Chalkbeat

American Psychological Association calls for higher ed tech standards, not screen bans in new report

2026-09-03T04:08:35+00:00

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Badges, tokens, and flashing lights: The widespread gamification of education technology harms learning and harms children, the American Psychological Association said in a new report out Thursday.

While the organization is calling for much higher standards for widely used learning apps and platforms, outright bans on screens or arbitrary time limits are not the answer, the report says.

“It is much easier for a school district to say we’re putting an all-out ban on something than do the harder work of actually vetting to make sure that learning is happening,” said Nicole Barnes, the APA’s executive lead psychologist for education. She said science supports the idea that technology “can be a very powerful tool to support learning, and it can be one that harms it at the same time.”

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The report comes as debates about education technology in general and AI specifically are roiling American classrooms, school boards, and state legislatures. New York City’s school system just adopted what might be the most restrictive AI policy in the country. Los Angeles Unified School District, meanwhile, banned laptops and tablets for young learners and prohibited the use of AI tools on school-issued devices. Other school districts are following suit.

The APA report aims to inform that debate with the science of how children learn and develop, to help people make decisions “from a place of evidence and not a place of hysteria or fear,” Barnes said.

People on all sides of that debate may find evidence in the report to support their position.

Key findings include:

Time spent on learning apps, student enjoyment, and completion rates are often mistaken for learning.
Features designed to maintain student attention can district from learning.
The amount of time students spend on learning platforms is not as important as what those platforms may be replacing, such as interaction with teachers or classmates.
Learning platforms can be good for practicing specific skills, but claims about improved critical thinking are rarely supported by evidence.
AI can improve student performance while reducing learning — a more polished finished product or higher score doesn’t necessarily mean the student learned more.

The report includes recommendations for educators, policymakers, and parents on what questions to ask and how to evaluate learning platforms.

Schools should ask for independent evaluations of the effectiveness of learning tools, not studies commissioned by ed tech vendors, the report says. They should also pay attention to which students benefit and which students continue to struggle when using certain tools, rather than looking at broad averages.

There are tools with a proven track record, Barnes said, including tools that have made learning more accessible for students with disabilities and English learners.

But too often, children are regularly exposed to technology that replaces human connections and productive struggle with the illusion of better scores and student engagement, Barnes said.

“Close the app. Ask the student to explain. Ask the student to solve a new problem, or to apply the skill in a different setting,” Barnes said. “This success that you might be seeing, this performance that you might be equating with learning, might just be that the student is really skilled in navigating that platform.”

The origin’s of the report predate the current ed tech debate and go back to pandemic-era online learning.

Barnes recalled looking over her son’s shoulder in 2020 and asking why he was playing a game rather than doing his homework. But the game was his homework.

“I only had to look at it for a minute to see that it wasn’t resulting in the type of learning that I’m sure it was being sold or marketed as,” she said. “If your child is spending more time dressing a character than doing a problem, that app is probably not resulting in learning taking place.”

Barnes’ first piece of advice to parents is to take that minute to pay attention to what apps and platforms their children are using for school. Then, if something doesn’t seem right, take another minute to ask the principal what evidence there is that the program supports learning.

She acknowledges this isn’t a silver bullet. Her conversation with her child’s principal didn’t lead the school to ditch the app. The longer-term solution would involve school systems and governments agreeing to hold ed tech vendors to a higher standard.

“All we’re really saying is, if you’re going to claim learning, you should prove it,” she said. “To me, that doesn’t seem too much to ask.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump’s moves to break up Education Department generate new bipartisan resistance in Senate

2026-07-31T22:05:48+00:00

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President Donald Trump doesn’t have the votes to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, though that’s not stopping him from taking it apart.

That came into focus this week when moderate Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine joined Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and other Democrats to advance legislation that would reverse some of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Education Department.

Thursday’s bipartisan 13-9 vote in the Senate education committee represents the first formal effort by Congress to stop a series of interagency agreements that Education Secretary Linda McMahon has used to transfer core functions to other departments.

“This bill is straightforward. It keeps the administration of important landmark education programs at the Department of Education, where Congress specifically put them and where they belong,” Collins said during the committee hearing.

McMahon has pitched these agreements, which critics have said are illegal, as “proof of concept” that the federal government can adequately support education without a standalone department. She and her top deputies have repeatedly said they are not trying to go around Congress to abolish the agency, even as they have moved aggressively to outsource its core functions without congressional approval.

That backing has always appeared unlikely. Unless the Senate ditches the filibuster, significant legislation such as abolishing a cabinet-level agency would require 60 votes. And Republicans only hold 53 seats. No Democrats are on record supporting the effort.

Perhaps there was a time when some Democratic votes could have been found in exchange for dramatic increases in education funding, said Rick Hess, a senior fellow at the right-learning American Enterprise Institute. Those days are long gone — and the Trump administration never offered that deal anyway.

The committee vote, meanwhile, shows the administration can’t unite even Republicans behind its goals, something the president’s allies find “enormously frustrating.”

“I don’t see a path forward,” Hess said.

At the same time, if Democrats somehow convinced enough Republicans or won enough seats to pass the bill restricting Trump’s outsourcing effort, he would simply veto it, Hess said.

“Nobody has the votes to do anything,” Hess said.

The legislation advanced by the Senate committee would roll back four of the interagency agreements. These sent K-12 education and postsecondary education to the Labor Department, Indian education to the Interior Department, and most controversially, special education oversight to Health and Human Services.

The bill does not affect agreements moving career and technical education to Labor, or giving the Justice Department a larger role in civil rights enforcement in schools.

The change to special education, widely decried by advocates, appears to have been the move that prompted public resistance on Capitol Hill. Trump’s record low approval ratings also give Republican skeptics more breathing room to act independently.

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, the education committee chair who recently lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, echoed the concerns of many special education advocates when he said, “I worry that many states will still struggle to meet IDEA’s requirements and need federal technical assistance, coordination, and oversight,” referring to the main federal special education law.

Though Cassidy ultimately voted against broader limits on reorganizing the Education Department, it’s notable that he allowed the vote to occur. He also introduced his own bill to prevent special education from going to HHS.

In response to the legislation, McMahon sent an open letter to Congress Thursday touting the success of the interagency agreements to date. She noted record numbers of applications for some grant programs and the successful distribution of federal funds.

“Our interagency agreements deliver on both promises by breaking up the failed federal education bureaucracy in Washington and partnering with agencies who are far better equipped to manage essential programs effectively,” she wrote.

Although the administration has promised to “return education to the states,” it has aggressively wielded federal authority in a bid to restrict liberal policies related to race and gender in school. Trump officials have also said they would preserve most existing federal education programs.

A department spokesperson said the legislation represented “an insult to American families — and downright malpractice.”

“It is entirely premature to sabotage this effort before it has the chance to eliminate bureaucratic barriers and fully deliver the results that our students, families, and educators deserve,” press secretary Savannah Newhouse said in an emailed statement.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Jeffco Public Schools sues Trump administration over Title IX-related threats to federal funding

2026-07-29T02:30:32+00:00

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Jeffco Public Schools is suing the Trump administration in an effort to prevent the U.S. Department of Education from withholding roughly $50 million in federal funding.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Colorado, is the latest step in a dispute between the state’s second largest school district and the Education Department over policies related to transgender students.

The Office for Civil Rights said the district’s policies on transgender sports participation and overnight field trip accommodations violate Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. Numerous other school districts have faced similar investigations.

Under the Trump administration, civil rights enforcement has focused on a few political priorities, including undoing protections for transgender students, while other cases have languished.

In its lawsuit, Jeffco Public Schools alleges that the Education Department changed longstanding interpretations of Title IX without going through an appropriate rule-making process, a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and that the way the department handled the investigation reflects an “arbitrary and capricious” approach that violates the district’s rights.

The lawsuit alleges that the administration has demanded that Jeffco Public Schools violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws based on an interpretation of Title IX that hasn’t been tested in the courts. A recent Supreme Court decision found that states may pass sports policies that block transgender students from joining sports teams that match their gender identity, but it did not require that they do so. The decision explicitly left the issue up to states and school districts, at least for now.

The lawsuit further alleges that the Education Department’s demands violate the First Amendment. One of the corrective actions required by the Office for Civil Rights was that the district issue a public statement adopting the Trump administration’s definition of sex and agreeing with its interpretation of Title IX.

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.

In an open letter to the community, interim Superintendent Rob Stein acknowledged that the lawsuit comes as the district faces serious budget problems and involves contentious issues. He said the Office for Civil Rights had placed the district in an “impossible position,” and the lawsuit would provide clarity about what it means to follow the law.

“The federal funding at issue helps support important programs and services that benefit students across our district, including many of our most vulnerable learners,” he wrote. “Protecting these resources is one of our responsibilities as a school district.”

Chalkbeat reporting found that OCR’s investigation into Jeffco was based on a limited review of documents rather than on in-depth interviews, an approach that represents a departure from past practices. The Education Department accused the district of having up to 61 boys on the rosters of girls’ sports teams, while the district says those names belonged to trainers, managers, and mascots. The department also issued a letter of impasse threatening enforcement action even before a 90-day window for negotiating an agreement had expired.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department investigates Denver Public Schools over teacher accused of making students kiss

2026-07-28T20:19:46+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education is investigating Denver Public Schools over an incident in which a high school teacher was accused of making girls kiss each other as part of a class assignment.

The Education Department’s description of the allegation is consistent with a previously reported incident at Northeast Early College during the 2023-24 school year. Local news outlets CBS Colorado and the Denver Gazette reported that an independent review found that students in a French class felt pressured to kiss other students of the same sex as part of skits performed in class. The district fired the teacher in question. The school principal also referred the incident to law enforcement. No criminal charges resulted.

Federal officials said Tuesday their investigation will focus on whether the district ignored any opt-out requests from parents or students, and whether parents were notified in advance about the nature of the assignment. The Office for Civil Rights will also look at whether the district complied with Title IX requirements in its handling of the incident.

The Denver investigation comes as the Office for Civil Rights has shifted its focus to political priorities such as transgender sports participation, bathroom access policies, and antisemitism on college campuses. The Education Department previously found DPS in violation of Title IX for converting a girls restroom at East High School to a gender-neutral restroom, but it has not pursued any enforcement action.

The Education Department, which did not name the teacher or the school at the center of the allegations, said the latest investigation is part of a larger effort to protect parents’ rights and prevent schools from exposing students to content related to sexual and gender identity. In the same press release, the department announced an investigation into Bethel School District in Washington state related to a Pride Month display.

“Shocking reports from across the country indicate that our kids are being subjected to inappropriate material, surveys, and events in schools, and parents’ fundamental right to review such materials and opt their children out of these suggestive activities appear to be disregarded in the process,” said Frank Miller, director of the federal Student Privacy Policy Office, in a press release.

A spokesperson for Denver Public Schools said the district had just received the investigation notice and could not comment on the assertions Tuesday.

In an emailed statement, spokesperson Scott Pribble said the district appreciates the bravery of students who came forward and staff who acted as mandatory reporters. The district learned of student concerns in March 2025 and immediately placed the teacher on administrative leave while an investigation was conducted, the statement said.

That investigation resulted in the school board voting unanimously to fire the teacher at a May 20 board meeting.

“The safety, emotional well-being, and dignity of our students are the absolute highest priorities of DPS,” Pribble said. “Our actions to date have been wholly consistent with those priorities.”

The Education Department said it would announce more investigations this week in honor of National Parents Day, which was Sunday. These investigations will look for potential violations of Title IX and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in education. The protection of student rights law gives parents the right to review instructional materials and opt their students out of surveys and evaluations.

The Education Department has also partnered with the Justice Department to launch a series of investigations into school district policies that limit parental notification when students express a different gender identity at school.

The Trump administration says such policies violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which gives parents the right to review any educational records related to their own child. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said such investigations would be a priority as more oversight of civil rights in schools moves to the Justice Department.

According to previous media reports, a teacher asked students to perform skits in French class that included same-sex kissing. This allegedly occurred during the 2023-24 school year but was not reported until later. The teacher said she gave students alternatives, such as a fist bump or blowing a kiss to each other.

However, the independent review written by an administrative law judge in Colorado reported students said they felt pressured by a classroom policy that “the answer is always ‘yes.’” At least one student said she kissed a female classmate at the teacher’s direction despite feeling uncomfortable with it, and another said she received a zero when she refused to participate in the skits.

Students also told an investigator they felt uncomfortable that the teacher always selected girls and never boys to participate in these skits, according to the review.

The teacher, a veteran educator who had previously received strong performance reviews, told the investigator she felt targeted because she was open at school about being a lesbian and participated in LGBTQ advocacy.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Parental rights and student gender transitions will be civil rights priorities: top DOJ official

2026-07-13T19:26:26+00:00

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The day after the Education Department announced the Justice Department would play a larger role in civil rights enforcement in schools, the Justice Department’s top civil rights official gave a preview of what that might look like.

Speaking on conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s radio program, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said the Justice Department would use its investigative and prosecutorial powers to enforce its interpretation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

“FERPA protects children and parental rights from illegal gender ideology being forced down their throats,” Dhillon said during the June 17 show. States are “simply ignoring this law and abusing children,” she added, calling the Justice Department the “right place” to enforce the law.

Passed in 1974, FERPA gives parents access to their children’s school records and prevents schools from sharing student data with third parties without permission. The law does not mention gender.

But the Trump administration has made clear through guidance and investigations that it believes policies that make it harder for parents to find out how their child expresses their gender identity at school violate the law. The Supreme Court bolstered that legal interpretation in its Mirabelli v. Bonta decision earlier this year, though the case did not deal specifically with FERPA.

Now, new interagency agreements between the Education and Justice Departments suggest the Justice Department plans to get involved in cases at an earlier stage, allowing for more aggressive enforcement on issues that align with President Donald Trump’s political priorities.

“I would expect that far more cases will go to court because they will begin with an agency that leans towards litigation, and I would expect there to be more of a bias towards litigation, as opposed to a bias towards mediation or resolution,” said Kenneth Marcus, who worked on education-related civil rights issues in both the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.

Unlike the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which must investigate every complaint it receives, the Justice Department can “cherry pick” which cases it pursues, said Marcus, who now heads the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law. Under this administration, that means prioritizing allegations of campus antisemitism, anti-DEI initiatives, and issues related to transgender students, he said.

These priority areas are not new — the Trump administration made them clear from the first days. But they do stand in contrast to the disability discrimination cases that historically have made up a large share of OCR’s case load.

OCR historically has resolved many cases through informal agreements. Many years, Marcus said, not a single one of the 20,000 or more complaints that come into OCR gets referred to the Justice Department.

Education Department officials deny doing an end run around Congress

But when cases have been referred, the Justice Department often has to redo parts of the investigation. That’s not necessarily because OCR investigators did a bad job, but because OCR’s focus is not preparing cases for trial, Marcus said.

Bringing the Justice Department in earlier could allow the federal government to put more pressure on noncompliant school districts. That may be more important now because some school districts targeted by the Trump administration disagree with how it’s interpreting the law and have not agreed to change their policies after the Education Department finds them in violation.

“What can make this new system work well is if it facilitates quicker, smoother, and more effective litigation against recalcitrant institutions, Marcus said. “What would make the process fail is if the departments are less able to address the broad range of cases involving well-meaning institutions that probably shouldn’t go to court.”

Lilian Sotolongo Dorka, a former senior counsel to the assistant secretary for civil rights, fears this new system will be harder for families to navigate. The agreements also seem to go against federal law that assigns responsibility for civil rights in schools to the Education Department, she said.

“The spin that this will be great for civil rights enforcement and education is really smoke and mirrors,” said Sotolong Dorka, who is part of a group of former OCR employees attempting to serve as a watchdog. “It’s an attempt to do illegally through this partnership agreement what they cannot do legally, which is to close down the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.”

Justice Department’s Dhillon seeks ‘maximum enforcement’ of FERPA

Education Department officials have said that many aspects of the interagency agreements with Justice — which cover both the Office for Civil Rights and the Student Privacy Protection Office, which oversees FERPA complaints — are still being worked out.

In an interview last month with Chalkbeat, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kim Richey said her office remains focused on resolving cases for families.

“There’s nothing in this agreement that changes OCR practices,” she said.

Dhillon described the agreement differently, telling Beck that “99%” of school-related civil rights work will now be handled “soup to nuts” at the Justice Department. The Education Department retains ultimate authority, though, over whether to withhold federal funding from school districts that don’t comply.

Last year, a FERPA expert told Chalkbeat the law requires that school districts share written records, such as gender support plans, if parents request them. But FERPA doesn’t appear to create a duty to proactively disclose that students are expressing a different gender at school.

Some educators and advocates fear that informing unsupportive parents could put students’ physical and emotional safety at risk. But others say that parents are entitled to information that is entwined with their children’s development and well-being.

Layoffs and other departures at both departments have limited the administration’s ability to pursue its agenda. But some cases are moving ahead.

In late June, the Education Department announced it would now partner with the Justice Department on an investigation opened last year into Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools’ student gender transition and parental notification policies.

But that case appears to have followed a typical trajectory, with the Education Department already declaring it had reached an impasse with the district and would refer the case to the Justice Department. The school district has said its policies already conform to federal law and it “respectfully disagrees” with the administration’s findings.

Supreme Court ruling on gender identity favors parents but leaves unanswered questions for schools

However, America First Legal, a conservative legal group closely aligned with the administration, has filed at least nine complaints in recent months alleging that school districts from Chicago to Hoonah, Alaska, kept information about gender transitions from parents. That tees up opportunities for the administration to try a new approach.

In an emailed statement to Chalkbeat, Dhillon said the partnership between Education and Justice “ensures maximum enforcement” of FERPA.

“Congress spoke with a clear voice when it guaranteed parents the right to know what information schools are collecting and using regarding their minor children,” she said. “That guarantee does not bend to the convenience of school administrators.”

A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to additional questions about how more-commonplace cases involving students with disabilities will be handled.

But any change in enforcement, Marcus said, should be seen as a “side effect” rather than the main purpose of the interagency agreements.

“This move can be seen most clearly and accurately as a step along the way towards President Trump’s clearly articulated desire to close the Education Department,” he said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department scaled back special education monitoring: report

2026-07-08T20:15:05+00:00

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Federal teams charged with making sure states are doing right by students with disabilities appear to have visited fewer than half of the states originally scheduled for review in 2025 and 2026.

That information comes from U.S. Department of Education documents compiled and analyzed by the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a group that supports students with disabilities and their families, as well as additional review by Chalkbeat of publicly available monitoring schedules.

If federal reviews of state special education systems continue at this pace, each state would be reviewed only once every 25 years, COPAA said in a report released Tuesday. That would mean many students would go their entire school careers without federal oversight of state systems.

“The new administration has quietly rolled back their state oversight,” said Chris Roe, COPAA director of state policy. “We are worried that this sends a signal to states and eventually to local schools that this is not important, and they don’t need to be concerned about it.”

Drawing on nearly a dozen state monitoring reports based on reviews that started under the Biden administration, the COPAA report also raises concerns about states’ capacity to adequately monitor school districts’ compliance with special education requirements as the Trump administration pledges to “return education to the states.”

The Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the Education Department by assigning key duties to other federal agencies. Most recently, the department announced that special education oversight would move to the Department of Health and Human Services, a change that has drawn significant organized opposition and some bipartisan skepticism.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a Republican who chairs the Senate education committee, has promised Democratic colleagues a vote on that change later this month. By itself, a committee vote won’t reverse the Trump administration’s actions, but a vote against it would represent the strongest formal objection from Congress to date.

COPAA opposes having another government agency handle special education oversight. The group’s report calls on Congress to intervene.

A spokesperson for the Education Department said COPAA’s “entire premise is false,” without describing any specific errors in the findings. The department pointed to monitoring reports — the same ones that COPAA reviewed for its analysis — as evidence the department continues to keep tabs on states.

Citing previous remarks by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the spokesperson said the partnership between Health and Human Services and Education would improve coordination and benefit families and students, and “ensure states are in compliance with federal law.”

“Students will not lose any rights, including their right to a Free Appropriate Public Education,” the unnamed spokesperson said. “No agreement can alter the rights that students with disabilities are afforded under federal law.”

But Roe said the flaws identified in the monitoring reports show that students and families might struggle more to defend their rights without federal involvement.

Meanwhile, Politico this week highlighted the large number of states flagged by the Education Department as needing assistance or intervention to meet their goals for serving students with disabilities.

“When they say let’s return education to the states, there’s an assumption that states will backfill those responsibilities,” Roe said. “The case that that is not going to happen is pretty strong.”

Federal oversight finds gaps in special education protections

The Biden administration had previously urged states to take more responsibility for ensuring school districts meet their special education obligations. But according to monitoring reports, auditors repeatedly found shortcomings.

These included lax fiscal oversight; limited supervision of school district practices; states allowing districts to pick which student files they wanted reviewed; states not investigating parent complaints in a timely manner; and states either not informing parents of their rights or giving them incorrect information.

Roe said this system isn’t perfect. COPAA’s reviews of federal monitoring efforts over the years have found many cases where auditors identified problems, but there was limited follow-up and the problems continued. Nonetheless, the reports provide an important tool for advocates and lawmakers to press for changes, he said.

“Without them, we definitely face more of an uphill battle to getting systems in place to support our students,” Roe said.

The Education Department spokesperson said the department is “on track” to complete monitoring visits to all states by 2028, in keeping with a schedule established in 2022.

However, the spokesperson did not provide a schedule that showed how monitoring teams would visit roughly half the states in the next two years. The schedule that’s been posted on the department website since the spring of 2025 identifies only four states, Puerto Rico, and a few Pacific island territories for monitoring during the 2025-26 cycle and none thereafter. One of those states, Georgia, was supposed to be reviewed this spring, but monitoring visits have been pushed back to the fall, the department said.

During the Biden administration, the Education Department set a goal of monitoring 10 states a year, creating a five-year cycle for regular monitoring, in addition to off-cycle visits to address specific issues. COPAA found the Education Department monitored eight states in 2023 and 10 in 2024. A monitoring schedule archived by the Wayback Machine shows the department previously had plans to monitor nine states plus the territories in the 2025-26 cycle, and another 10 the next year.

It’s not clear why states previously identified for monitoring were removed from the schedule. However, the Education Department has laid off large numbers of workers. A report from the Office of Inspector General published last month raised questions about whether the department could carry out its responsibilities at current staffing levels.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

What SCOTUS didn’t say about transgender athletes — and what the ruling means for schools and students

2026-07-01T21:41:18+00:00

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision on transgender sports participation in some ways simply upheld the status quo.

States that prohibit trangender athletes from playing on teams that match their gender identity can keep doing so — there’s no constitutional problem, the court’s conservative majority found.

But states without such bans can maintain more inclusive policies. Nothing in the ruling requires that states keep transgender athletes out of women’s and girl’s sports.

But that’s just one piece of the story. Advocates on both sides expect the fight in states and the courts to continue. And the Supreme Court majority’s reasoning raises new questions about the boundaries of transgender rights and gender protections more broadly.

Fight over transgender athletes to continue in states

More than 20 states still allow transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity, provided they meet certain criteria, and the Supreme Court ruling doesn’t change anything in those states.

Bolstered by the Supreme Court ruling, people who don’t believe transgender athletes have a place in girl’s sports hope to change that through the legislative process. Voters in Colorado and Washington will also get to decide whether to adopt bans through ballot measures.

Beth Parlato, an attorney with the conservative Independent Women’s Law Center, said she can now reassure lawmakers and the public that any ban they adopt is legal. Parlato said she’s also fielding calls about how the ruling might affect interstate competition when states have different standards.

“As litigators, we keep making these arguments until we win,” she said.

LGBTQ advocates, meanwhile, hope they can succeed in the court of public opinion in a way they didn’t with the Supreme Court.

“We’ve never been favored by the laws, and we know that the courts are not the be-all, end-all,” said Shawn Meerkamper, managing attorney at the Transgender Law Center. “We’re on to the next fight.”

All youth need opportunities to be physically active

Soju Hokari, a transgender athlete who described sports as a vital part of her childhood and her development as a person, said those who care about trans youth must find ways for them to get the benefits of sports, even in states with bans. That might mean creating clubs outside school or officially sanctioned teams.

Hokari said everyone involved in sports has “an obligation to make sure we’re making space for trans athletes to thrive.”

Writing in the newsletter QueerED, teacher and researcher Benjamin Lebovitz pointed to data from Wisconsin that showed transgender and questioning youth were much less likely to participate in sports or be physically active than their peers. That gap grew as the political debate over transgender athletes heated up, and Lebovitz fears the Supreme Court ruling will only exacerbate that withdrawal.

Schools should make sure all students have access to physical education, open gym time, and intramural and club sports, and they should make co-ed teams when dividing students, Lebovitz wrote.

The definition of sex remains legally ambiguous

Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education and athletics while allowing sex-separated sports teams. But it doesn’t define sex. Federal courts have said that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex stereotypes — the idea that boys should be one way and girls another. Civil rights guidance from Democratic presidents supported this interpretation.

Conservatives disagree. They say there’s little doubt lawmakers were thinking of biological sex when they passed Title IX in 1972. (Biological sex feels intuitive to most people in most situations, but it can be a mushy concept scientifically.)

Conservatives hoped that the Supreme Court might use the Hecox v. Little and West Virginia v. B.P.J. cases that were the basis for Tuesday’s ruling to find that sex means biological sex. The justices did not go that far.

And the ruling doesn’t officially endorse the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which the Office for Civil Rights has used to justify investigations into school districts and states with inclusive sports policies.

Supporters of LGBTQ rights rally outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the transgender sports cases. Advocates say they'll work to maintain inclusive sports policies in states without bans.

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh did write that sex, especially in the portions of Title IX dealing with sports, “cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.”

Advocates and legal experts said that position could play a role in future lawsuits.

Neil Gorsuch’s balancing act confuses both sides

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in the 2019 case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that Title VII’s protections against sex discrimination on the job also protected gay and transgender employees.

In a concurrence to the sports decision, Gorsuch tried to explain how he could hold that view and still vote to uphold bans on transgender athletes. Title VII bans discrimination while Title IX allows for separation of men and women in some circumstances, he noted.

“It is a mistake to assume that, just because firing someone in part because of his biological sex amounts to unlawful discrimination in violation of Title VII, sponsoring a single-sex sports team limited to biological women or girls must also amount to unlawful discrimination in violation of Title IX,” he wrote.

Gorsuch seems to have pleased no one.

Parlato of the Independent Women’s Law Center said Gorsuch tried to “thread a needle” but that his logic doesn’t hold up.

And Meerkamper of the Transgender Law Center said “there’s no principled way” to support both the Bostock decision and the court’s new sports ruling. What’s changed, he said, is the political environment for trans rights between 2019 and 2026.

Still, unlike Justice Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch didn’t call transgender identity a mental illness.

SCOTUS silent on what protections transgender students have

Race and sex are protected classes, and potentially discriminatory laws must demonstrate some significant public interest to pass legal muster.

The conservative majority’s opinion did not find that transgender people have similar protections. But it didn’t find that they did not have such protections either. In short, they evaded the issue.

For Deborah Drake, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, that leaves an opportunity to challenge transgender discrimination in the courts — though she has few illusions that the Supreme Court’s current justices will be receptive to those claims.

But Anna Kirkland, an attorney and professor of gender studies at the University of Michigan, said it’s deeply concerning that the majority gave so much deference to state laws without requiring more evidence that women and girls are harmed when transgender athletes participate in women’s sports.

Under this approach, she said, women might not have been admitted to elite military academies, for example. And it could mean other policies that only affect a small number of people who don’t conform to gender stereotypes are allowed to stand in the future.

“This ruling shows how the conservative majority is narrowing what equal protection means for everyone,” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court rules states can restrict transgender athletes’ sports participation in schools

2026-06-30T21:38:29+00:00

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States can bar transgender athletes from playing on school teams that match their gender identity, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The 6-3 decision from the court’s conservative majority leaves intact restrictions in 29 states, most of which explicitly prevent transgender women and girls from playing on women’s and girls school sports teams.

The decision was hailed by conservatives who reject the idea that gender identity is a meaningful legal category and by some groups representing female athletes, who say such bans are necessary to ensure fairness and safety in women’s sports. It marks another legal setback for transgender youth as the Trump administration and Republican-led state legislatures have advanced policies limiting transgender rights.

The decision does not require states to bar transgender athletes from playing on teams that match their gender identity, permitting, at least for now, policies in more than 20 states that the Trump administration has targeted.

But writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the plain meaning of “sex” in the Title IX statute that bars sex discrimination in education, particularly in the amendment dealing with sports participation, “cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.”

Kavanaugh wrote that the science on whether transgender women athletes who have been through hormone therapy retain physical advantages over other women remains unsettled. That is sufficient reason, he said, to defer to states and athletic associations. And he wrote that allowing transgender girls and women to compete on women’s teams could leave other competitors at a “serious disadvantage.”

“That is because sports are generally zero sum,” he wrote. “Allowing a biological male athlete to compete on a girls’ team necessarily displaces or disadvantages a female athlete—replacing her on the roster, knocking her out of the starting lineup, reducing her playing time, depriving her of a medal, and the like. That hard reality of sports cannot be ignored or swept under the rug.”

The court’s three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed that bans on transgender women and girls participating in female sports may not violate Title IX. But she said one of the cases should have been sent back to the lower courts for further fact-finding about whether that particular athlete — a West Virginia high school track athlete who never went through male puberty — could compete fairly with other girls.

And she said the majority opinion was cavalier in its treatment of the legal rights of transgender people under the constitution’s equal protection clause. Sotomayor also expressed concern about the opportunities that could be denied to them under the ruling.

Sports, Sotomayor wrote, “can help build resilience, tenacity, leadership, and discipline. It can lead to life-long friendships, community, and a sense of belonging. It can bring joy and the thrill of victory, along with all the lessons one learns from experiencing defeat. The benefits are immense.”

“Sports, of course, are often zero sum,” she continued, “but the law need not and should not be.”

The ruling stems from two lawsuits challenging state laws in Idaho and West Virginia.

One case, Little v. Hecox, involved Lindsay Hecox, a transgender student who competed in the women’s track and field club team after she didn’t qualify for the Division I team. The other, West Virginia v. B.P.J, involved Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender high school track athlete who had undergone hormone therapy from a young age.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in both cases in January.

The cases centered on whether state laws limiting transgender athletes’ participation in sports violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

Idaho became the first state to enact such a law in 2020.

Today, 29 states have laws or policies restricting transgender athletes’ participation, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ issues. Most states with restrictions bar transgender women and girls from participating on girls sports teams, while some also prohibit transgender boys from boys teams.

Other state laws are silent on the issue or require an inclusive approach. Some high school sports associations set standards for when transgender athletes can compete in the female category.

Cases raise issues of fairness, competition, community

Soju Hokari, a transgender athlete who played ultimate frisbee in high school and college, said she wasn’t surprised at the outcome, but said she feels sad and worried for Pepper-Jackson and other trans girls who will have to stop playing on their school teams.

“I cannot imagine, as a high school student, being pulled away from that community,” said Hokari, who graduated from Emory College just as Georgia’s ban was taking effect. “Sports is so central to a lot of people’s childhoods. If I hadn’t had my sports, I would have been a very different person.”

But Nancy Hogshead, an Olympic swimmer and attorney who has advocated for women’s opportunities in sports, called the decision “a step in the right direction” that doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t require states to bar transgender athletes from women’s teams.

Given that everything from weight categories to swimsuits to the air pressure in a football is so heavily policed in sports to ensure fairness, Hogshead said it doesn’t make sense to overlook any potential advantage afforded by sex.

“The female categories exist to exclude males and male athletic advantages,” said Hogshead, who leads the advocacy group Champion Women. “It exists to give girls and women a place to compete and win.”

Ruling upholds status quo, sets up future battles

The decision marks the third setback in two years for transgender rights at the Supreme Court.

In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court in 2025 upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. In Mirabelli v. Bonta earlier this year, the Supreme Court sided with parents challenging a California law that protected the privacy of students who were transitioning.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has issued executive orders recognizing only two sexes and defining sex based on biology at birth, targeting policies involving gender-affirming care, gender markers on passports, and transgender athletes’ sports participation. It has used its interpretation of Title IX to target states and school districts with more inclusive rules.

Legal experts said Tuesday’s decision was narrow in the sense that the justices tailored their arguments to sports and left many other issues related to transgender rights for future cases.

Deborah Brake, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has written extensively about Title IX, said while this Supreme Court has not been friendly to transgender rights, nothing about the decision “forecloses challenges to transgender discrimination in other areas.”

Nonetheless, Shawn Meerkamper, managing attorney at the Transgender Law Center, said the decision endorsed sports policies in more than two dozen states that they see as discriminatory and simplistic. The court could have, for example, overturned broad bans and required states to adopt policies that consider the characteristics of individual athletes.

Across the spectrum, advocates predicted the political fight would only intensify in states that still have inclusive policies.

“It is an absolute win, and we still have more work to do at the state level,” said Beth Parlato, senior legal adviser at the conservative Independent Women’s Law Center.

This story has been updated throughout with additional reaction and commentary about the decision.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department officials deny doing an end run around Congress

2026-06-25T22:59:46+00:00

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Parceling out key Education Department functions to other agencies does not represent an end run around Congress, top officials said Thursday, even as they declined to say what might trigger the need for congressional approval.

In a 20-minute video interview with Chalkbeat, assistant secretaries Kirsten Baesler, Kimberly Richey, and Kelly Rogers pushed back against criticism from education advocacy groups, Democratic lawmakers, and even some Republicans.

They argued these changes will be good for students and families in tangible ways — saying that they will improve services for children with disabilities, strengthen civil rights protections, and boost academic outcomes. In a number of cases, though, they offered only limited specifics on how moving around offices would make a practical difference.

Baesler, the former North Dakota schools chief, oversees K-12 programming, which is now under the Department of Labor. Richey oversees civil rights, which will be working more closely with the Department of Justice. Rogers runs the special education arm, which has been moved to the Department of Health and Human Services.

They reiterated the idea that a series of interagency agreements will provide proof of concept that the federal government can best support education without an actual Education Department.

And they said the changes underway are responsive to parent and educator complaints about the status quo — but they could not name leaders or groups not already in the Republican camp who support specific changes, such as moving special education oversight to Health and Human Services.

Here’s what we heard from Education Department leaders:

Officials deny going around Congress

Baesler responded with an emphatic “absolutely not” when asked if the interagency agreements are a way to dismantle the department without getting congressional approval.

“We know that dismantling or the dissolution of the Department of Education will take an act of Congress,” she said. “Our whole intent is to provide evidence to our congressional members of the House and the Senate that this is actually a more efficient and effective way to yield stronger student academic outcomes. … We’re not going around but working with.”

Kirsten Baesler, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education

Baesler compared the 14 interagency agreements that have farmed out duties the law assigns to the Education Department to six other departments to times she ran a pilot program in North Dakota before asking state lawmakers to change policy or approve new funding.

But the administration has not treated the effort as a small pilot — it has outsourced several of the largest arms of the agency. After months of limited pushback, some lawmakers are speaking out.

Last week, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the Senate education committee who has stepped up his criticism of the administration since losing his primary, promised a committee vote on a measure that would prevent special education from moving to HHS.

And on Thursday, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Michigan Democrat who serves on the House education committee, introduced articles of impeachment that accuse McMahon of “willful intent to unilaterally dismantle and eliminate the Department of Education.”

Schools will get federal money on time this year

Baesler said federal money will go out to states and school districts on July 1, as is typical.

Last summer, the Office of Management and Budget held back some $7 billion that school leaders had been counting on to hire staff and set up programs for the upcoming school year. The money was only restored after outcry from Republican lawmakers and state chiefs.

This year, the Office of Management and Budget has used an obscure procedure to delay placing money in the necessary accounts for some federal grant programs. The affected accounts involve a smaller pot of money than last year’s withholding.

Baesler said school districts will not experience a repeat of last year’s delays.

Officials could not name parents who pushed for special education changes

Rogers laid out the case for the most contentious of recent changes: moving special education oversight to HHS. In listening sessions, Education Department officials heard from parents that their children often need services and support outside of school. She said partnering with HHS will improve services from infancy into adulthood. The ultimate goal, she said, is better long-term outcomes.

While disability advocates have stressed that students with disabilities are students first, Rogers said parents said their children are more than just students. That means Health and Human Services is a better place to meet their needs, she said.

Linda McMahon says she heard parents. Parents say special education changes show she didn’t listen.

But asked to name a disability rights group or individual who wanted special education to move to HHS, Rogers could not do so. “I don’t have that information right now on who said what, but we took in all the feedback and made the ultimate decision,” she said.

Administration touts state flexibility, even though some leaders aren’t feeling it

Similarly, Baesler said she believes the changes to K-12 education will empower states and local districts and ultimately improve student academic outcomes.

But asked to name a Democratic-appointed or aligned education leader who feels empowered by the administration’s changes, Baesler could not do so. She cited Vermont’s education chief, who was appointed by a Republican. Education leaders in Rhode Island and Washington have previously told Chalkbeat that if anything they are experiencing more federal involvement under the Trump administration.

It’s still not clear how exactly civil rights enforcement will change

The Department of Justice will take a “more active and involved role” in school civil rights complaints going forward, Richey said, while the Office for Civil Rights retains ultimate authority over civil rights enforcement.

“We’re going to continue to be laser focused on complaint investigation and resolution,” Richey said.

The Trump administration has laid off civil rights investigators, closed regional offices, and focused enforcement on high-profile cases involving political priorities such as transgender athletes and campus protests.

Many details of the agreement are still being worked out, Richey said, but the goal is “more aggressive enforcement” and bolstering civil rights in schools.

In an interview last week with conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, said Justice has “cut out the middle man, which is Department of Education investigators and lawyers.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the work is going to be done here,” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Most kindergartners who start school behind never reach proficiency: study

2026-06-25T04:36:58+00:00

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Just 1 in 10 kindergartners who start school at the bottom of their class in reading and math skills is proficient by third grade.

This finding comes from a new analysis of MAP reading and math scores from the testing organization NWEA. It aligns with a large body of research that finds that many educational gaps are already present in kindergarten and remain stubbornly persistent throughout children’s educational careers.

