity grading, which has been adopted by school districts across the country, is basically grade inflation dressed up ...

Low student scores on national and state reading tests expose the disturbing reality that a lot of children are being promoted from one grade to the next even though they do not have the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed. Reading is the foundational skill that all children need to ...

America’s amazing technological achievements, such as SpaceX’s recent rescue of stranded astronauts, mask the death spiral of math learning in the U.S., which has reached an ignominious low with Harvard’s decision to offer remedial math. On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam, 73 percent of eighth graders ...

More than two decades ago, I co-authored a Pacific Research Institute report entitled “Facing the Classroom Challenge,” which analyzed the teacher-training curricula at schools of education in the California State University system.  Many of these schools openly stated their left-wing bias. At California State University Dominguez Hills in the Los ...

When average people think about classical education, they tend to think about students reading the great works of Western civilization such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Those same people probably do not think about mathematics and its classical origins, yet it is the movement away from mathematics’ classical heritage that ...