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According to teachers’ unions, COVID only spreads on Fridays. Detroit Public Schools – after negotiations with the Detroit Federation of Teachers – has just announced it will move to remote instruction on Fridays, which district officials say is in response to “mental health” and “COVID cases.”

As Bellwether Education’s Alex Spurrier points out, Detroit received an astounding $1.3 billion in federal funding for “pandemic relief” – or $25,000 per student. Yet, as he notes, the district “can’t find a way to keep schools open five days/week.”

What’s next for school choice in Virginia? Writing for the Institute for Family Studies, Jonathan Butcher explains that Virginia legislators should consider proposals to expand the state’s tax credit scholarships. Currently, donors only receive a tax credit worth 65 percent of their donations to scholarship organizations. This makes scholarship contributions less appealing to potential donors, which limits the number of students who can access a scholarship. Lawmakers should consider giving charitable donors and organizations a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for their contributions to scholarship-granting groups. Policymakers should also expand student eligibility for these K-12 private school scholarships to include all students and convert the scholarships into education savings accounts, similar to the accounts in Arizona, Florida, and elsewhere. Read on for more of Jonathan’s proposals on this issue.

What does that have to do with math? Writing for Real Clear Politics this week, the Discovery Institute’s Debra Saunders asked Jonathan about California’s new K-12 mathematics standards. “According to California's draft ‘Mathematics Framework,’ math is not just a ‘neutral discipline’; it also can be used to promote equity and ‘social justice,’" she wrote. Saunders quoted Jonathan asking, "What does this have to do with learning math?" Jonathan explained that “schools should be teaching math skills that comport with rigorous standards; instead, they're trying to train ‘foot soldiers for some social justice cause.’" Read more about California’s “Woke Math” here.

Speaking of “woke” – are teachers? New research from Jay Greene and James Paul suggests that teachers’ political leanings are closer to the average American than to the average liberal. For example, in Political Opinions of K-12 Teachers: Results from a Nationally Representative Survey, Jay and James reveal that just 27 percent of Americans believe the birth of America was 1619 – rather than 1776 – a number equal to the percentage of teachers who believe similarly (27 percent). That figure was far below the results for liberal respondents, 52 percent of whom believe the birth of America was 1619.