The finding is “depressing,” acknowledges Megan Kuhfeld, NWEA director of growth modeling and data analytics, but it should not be taken as reason to give up or assume schools can’t change students’ trajectories.

“The key story for me in these findings is that early intervention matters, and if we just wait until third grade to get a signal of where kids are, we’re missing probably the most important window when we can do something about it,” Kuhfeld said.

The analysis released Thursday relies on MAP reading and math test scores from more than 400,000 students who started kindergarten in the 2021-22 school year. Unlike the National Assessment of Educational Progress, students who take MAP tests are not a carefully selected representative sample. But they come from similar demographic backgrounds as American students as a whole, and the sample is larger than NAEP.

Students in participating districts take MAP tests in the fall and spring of each year, providing insights into their growth over the course of the school year and over time. NWEA found that many students made progress relative to their starting point. Conversely, not all students who started out at the top of their class stayed there.

But among students in the bottom fifth of their kindergarten class at the start of the school year, just 10% were proficient in math by third grade and just 13.9% were proficient in reading. For students who were still in the bottom 20% at the end of first grade, just 2% — 1 in 50 — were proficient by third grade.

Students who read poorly at the end of third grade often struggle for the rest of their schooling because they’re expected to use reading to learn every other subject. Elementary math skills, meanwhile, form the building blocks for more advanced work in middle and high school.

Most states start standardized testing in third grade, limiting insight into how students are doing in the early grades. Many states have kindergarten readiness screeners, though, and more states have adopted early literacy screeners as part of science of reading policies.

Kuhfeld said that reflects growing awareness of how important those early years are. But an attitude of “they don’t know it now but they’ll learn it soon, so you don’t need to worry about this too much” remains widespread, she said. The data suggests that “if you’re off track in kindergarten, that means you’re likely going to be off track in later grades,” and schools should act with urgency.

Kindergarten readiness varies widely by income, new data shows. Cities are stepping in to help.

What, exactly, those interventions should be is a complicated question without clear answers. Many states have invested in preschool and high-quality childcare, yet some studies show the effects of preschool can fade over time. Some states like Louisiana and Mississippi have shown progress in early reading and math. Other states that have adopted science of reading policies have not seen similar progress, at least not yet.

NWEA is planning additional analysis of the effect of science of reading policies in states where its tests are widely used. Kuhfeld said teachers should not be expected to solve these longstanding problems on their own, but she believes training and high-quality instruction can move the needle.

Douglas Ready, a Teachers College, Columbia University professor who has studied inequality and the effects of schooling, said researchers have long known about large inequalities at the start of kindergarten and so have teachers, even if just anecdotally. The “glass half empty” view is that schools aren’t doing much to solve inequality, he said.

But there’s also a “glass half full” view, that disadvantages pile up for children in poverty before they even arrive at school, and schools can stop these inequalities from getting worse.

Averages also obscure important stories of success and failure, he said.

“Hidden within these data are schools that are doing amazing things, schools that are closing these gaps,” he said. “And there are schools that are making the gaps worse.”

The growing use of early assessments, including those on which NWEA based its analysis, can serve as a “clarion call” for the public and policymakers to understand just how large a job schools are inheriting from society, Ready said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Research on AI tutoring ran into a problem: Most students wouldn’t use it

2026-06-17T18:16:17+00:00

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A group of Stanford University researchers started with one question: Could a human tutor providing motivation and support get students to spend more time working with an AI literacy tutor?

The answer turned out be yes — but only between one and four minutes more per week. Many students never logged on at all.

That left the researchers with a different set of questions.

“A key finding that we weren’t even meaning to test is that having access to this AI tutor isn’t the same as using it,” said Carly Robinson, the lead author on the study released Wednesday and the director of research for the SCALE Initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning.

Robinson said this doesn’t necessarily mean AI tutoring doesn’t work. “We never really got close enough to the dosage needed to find out.”

The study adds to a very limited research base for AI tools in education as many school districts are looking for ways to maintain or increase tutoring that costs less than hiring people to do the work. It also aligns with the experience of Khanmigo founder Sal Khan, who recently acknowledged that students didn’t engage much with the AI tutor he initially hoped would revolutionize education.

Robinson and her colleagues worked with two school districts serving high-poverty populations using the same AI learning platform in different tutoring settings. Neither the districts nor the learning platform are named in the study.

In one school district, elementary children were supposed to use the literacy tutor during homework time in an afterschool program. In the other, early elementary students were supposed to use the AI tutor during class time.

The learning platform provider said that students would show improvement in their reading skills with at least 30 minutes of use a week. The goal was for students to complete two 30-minute sessions each week.

Students were randomly assigned to either work independently with the AI tutor or with guidance from a specially trained person — afterschool program staff in one district and middle school students who were strong readers in the other — who could provide motivation and tech support.

Other research has found that the relationship between tutors and students can be a key factor in tutoring effectiveness. Researchers wanted to know if having human support would increase engagement with the tool and raise test scores over the course of the school year. They also thought they might learn that students working independently made more progress because they spent more time on the platform and less time chatting.

But it turned out both groups of students barely used the platform, and having a human tutor didn’t increase the likelihood that students would log on.

Students who did use the platform spent about 13 minutes in a session in the afterschool setting and almost 26 minutes in a session when they used it in class, enough time to probably derive some benefit, Robinson said.

But the low rate of participation meant students in the afterschool setting averaged only about two minutes a week on the platform when they worked independently and three minutes when working with a tutor. In the other district, younger students working independently in class averaged a little more than five minutes a week on the platform, which increased to almost 10 minutes a week when they worked with a tutor.

There was no meaningful difference in the reading scores of the two groups.

The bigger finding, Robinson said, was that many students didn’t log on most weeks. And those that did log on were more likely to already be higher performing and not identified for special education.

Researchers don’t know why students didn’t use the platform. Perhaps some didn’t find it engaging, or perhaps teachers directed students to spend their time in other ways. Those other activities may have been beneficial, Robinson said. The study didn’t compare outcomes for students who used the platform and who didn’t use the platform.

Robinson said she still sees enormous potential for digital tools to provide personalized instruction at scale. But before districts pay for a license, administrators need to look at more than whether there’s evidence a particular AI tool improves student learning.

“The challenge isn’t just building good AI tools,” Robinson said. “It’s really getting students to use them, and that seems to take the same type of intentional design that we’ve learned matters with other ed tech interventions and tutoring.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Linda McMahon says she heard parents. Parents say special education changes show she didn’t listen.

2026-06-17T00:23:04+00:00

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon had a message for parents of students with disabilities on Tuesday as she announced seismic shifts to federal special education oversight: “I’ve heard you.”

In listening sessions and at school visits, McMahon said thousands of parents described struggles to get their children the services to which they’re legally entitled. Moving special education oversight out of the Department of Education, she wrote in an op-ed for Fox News, will reduce red tape and open opportunities.

McMahon may have heard parents, many advocates said Tuesday, but she didn’t listen.

“It is accurate what they said today, that they spent six months talking to people, but we’ve been very consistent in our message that we didn’t want this to happen,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director for the Center for Learner Equity and a parent of students with disabilities.

Agency officials announced Tuesday the department will move oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services and aspects of civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice through interagency agreements without approval from Congress. The Department of Education touted holding multiple listening sessions with hundreds of parents, educators, and special education directors.

But some of those same people said the decision flies in the face of what they’ve told McMahon and agency leaders. They raised concerns about dysfunction across special education programs nationwide, but they did not want the department to fracture the system even further.

“To remove that federal oversight piece in an already fragmented system, it just feels like an extra blow to parents of kids with disabilities who are already dealing with so much,” said Jillian Benfield, whose son Anderson, 11, has Down Syndrome and attends public school in Florida.

Some conservative organizations say the steps the Trump administration has taken to dismantle the Education Department will be positive for students with disabilities, arguing too many layers of bureaucracy limit opportunities.

A senior department official said the changes would not change students’ rights and would instead lead to more effective services for students and families, with more coordination of services for young children and adults.

But many advocates said they are worried about how much is at stake in these agency agreements and what could be lost in the transition, particularly because the Office for Civil Rights — where the bulk of the case load involves complaints from students with disabilities — has also been upended.

Calling it the “next step in a lawless decimation” of an agency created by Congress, Catherine Lhamon, who ran the civil rights office in the Education Department under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said the new structure may ensure dollars will flow from one agency to another, “but rights will not flow to anyone.”

“It’s incredibly dangerous for the rights of kids in schools to learn on an equal basis,” she said.

Parents worry federal shifts could trickle down to their children

Lanya Elsa is the parent of two children who are deafblind. She is a special educator who helps support families while they pursue school accommodations.

Program officers with the Department of Education oversee multiple state and federal programs for students who are deafblind, she said. And parents with children with those disabilities worry these programs will be the next to be cut or shifted away from the Department of Education.

“If my kids were born 40 years ago they would have been put in an institution,” she wrote in a text message. “Instead they have college degrees and are working. That’s why many of us are uneasy about moving oversight away from education.”

Benfield and other parents also are skeptical of the department’s argument that shifting responsibilities to other agencies is an efficient choice.

“There’s already so much as a parent of a kid with a disability that you have to navigate, so many different systems,” she said. “Now, where are parents going to go? You’re just making an already complex system more complicated for parents.”

Education Department dismantling continues: special ed oversight to HHS, civil rights to Justice

In addition to tangible impacts on families, disability advocates say moving the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the Department of Health and Human Services reinforces stigma by associating disability with an agency dealing largely in healthcare and medical issues.

Robyn Linscott, director of Education and Family Policy at the Arc of the United States said it’s notable that other K-12 functions were moved to Labor, ostensibly because the long-term goal of education is a good job, while special education was not.

“I think it can’t be overstated enough that the way we think about students with disabilities and the messages we send about the potential of students with disabilities really matters,” she said. “And the irony that we’re talking about this 50 years after IDEA is not lost on me. The idea that it’s OK to segregate students with disabilities, that they can’t learn with other students, really concerns me.”

Shifting agency duties to Health, Justice departments

Linscott said Tuesday’s announcement caught many advocates off guard, even though the idea has been discussed since the early months of the Trump administration and even earlier in Project 2025. Advocates had spoken repeatedly with senior administration officials and thought their message might be heard.

“Despite the number of families sharing the difficulty their students were having accessing services, not a single person said moving OSERS to HHS was the way to approach this,” Linscott said, describing an hours-long listening session held in January. “Not a single parent, advocate, or educator said that.”

But Coco recalled one meeting where agency officials were explicit that these functions would move out of the Education Department.

“It wasn’t a question of whether this should be done or whether it was right —- that had already been predetermined,” she said. “The question that’s been lingering is, well, where are they going to move it to?”

Asked what problems the Education Department was trying to solve and how services would improve through moving functions to other agencies, a senior department official said that McMahon “has been very clear about the final mission of the U.S. Department of Education,” referring to promises to dismantle the department entirely. Moving oversight to other agencies allows the federal government to meet its legal obligations, the official said.

While HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised in a press release to “help every child reach their full potential,” advocates worry about how a department led by him will approach special education. Kennedy has spent over a decade spreading misinformation about autism, and 13% of students served under IDEA fell under the autism category, according to federal data from the 2022-23 school year.

McMahon tried to reassure parents their children will be treated as students, not patients.

“IDEA, as an education law, ensures that a child’s disability isn’t viewed as a medical condition that needs to be treated,” she wrote.

Advocates’ concerns are compounded by moving special education and civil rights enforcement to different agencies. Having the two under the same roof meant the department had multiple ways to communicate with schools about how to best serve students, said Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy for the progressive advocacy group The Education Trust.

“The Office for Civil Rights is not just a punitive office,” Duncan said. “It’s really to support the systemic issues that are affecting why certain students are overly disciplined or referred for certain things, why students are in settings where they’re not comfortable or aren’t able to learn because of their specific challenges.”

The Department of Justice can’t replicate the work done by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, Lhamon said. It’s a “totally different agency,” she said, whose work ranges from helping entire school communities resolve issues to answering “any mom’s question about whether civil rights have been violated.”

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department dismantling continues: special ed oversight to HHS, civil rights to Justice

2026-06-16T17:27:13+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Justice is taking over aspects of civil rights enforcement in schools, while oversight of special education is moving to the Department of Health and Human Services, the Trump administration announced Tuesday.

The change will move some of the most essential and integrated functions provided by the federal Education Department to two separate agencies and further accelerates the dismantling of the department without congressional approval.

Senior department officials said the changes would not reduce or affect students’ rights and would instead lead to more effective services for students and families. But many details are still being worked out.

“The Trump Administration has been clear: as we scale back federal micromanagement when it hinders success, we are equally committed to bolstering the efficacy of federal oversight where it is essential,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a press release.

Advocates for students with disabilities have been fighting the move involving special education for more than a year. They had hoped that the overwhelming opposition voiced during listening sessions earlier this spring might sway officials.

They fear that Health and Human Services lacks not only the experience but also the appropriate perspective to support the education of students with disabilities, most of whom are educated alongside their peers in general education classrooms.

Meanwhile, complaints related to children with disabilities make up a significant portion of the work of the Office for Civil Rights. While the Department of Justice has always played a critical role in civil rights enforcement, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights historically has focused specifically on getting school districts to change their practices rather than penalizing violations. Advocates have valued that approach as a way of improving education for a larger group of students.

The law that established the Department of Education says the agency is responsible for overseeing and funding the education of children with disabilities, and for enforcing civil rights in schools. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act also places special education oversight within the Department of Education.

Recent budget laws give control of IDEA funds to the Department of Education and say that money can’t just be transferred to another agency.

Education advocates quickly condemned the move.

“These continued disruptions will create confusion for states and school districts, undermine accountability, and inject uncertainty into services that students and families depend on every day,” The Education Trust, a progressive advocacy group, said in a statement. “Without a clear plan, these shifts risk weakening implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and decades of hard-fought civil rights progress.”

The Education Department is using interagency agreements to move the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to HHS and the Office for Civil Rights to Justice without a green light from Congress. Historically, such agreements were used to allow departments to contract with other agencies for certain services outside their core mission.

It’s the same mechanism that the department used to move career and technical education and the bulk of K-12 programming to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Members of Congress have raised questions about these moves, with Democrats even calling them illegal, but there has been no meaningful congressional oversight or other steps to block the changes.

Supporters of the changes have said it would better align educational programs with workforce needs.

Moving special education to Health and Human Services is a much bigger change, and one where the policy justifications are less clear.

Linda McMahon says she heard parents. Parents say special education changes show she didn’t listen.

Supporters of IDEA and its critics can both point to many problems with the law, including persistent underfunding and a focus on compliance rather than meeting students’ needs.

But many advocates fear moving special education to Health and Human Services will mark a return to a medical model of dealing with disability. A recent study found that students with disabilities benefit from special education services, suggesting the system is working for at least some students.

A senior department official said partnering with Health and Human Services will improve coordination of services for infants and toddlers, on one end of the spectrum, and services for adults with disabilities on the other end, with the education provided in schools.

The official said the Trump administration also plans to increase funding for special education by roughly $500 million, although it remains to be seen if Congress will agree to that.

The move follows a blueprint laid out in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which calls for moving special education to HHS and converting funding into a small voucher for individual families. Project 2025 also calls for moving civil rights enforcement to Justice.

Lindsey Burke, the lead author of Project 2025’s education chapter, is a top official at the Education Department.

“Downsizing this agency and returning education to the states achieves a long-standing goal to empower families and local communities,” Burke said during a Chalkbeat event earlier this year. She said that the Education Department has proven to be a costly failure.

Under McMahon, the Office for Civil Rights has been cut significantly even as it’s continued to receive thousands of discrimination complaints. The office received more than 9,000 complaints of alleged discrimination between March 2024 and Sept. 2025, according to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report. The department resolved more than 7,000, though 90% were resolved through dismissal.

The administration previously laid off Office for Civil Rights staff before more recently moving to rehire attorneys. It also closed seven out of 12 regional offices, reassigning caseloads to the five remaining offices.

National reporter Lily Altavena and Ideas Editor Matt Barnum contributed.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Treasury Department preview of tax credit scholarship rules suggests limited role for states

2026-06-11T23:51:45+00:00

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States most likely will not be able to place additional requirements or guardrails on scholarship groups funded through the new federal tax credit, according to a preview of the rules provided by the U.S. Treasury Department this week.

This position contradicts comments Education Secretary Linda McMahon made to Congress last month and at a Michigan school choice event in March in which she said states would be able to shape their own programs.

The U.S. Department of Education has declined to clarify those remarks, but it is ultimately the Treasury Department that will set the rules for the program.

And in remarks made Tuesday at a closed-door meeting and later released by the Treasury Department, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Kevin Salinger said that states may not impose “substantive” rules on scholarship groups that are more restrictive than federal law.

That’s welcome news for school choice groups who want more flexibility and limited rules for scholarship groups.

It may present a dilemma for Democratic governors who have said they are waiting to see these rules before deciding whether to opt in.

One of the key questions for this group has been whether they’ll be able to shape the program by putting additional rules on scholarship groups, requiring, for example, that they serve low-income families and students with disabilities or meet certain academic standards. Some Democrats have indicated they want the money only to go to public schools.

“I am never going to leave money on the table when it comes to supporting our kids in public schools,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said last week at the Education Writers Association conference in Baltimore when asked about the tax credit. But Moore said he was waiting on the regulations to decide whether to participate. “I do not believe that we should be taking public dollars and putting them towards private education.”

Salinger’s remarks indicate states will not be able to shape the program as they see fit, contradicting the administration’s promise to “return education to the states.”

Set to launch in 2027, the federal tax credit scholarship allows individuals to donate up to $1,700 to eligible nonprofits and get fully reimbursed through a federal income tax credit. The scholarship groups can provide vouchers to families earning up to 300% of the area median income to spend on educational expenses. Those expenses could be private school tuition, tutoring for a public school student, or specialized equipment or therapies.

Governors can decide whether their states participate, and those who do must submit lists of eligible scholarship organizations each year. Federal law imposes only minimal requirements, for example that scholarship groups operate as federally recognized nonprofits and provide money to students who attend more than one school.

The closed-door event at which Salinger spoke included a panel on ways public school students could also benefit.

Speaking at a separate Chalkbeat Ideas event Thursday, Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green said Democratic states should be open to possibilities, such as scholarships funding afterschool tutoring through approved vendors.

“This is not money that we would have,” she said. “This is money that, instead of going to the federal government, could come to our state.”

Another question has been whether homeschool families can benefit. That’s likely to be determined by whether state law considers a home school to be a school in a legal sense.

Sailnger laid out other aspects of the rules that school choice groups have been watching carefully, clarifying that they can operate in multiple states and that caps on administrative costs won’t apply to their entire budgets, only to money they raise for scholarships.

The rules will be finalized by the end of September, Salinger said.

Large national scholarship groups hoped for this flexibility so they can expand and serve more families.

“We have gotten our clearest signs from Treasury yet that this tax credit is going to benefit all students across all sectors,” said Ashling Preston, director of federal affairs for the American Federation for Children. “Every governor has the information they need to opt in right now. There are hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars at stake in every state.”

But Augustus Mays, vice president for partnerships and engagement at the progressive advocacy group EdTrust, said the preview of the rules only reinforces his belief that Democratic governors should opt out.

