“More than three million borrowers have had $127 billion of their federal student loans flagged for cancellation, despite a Supreme Court ruling in June that blocked relief for millions more student-loan holders,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The high court ruled that the Biden administration couldn’t cancel hundreds of billions of dollars for tens millions of student-loan holders, reasoning that the authority for such a broad-based policy doesn’t exist under the law. While that closed one path, Biden tapped a variety of different tools that no previous president had ever used to this extent.”

David French: “In rightly ascribing importance to the Harvards of the world, we can forget that other schools in other contexts also exercise immense influence, and their virtues and flaws can sometimes be more consequential than anything that happens in the Ivy League.”

“In fact, I’d argue that the moral collapse at Liberty University in Virginia may well be the most consequential education scandal in the United States, not simply because the details themselves are shocking and appalling, but because Liberty’s misconduct both symbolizes and contributes to the crisis engulfing Christian America. It embodies a cultural and political approach that turns Christian theology on its head.”

An Arizona father stripped down to a “crop top and short shorts” at a school board meeting to protest against a proposed relaxing of the student dress code, KPNX reports..

Said the father: “Under the proposed policy this would be appropriate in a classroom.”

The board was not swayed and approved the new, relaxed dress code.

“President Biden announced student-debt forgiveness for another tranche of Americans on Wednesday, months after the Supreme Court blocked the administration’s most ambitious borrower-relief plan,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The string of politically advantageous announcements comes thanks to the administration’s use of existing programs that allow the government to waive debt for certain borrowers.”

“The moves are separate from the administration’s troubled attempt to cancel as much as $20,000 in student debt for any borrower who earns less than $125,000 a year. The Supreme Court struck down that executive action in June.”

Washington Post: “The American Library Association is facing a partisan firefight unlike anything in its almost 150-year history.”

“The once-uncontroversial organization, which says it is the world’s largest and oldest library association and which provides funding, training and tools to most of the country’s 123,000 libraries, has become entangled in the education culture wars — the raging debates over what and how to teach about race, sex and gender.”

“Over the summer, state libraries in Montana, Missouri and Texas announced that they were severing ties with the ALA, imperiling their libraries’ access to funding and training.”

Texas made the most attempts to ban or restrict books in 2022, according to a new report from the American Library Association, The Guardian reports.

“Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday he wants to close the Department of Education and have state governments ‘run the education of our children,’ pushing for a long-held Republican goal that has been endorsed by several other 2024 GOP candidates,” CNN reports.

Said Trump, in a video: “We’re going to end education coming out of Washington, DC. We’re going to close it up – all those buildings all over the place and people that in many cases hate our children. We’re going to send it all back to the states.”

“But eliminating the US Department of Education would not necessarily give any more power to states over K-12 schools. While the federal agency helps the president execute education policies, the power to set curriculum, establish schools and determine enrollment eligibility already lies with the states and local school boards.”

“The elite colleges that found an ally in Miguel Cardona while defending their admissions practices are now among the Education secretary’s biggest targets,” Politico reports.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to gut race-conscious college admissions policies ignited new urgency among civil rights groups concerned about Black and brown students being left out of higher education. But it also gave Cardona — and President Joe Biden — an opening to air long-held criticisms of how Harvard, Yale and other selective institutions favor applicants who come from wealthy alumni families through legacy admissions.”

“The head of the Chicago Teachers Union is facing backlash for sending her eldest child to a private high school, a decision she says represents a stark statement about disinvestment in public schools and drives home why the fight to fully fund neighborhood schools is so important,” the Chicago Sun Times reports.

Said Stacy Davis Gates: “In many of our schools on the South Side and the West Side, the course offerings are very marginal and limited. Then the other thing, and it was a very strong priority, was his ability to participate in co-curricular and extracurricular activities, which quite frankly, don’t exist in many of the schools, high schools in particular.”

“The Classic Learning Test is the college admissions exam that most students have never heard of. An alternative to the SAT and ACT for only a small number of mostly religious colleges, the test is known for its emphasis on the Western canon, with a big dose of Christian thought,” the New York Times reports.

“But on Friday, Florida’s public university system, which includes the University of Florida and Florida State University, is expected to become the first state system to approve the Classic Learning Test, or CLT, for use in admissions.”

“As Florida lawmakers expanded eligibility for school vouchers this year, they also gave parents more ways to spend the money,” the Tampa Bay Times reports.

“Theme park passes, 55-inch TVs, and stand-up paddleboards are among the approved items that recipients can buy to use at home. The purchases can be made by parents who home-school their children or send them to private schools, if any voucher money remains after paying tuition and fees.”

“Democratic state officials in California are taking a leading role in fighting the education culture wars at the local level, just as conservatives launch an effort to take the same issues directly to voters,” NBC News reports.

“Three of the top elected officials in the state — Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — are pulling a variety of levers to fight back against conservative school board policies banning books and restricting support for LGBTQ students.”

“When Florida rejected a new Advanced Placement course on African American Studies, state officials said they objected to the study of several concepts — like reparations, the Black Lives Matter movement and ‘queer theory,'” the Miami Herald reports.

“But the state did not say that in many instances, its reviewers also made objections in the state’s attempt to sanitize aspects of slavery and the plight of African Americans throughout history.”

“In response, the state raised concerns that the unit ‘may not address the internal slave trade/system within Africa’ and that it ‘may only present one side of this issue and may not offer any opposing viewpoints or other perspectives on the subject.'”

“The Biden administration officially launched the new income-driven student loan repayment plan for borrowers Tuesday, ahead of repayments restarting this fall,” The Hill reports.

“For most people with federal student loans, the Supreme Court dashed their dreams of debt relief. Still, some borrowers are beginning to have their balances wiped away,” Bloomberg reports.

“The US Department of Education recently began forgiving $39 billion in student debt for more than 800,000 borrowers that enrolled in income-driven repayment plans and had made monthly payments for at least 20 years.”

Washington Post: “Hundreds of thousands of children have begun home schooling in the last three years, an unprecedented spike that generated a huge new market. In New Hampshire, for instance, the number of home-schoolers doubled during the pandemic, and even today it remains 40 percent above pre-covid totals.”

“For many years, home schooling has conjured images of parents and children working together at the kitchen table. The new world of home schooling often looks very different: pods, co-ops, microschools and hybrid schools, often outside the home, as well as real-time and recorded virtual instruction. For a growing number of students, education now exists somewhere on a continuum between school and home, in person and online, professional and amateur.”

Chronicle of Higher Education: “When a committee of the New College of Florida Board of Trustees met in July, a whopping 36 faculty members had already left since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis initiated a conservative restructuring of the institution in January. That number has subsequently grown to more than 40…”

“This fall will mark the first new academic year since DeSantis began his overhaul of the liberal arts college, the smallest public institution in Florida, by appointing six new conservative trustees. Many students were nervous about returning to NCF under the new leadership, which in short order fired former president Patricia Okker, axed the diversity, equity and inclusion office and denied five faculty members tenure. But as the fall semester inches closer, it is becoming increasingly apparent just how much dysfunction New College’s students will have to contend with this year.”

“Parents who don’t send their kids to school on a regular basis could be sentenced to jail, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.