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Fighting discrimination. I talked to Newsmax this week about discrimination—and how this should have no place in America. I explained that the new “woke” agenda is pushing for discriminatory activities in classrooms based on teacher and student skin color and other immutable characteristics instead of the content of someone’s character. You can watch the segment here.

Not helping students in need. Should the federal government take the hard-earned dollars of American families and use it to give welfare to the middle-class and wealthy?

The answer should be obvious: Of course not. This turns welfare on its head.

Welfare is supposed to serve as a safety net for those in need. But the Biden administration and some legislators would like to turn the needs-based federal school meal programs into a blanket entitlement: free school meals for all. Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Daren Bakst and I write this week, “It’s past time to get federal school meals back on track and serving its intended recipients: those in need.” Read on.

Washington lets unions drive reopening plans. Last week, Jude Schwalbach wrote in the Daily Signal about how at least two of the CDC’s guidelines for reopening schools were taken verbatim from suggestions made by the American Federation for Teachers, one of the largest teacher unions in the nation. “While American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten brushed off the emails as ‘routine’ correspondence, The 74’s Mike Antonucci noted that Weingarten’s own words capture the conundrum: ‘The problem is that it’s routine,’ he wrote. This ‘routine’ correspondence illustrates the all-too-common occurrence of teacher union lobbying setting the tone for agency guidelines,” Schwalbach noted.

Fox News reached out to Jude for further comment about the federal agency’s lopsided collaboration with special interest groups. Jude's statement explained, "When CDC guidelines are taken verbatim from language suggested by powerful teachers unions, it diminishes the public trust in our civil institutions. Parents—the biggest stakeholders in education—do not have the political clout to affect CDC reopening guidelines, yet teachers unions have a direct line to policymakers in the upper echelons of the CDC."

Getting into college…Lindsey Burke and Mike Gonzalez write in the Daily Signal about the elimination of the SAT and ACT in admissions decisions at colleges within the massive University of California system. As they argue:

"For all of the shortcomings of standardized tests—and the particular problems with the College Board, which owns the SAT—these college entrance exams attempt to approximate an objective assessment of a student’s capacity to do college-level work. Getting a good score reflects hard work and often is rewarded with admission to a chosen college."

And while there's clearly no love lost for the College board, California's decision - the result of a 2019 legal battle - has more to do with rejecting meritocracy than calibrating the college admissions process.

"...California’s move isn’t born of a desire to correct course on assessments and identify better tools for screening applicants to the UC System. It’s born of a desire to abandon meritocracy, to align the state’s policies with the broader goals of critical theory. The ability to do academic work should determine who gets into college, not race, national origin, sex, or any other immutable characteristic," they conclude.

…and who picks up the tab? Lindsey also joined NPR's All Sides with Ann Fisher to discuss the problems with student loan debt forgiveness. You can listen here.