“If you’re a governor and you think you’ll be able to have the authority to shape this program to align to your public school priorities,” he said, “the answer is no, you’re not going to have that authority.”

Ideas Editor Matt Barnum contributed.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Superintendents defend policies about transgender students, parent rights on Capitol Hill

2026-06-10T22:19:04+00:00

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Three progressive superintendents defended their policies for parental involvement and transgender inclusion during a congressional hearing Wednesday in which Republican lawmakers called them “pathetic” and said they should find other jobs.

House Education and Workforce Chairman Tim Walberg convened the hearing with the title “Breaking Trust.” Much of the questioning centered on policies intended to protect the rights of transgender students or create more inclusive school environments. But lawmakers also brought up abortion, the role of teachers in promoting political protest, and eighth grade algebra access.

Called to testify were San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Maria Su, Loudoun County Superintendent Aaron Spence in Virginia, and Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King, who had to be subpoenaed.

Each of these superintendents is a relatively new leader in a district that has been at the center of intense controversy over race, gender, and other topics that are often referred to as part of culture war fights. Chicago and Loudoun County, in particular, have been the targets of repeated investigations by the Trump administration, which has also threatened to withhold funding.

Two days before the hearing, the conservative advocacy group America First Legal, founded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, filed formal complaints accusing all three districts of violating parental rights and federal law with policies that give students a say in whether parents are notified that that child wants to change their gender presentation.

Walberg, a Michigan Republican, said in his opening remarks that Congress has a responsibility to ask questions of school districts, including when “parents are excluded from major decisions involving their children” and “when classrooms become vehicles for political or ideological agendas.”

“Across the country, school districts are losing sight of their core mission: educating students,” Walberg said.

The superintendents, in turn, said they respect parents as partners, develop policies with input from local communities, and want to create school environments where students can show up as themselves.

“We’re in education because we care about students, and part of that means ensuring an environment where all students can reach their full potential,” Spence said.

Lawmakers and superintendents spar over abortion, transgender students

Asked repeatedly if parents can opt out of lessons related to sexual health or LGBTQ topics, superintendents said yes or that they comply with state and “binding” federal law.

Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, asked King about Chicago Public Schools making information about abortion available to students. He also pressed her about “which form of abortion” she preferred after offering graphic descriptions of the procedure.

“I’m very disturbed by that question,” King said after a pause. “I want to say that Chicago Public Schools’ sexual education curriculum is in compliance with Illinois state law.”

CPS CEO Macquline King testified before Congress. Here are 3 key takeaways.

Rep. Rick Allen, a Georgia Republican, cited a recent malpractice lawsuit in which a New York jury awarded $2 million to a woman who felt disfigured by a mastectomy she had as a teenager when she identified as male. He compared that to school districts having policies that require addressing students by their preferred names and pronouns.

“You’re going to be held responsible legally for what you’re perpetrating on young people,” Allen said.

Democrats for their part used their time to highlight cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, the value of diversity, and Republican efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. They emphasized that the superintendents were accountable to local elected school boards and that policies reflected community preferences.

“This committee talks all the time about ‘decisions should be made at the local level,’ but I guess that’s only if they like the decisions that you make at the local level,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Connecticut Democrat and former national teacher of the year.

Supreme Court ruling on gender identity favors parents but leaves unanswered questions for schools

And Democratic Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania urged the superintendents not to “change your values or your positions, because you know who you work for, and it is the parents and the students in your community.”

Spence came in for some of the most intense questioning. The Virginia district has been at the epicenter of political battles over COVID restrictions, parental rights and policies related to transgender students and racial equity. Most recently, the district refused to bend to pressure to exclude some immigrant students from federally funded career education.

Virginia sits under the jurisdiction of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in the 2020 Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board decision that students cannot be prevented from using restrooms that align with their gender identity. Loudoun County officials have said they are bound by that ruling until the 4th Circuit or the Supreme Court decides otherwise.

The Trump administration, in contrast, says Title IX, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in education, actually requires that transgender students be excluded from restrooms that align with their gender. It has threatened Loudoun County with the loss of federal funding.

“Yes or no, should biological men be allowed in locker rooms with biological women or girls?” asked Rep. Robert Onder Jr., a Missouri Republican.

“Transgender women should be allowed in women’s spaces,” Spence responded.

“That’s a yes,” Onder said. “So biological men should be able to go into locker rooms and shower rooms with biological girls?”

“Federal law requires it,” Spence said.

“No it doesn’t,” Onder said.

“Yes, it does,” Spence said.

“No,” Onder said. “Title IX is, in fact, quite the opposite. Title IX requires you to protect women and girls.”

Loudoun County has also been investigated over an incident in which a transgender boy was accused of filming other boys in a locker room. The U.S. Department of Education said the school district violated Title IX in its handling of the incident.

Several representatives interrogated Spence over the incident and why the students who complained about being filmed allegedly received longer suspensions than the transgender student.

Spence said he could not discuss specifics due to student privacy laws but said that the incident had not been described accurately in public reports. He also said the district applies discipline “appropriately” and in accordance with its policies, including policies against bullying.

The hearing did have moments of comity. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, who recently switched from Republican to independent, said he’d long been a critic of San Francisco Unified but praised Su, giving her a platform to talk about changes she’s made.

Su said the district has brought back eighth grade algebra, revised its ethnic studies curriculum, and implemented literacy approaches consistent with the science of reading, among other changes.

“When I came on as superintendent 18 months ago, I listened to families, listened to parents and our educators, and we moved quickly,” Su said.

Kiley said he probably disagrees with many things the district is doing.

“But these are really good, important steps, so thank you for your leadership,” he said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Half of teacher preparation programs align with the science of reading, report finds

2026-06-09T04:01:28+00:00

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Slightly more than half of teacher preparation programs use scientifically grounded methods to teach aspiring educators how to teach children to read, according to a new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality.

That’s both good news and bad news.

Three years ago, when NCTQ last surveyed teacher preparation programs, only a quarter of them were fully aligned with the science of reading. So the number of programs giving new teachers a strong foundation in best practices to teach reading has doubled.

But that still leaves hundreds of teacher prep programs that are not aligned with the science of reading, according to the report released Tuesday. Hundreds of other programs declined to participate in the review. Of those that did participate, about 1 in 5 programs earned an F rating, meaning they teach multiple outdated or disproven practices. Even generally strong programs often devote very little time to supporting English learners, struggling readers, and students with disabilities, the report found.

Many teacher prep programs continue to teach outdated methods even as states and school districts invest millions of dollars in retraining teachers already in the classroom.

“This is a form of educational malpractice against new teachers and the students they will serve,” NCTQ President Heather Peske said.

The findings suggest one possible reason that science of reading policies, now on the books in all but a handful of states, have not made as big an impact on reading scores as advocates had hoped.

The recently released Education Scorecard found that students are in a sort of “reading recession,” with test scores persistently down over the last decade. That analysis found that states where reading scores had improved, such as Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Indiana, had adopted science of reading policies. But it also found that many more states with similar policies in the books had not made equivalent progress.

Foreshadowing NCTQ’s findings, a survey released earlier this spring by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right education think tank, and the RAND Corporation, a research organization, similarly found that many teachers, especially those in high-poverty schools, continued to use outdated methods, such as asking students to guess at words using context.

Teachers who relied on their pre-service training were more likely to use such methods than those who had received on-the-job training, the Fordham report found.

Peske said states are in a strong position to exert leverage on teacher preparation programs through program accreditation and the teacher licensure process, but many states aren’t using that authority.

“If states do not include teacher preparation programs as part of a comprehensive approach to improving teacher capacity and student outcomes, they are missing the boat on a huge impact point,” she said.

States should set high standards for their teacher preparation programs and also provide support to help programs improve, Peske said.

NCTQ reviewed more than 700 teacher preparation programs by looking at course catalogs, syllabi, textbooks and other class materials, and then scored them using a standardized rubric. Critics of NCTQ have long said this method paints an incomplete picture and fails to account for the full range of work that happens within teacher prep programs.

Half of NY teacher prep programs fail in reading instruction: report

NCTQ said program administrators had an opportunity to review their rating and correct information before the report was published.

More than 460 programs declined to participate, including 72% of teacher preparation programs in Illinois, 57% of programs in New York, and 58% of programs in New Jersey — all states that have ostensibly made improving literacy a priority.

Paula White, the executive director of JerseyCAN, a statewide education advocacy group, said ensuring students can read is a matter of accountability that starts with evaluating teacher preparation programs and ensuring that teachers are ready once they enter the classroom.

“We are accountable to our students, and what that should look like is that our teacher candidates are ready for prime time on day one in the classroom, instead of ramping up with the first cohort of students that they teach,” White said.

Of the 13 teacher preparation programs in New Jersey that participated in NCTQ’s report, the picture is bleak. Only The College of New Jersey’s undergraduate program earned an A grade. Seven programs earned an F, three earned a D, and two earned a C.

NCTQ tried to use publicly available information to assess programs that didn’t participate in the review, and found they often used textbooks and other materials also found in poorly rated programs.

NCTQ highlighted the work done in Mississippi, Colorado, and Indiana to improve teacher preparation as models for other states.

Improving teacher training was a central part of the reforms that contributed to the so-called “Mississippi Miracle.” In this year’s NCTQ review, 9 out of 10 programs earned an A or B rating.

Colorado used its accreditation process to pressure programs to overhaul their approach to reading instruction starting in 2019. This year, all 17 of the state’s programs earned an A or B rating.

Indiana leaned on a $25 million initiative from the Lilly Foundation to help its teacher colleges overhaul their programs after the state passed a new literacy framework in 2023. (The Lilly Foundation is a funder of Chalkbeat. See our funders here and read our ethics policy here.) This year, 24 of 25 Indiana programs earned an A rating.

Chalkbeat reporter Jessie Gómez contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

The Voting Rights Act reshaped school boards. What will happen after the Supreme Court weakened it?

2026-05-26T12:59:58+00:00

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The Voting Rights Act has for decades given parents and others a pathway to change the institutions that have the most day-to-day control over American schools: their local school boards.

But the Supreme Court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which has kicked off a rush of partisan redistricting that threatens Black representation in Congress, could make it harder to demand changes in how school boards are organized going forward.

The impact of that law has been sweeping. More than 320 Voting Rights Act complaints between 1982 and 2024 dealt with school board elections, according to a database created by Chris Seaman, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.

School boards accounted for more than a fifth of all Section 2 voting rights cases during that time period, Seaman found.

Many of those challenged at-large elections — which allow everyone in a community to vote for every seat on a board. This setup can make it difficult for communities of color to elect their preferred candidates, especially in places where a white majority votes in a bloc.

Some 3.6 million children currently attend school in a district shaped by one of those challenges, a Chalkbeat analysis found. But at-large elections remain the most common school board structure in the United States.

Legal experts agree that it will be more difficult now to claim that a particular electoral system violates the rights of minority voters. In the aftermath of Callais, conservative legal groups are gearing up to challenge state voting rights laws that have provided additional tools to reshape school boards. Some even see an opening to challenge past settlements — especially in cases where school districts voluntarily made changes to improve racial representation.

The Supreme Court’s weakening of the Voting Rights Act will likely lead to “a decrease in minority representation, and school boards will not be exempt,” Seaman said. Most public school students are children of color, while most school board members are white. While the Voting Rights Act does not guarantee the election of candidates of color, it has given minority communities the opportunity to elect candidates responsive to their concerns. Limited research has shown school board members of color make a difference in student discipline, superintendent hiring, and academic outcomes.

But unfair student discipline or low test scores don’t create Voting Rights Act violations, said J. Christian Adams, a conservative election lawyer and former Justice Department official who served on President Donald Trump’s failed 2017 voter-fraud commission.

There’s nothing fundamentally better or worse about single-member or at-large school board districts, said Adams, now president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. But under the Callais ruling, “if a school district says we’re going to single-member districts to elect minority representatives, that would violate the constitution. That’s over. That’s done.”

Callais focused on partisan redistricting in legislative races. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority said party considerations — wanting Republicans or Democrats to win more seats — could justify drawing maps that dilute minority voters’ voice.

That could mean the decision has less impact in nonpartisan school board races. It will take time and more lawsuits to fully understand the effects.

“To the extent that the Voting Rights Act has any vitality left after Callais, I think it’s likely to be in these local races like school boards,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert and professor at Loyola Marymount University.

How racism fueled at-large school board elections

At-large school board elections are a legacy of Progressive-era reforms that sought to reduce the power of machine politics and cronyism over education governance.

In northern cities, these changes reduced the political power of immigrant enclaves. In the Jim Crow South, they prevented Black communities from electing their own school board representatives, when those residents could vote at all.

As Memphis schools takeover looms, city faces further voting power struggle

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, first passed in 1965 and repeatedly amended, provided grounds to challenge at-large elections for local government offices that potentially dilute the votes of minority groups.

A handful of attorneys in Texas and Alabama filed dozens of challenges to at-large school board elections in the 1980s and 1990s, accounting for the majority of cases. Often, school districts agreed to settle when faced with just the threat of a lawsuit.

These challenges changed who decided to run for office, who won seats on school boards, and how resources were allocated in districts across the country.

“There are really important decisions that impact students of color that benefit from the perspective of school board members of color,” said Carrie Sampson, an associate professor of educational leadership at Arizona State University who studies school boards.

And these challenges continue in the modern era.

Just last year, Wicomico County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore agreed to replace its hybrid system, which included at-large and single-member districts for both county council and school board, with seven single-member districts, two of which are majority Black. The changes occurred in response to a 2023 lawsuit by Black voters supported by the Maryland branches of the ACLU and the NAACP.

The lawsuit described a long history of discrimination and racially polarized voting that blocked Black candidates from winning at-large seats. When the governor appointed members, the Wicomico school board often had two Black members. After switching to an elected board in 2016, the board has only had one Black member at a time — always elected in the single majority-Black district.

“They kept claiming that we didn’t need to sue them, that they would have done it if we just asked nicely,” said Deborah Jeon, legal director of the Maryland ACLU. “But we had been asking nicely for two decades. It was only once we sued that they came to the table.”

School boards might defend at-large seats creatively

Whether school districts will continue to come to the table or instead fight to maintain at-large elections is an open question.

Even in communities with hard-fought, racially polarized school board elections, those divisions may not fall neatly along party lines. That means advocates can still make arguments about vote dilution and other unfair practices.

But Levitt, who advised the Biden administration on voting issues, said he expects more school districts to find other race-neutral justifications for their electoral systems, for example that at-large elections produce candidates who will look out for the interests of all students.

“I think you’ll see a lot of creativity,” he said.

Callais also requires “a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred” in setting up a particular voting system, and not just a discriminatory effect or outcome.

Colorado lawmakers reject attempt to move away from at-large school board elections

Adams said school boards that might have settled in the past could now open themselves up to counterchallenges that they drew districts designed to advantage one racial group. He reads Callais as allowing such a remedy only when a court finds recent evidence of discrimination in voting.

“A school district would be very foolish to think that a settlement will bring them peace, because the next people they’ll hear from will be suing over an illegal racial gerrymander,” he said.

Even school districts that discuss racial balancing during regular redistricting processes, as Denver did in 2024, could open themselves to a lawsuit, he said. The meeting minutes would be “gold” in proving racial motives.

Challenges to school board elections confront new standard

Two decades ago, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, made national headlines for adopting sweeping anti-immigrant legislation as new arrivals transformed the demographics of the coal country city. Those laws were found to be unconstitutional, but Hispanic residents say they continue to face discrimination, including in school.

In 2024, Aleida Aquino and Brendalis Lopez filed a lawsuit challenging the Hazleton Area School District’s at-large election system with support from the University of California Los Angeles Voting Project.

Hispanic voters account for some 40% of registered voters in the district, according to the lawsuit. Two-thirds of students are Hispanic. At least six Hispanic candidates have run for school board since 2019, yet no Hispanic candidate has won a seat on the nine-member board.

The Supreme Court’s voting rights decision could reshape local government across Texas

Moving to single-member districts could allow the Hispanic community concentrated in the city of Hazleton to elect a representative who might be more responsive to their concerns about unfair discipline practices, limited translation services for parents, and other disparities, the lawsuit says.

But unlike many school districts in this situation, Hazleton hasn’t settled and is fighting to maintain its at-large elections. Now the lawsuit will be heard under the higher standard created by Callais.

Neither Superintendent Brian Uplinger nor the school board president responded to a request for comment from Chalkbeat. In a statement issued when the lawsuit was filed, Uplinger defended the district’s record of serving Latino students.

Bernadette Reyes, senior counsel with the UCLA Voting Project, said Callais runs counter to the history of the Voting Rights Act and congressional action. The ruling has made the road ahead more difficult for lawsuits like the one in Hazleton.

“But it’s important that these challenges continue,” Reyes said. “Those folks challenging it need to adapt to the higher standard.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Linda McMahon suggests states could set their own rules for federal tax-credit scholarships

2026-05-14T21:52:25+00:00

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon said states will be able to put conditions on scholarship organizations as part of the federal tax-credit scholarship program, weighing in on one of the biggest questions for governors considering whether to opt into the program.

The Treasury Department, not the Education Department, ultimately is responsible for setting the rules that will govern the federal tax credit, and those have not been finalized. It was not clear whether McMahon’s comments reflect the Trump administration’s position. The Education and Treasury Departments did not immediately respond to requests for clarification.

Allowing states to pick and choose which scholarship groups are included in the program would be at odds with how many conservative school choice advocates believe the program will work. But it would align with the Trump administration’s pledge to return education to the states.

McMahon’s comments came during an exchange with Rep. John Mannion, a New York Democrat and former classroom teacher, at a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on Thursday.

Just last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she intends for her state to participate in the program, which allows taxpayers to donate up to $1,700 to eligible scholarship organizations and get a refund or credit on their federal taxes for the full amount. However, Hochul said through a spokesperson that she’s waiting to see the rules and will review them carefully for any “poison pills.”

“You had mentioned that we need to return education to the states,” Mannion said. “Will the states have the ability to set rules around these scholarship-granting organizations? And some of the questions might be assuring that there will be scholarships for low income families or minority families or public institutions. Will the school boards or the boards of regents or the governors have control over that at the state level?”

“Yes, that’ll be done at the state,” McMahon responded. “Of course, the 501(c)(3) status is granted through the federal government, but those decisions would be made at the state.”

Mannion sought additional clarity: “Gotcha. So they will be able to set rules around scholarship-granting organizations and the scholarships themselves?”

“That is my understanding,” McMahon said.

The federal law that established the tax credits lays out bare-bones requirements for scholarship-granting organizations. They must be federally recognized nonprofits and serve students from more than one school, and scholarships must go to educational expenses. Governors can decide whether their states participate, and those that do must submit lists of eligible scholarship organizations each year.

Some education advocates have called for the Treasury Department to allow governors to set criteria for scholarship groups in their state. Those could include requiring these groups to serve students from low-income families, requiring that schools that receive scholarship students meet certain standards, or perhaps most significantly, that scholarship groups and participating schools abide by non-discrimination rules.

That could pose a problem for some religious schools and scholarship groups. In Colorado, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis warded off an attempt by lawmakers of his own party to place just such requirements on scholarship groups. He said Colorado risked losing out on money and not being able to participate if it imposed non-discrimination requirements.

