Mizzou president resigns, forced pregnancy tests, special ed, and more: Required Readings, 11.08.15

The president of the University of Missouri resigned this morning in the wake of protests and a hunger strike over his handling of racism at the school.

Girls in Sierra Leone are forced to undergo public pregnancy tests and physical examinations since the government banned pregnant girls from attending mainstream schools and taking exams. Meanwhile, a Georgia teacher forced a teen to swear on a Bible that she was not pregnant in order to participate in student government, after the girl gained weight over the summer.

School districts across the U.S. are dealing with a shortage of credentialed special education teachers, in part because of overwhelming paperwork and especially long hours. In New York, a lawsuit accuses a Brooklyn charter school of not providing mandated special education services and punishing students for behavior that arose from their disabilities.

The Vermont State Board of Education approved a letter this week telling parents not to be concerned about their child’s standardized test scores, because the information the tests provide is narrow and not a robust measure of skills and abilities. And an Alabama state school board member is not a fan of the Common Core tests, because she considers them an effort by “radical, left, homosexualists” to indoctrinate students into becoming “little social activists for social justice.”

A course on sex and film showed one professor the negative side of trigger warnings.

Dozens of City University of New York faculty were arrested last week while protesting at administration officers over a demand for salary increases in their first contract since 2010.

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