Good morning, you’re listening to the Daily Apple, your source for the latest in Education News. I’m your host Jim Kent, the date is December 13, 2019. Before we get into the news of the day, I’d like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, VictoryXR. VXR’s award-winning content, helps kids experience science and engineering in a way that they have never been able to before, while making sure to cover everything within the NextGen Science Standards, and they’ve made it accessible on every kind of VR headset you can think of. To find out more, check out VictoryXR.com But now for the news.

NPR reports that documents they’ve obtained shed new light on a bitter fight between defrauded student borrowers and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

These borrowers — more than 200,000 of them — say some for-profit colleges lied to them about their job prospects and the transferability of credits. They argue they were defrauded and that the Education Department should erase their federal student loan debt under a rule called "borrower defense."

DeVos disagrees: She says most student borrowers still got value from these schools and deserve only partial relief from their federal loans. Now, internal Education Department memos obtained by NPR show that career staff in the department's Borrower Defense Unit came down firmly on the side of defrauded borrowers.

Until now, these internal department memos have been hidden from public view. Lawmakers had previously requested access to them, but DeVos and her department refused to hand them over. DeVos has argued for years that the Obama administration's full-relief interpretation of the borrower defense rule was too lenient. DeVos' new plan is the department's second attempt at resolving the more than 200,000 outstanding borrower defense claims. The first attempt was blocked in May 2018 by Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Devos testified yesterday, in front of congress to defend her plan.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786367598/betsy-devos-overruled-education-dept-findings-on-defrauded-student-borrowers

According to The New York Times, An executive order signed Wednesday that extends civil rights protection to Jews is likely to strengthen the hand of President Trump’s Education Department, where the department’s civil rights chief has been investigating some of the nation’s most elite universities for anti-Jewish bias. Mr. Trump, at a Hanukkah celebration at the White House, opened the door on a case-by-case basis to essentially defining Judaism as a race or national origin, not just a religion, under the Civil Rights Act. His order also expanded the definition of anti-Semitism to include some anti-Israel sentiments. Both moves had been pushed by Kenneth L. Marcus, the head of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, for years.

Jewish groups were largely supportive, with some liberal organizations opposing it. Palestinian rights groups were incensed.

The issue arises as campuses have become hotbeds of racial and cultural strife. In a 2018 report, the Anti-Defamation League found an 89 percent increase in reported episodes of anti-Semitism on college campuses in one year, as well as a steady rise in white-supremacist propaganda.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/trump-anti-semitism-judaism-nationality.html

According to Fox61 in Connecticut, The Killingly Board of Education voted late Wednesday night to temporarily not have a mascot given the different opinions on whether it should be the Redmen or the Red Hawks.

Before that vote, the board initially voted for the Redmen and that is when most of the crowd left in an uproar. Those who oppose Redmen said the name is racially inappropriate and disrespectful to the Native American culture. State Police and Killingly Police made their presence known at the Board of Education meeting knowing the crowd has been aggressive in past meetings.

Killingly High School's mascot was formerly known as The Redmen. In July, the Board of Ed decided to allow a mascot change. In October, students voted to change the mascot to the Red Hawks.

However, the controversy returned when Newly-elected Republicans on the board decided to change it back to the Redmen. Members with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe said the Redmen image is offensive because it displayed a Native American in a headdress and feathers were adorned on the helmets of football players.

A special meeting will be held next Wednesday to further discuss this controversy.

https://fox61.com/2019/12/12/crowd-leaves-in-an-uproar-as-killingly-board-of-education-votes-not-to-have-mascot/

The Dothan Eagle reports that Alabama's State Department of Education voted to replace Common Core math standards on Thursday. Suzanne Culbreth, former Alabama Teacher of the Year (2013), and member of the Math COS committee, said she believes the hard work and dedication that went in to developing the new math standards will bode well for Alabama students and their educational achievement for years to come.

Alabama joins eight other states that do not teach Common Core state standards, either because they never adopted or have since replaced or repealed it.

https://www.dothaneagle.com/news/education/alabama-state-department-of-education-vote-to-replace-common-core/article_e075fad9-4f99-576c-9981-50dfdd5dbeda.html

In Toronto, the Globe News Wire reports that four unions representing teachers and education workers across Ontario’s publicly funded education system have filed court challenges against the Ontario government’s Bill 124, the Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act.

Given the content and timing of the legislation, in the midst of negotiations for the renewal of collective agreements in the education sector, the unions contend that Bill 124 is a direct attack on free collective bargaining in the education sector, and a violation of sections 2(b) and 2(d) of the Charter, which guarantee freedom of expression and the freedom of association. In addition, they believe the legislation violates the duty of the Crown to bargain in good faith.

The Ontario government has said that the purpose of the bill, which would moderate the compensation of public employees, is to “ensure public sector compensation reflects the province's current fiscal reality.”

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/12/12/1959885/0/en/Education-Unions-Launch-Charter-Challenge-Against-Ford-Government.html

According to reporting by the AP, The University of Phoenix and its parent company have agreed to pay $50 million in cash and cancel $141 million in student debt to settle allegations of deceptive advertisement brought by the Federal Trade Commission.

The deal, announced Tuesday, settles a dispute over an ad campaign the for-profit college launched in 2012 touting partnerships with companies including Microsoft, Twitter and Adobe. It suggested the school worked with those companies to create job opportunities for students, even though there was no such agreement, investigators found.

The Federal Trade Commission said the settlement is the largest the agency has ever obtained against a for-profit college. Under the settlement, the University of Phoenix and Apollo will cancel all remaining debt for students who first enrolled between Oct. 1, 2012, and the end of 2016. Letters will be sent to borrowers saying they no longer owe payments to the school. The school is also barred from making false claims about its relationships with companies or employers.

The FTC says the $50 million payment will be used to help consumers who were misled by the ads.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-phoenix-agrees-cancel-141-million-student-loan-debt-n1099681

CBS Minnesota reports that Bethel University announced this week that it will cut administrative staff and faculty in order to deal with declining student enrollment.

In a statement Tuesday, the Arden Hills-based Christian college says that staff cuts will be announced next month and that faculty cuts will be made public in April.

Affected faculty will stay on until the end of the 2020-2021 academic year, the university says. Teach-out programs will be offered for students affected by the curriculum changes. Bethel did not say which departments would be affected by the cuts.

Bethel says it’s among many colleges across the nation facing financial difficulty due to the declining undergraduate enrollment numbers.

https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2019/12/11/citing-declining-student-enrollment-bethel-university-to-cut-staff-faculty/

And that rounds it up for todays headlines. Thanks again to VictoryXr for making this all possible. You can find the full transcript of today’s episode, along with links to the full stories, in the description of the episode. If you have any questions, comments, or stories of your own that deserve to be broadcast, let us know on social media at dailyapplepod or by email at dailyapplepod@gmail.comThanks for listening. We’ll see you tomorrow morning, bright and early