Many Democratic governors have said they are waiting to see Treasury rules before making a final decision.

In a statement to Chalkbeat, Mannion said he hopes McMahon’s answers to his questions show up in official policy.

“Secretary McMahon is now on the record saying that state governments will be able to set their own rules around scholarship granting organizations,” he said. “She should make that clear to the Treasury Department, and I fully expect to see it reflected in the upcoming guidelines.”

For their part, conservative education choice advocates have insisted the only requirements for scholarship groups should be those already in the law. Governors, however, would be free to use their bully pulpit to promote their preferred causes.

Leslie Hiner, vice president of legal policy for EdChoice, a school choice advocacy organization, said her organization expects initial rules from the Treasury Department in July. Hiner said the federal law appears to limit governors’ role in the program. EdChoice would oppose governors attempting to place any kind of restrictions on the program that the group would view as motivated by politics, she said.

“Yes, we oppose that and we’ll oppose that all day long,” Hiner said. “The ultimate beneficiary is that child who needs some help and that parent who needs some help in taking care of that child.”

National reporter Lily Altavena contributed.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul intends to opt into federal tax-credit scholarship

2026-05-08T15:01:12+00:00

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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul intends to opt the state into the federal tax-credit scholarship.

The announcement represents a major win for supporters of private school choice who have been lobbying Democratic governors to participate in the program. However, Hochul’s office said she intends to review the details before making the decision official.

The American Federation for Children, a national school choice advocacy group, said Thursday night that Hochul first made the announcement at a private gathering. The meeting was with Agudath Israel, an organization that supports Jewish religious education, according to an Agudath spokesperson.

Emma Wallner, a spokesperson for the governor, confirmed Hochul’s plans to opt in to the tax credit.

“Governor Hochul is supportive of the federal tax credit scholarship and its potential to help New York students and schools,” Wallner wrote in a statement. “Our office awaits information from the federal government on the program and will thoroughly review the details of the policy for poison pills that could harm New York’s education system.”

The Treasury Department is still in the process of developing guidelines for the program, which will clarify, for example, how donated money might benefit public school students or whether states can prevent scholarship-granting organizations from discriminating against certain students.

The tax credit was approved last year as part of the Republican-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It allows taxpayers to get a dollar-for-dollar credit up to $1,700 on their federal taxes if they donate money to an eligible scholarship-granting organization. These organizations could give students money for private school tuition, tutoring, and other educational expenses.

Governors, however, have to opt into the program for students in their state to benefit.

“Finally, school choice is coming to New York, thanks to the courage of Governor Hochul and the tremendous advocacy of countless families, educators, and supporters who have worked for generations to advance options for kids who need them,” American Federation for Children CEO Tommy Schultz said in a press release.

Some New York Democrats, and the city’s teachers union, criticized Hochul’s decision.

“While this tax credit may appear enticing, there will undoubtedly be long-term damage to the ability of states to provide public education,” said state Sen. John Liu, who chairs the New York City Education Committee. “Many governors and legislatures around the country have recognized this tax credit for the Faustian bargain it is and have already opted out, and I sincerely hope that New York will opt out as well.”

According to a tracker maintained by Ballotpedia, 29 states, nearly all of them led by Republicans, have opted into the tax credit. That list does not include New York.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is the only Democratic governor to have officially opted in. Under pressure from Republican lawmakers, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said last year that he intends to do so after the rules are released.

Some Democratic governors have been strongly opposed. In Wisconsin, which launched one of the nation’s earliest voucher programs, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican-backed legislation that would have opted that state in. In a veto statement, he cited the lack of any accountability measures in the federal program.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear also vetoed opt-in legislation, as did Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, but Republican-controlled legislatures overrode vetoes in both states.

Other Democratic governors are taking a wait-and-see approach. Democratic backers of expanding school choice argue that families want more options and that states that don’t opt in risk their own taxpayers donating to scholarship groups in other states. Opponents say the program undermines public education and threatens funding, even if indirectly.

Nationally and in New York, supporters of religious education have lobbied for the tax credit as a way to ease the tuition burden for families.

“This is extraordinary news for Jewish families and for every community across our state,” said Sydney Altfield, the CEO of Teach NYS, an organization that lobbies for public funding for Jewish schools. “Blue states across the country will now be watching closely.”

Hochul has courted the Orthodox Jewish community, an influential voting bloc, as she faces reelection in November. Along with state legislative leaders, she previously pushed to weaken oversight of private schools, a measure that would largely benefit certain yeshivas that do not always provide a basic secular education. The state’s education commissioner, Betty Rosa, called the move a “travesty.”

Hochul has backed other efforts to expand school choice since taking office nearly five years ago, drawing pushback from other New York Democrats. In 2023, she proposed to significantly expand the number of charter schools in New York City, even as the publicly funded yet privately managed schools have fallen out of favor among many left-leaning elected officials. State lawmakers rejected Hochul’s sweeping proposal but ultimately approved a more modest expansion.

Hochul has also touted her commitment to funding traditional public schools and has presided over increases in state spending. State officials indicated Thursday that schools should expect at least a 2% bump in the state’s forthcoming budget, which is more than a month overdue and has yet to be finalized.

“I’m proud of the resources we have put into education,” she told reporters Thursday.

This story has been updated with additional details about the private meeting where Hochul announced her support for the tax credit, as well as additional background about Hochul’s approach to private school oversight.

Correction: This story has been updated to accurately reflect how many states have opted into the tax-credit program.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

2026 National Teacher of the Year wants to share the ‘playbook for the power that people can generate’

2026-04-21T22:17:45+00:00

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When Leon Smith was a kid at camp, adults would tap him to keep an eye on younger children and make a point of praising how well he handled the responsibility.

It sparked a thought — probably helped along by the fact that both his parents were educators — that teaching might be the way he could make a difference in the world and in the lives of others.

He especially wanted to be the Black male teacher he only briefly got to experience as a child. That student teacher Smith had in 10th grade “made me feel the way that I hope all students feel in classrooms, and that is to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of dignity. And it just really gave me a great passion.”

Smith, a history teacher at Haverford High School in Pennsylvania, was named the 2026 teacher of the year by the Council of Chief State School Officers on Tuesday. He’ll spend the next year as an ambassador for the teaching profession.

Smith teaches AP U.S. History and African American Studies and coaches basketball. His favorite period to teach is Reconstruction, when Black men and women just a few years out of slavery built community institutions to provide opportunity for the next generation.

“It’s just a real playbook for the power that people can generate when they are committed to a cause,” he said.

But his favorite lesson, one that calls for students to embrace the complexity and nuance of history, is about events from nearly a century later.

Chalkbeat spoke with Smith about that lesson, why teacher diversity matters, and why young people should consider teaching. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You started an Educators Rising chapter to encourage students to become teachers. We hear a lot that fewer young people want to go into the profession. What concerns do you hear from young people about teaching and what do you tell them about why this is a good job?

There are a lot of young people that do want to be teachers, and we really have to do a better job as adults of inviting them into the profession. We have to do a better job with our PR and really letting students see the greatness of the profession. So that’s one.

But students are always thinking about, hey, does this teacher understand me? Do I feel like I can talk to this teacher about anything? Are they going to give me grace if I’m going through a difficult time? I think many of our students just want the teacher to support them and to be someone that they can go to if they need a hand. And I think that type of compassion and joy and genuineness that they would receive from the educator is something that would then make them think, “I want to do that for someone else.”

Through kindness and through those types of understanding and gestures, we can really start to plant the seeds for the next generation of educators.

You were the only Black male educator at your school for many years. What were the things that helped you keep going or feel supported and gain that comfort in bringing more of yourself into the classroom?

My faith. I have a strong belief in God. I would also say my community, my mom, my wife. But what began to give me a sustaining power was some of the feedback that I received from students. I would often get cards and messages from students thanking me for just being a genuine person, for telling them about my experience. And as I started to read those notes, I began to be more confident in being who I was as a teacher and letting them know, hey, here are some of the things that I’ve gone through, good and bad.

The more that we as a society can share our experiences, talk to each other, the more we can understand each other and move forward.

Some of this work around increasing the diversity of who’s in the classroom has come under political attack. What would you want the general public to know about the importance of having diverse people at the front of the classroom, in front of students?

I think one thing that we can all agree on is that we want all of our students to be successful. Student achievement is driving all of our work in education. The research is clear, that educators of color not only benefit students of color, but they benefit all students. And that’s what we want. We want all of our students to be successful.

You teach American history. I’m wondering if you have a favorite lesson.

We did a Socratic seminar where the students listened to a podcast by Malcolm Gladwell, a Revisionist History podcast called Miss Buchanan’s Period of Adjustment. It shines a light on an often untalked-about chapter when it comes to Brown vs. Board of Education and that is the number of Black teachers and principals that were fired in the wake of desegregation, over 100,000.

We talk about our teacher pipeline, and we talk about not having enough educators of color. There was a time when we saw many educators of color, and there were events that led to that decrease. And so when my students listened to that, they came back the next day and the classroom was buzzing. They’re like, “Mr. Smith, I can’t believe this.” It’s such a joy as a teacher to have the students be connected to their learning in that way.

We’ve had some great discussions. I had a young woman actually start to write the curriculum for an Asian American studies course as a result of that particular lesson, I’ve had another student that was more connected to her heritage as a result of that lesson.

So then they get a chance to choose any topic they want in American history and look at this topic from a different perspective or try to find an untold story with regard to this topic. And they get a chance to choose any medium in which they want to present that, and that’s our capstone project.

They set up in the library and the whole school comes and talks to them about their projects. And these are ninth graders, and they are just outstanding.

Brown is one of the seminal civil rights Supreme Court decisions. What do you think students get from considering this other angle?

It’s important for us to really look at things through multiple perspectives and to really understand the impact of context and point of view and intended audience. We build critical thinking skills in my classroom, not so that we can just decipher primary and secondary sources. I really want my students to take that out into the world and help them to be critical consumers of information, to be able to really evaluate the information that they’re seeing, to think about how it’s going to apply to them.

They’re going to be parents, they’re going to be voting citizens, they’re going to be homeowners. And so they really need to be able to think critically about a whole variety of things. And I’m excited that they get a chance to start doing that in my class.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Some students get tutoring but end up as ‘intervention lifers.’ This common sense tactic could help.

2026-04-20T11:00:00+00:00

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Knox County Schools looked like it was doing everything right.

The district was using a well-regarded, evidence-based curriculum to teach students how to read. Young students who struggled got intensive tutoring using high-quality supplemental materials. Tutoring sessions took place during the school day, ensuring high participation.

But the 60,000-student district in eastern Tennessee wasn’t seeing the results from tutoring that leaders had hoped for. Erin Phillips, the district’s executive director of learning and literacy, decided to try something new: ask tutors to use materials that matched what students were learning in the classroom.

Working with outside researchers during the 2024-25 school year, Knox County Schools randomly assigned more than 300 early elementary students who fell below the 40th percentile on a universal literacy screener into two groups. One group received tutoring using the district’s usual supplemental materials. The other got tutoring using materials that were aligned with the district’s core curriculum, Benchmark Advance.

The results, described in a paper by researchers Cara Jackson and Ayman Shakeel, were striking. Students who received tutoring that aligned with classroom instruction made more progress, the equivalent of an additional 1.3 months of learning, compared with students in the control group whose tutoring sessions used supplemental materials.

This approach and the outcome might sound like common sense. But it goes against a widespread way of thinking about intervention, that if students didn’t learn the material well in class, they might benefit from new ways of approaching it or different explanations of the same concepts.

But the study suggests the opposite was true, that teachers and tutors may have inadvertently confused students by, for example, teaching different letter sounds in different orders or referring to the “magic e” in one setting and the “silent e” in another.

The findings are important as school districts look for ways to make tutoring more effective with limited dollars. School districts were urged by experts and officials to invest in high-intensity or high-dosage tutoring, generally defined as occurring at least three times a week and for 10 weeks or longer, as an evidence-based way to address pandemic-related learning loss. But large-scale tutoring programs often failed to produce the same outcomes as carefully designed pilot programs.

The education sector jargon for what Knox County is doing is “coherence.” That’s simultaneously an increasingly popular buzzword and a vital missing element in many education reforms.

In Knox County’s case, “What we were asking our most at-risk learners to do is carry the heaviest cognitive load,” Phillips said. “We were calling the same thing by different names in every learning experience. We were overloading their ability not only to have that knowledge in their brain, but to retrieve that information, not only retrieve it, but then apply it, and then transfer it from place to place.”

Using aligned materials, in contrast, lightens their cognitive load and gives them more opportunity to practice the same skills covered in class, she said.

Knox County students using aligned materials also did better on state standardized tests, according to the study from Jackson and Shakeel, though the difference was not statistically significant.

Tennessee is in its fifth year of a major early literacy initiative that includes teacher training, state-approved curriculum lists, mandatory tutoring for certain students, and holding back students who don’t meet certain benchmarks by third grade.

Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator’s review of tutoring research notes that alignment seems like it would be good practice but doesn’t have a strong research base. Jackson, research manager at the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting, said she wanted to address that gap with a randomized controlled trial.

“We were testing something lots of people very much believed would be true, and that a lot of people have talked about for a long time,” she said.

Jackson said she hopes other researchers try to replicate her findings in other settings and with larger groups of students.

Phillips is moving to adopt more aligned curriculums across subjects and grades. She’s also continuing to closely monitor student learning, including whether fewer students score in the bottom quartile or are referred for special education evaluation.

She said the study results shed light on a long-standing problem in the district.

“We had a decade’s worth of data showing us that students were not exiting intervention,” she said. “They were becoming intervention lifers. That’s not the intention of this support. All this data was showing that this was not working.”

Different curriculum choices can create an unhelpful ‘lasagna’

Many factors have nudged districts away from using aligned curriculum for students in intervention services, according to TNTP, a school improvement consulting organization that worked with Knox County.

Large established publishing houses dominate the market for core curriculum, while dozens of smaller companies fill in the gaps. When states draw up lists of approved curriculum, core and supplemental materials might go through different approval processes, and districts might not see materials from the same company on both lists.

Grants might also require districts to pick materials from certain vendors, contributing to a proliferation of different learning materials that take different tacks.

“We build this lasagna of program over program over program,” said Devon Gadow, TNTP’s director of national consulting.

Surveys by the research organization Rand Corp. found that teachers frequently cobble together materials from different curriculum companies, with the average teacher reporting they used two core curriculums and five supplemental curriculums.

And a study by the Center for Education Market Dynamics found more than 350 different supplemental math products in use across 1,700 school districts. These same school districts chose from fewer than 20 core curriculum options.

While districts often put significant time and attention into assessing core curriculum options before making a decision, they adopted supplemental materials in an ad hoc way, in part because the contracts were shorter and less expensive, the analysis found.

TNTP is urging state policymakers to look at ways they may be steering districts away from using more-aligned materials. The group also wants district leaders to look at what they already have in their arsenal that they could redeploy.

Gadow said district officials should be wary of marketing pitches based on coherence or alignment. They may not need to buy something new as long as they’re already using high-quality materials.

Core curriculum often includes materials to support scaffolding, remediation, and intervention, Gadow said, but classroom teachers don’t have the time to read through every page and develop lessons for struggling students. That’s work that central office staff could take on.

In Knox County, Phillips said teachers had developed a habit of using supplemental materials in the past when the district’s core curriculum wasn’t as good. Those habits were hard to break, in part because those past experiences led teachers to distrust that any core curriculum could cover all the necessary ground.

Phillips spent roughly $1.4 million from what remained of Knox County’s pandemic relief on aligned supplemental materials from Benchmark at the beginning of the study period. But if she had it to do over again, she would have looked more closely at what already existed in the core curriculum, she said. That’s what she’s doing now for other subjects. Most teachers are on board with the change, she said.

Meanwhile, she’s phasing out materials from other publishers as licenses expire, saving money going forward.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department dissolving federal office serving English learners

2026-04-15T17:12:25+00:00

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The Education Department plans to dissolve the office that supports the country’s 5 million English learners.

The move comes as the Trump administration has called to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and to stop funding English language acquisition programs in the federal budget. The country’s English learner student population includes U.S. citizen children of immigrant parents as well as authorized and undocumented immigrant children, communities that are reeling from the effects of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The Office of English Language Acquisition already was decimated in early rounds of layoffs. Last August, the Department quietly rescinded guidance that many states and school districts rely on to protect the rights of immigrant students.

Education Department officials said dissolving the office and assigning its work to offices doing related work would be better for English learners.

In an emailed statement, Assistant Education Secretary Kirsten Baesler said the changes would align work across teams within the department, reduce administrative burden, and “empower states to design integrated supports.”

“English Learners should never be treated as a siloed program, set aside as an afterthought,” Baesler said. “When English language acquisition is embedded across core priorities like literacy, academic content, educator preparation, and accountability, it receives the seriousness and sustained focus it deserves.”

The Education Department informed Congress of the changes in a February letter. Education Week first reported on the moves and the letter Tuesday.

According to the letter, distribution of federal Title III money that helps states educate English learners will be handled by the same office that distributes other large federal programs such as Title I.

Trump’s proposed budget calls for eliminating Title III funding as a separate program, even as he also signed an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States. Congress last year disregarded a similar budget proposal and maintained Title III funding.

Training programs for teachers who work with English learners will move to the Office of Effective Educator Development Programs, the letter said. Language programs for Native American and Alaska Native children will move to the Office of Indian Education.

Trump pressured states to limit undocumented high school students’ access to career education programs

The changes do not affect the rights of English learner students under federal law. However, many advocates and educators said the office played a critical role in ensuring federal funds were spent appropriately and in sharing best practices and new research.

More of that responsibility now falls to states and school districts. While the Education Department says that shift is appropriate, many school districts historically have failed to meet the needs of English learners, leading to lawsuits.

The Education Department is in the process of moving the entire Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to the Department of Labor, while programs related to educating Native American students are moving to the Department of the Interior.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump termination of civil rights agreements could chill student complaints and confuse schools

2026-04-14T10:52:00+00:00

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When the Delaware Valley School District board voted unanimously last month to reverse policies protecting transgender students that they’d adopted a decade ago, some in the audience cried, “Shame!” Others said the board didn’t go far enough.

The district had adopted those policies in the first place under pressure from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in response to a complaint from a transgender student. An agreement between the district and the federal government during the Obama administration called for more training for staff and more support for students changing their gender presentation.

Now that same agency had told the district the agreement was terminated. Officials had 30 days to remove gender from the district’s anti-discrimination policies or face consequences.

The board voted at its March meeting to require transgender students to use locker rooms and bathrooms that match their sex assigned at birth. The superintendent said social workers would meet with the affected students to go over the changes.

This whiplash is one potential outcome of the Trump administration’s decision to terminate civil rights agreements drawn up under previous Democratic administrations. The Education Department announced in early April that it was ending such agreements related to violations of Title IX — the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education — in five school districts in four states, as well as for a California community college.

In other communities, little may change because local officials are more supportive of transgender rights. Nevertheless, multiple legal experts and former employees of the Office for Civil Rights told Chalkbeat that tearing up agreements reached after lengthy investigations and negotiations sends a dangerous message to all students: If you file a complaint, the resolution might last only as long as the next presidential election cycle.

