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GOP legislative leaders on Thursday maintained that parents need more transparency on what students are being exposed to inside Tennessee's public schools, but a handful conceded the arguments recently used to condemn teachers and libraries had crossed a line.

The Republican supermajority at the capitol is going after more books, this time books the GOP says contain pornographic material in them.

Eight Republican candidates for the Williamson County Schools Board of Education participated in a candidate forum Thursday, their first chance to answer questions in front of constituents ahead of the May 3 county primary.

Tennessee Textbook Commissioner and potential House of Representatives candidate Laurie-Cardoza Moore testified before House subcommittee yesterday that she believed the commission on which she serves should have expanded authority to be able to regulate books that appear on school library shelves.

The ACLU of Tennessee has requested that the state of Tennessee release all records regarding its announced charter school partnership with Hillsdale College in Michigan.

The removal of "Maus" from McMinn County Schools — located in East Tennessee — caused the phrases "book banning" and "book burning" to go viral across the internet in January.

When award-winning author and illustrator Jerry Craft learned last October that his virtual visit to a school in Katy, Texas, was canceled and his popular book New Kid had been removed from the library’s shelves, he was shocked. A mom had complained that his humorous graphic novel—about his childhood experience as a Black student attending a mostly white school—gives students a distorted view of race.

First, as angry as we may get, it's not humanly possible to ban a book, really. We keep using the term "ban" as a kind of shorthand for attempts to shoo certain books away from places where they might be encountered by young humans (the same humans who carry pocket computers with internet access to Two Girls One Cup and stills from the Human Centipede--and no, I am not linking to either).

Williamson County parent group OneWillCo spoke out this week on the issue of book banning and giving authority the State Textbook Commission to ban books in public school libraries.

School librarians are pushing back against a bill that Governor Lee says he plans on signing into law.

The new law would allow local school boards to still make the decisions about which books are on shelves.

But, if a parent disagrees with one of their choices, they can appeal to the Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission.

Hillsdale College is one of the leaders in Christian Nationalist education, and have been pushing charter school programs for years. We've looked at them before. Their current president is Larry Arnn, a guy who is a lot heavier on the conservative than the Christian. And it turns out he has some spectacularkly insulting thoughts about teachers and education.