“How far will it go?” asked Beth Gellman-Beer, an attorney who spent 18 years with OCR under Republican and Democratic administrations. “Once you open that door to something that is unprecedented, where does it end? If we have another administration that is Democratic, what will they do? What will be the point for anyone to bring a case to OCR, if they can’t trust whatever decision that comes out of that complaint will remain the decision?”

Revoking civil rights agreements is just one piece of a much larger transformation of the Office for Civil Rights, where a reduced staff focuses on cases that align with the president’s political priorities. And federal officials are blunt about how much the government’s approach has changed between the Obama and Biden administrations and Trump’s second term.

“Prior Administrations regularly misinterpreted Title IX to pander to political ideology and police ‘misgendering’ despite not having sound legal grounds,” Education Department spokeswoman Amelia Joy wrote in an email. By terminating past agreements, Joy wrote, “the Trump Administration is upholding the law and righting years of wrongs.”

Given what’s happened over the last few presidential administrations, canceling civil rights agreements was perhaps inevitable, said R. Shep Melnick, a Boston College political scientist who has studied civil rights enforcement extensively.

“The combination of presidential influence and partisan polarization means you have administrations that have very different understandings of how to interpret civil rights law,” Melnick said. “It’s not surprising, once the regulations flip back and forth, that agreements based on previous understanding of statute would be subject to change.”

Ending OCR agreements part of new enforcement approach

The Office for Civil Rights under Trump has made keeping transgender students out of bathrooms and off sports teams that match their gender identity one of its top priorities. Ending the six agreements, which treated discrimination based on gender identity and sex stereotypes as Title IX violations, fits into that broader enforcement approach.

Conservatives hailed the decision as reversing a misinterpretation of Title IX.

“These particular agreements were changing the definitions of sex such that boys could self-identify into locker rooms, bathrooms, and showers,” said Beth Parlato, senior legal counsel at the conservative Independent’s Women’s Forum. “The Trump administration is sending a strong message that Title IX is about protecting women and girls.”

In Delaware Valley, a 4,200-student district in northeast Pennsylvania, most transgender students weren’t using shared restrooms even under the OCR agreement, said Taylor James, executive director of TriVersity Pride Center, an LGBTQ community group and resource center based in Milford.

Fearful of backlash, he said, most students either used the restroom in the nurse’s office or just waited until they got home. But telling students they can’t use a restroom they feel comfortable in sends a message that there’s something wrong with them, James said.

Without the OCR agreement in place, James fears there won’t be any repercussions when teachers deliberately misgender students or when students face bullying because they don’t conform.

He’s working with legal aid groups on potential next steps, but his top priority is making sure students feel valued and cared for.

James said his biggest piece of advice to those students is to “just make it to adulthood, because you will be celebrated for the things you’ve been taught to hate about yourself.”

Many states still have laws protecting transgender students

Not all of the documents related to the affected districts are available in OCR’s public case search. The Education Department declined to make all the previous settlement agreements available or answer questions about which provisions would no longer be enforced.

But in the La Mesa-Spring Valley school district near San Diego, the revoked agreement involved allegations that a nonbinary student was bullied for continuing to use the restroom that matched their sex at birth — the very practice that the Trump administration wants to require.

And in the Sacramento Unified School District, the complaint didn’t relate to restrooms at all, according to local news reports. Federal investigators found that district officials responded promptly in 2022 after teachers didn’t use a transgender student’s preferred name and pronouns but failed to inform the student of their right to file a complaint.

Kayleigh Baker, a consultant with TNG Consulting and a member of advisory board of the Association of Title IX Administrators, said she’d recommend that institutions “wait just a second” if they’re considering policy changes based on the fact that the agreements have been rescinded.

Supreme Court ruling on gender identity favors parents but leaves unanswered questions for schools

Many states, including California, Delaware, and Washington, where the Education Department rescinded agreements, have state laws protecting transgender students’ rights. Some school districts have had early court wins after pushing back against funding cuts related to Title IX.

“We shouldn’t rush to anticipatory complying with what we think the administration may do, because we have state law, we have all of these open questions,” she said. “And at the end of the day, we have very real students and employees who are trying to access their education, access their work environments, free from discrimination, and we don’t want to rush to take away rights that they have.”

Kristina Moon, senior attorney with Education Law Center-Pennsylvania, stressed that federal laws and legal rulings, not OCR agreements, ultimately spell out what districts’ obligations are to LGBTQ students.

Some affected school districts, for example, are also under the jurisdiction of federal appeals courts that require schools to protect transgender students’ bathroom access.

“A fundamental concern is that our school boards and our school leaders are not understanding this distinction and feeling significant threats from the federal government, by design,” Moon said.

Parlato acknowledged that rescinding agreements is unusual and that courts haven’t yet consistently interpreted Title IX the way the Trump administration does. But she’s optimistic that will change in the next few years.

“Sex is an immutable characteristic, it can’t be changed, and once we can get that codified in law, we won’t have this issue,” she said.

Terminating agreements could undermine OCR’s credibility

The Education Department has also rescinded agreements that have nothing to do with transgender students.

Last year the Education Department withdrew a 2023 settlement in Forsyth, Georgia, in which the Office for Civil Rights had determined that book-ban discussions created a hostile environment for some students. The department also ended an agreement in Rapid City, South Dakota, that addressed mistreatment of Native American students.

Rescinding agreements tells students not to bother filing complaints, said Gellman-Beer, who led the OCR’s now-closed Philadelphia office before resigning last year. She also fears it will give school districts few incentives to work cooperatively with OCR or comply with ongoing monitoring.

“It’s going to make it a thousand times more difficult to negotiate with a school district when they think they can just renegotiate with the next administration,” she said.

Throwing out agreements is “clearly going to reduce the credibility and authority of OCR,” Melnick said. At the same time, the more overtly politicized enforcement becomes, the more questions it raises about the validity of agreements. Melnick highlighted how the Trump administration threatened to withhold billions in federal research dollars to pressure universities to sign sweeping settlements of antisemitism claims.

“One administration should not be able to lock in a policy for the indefinite future regardless,” Melnick said.

Students bring complaints because they want their negative experience to lead to a meaningful change in their community, Baker said. Even students who agree with the current administration’s policies might wonder, “who’s to stop that meaningful change from being undone the second there’s a change in power?”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

Should you red-shirt your kindergartner? A new analysis suggests it doesn’t help most students.

2026-03-24T04:15:57+00:00

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The practice of red-shirting — having students start kindergarten a year late — appears to have returned to historically normal levels after a post-pandemic bump.

And the students who started kindergarten late in the aftermath of COVID now perform similarly to their slightly younger classmates on standardized tests, according to a new analysis from the testing company NWEA.

The analysis released Tuesday comes amid ongoing concerns about the academic preparedness and progress of young students.

Separate studies by NWEA and other testing companies have found that students who weren’t even in school yet during the pandemic are struggling academically compared with their pre-COVID counterparts. The reasons are not well understood, and theories range from parental stress to missing preschool learning experiences to increased screen time.

Red-shirting refers to the practice of having children whose birthdays are near the cut-off date start kindergarten a year later. This makes them the oldest rather than the youngest students in their class and is widely believed to confer academic and athletic advantages.

Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and analytics at NWEA, said she wanted to find out if all the chatter about red-shirting in the media and in her social circles showed up in the data.

Kuhfeld discovered it did not.

Kindergarten readiness varies widely by income, new data shows. Cities are stepping in to help.

Most years between 2017 and 2025, a little less than 5% of kindergarten students started school a year late. (Another 1% to 2% were older than their classmates because they repeated kindergarten.)

The exception was the 2021-22 school year, when 6.4% of kindergartners started late. But that increase quickly subsided. Last school year, just 4.4% started late.

NWEA used data from three million kindergartners who took the company’s MAP growth assessment for younger elementary students. This sample comes from schools all over the country but may not be nationally representative.

The typical red-shirted student is a white boy who comes from an economically comfortable household. That hasn’t changed over time. Rural communities have the highest rates of red-shirting, and they saw the largest increase during COVID. Roughly 9% of rural kindergartners started late in the 2021-22 school year.

Students in high-poverty schools have the lowest rate of red-shirting but also experienced notable increases during the pandemic.

Asian American students have consistently low rates of red-shirting, and that didn’t change during the pandemic.

Students who start kindergarten late posted higher test scores in kindergarten than their younger peers, with the gap equivalent to 20% to 30% of a school year’s worth of learning, NWEA found. However, by third grade, that gap evaporates.

Kuhfeld said there could be a number of reasons for this. Teachers tend to teach toward the middle of the pack, and where they differentiate, they tend to focus more on students who are behind. Students who start out ahead of their classmates might also grow bored and not do as well later, she said.

“Holding kids back is not going to undo the COVID impact,” Kuhfeld said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

More American students are attending private school. Why do so few take NAEP?

2026-03-13T10:52:00+00:00

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The National Assessment of Educational Progress is known as the nation’s report card. But as more students leave public schools, the test risks becoming less representative of the nation’s students.

Unlike public schools, private schools aren’t required to participate in the test, which is administered every two years to a representative sample of roughly half a million American students. Not enough private school students take the test to report distinct results for that group, even at the national level. Home school students aren’t included at all.

This isn’t a new problem — the last time NAEP reported separate private school results was 2013. But as more students attend private school or home school with public money, the significance of the information gap will only grow, NAEP governing board members and independent researchers told Chalkbeat.

“I see it as the most significant challenge facing the NAEP program in the medium term,” said Martin West, a Harvard University education professor and vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, “because it threatens our ability to speak with confidence about states’ success in supporting student learning.”

A dispute in Florida over the state’s 2024 NAEP results hints at a future where more states question the validity of their scores and where comparisons among states are trickier. When results were released in early 2025, Florida students’ performance had dropped to its lowest point in 20 years. Then-Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Education that blamed the decline, in part, on excluding private school students.

“This issue only stands to grow, as Florida has chosen a path that puts students and families before teachers unions and provides universal school choice,” Diaz wrote, before concluding with a call to “make NAEP great once again.”

Observers said the increase in Florida’s private school enrollment between 2022 and 2024 simply wasn’t large enough to account for the decline, but state education officials remain concerned.

Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist who frequently works with NAEP data, said “what happened in Florida in 2024 is a harbinger of the future as private school enrollment grows. It will become increasingly plausible for states to say that our public school results aren’t representative of our achievement.”

“If NAEP is the nation’s report card, then questions about private school achievement will become the dog that ate the homework,” added Kane, who is not involved in administering the test. “It will be a source of evasions and spin.”

Low private school NAEP participation leaves information void

NAEP is considered the gold standard in student assessment, a no-stakes test that allows reliable comparisons over time and between states.

The drop in NAEP scores after pandemic disruptions put the test in the public spotlight in a new way, fueling competing calls for greater investment in public schools — or more pathways out of them.

Congress intended for public and private school students to take the test, but federal law only requires public schools to participate in the main NAEP reading and math tests administered to fourth and eighth grade students.

Private schools make up about a quarter of American schools and educate about 9% of K-12 students, according to recent federal data. But a much smaller share of private school students take NAEP. In 2024, they accounted for about 1.3% of students who took the main tests.

Low participation means that NAEP doesn’t have enough data from private school students to report separately on how they perform. State results only reflect public school students in those states.

That lack of information already complicates state-by-state comparisons. The most recent national data shows private school students account for 15% of Wisconsin students and 13% of students in Florida, Louisiana, and New York, but just 2% of students in Utah and Wyoming.

Higher private school participation would allow their NAEP results to be reported separately at the national level and incorporated into state-level results. That could help answer questions about whether changes over time or differences between states are driven by the share of students in private school, West said.

It would take dramatically higher participation to report private school results separately at the state level. That’s not a high priority, West said, because NAEP data isn’t as useful for comparing the effectiveness of public and private schools.

Meanwhile, 1.2 million students participated in some sort of publicly funded school choice program in the 2024-25 school year, according to data from EdChoice, an advocacy group.

That’s still less than 3% of K-12 public school enrollment, but the numbers have surged in the last few years and are expected to continue to grow.

Private school leaders have mixed feelings about NAEP

Catholic schools participate at much higher rates than other private schools, and their NAEP results are reported separately. Catholic school students also showed some declines during the pandemic, but they have continued to post higher average scores than public school students.

“I’m not sure why people wouldn’t do it,” said Steven Cheeseman, president and CEO of the National Catholic Education Association. “The reality for us as Catholic schools is that we’ve always felt like it’s an important accountability measure.”

Michael Schuttloffel, executive director of the Council for American Private Education, said in an email that many private school leaders find the prospect of taking time out of the school day for a test that doesn’t directly benefit them “daunting.”

NAEP tries to minimize the burden on schools by handling all the logistics. Officials hope a Next Gen NAEP initiative can find ways to reduce testing burden further and make results more useful.

Some private schools also may have a “philosophical disposition against the idea of a standardized test — especially one administered by the federal government — being the principal measure of student learning or school success,” Schuttloffel wrote.

Schuttloffel said he shares that perspective, but added: “Nonetheless, knowing whether kids can read and do math is an important piece of the picture when we are trying to get our arms around what, and how well, our kids are learning.”

Ron Reynolds, who represents non-public schools on NAEP’s governing board, believes private schools are not only “shirking their responsibility” but also missing “a magnificent opportunity for private schools to tell their story writ large.”

The leaders of private school organizations are generally on board with administering NAEP, Reynolds said, but “the challenge is delivering the message effectively to school site leadership and inducing buy-in at the site level.”

A new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center calls for Congress to charge NAEP’s governing board with increasing participation across all school types. Reynolds said he would support making participation a condition of receiving money from the new federal tax-credit scholarship. While he would prefer not to see a mandate, public money brings with it certain responsibilities.

But parents likely would object strongly to mandates as federal meddling, Schuttloffel said.

Rob Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice, has used NAEP data to argue that public schools are failing students, but he sees less value in it for private schools. Parents and the public might learn more, he said, if those schools shared more data they already have.

If policymakers want more private school students to take NAEP, incentives such as automatic accreditation would be more appropriate than mandates, he said.

“Everyone says they want apples-to-apples comparisons, but we’ve had rotten apples for years and done nothing about it,” Enlow said.

Ultimately, the case for participating in NAEP is to contribute to reliable information and good policymaking, West said.

“It’s an appeal to the good of the nation or the quality of data we have for everyone,” he said.

The 2026 test administration is currently underway and expected to wrap up later this month. Results for math and reading are expected in early 2027.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court ruling on gender identity favors parents but leaves unanswered questions for schools

2026-03-07T00:27:11+00:00

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s Mirabelli v. Bonta ruling casts doubt on the legality of school district policies that aim to protect transgender students’ privacy.

But even though the majority of justices sided with California parents who said those policies led schools to withhold important information about their children’s gender identity, the practical impact of their ruling is less straightforward amid a shifting legal landscape for trans rights.

In Mirabelli v. Bonta, teachers and parents challenged a California law that required schools to use students’ preferred names and pronouns and to not disclose students’ transgender identity — including to parents — without the student’s consent.

A U.S. District Court judge sided with the parents and teachers and ordered California to revise its guidance to school districts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit put that decision on hold, leaving California’s law in place while the lawsuit played out. The Supreme Court intervened before the appeals court could more closely consider the case, with the conservative majority finding that the parents were likely to succeed on the merits.

As an emergency ruling on the so-called shadow docket, Mirabelli doesn’t create binding precedent but gives a strong indication of how judges view the issue.

Conservatives hailed the 6-3 decision as a victory for parental rights that puts school districts on notice. A database maintained by the conservative parent group Defending Education identified more than 1,000 school districts nationwide with policies that limit parental notification about children and their gender identity.

“If you have been socially transitioning children at school without their parents’ knowledge, the Supreme Court of the United States has now told you in no uncertain terms: that is unconstitutional,” Paul Jonna, special counsel at the Thomas More Society, a conservative religious public interest law firm representing the California parents and teachers, said in a statement. “Get your policies into compliance immediately.”

But while the decision seems to say clearly that schools can’t withhold information from parents, the ruling doesn’t clarify under what exact circumstances they have to reach out, said University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black.

A narrow reading of the ruling could be that schools need to respond honestly to parent questions, but don’t have an obligation “to get on the phone and say, ‘Hey, did you know that Jane is going by John now?’” Black said. “That would be kind of absurd actually because the parents may very well know.”

Advocates for transgender youth, meanwhile, worry that some students will lose their only safe haven.

President Donald Trump has asserted through executive orders that there are only two sexes and that people cannot change their gender. His administration has investigated school districts over inclusive policies and threatened to withhold funds from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.

Mo Turner, director of policy and advocacy for Glisten, a group that focuses on making education safe for LGBTQ youth, sees “a steady march towards trying to create a U.S. where trans folk don’t exist.”

“We are creating a harmful environment when we see school districts asked to forcibly out students, when we ask folks to chip away at the little pieces of independence that our youth are getting, as they try to figure out who they are,” Turner said.

When must schools notify parents about gender identity changes?

Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor gave parents the right to opt their children out of lessons that violate their religious beliefs. But even before that, legal precedent going back to Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Wisconsin v. Yoder generally supported parents’ rights, Black said.

Those constitutional issues are distinct from political questions or policy preferences, he said, even if the outcome presents a “tough pill to swallow” for some.

“Parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children,” he said. “I’m not saying every parent is going to get it right, but if you have to choose between the state, the school, and the parent, it’s going to be the parent every time.”

One exception, Black noted, was the 2024 U.S. v. Skrmetti decision, which upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and disregarded the rights of parents who supported their children’s transitions.

Indiana, Tennessee, and four other states have laws that require schools to notify parents when a student wants to go by a different name or change their gender presentation at school, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

But on the ground, school district policies can be inconsistent, Chalkbeat reporting found.

And the Supreme Court did not address what actions should prompt schools to proactively inform parents. Does that obligation kick in when a student informs adults at school about a new name or pronouns? Or if teachers notice that a student’s friends address them differently?

“The implications for enforcement are so complex and almost impossible to comprehend in terms of how it will be operationalized on a day-to-day basis,” said Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center.

Asked if the state would be issuing new guidance for school districts, the California Department of Education said only that it does not comment on pending litigation.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office is “disappointed” in the ruling but declined to say whether they would continue to defend California’s law in court.

“We remain committed to ensuring a safe, welcoming school environment for all students while respecting the crucial role parents play in students’ lives,” the statement said.

Where do parental rights begin and end?

Social conservatives and the Trump administration have accused schools for years of facilitating children’s gender transitions. Most often, this refers to schools using children’s preferred names and pronouns as part of a process of social transition.

Such accusations touch on highly sensitive and disputed questions of parental rights and the role of schools and educators in children’s lives. Sometimes children or teens ask to go by a different name or gender identity at school and ask trusted teachers not to tell their parents because they fear their parents will respond negatively. Schools might continue to use a student’s legal name and gender in communications with parents.

These decisions can have high stakes for everyone involved. One set of parents in Mirabelli said they did not know their child identified as a different gender until they were hospitalized for a suicide attempt. At the same time, between 20% and 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, with many reporting that parental rejection and abuse contributed to them leaving home.

Black said policies that treat parental involvement as the default and carve out clearly defined safety exemptions might withstand legal scrutiny better than those that tightly limit disclosure.

Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a blog post that the decision was “a quiet victory for public schools and teachers.”

“Teachers do their best work when aligned with families, not forced to participate in secrecy regimes that invite suspicion,” he wrote.

Absent from Mirabelli was any consideration of students’ rights or agency. In an unrelated Colorado case, a U.S. District Court judge rejected the parents’ claim that district policies limiting disclosure had harmed them. “The District is not the decision maker at issue: the student is,” the judge wrote.

These and other legal questions could get more consideration if the Supreme Court takes up any of the several dozen cases working their way up through the lower courts.

Like Mahmoud before it, Mirabelli raises other questions about where parental rights begin and end, and whether it matters if parents’ claims are grounded in religious belief. Many states allow teenagers younger than 18 to consent to mental health treatment, medical care, working during school hours, sex, and even marriage without parental permission.

Writing in Vox, Ian Millhiser said the decision’s description of parental rights was so broad that it could require schools to report students to their parents if they dated a classmate, ate non-kosher food, or removed their hijab after arriving on school grounds.

The Education Department, meanwhile, has ongoing investigations into California and Maine based on accusations they violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which lays out students’ privacy rights in school and also gives parents access to students’ educational records, by withholding information. Conservative advocacy groups have filed civil rights complaints that make similar claims.

FERPA requires schools to share written records, such as a formal gender support plan, with parents, but experts question whether it requires proactive disclosure. The administration could draw on Mirabelli to bolster its pursuit of these claims, but on its own, the decision doesn’t change the law.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court finds parents have a right to know about gender transitions at school

2026-03-03T15:44:03+00:00

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Parents have the right to know about their child’s gender identity at school, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an emergency decision Monday.

The 6-3 decision by the conservative majority found parents were likely to prevail in a lawsuit seeking to overturn a California law that required teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns at school and that barred them from disclosing students’ gender identity to parents without the students’ consent.

The decision was notable because the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to take up similar cases that had worked their way through the courts. The case touches on hotly contested issues about the role of schools in children’s lives and how the law distinguishes between parents’ rights and children’s rights.

The majority invoked Mahmoud v. Taylor, a decision last year that found parents have the right to opt their children out of lessons that violate their religious beliefs. California’s law is unlikely to survive the strict scrutiny requirements imposed by Mahmoud, the court wrote.

“Indeed, the intrusion on parents’ free exercise rights here — unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition — is greater than the introduction of LGBTQ storybooks we considered sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny in Mahmoud,” the court wrote.

Going beyond just the question of religious rights, the court also found that California’s law likely violates parents’ due process rights to direct their children’s upbringing.

“Gender dysphoria is a condition that has an important bearing on a child’s mental health, but when a child exhibits symptoms of gender dysphoria at school, California’s policies conceal that information from parents and facilitate a degree of gender transitioning during school hours,” the decision stated. “These policies likely violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”

Writing in dissent, Justice Elana Kagan said the court should have allowed the case to get a more thorough airing in the lower courts — or taken up one of the numerous cases that has been argued more extensively, including a similar one out of Massachusetts.

The case, Kagan wrote, “raises tricky questions, and so cries out for reflection and explanation. The Court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly.”

Kagan also noted that the court last year refused to even consider the due process rights of parents who supported their children’s gender transition in its 2024 U.S. v. Skrmetti decision, which upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care for minors.

The lawsuit in California originally was brought by Catholic teachers who said the law impinged on their free speech and religious liberty rights. Later, parents who said the law blocked them from making important decisions about their children’s health and upbringing joined the lawsuit.

A U.S. District Court judge sided with the teachers and parents, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit put that decision on hold, leaving California’s law in place while the lawsuit played out.

The teachers and parents asked the Supreme Court to intervene on an emergency basis. They said allowing the law to remain in place, potentially for years, while the case worked its way through the system, could do irreparable harm.

The Supreme Court did not weigh in the teachers’ rights issues raised by the case, only on the parental rights.

The Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm focused on religious liberty that represented the parents in the case, predicted that the decision will “dismantle secret gender transition policies across the country.”

“This is a watershed moment for parental rights in America,” said Paul Jonna, special counsel at the law firm. “The Supreme Court has told California and every state in the nation in no uncertain terms: you cannot secretly transition a child behind a parent’s back.”

Attorneys for the state of California had argued their law supports the creation of safe and inclusive environments at school and allows parents to be notified, even against a student’s wishes, when there are immediate safety issues.

LGBTQ advocacy groups have said they generally encourage schools to help students find a way to involve their parents in these decisions, but not all parents are safe. Between 20% and 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, with many reporting that parental rejection and abuse contributed to them leaving home.

The court majority wrote that California could inform parents about children’s gender transitions and still ensure child safety by enforcing child abuse laws.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

FBI raids Los Angeles Superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s home, offices: what we know so far

2026-02-28T01:25:18+00:00

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Los Angeles Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is on paid administrative leave after an FBI raid on his home and offices earlier this week.

The Los Angeles Unified school board announced the unanimous decision Friday afternoon after two lengthy closed-door sessions. Chief of School Operations Andres Chait was named acting superintendent, effective immediately.

Carvalho has led the nation’s second largest school district since February 2022. He previously served 14 years as superintendent of the Miami-Dade County School District in Florida. Carvalho has been an outspoken defender of undocumented students and at one point was an unauthorized immigrant himself.

The FBI raided Carvalho’s home and offices on Wednesday morning.

The FBI has not accused Carvalho of wrongdoing. Sources have told the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets that Carvalho is a target of an investigation related to the now-defunct edtech company AllHere Education, which designed an AI chatbot for the district.

In a press release, the school board said it acted to ensure district leadership could remain focused on serving students. The press release also said the board could not comment on the investigation.

“Today’s action is aimed at fulfilling our promise to students and families to provide an excellent public education without distraction,” Board President Scott Schmerelson said.

Here’s what we know so far:

Federal officials executed search warrants at Carvalho’s home in Los Angeles’ San Pedro neighborhood Wednesday morning, as well as his office at LAUSD headquarters. The FBI also searched a home in Broward County, Florida, in relation to the same investigation, Miami public radio station WLRN reports. Public records show that the home belongs to Debra Kerr, a former sales representative for AllHere. The affidavits that back up these search warrants are sealed, the FBI told local media outlets.

LAUSD launched “Ed,” an AI-powered personal assistant for students, in March 2024. The district abruptly dropped its relationship with AllHere, the company that developed Ed, a few months later when the company collapsed. Company founder and former CEO Joanna Smith-Griffin was indicted on federal fraud charges in 2024. She pleaded not guilty. A report by EdSurge raised questions about what happened to student data in the process.

Under Carvalho’s leadership, Los Angeles Unified School District has ramped up protections for undocumented students in response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. The district has expanded bus routes and virtual schooling options, conducted its own patrols around school sites, and helped families with legal assistance. Carvalho grew up very poor in Portugal and was homeless and undocumented as a young man. He has said his own experiences mean he can understand the fear that many immigrant students feel today.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently sought to join a private lawsuit challenging the Los Angeles district’s decades-old desegregation policies. The lawsuit filed in January by the 1776 Project Foundation alleges that a district policy of ensuring slightly smaller class sizes at most of its schools discriminates against students who attend schools with a higher percentage of white students.

The School Superintendents Association named Carvalho their Superintendent of the Year in 2014 when he was the head of the Miami school district, the nation’s fourth-largest. In 2018, then-New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio named Carvalho chancellor, only for Carvalho to turn down the job. He took the top job in Los Angeles in 2022.

The Miami district’s inspector general investigated a nonprofit started by Carvalho for soliciting a donation from a company that created a failed online learning platform. The investigation found no ‘actual’ wrongdoing, the Miami Herald reported in 2021, but the inspector general said the donation created an appearance of impropriety and should be returned.

Editor’s Note: Updated, Feb. 27, 2026. This story has been updated to reflect that Carvalho was placed on paid leave and to include additional information about the investigation.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

U.S. Department of Education releases vision for reshaping federal research after DOGE cuts

2026-02-27T23:20:56+00:00

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A much-anticipated report on the future of federal education research makes a strong case for the value of the Institute of Education Sciences and calls for significant changes to make research more useful for educators and policymakers.

The report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education praises IES for significantly improving the rigor of education research and contributing to a strong body of evidence about what works in schools. But it also says too much previous work by IES hasn’t been put to practical use, has failed to address high-priority issues, or is redundant.

Although the department shared the recommendations, the Trump administration has not committed to adopting them. The administration wants to dismantle the Department of Education and has been parceling out key functions to other agencies in pursuit of that goal. The Institute of Education Sciences was devastated during the early months of the Trump administration, when the U.S. DOGE Service cost-cutting initiative abruptly canceled contracts and eliminated more than 100 positions.

Education research is one of the Education Department functions required by law and is widely considered one of the most important roles played by the federal government. Many researchers and advocates fear states would not make their own investments in education research and that research would not be as widely disseminated without federal involvement. IES directors are appointed for six-year terms that, like those of Federal Reserve chairs, are intended to straddle administrations and insulate the agency from partisan pressures.

The Department of Education hired Amber Northern, senior vice president for research at the center-right Thomas B. Fordham Institute, to look at the work IES had been doing and talk to researchers, state schools chiefs, and others about the best path forward.

“These are not nips and tucks, as IES is struggling in multiple ways to remain relevant and responsive,” Northern wrote in “Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences.”

But the report also offers a vigorous defense of the value of a strong federal role in education research, and argues that research must remain independent from political influence.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that IES’s dogged commitment to high-quality empirical studies has transformed the field of education research, shifting it away from less to more rigorous methods and practices,” the report says.

As the administration seeks to dismantle the Department of Education, the report argues that a reinvigorated IES would support larger goals of giving states and parents the tools to improve how schools serve students.

IES is an “entity worth redemption and revitalization, precisely because its work has the potential to empower those who deliver education to the American people, meaning state and local leaders, school leaders, teachers, and the broader public, including parents,” the report says.

The report lists out research projects that have helped educators support struggling readers, improve students’ math skills, and steer high school students to higher education. Practice guides related to literacy and math instruction are downloaded tens of thousands of times each year. The basic data sets that the National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES, maintains on student demographics, school finance, and more provide a foundation for public and private research.

And the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP or the nation’s report card, provides essential information about student learning across states and over time.

But too often, research doesn’t make it into the classroom or answer the most urgent questions in education, the report said. And some data collection projects are duplicative or unwieldy and cost too much for the value of data produced.

The report includes numerous recommendations focused on making research easier for schools to use. For example, it says researchers should produce one-page summaries, infographics, and short videos as a condition for funding.

The report also emphasizes funding research that can quickly drive change at the classroom level. There is often tension, however, between speed and determining whether an intervention makes a difference for students years later.

The report’s recommendations include:

Focusing on fewer problems in education and addressing those problems from multiple angles and across the offices within IES.
Streamlining data collection and focusing on core functions.
Prioritizing multi-state projects over requests from individual states and jurisdictions.
Directing research toward “practicality, innovation, and relevance.”
Narrowing the scope of the What Works Clearinghouse to practice guides and other tools educators are likely to use.

In its press release, the Education Department thanked Northern for her work and noted the IES “too often delivered research that is slow, siloed, and disconnected from classroom realities.” It did not commit to adopting the recommendations.

In a blog post, acting IES Director Matthew Soldner wrote: “The challenge that lies ahead is operationalizing elements of Reimagining while ensuring that IES’s unique role in the education sciences isn’t just continued, but elevated."

Report on reshaping IES gets outside support

In an interview, Northern said one of her first questions when the department approached her about the job was how serious officials were about reinvigorating IES. She said she was impressed with how many people inside and outside the administration wanted to engage on the future of IES.

“Too much research was suited to what researchers wanted to know rather than what the field needs to know,” said Northern, who is continuing in an advisory role through June. “We had no real strategy.”

Mark Schneider, who served as director of IES from 2018 to 2024, said the cuts made by DOGE have opened up an “amazing opportunity” to rebuild the agency. Schneider has described being frustrated in making big changes during his tenure by entrenched interests.

Schneider said he supports the report’s focus on addressing urgent education problems and changing how NCES collects long-term data.

“The statistical data collections were old, creaky,” he said. “They weren’t using modern techniques. They didn’t care enough about timeliness.”

Rachel Dinkes, president of the Knowledge Alliance, a national education research coalition, said the report represents a “positive step forward” overall because it promotes the idea that IES is important to federal infrastructure.

“There is a real critical mass of people that feel that IES is a really important agency,” she said.

The report includes valuable recommendations on connecting research and practice, said Cara Jackson, research manager at the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting and past president of the Association of Education Finance and Policy. But Jackson worries that too much focus on speed could lead to more correlational studies and less rigor around causality.

Jackson, who participated in one of the working groups that contributed to the report, said she doesn’t want to open the door to vendors making misleading claims about their products.

She also wonders who will turn the recommendations into policy change.

“They’ve let so many people go,” she said. “I’m worried we’ve done tremendous damage to our ability to recruit people into government work.”

Read the full report here.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

These high school students are the caretakers of one of America’s dark chapters

2026-02-19T20:14:53+00:00

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GRANADA, Colo. — The black-and-white photographs show neat rows of young men wearing old-fashioned football uniforms and leather helmets. As elementary students jostled around the museum display, Granada High senior Emersen Hernandez explained that the Amache Boys’ Club team only ever played one home game, against nearby Holly.

Amache won that game. But most other teams in the region did not want to play at Amache — or play against them at all.

“Why?” one boy interrupted.

Emersen paused before answering. But she didn’t shy away from the reason. “At the time, there were a lot of racists in the area, and they did not want anything to do with the Japanese Americans.”

Cheraw School students gather around a panel at the Amache Museum during a field trip on Oct. 22, 2025.

The younger students, many in their purple Cheraw Wolverines T-shirts, had traveled an hour by yellow school bus for their October field trip to Amache. Located in southeast Colorado just outside the tiny town of Granada, it was one of 10 sites where the U.S. government imprisoned tens of thousands of its own citizens during World War II.

Under the leadership of teacher John Hopper, the site and its stories have for more than three decades had an unusual set of caretakers: Granada High School students like Emersen.

Students have sifted through dirt to find discarded children’s toys and broken glass bottles of lithium-laced Cheer Up soda. They’ve recorded firsthand stories from survivors and their families. They’ve mowed the grass and tended the cemetery.

Amache represents the kind of difficult American history that many teachers are wary of broaching in the classroom. Addressing it wasn’t popular back in the 1990s either, when Hopper first had his students send questionnaires to survivors.

“I had a lot of pushback from locals. ‘Leave it alone,’” Hopper recalled. “I was getting letters. I was getting phone calls. I was not very well-liked.”

Over time, Hopper’s Amache course became a sought-after elective at Granada High School, and the Amache Preservation Society became an elite club with its own letter jackets.

Members of the Amache Preservation Society clean glass display cases after a field trip leaves the museum. "You'd be surprised how many fingerprints get on those glass containers," said Tanner Grasmick, a Granada High School teacher who has taken over running the program.

The Amache Museum collection includes posters ordering people of Japanese ancestry to report for evacuation and suitcases that community members carried on the journey. Granada students research artifacts and write interpretive text with support from graduate students and faculty from the University of Denver.

The work done by Hopper’s students helped lay the foundation for Amache officially becoming a national historic site in 2024. That put the federal government in charge of the site. Hopper ensured Granada students would keep control of the small independent museum they run out of a converted bank in town. At this de facto visitor center, they give tours to school groups and tourists filling their National Parks Passports.

This is sensitive work. Few people today believe this history should be ignored. But exactly how it should be told, and what lessons this episode holds for the current political moment, have divided people for decades.

The Granada students have always steered clear of partisan politics while sharing those stories. But the Trump administration’s push for schools and national parks and museums to present a positive view of America’s past has made politics more challenging for students to sidestep.

QR codes went up last summer at Amache and every National Park Service site advising visitors to report anything “negative about either past or living Americans.”

The National Park Service has since removed a slavery exhibit from a Philadelphia home where George Washington lived, though a federal judge ordered it restored. The Pride flag came down at Stonewall National Monument, though New Yorkers promptly raised it again. The park service has plans to remove signs at more than a dozen other sites.

Hopper is getting questions again, from both visitors and locals. “What are you going to do about your museum? It’s mostly DEI.”

The reconstructed water tower is a signature feature of Amache and visible for miles around. After the camp closed, the tank was used to water cattle.

Amache museum tells story of Japanese American internment

Today at Amache, you can find a reconstructed water tower, community center, barracks building, and watchtower. Sage and blue grama have reclaimed much of the site, though elms planted by those incarcerated here still dot the landscape.

But between 1942 and 1945, this site was the 10th largest city in Colorado. In total, roughly 10,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them U.S. citizens, lived here behind barbed wire and under constant military guard, in hastily constructed barracks that afforded little privacy or protection from the wind and dust and cold.

“It just scared the living daylights out of me when we went by it on the highway,” said Sandra Ellis, who grew up in a nearby town. “We assumed they were locked up because they were dangerous.”

Plans to round up people of Japanese descent in the event of a war had been laid years earlier. After the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act to arrest non-citizen immigrants and community leaders.

Then on Feb. 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing exclusion zones from which military authorities could order the removal of civilians. Military officials first imposed curfews only on Japanese Americans, then encouraged them to leave the West Coast voluntarily, and then ordered their removal and detention in the U.S. interior.

The Amache Museum tells this story. There are posters ordering people of Japanese ancestry to report for evacuation and suitcases into which they crammed what they could carry.

Three young boys play baseball at Amache. The photo was taken by Jack Muro, a Japanese American man incarcerated there, sometime between 1943 and 1945. Cameras initially were banned at incarceration sites. U.S. citizens eventually were allowed to apply for the return of confiscated cameras.

“Little kids, like you guys, they couldn’t bring their toys,” Emersen, her dark hair pulled back in small braids, told the Cheraw students. “They had to take things that their families needed, so extra sheets, extra jackets, sweaters.”

Faculty and graduate students from the Amache Community Archeology Project, based at the University of Denver, helped Granada students learn how to catalog artifacts and display them in meaningful ways.

There are kimonos and traditional Japanese instruments, cards produced by Amache’s silk screen shop, and a wedding cake topper that was used again and again. There are loyalty tests that marked some for transfer to harsher camps and passes that allowed those deemed low-risk to leave the camp for work.

These items shape students’ discussions with visitors. Emersen recalled one person who questioned whether people at Amache were truly incarcerated.

“I was explaining how they could leave with permission and get passes and IDs to go into town, so one man asked me, ‘If they can leave and go in and out, they’re not really prisoners, right?’”

“But if you have to get permission to leave and you have to come back,” Emersen said she told him, “you’re not free.”

Carlene Tanigoshi Tinker, right, sifts through soil during an excavation at Amache in 2022. Tanigoshi Tinker was incarcerated at Amache as a very young child and participates in the University of Denver's archeology field school every summer. She met local resident Sandra Ellis on one of these trips and invited her to an open house at the end of the field season, the beginning of a lasting friendship.

Students let Amache visitors make up their own minds

A large group had just left the museum last summer when the students found something alarming tacked up in a semi-private cubicle where survivors and their descendants leave handwritten remembrances.

Next to note cards describing how one person’s mother had to report for removal a week after giving birth, and how another’s parents met at Amache, were the words “WE HAVE LEARNED NOTHING” and articles and photos about “Alligator Alcatraz,” the immigrant detention center recently built in the Florida Everglades.

The students don’t know if someone from that group put up the Alligator Alcatraz display, or if any visitors saw it.

“The person probably thought, ‘Oh, the people who work here or the people who are coming to visit, they would agree with what we’re putting up,’” Emersen said. “But the museum is supposed to be about the Japanese Americans, and putting up stuff like that takes away from what people are trying to learn.”

Out at the camp, next to the QR code, another visitor left their sarcastic take on what a positive version of the incarceration story might look like.

“It was the Spring of 1942 and President Roosevelt decided to treat people of Japanese descent to a fabulous free vacation at one of ten fantastic luxury resorts built just for the occasion,” it began.

Students worried that visitors might take it at face value.

“When people go there, they don’t expect something sarcastic,” said Destiny Garcia, also a senior at Granada High School and a member of the Amache Preservation Society. “So some people might have taken it serious, and that’s misinformation being spread.”

Granada High School junior Dayzriana Quintana leads Cheraw School students on a tour of the Amache Museum. Cheraw teachers bring the older elementary students to Amache every few years. Students learn more about Japanese American incarceration when they study Colorado history in fourth grade.

Granada students don’t see their work as political. They also believe Amache has lessons for today. “This can happen again,” Emersen said. “The Constitution hasn’t changed. Everything you see here, it could happen to another person again.”

A former Japanese American incarceration site at Fort Bliss in Texas has been reopened as an immigrant detention site. Several states are using an obscure law, last used to identify Japanese immigrants for relocation, to bring criminal charges against unauthorized immigrants who fail to register.

Today a majority of Granada students are Hispanic. Destiny said she worries about people being questioned or detained based just on their appearance. But the goal of the Amache Preservation Society is to present historical facts, not tell people what to think.

“We leave political opinions for the visitors to conclude,” Destiny said.

Amache offers students the chance to be historians

Hopper knew about Amache back when very few people talked openly about it. He grew up about an hour away, and a friend of his parents had been interned there. And whether people talked about it or not, signs of that history were everywhere.

The town used portions of the Amache site as a landfill and a fairgrounds. The physical materials of Amache, auctioned off after it closed, were scattered around the region. The Amache hospital laundry became the school district’s bus barn. Some residents grew up eating out of Amache’s soup bowls.

Hopper, who sports a mustache, has a quality particular to the best teachers, who can command kids’ attention and get them to do things they didn’t think were within their reach. But when he was young and inexperienced, he was looking for ways to make history more engaging. He was also curious about Amache, so he put his students on the case.

Starting with just a few addresses, they sent questionnaires to survivors. These interviews expanded the historical record of what happened there and slowly built trust with people who had not always been welcomed back when they started making pilgrimages in the 1970s.

Dayzriana Quintana shows Cheraw students a scale model of Amache. Earlier that morning, the students had visited the camp site, where there are a few reconstructed buildings and hundreds of barracks foundations.

Working with the school’s math teacher, students built a scale model of Amache. They calculated the slope of the site and measured barracks’ foundations to get it right. Drawing on his graduate school archeology experience, Hopper taught the students how to build sifters and took them to look for artifacts.

Students loved the chance to be historians and not just read about history. They formed bonds with survivors and their descendants, who entrusted them with artifacts and sought their help in researching family stories.

“It’s not just state standards this, state standards that,” Hopper said. “It’s practical knowledge of how to do things and how to do it correctly and how to use critical thinking skills to figure it out.”

Hopper got a tip after a local rancher died that the camp’s old water tank was in a field some 20 miles away, where it had been used to water cattle. But the estate was tied up in probate, and things were getting ugly.

Hopper gave the job to a student because he knew it would be harder to say no to a kid.

“He had to call 43 different people from that family,” Hopper said. “He called cousin Eddie and cousin Betty. He called this person and that one to get to the right person. And that person said, ‘It’s yours, but you got to get down there now and get it off.’ So that’s what we did.”

The restored water tower is now one of the site’s defining features.

Ellis, who felt scared when she drove past as a child, can see it from her window. Now it fills her with awe.

“They got to have been very strong and courageous people to be plunked down in the middle of that prairie and do what they did,” she said. “And then to find out they were American citizens.”

A guard tower is reflected in the window of a reconstructed barracks building at Amache National Historic Site. Amache was considered one of the less restrictive and better administered incarceration sites, but residents still lived under armed guard at all times.

Granada students’ work changed minds at home

When the Army ordered Japanese Americans to leave the West Coast, Mitch Homma’s grandfather Kyushiro Homma lost a thriving dental practice in Los Angeles that served Hollywood actors and University of Southern California football players. He died in Amache, most likely of a heart attack or stroke, at just 44 years old.

Homma’s father, Hisao, was 8 years old at the time.

Homma is now the president of the Amache Alliance, a California-based group that represents survivors and descendents. He didn’t learn much about his family’s story until his grandmother died in 2004, and he uncovered a trove of photographs — prewar family photos that church friends had saved and camp images his grandfather had taken with cameras smuggled in with his dental equipment.

Digital copies of those photographs — a rare find in a community forced to abandon family albums and restricted from taking new photos in camp — are now part of the Amache Museum’s collection. A panel tells the Homma-Wada family story.

Exploring that story wasn’t easy. Homma’s first trip to Amache with his father opened old wounds.

“When Dad got off the bus, and I saw the look on his face, I thought I was the worst son in the world,” Homma said. “You could see all the memories coming back. When I pushed and probed, he would remind me: ‘Amache took my father.’”

Hisao Homma, left, and Kumiko Hasegawa, right, look at the Amache Remembered memorial during a 2008 visit. The marker commemorates soldiers from Amache who died in combat as well as people who died while incarcerated. Hisao Homma was 8 years old when his father died at Amache.

President Ronald Reagan apologized for Japanese American incarceration in 1988 — the result of decades of Japanese American activism that sometimes divided the community.

But anti-Japanese sentiment from the war years remained widespread when Hopper started this work.

Then-Granada mayor Alan Pfeiffer told the alternative weekly Westword in 2001 that he didn’t see much value in learning about Amache. Pfeiffer’s father had been at Pearl Harbor and “didn’t have a good taste for the Japanese up to the day he died,” he said.

At one point, Hopper said, a woman came all the way from Idaho to confront him while he was working with students at the cemetery. She demanded to see his curriculum. He told her it was public knowledge, and she was welcome to review it.

In the face of skepticism and hostility, Hopper urged his students to stick to the facts. Their presentations were backed by primary source documents and vetted by survivors. Everything they told people about Amache, they could explain how they knew it to be true.

Slowly, attitudes changed. When Amache became a national historic site, Granada Mayor Argie Thrall Jr. issued a statement of support.

“It was the kids who changed the minds of their parents and other people in their region,” Homma said. “I always refer to them as little educators.”

Amache story remains in the hands of students and descendants

So far, no changes have been made at any of the six Japanese American incarceration sites in the NPS system, according to both parks supporters and the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service.

An Interior Department spokesperson denied that changes underway at other sites involve diluting or rewriting history. In an email, the spokesperson said the National Park Service is doing routine reviews and maintenance “to ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values” to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

Visitor comments in response to the QR code reviewed by Chalkbeat overwhelmingly supported telling the full history of Amache.

“I think our country is strong enough to understand the history of our nation in its totality, and I think that anything less than that makes us weak,” one person wrote.

Changes are coming for Amache, though. Existing signage includes a mix of materials put up by the Amache Preservation Society, Colorado Preservation Inc., and others over the years. Some signs are sun-bleached and hard to read.

Now that Amache is a national historic site, Japanese American organizations, academic experts, and others are working with the National Park Service on planned updates. Homma worries about the park service’s larger educational mission, but he said initial reviews of new material have gone well.

Advocates for Amache are choosing their language carefully. They don’t want to sanitize the story and risk people “thinking it was a YMCA summer camp,” Homma said. Nor do they want to “jab the government in the eye.”

“The site’s not there to make people feel horrible about what happened,” Homma said. “It should never happen again. I’m not trying to water that down. But there are great stories of resiliency.”

Granada social studies teacher and coach Tanner Grasmick poses for a portrait outside the Amache Museum on Oct. 22, 2025. Grasmick has taken over day-to-day operations of the Amache Preservation Society.

Those incarcerated at Amache coaxed vegetables from the soil with farming techniques brought from California. They published newspapers and formed dozens of clubs. Young men and women volunteered for military service at the highest rate of any camp.

That perseverance is a message Tanner Grasmick also hopes to impart on visitors. As a student, talking directly to people who were “uprooted from their home and had to move to the middle of nowhere and make the best of it” made a deep impression on him.

Inspired by Hopper, Grasmick became a teacher and returned to Granada. Hopper is officially retired, though he still works part-time, and Grasmick has taken over running the Amache Preservation Society. Students are already talking to him about wanting to join next year.

The museum remains in the control of the Amache Preservation Society, so the federal government won’t dictate the stories it tells. And as Grasmick steps up to guide students, Hopper said he’s playing the role of the superintendent who had his back when he was a young teacher. If there’s any heat to be taken, he’ll take it.

Grasmick said he feels supported by a community that once wanted Hopper to back off.

“We tell the story as it is, regardless of how uncomfortable it might be, regardless of anything,” Grasmick said. “If that’s the story that happened, we’re going to tell it how it was.”

Between 1942 and 1945, Amache was the 10th largest city in Colorado. After World War II ended, the building materials were auctioned off, leaving concrete foundations, the road grid, and elms planted by Japanese Americans confined here.

Teaching Japanese American incarceration

Arrange a visit to the Amache Museum and Amache National Historic Site.

Visit other Japanese American incarceration sites in the National Park system.

Densho offers lesson plans and video interviews with former incarcerees. Densho preserves oral histories, images, and other historical documents related to Japanese American incarceration and promotes civil liberties.

Heart Mountain Japanese American Confinement Site offers classroom resources and in-person and virtual field trips. This Wyoming incarceration site is managed by a private foundation independent of the National Park Service.

Japanese American National Museum offers a summer teacher training program and virtual workshops about the Japanese American experience, including incarceration. JANM is a Smithsonian-affiliate museum in Los Angeles.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Why these Minnesota superintendents are suing to keep ICE away from schools

2026-02-11T19:18:43+00:00

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When the Department of Homeland Security did away with the longstanding practice of avoiding immigration enforcement at schools, a memo to agents instructed them to use “common sense.”

But common sense is not what Superintendent Brenda Lewis says she sees playing out daily in Fridley Public Schools, the 2,800-student district she leads in a diverse inner-ring suburb of Minneapolis.

A lawsuit filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Minnesota alleges DHS agents followed Lewis and school board members and staged operations from at least two Fridley school parking lots. In an interview, Lewis said ICE agents repeatedly circled a roundabout near a school one morning, refusing to stop for crossing guards or allow children to cross.

Attendance is down dramatically, and under state law, the district loses money when students miss more than 15 days of school. About 400 students now are enrolled in virtual options.

Fridley Public Schools is taking the lead in the latest effort to use the courts to keep ICE agents away from schools. Along with Duluth Public Schools and Education Minnesota, the state teachers union, the district is suing the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Kristi Noem to restore protections for sensitive locations such as schools, churches, and hospitals.

Denver Public Schools filed a similar lawsuit in February 2025, but later abandoned it after U.S. District Court Judge Daniel D. Domenico, a Trump appointee, found that Denver had failed to show serious enough effects to justify a preliminary injunction.

Whatever the reasoning in the Denver case, Lewis said the impacts in Fridley and in Minnesota more broadly are “very well documented.”

“We can show that through attendance data,” she said. “We can show that through students enrolling in virtual learning. We can show that in students and family members being detained, which then takes away from the educational environment, when they’re legally in this country. And I think we can show the mental health impacts that are happening with our children now, unfortunately, normalizing ICE agents near their school district buildings and interfering with the school.”

The lawsuit comes amid a backlash to aggressive immigration enforcement tactics after agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota. A viral image of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos drew attention to the rising number of children in detention.

Democrats in Congress have laid out 10 conditions for agreeing to fund the Department of Homeland Security. One of them is restoring sensitive locations protections for schools, churches, and hospitals.

That’s a priority for many education advocacy groups, but it’s not clear how much of a priority it is for lawmakers. Most of the public debate has focused on whether immigration agents should operate more like other law enforcement officers, forgoing masks and obtaining judicial warrants to enter private property.

Congress has until Friday to reach a deal, and so far the two sides remain far apart. Funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement will continue regardless.

The lawsuit describes school vans and buses stopped by immigration agents, parents arrested while waiting at school bus stops, and preschool teachers arrested in the parking lots of child care centers, including one who was tricked into coming outside by agents who told her someone hit her car. The lawsuit alleges that the decision last year to withdraw protections from schools was arbitrary and capricious and violates the Administrative Procedures Act.

The Department of Homeland Security and Immigrations and Custom Enforcement did not respond to a request for comment on the specific allegations in the lawsuit or to questions about how the restoration of sensitive locations protections would affect their operations.

“ICE is not conducting enforcement operations at, or ‘raiding,’ schools. ICE is not going to schools to make arrests of children,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement released last year. “Criminals are no longer able to hide in America’s schools to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

Duluth Public Schools, the other school district suing DHS, isn’t experiencing the same kind of direct effects as Fridley. Immigrant families make up a relatively small share of the district’s 9,100 students, and ICE hasn’t ramped up enforcement activity in this northern city.

But Duluth Superintendent John Magas estimates that 30%-50% of his staff’s administrative time is now being spent on preparations and communications and support for families. Staff members of color are carrying their passports. Parents stopped showing up for adult English classes.

Magas said he was frustrated that letters and public appeals didn’t seem to be getting the attention of people in power. He also felt like he was in a position to stick his neck out on behalf of districts that are more heavily affected and fear retribution. He had the unanimous support of his school board in joining the lawsuit.

“We believe in Minnesota in being good neighbors. and we want to stand up and be a good neighbor to the North and stand up for our communities that are being impacted,” he said.

Lewis said she hopes the lawsuit results in more protections for schools in Minnesota and ideally nationwide. But if Congress wants to act, that would be even better.

“Whatever is the quickest — and not able to be undone — method, we’ll take it,” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Growing number of education groups criticize impact of ICE operations on students

2026-01-29T01:04:47+00:00

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Tear gas fired outside preschools. Parents and children detained on their way to and from school. Federal agents circling schools or parked near bus stops. Parents keeping their children home as absences and learning loss mount.

A growing number of education advocacy groups say aggressive immigration enforcement tactics are having a devastating impact on students’ access to education. They are calling on Congress to make funding for the Department of Homeland Security conditional on a less-disruptive approach to enforcement than what agents from Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have used.

Keri Rodrigues of the National Parents Union, who visited Minneapolis this week, said Congress should condition further DHS funding on the restoration of the sensitive locations policy, which for decades limited immigration enforcement near schools, child care centers, churches, and hospitals.

“You can see ICE circling around elementary schools so they may not actually be physically in the building, but it’s quite clear and it’s sending a very strong message to parents and families that it’s not safe to take your kids to school,” she said.

The Council of the Great City Schools, which represents urban superintendents, said immigration enforcement is being carried out in ways that destabilize entire communities and interfere with schools’ ability to serve students.

“The Council of the Great City Schools calls on federal leaders—including the Trump Administration, Congress, and the courts—to immediately halt actions that endanger children, disrupt schooling, and erode trust in public institutions,” the group said in a statement Wednesday. “Our nation has a responsibility to ensure that policies are carried out in a manner that upholds human rights and dignity, protects children, and preserves schools as places of safety, stability, and opportunity.”

In an interview, executive director Ray Hart said that restoring the sensitive locations policy is important, but city superintendents are also concerned about the widespread fear of arrest that is leading families to keep their children home. He also noted that Congress has previously considered but failed to pass legislation in the past to codify the policy.

Some say the issue is critical enough that it’s worth shutting down the government if that’s what it takes to use the appropriations process to put guardrails around immigration enforcement.

The Senate this week had been expected to approve a bipartisan package of spending bills, including an education spending bill that avoided cuts proposed by the Trump administration. The package already has been approved by the House, which is in recess this week. The spending bills must be approved by midnight Friday to avoid another government shutdown.

But in the aftermath of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Democrats have said they want to separate the Department of Homeland Security funding measure from the other funding bills to require more oversight.

“People are living in fear, which means that many children are not going to school, and children who are going to school are worrying that when they come home something will have happened to their families,” said Amy Loyd, CEO of the advocacy group All4Ed. “Children are going to school and wondering what happened to their classmates. All the things we want kids to be able to do in school to learn and grow are being impacted.”

Having previously served as an Education Department official in the Biden administration, Loyd said she doesn’t take the prospect of a shutdown lightly. But if the current approach to immigration enforcement continues, she said, it endangers all the work to close achievement gaps, raise graduation rates, and ensure students are prepared for life and the workforce.

“All4Ed is taking a stand that if we cannot unbundle the DHS funding, we are in support of a partial shutdown until Congress can best figure out how to address the impacts on our children.”

And First Focus on Children, which advocates for issues related to children’s welfare, called on Congress to protect schools and other sensitive locations and end child detention and separate the DHS funding bill to avoid a shutdown.

Many of the groups weighing in are on the progressive side of the political spectrum, but more often focus their advocacy on parents’ rights, student achievement, and school choice.

The national teachers unions took slightly different tacks. National Education Association President Becky Pringle called for freezing DHS funding. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in an emailed statement that immigration enforcement needs reform “immediately,” including more protections for schools, and urged lawmakers to work together to avoid a shutdown.

The conservative parents’ rights group Defending Education, meanwhile, accused teachers of indoctrinating students to join anti-ICE protests and publicized a list of districts that had adopted sanctuary policies related to protecting immigrant students.

“The materials we uncovered show that students are being offered walkout guides, ‘day of action’ strategies, and training on how to respond to federal agents on school property,” President Nicole Neily said in an email to supporters.

Democrats’ demands, released Wednesday afternoon, include that ICE and Border Patrol agents not wear masks, display identification, and follow more conventional law enforcement practices around use of force, including cooperating with independent investigations.

The provisions as reported by multiple news outlets do not specifically address sensitive locations or enforcement near schools. But they do call for an end to “roving patrols” that have spread fear among legal immigrants, naturalized citizens, and communities of color more broadly.

While some Republicans have also been critical of federal agents’ actions, they still broadly support the president’s immigration crackdown.

Any changes to the spending bills would require that the House vote again, and conservative Republicans closely allied with the president could balk at restrictions on enforcement.

Updated: This story has been updated with comments from the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

Chalkbeat national reporter Lily Altavena contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Project 2025 author and top Trump official: Special education protections and funding will remain

2026-01-14T23:07:59+00:00

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The future of special education remains up in the air, but the Trump administration is feeling pressure to assuage the concerns of parents of students with disabilities that efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education could put their children at risk.

That was one of the key takeaways from Chalkbeat’s conversation with Lindsey Burke, a Department of Education official and author of the education chapter of the conservative blueprint Project 2025.

Burke, though, said that some of Project 2025’s most controversial ideas, including deep budget cuts to schools, aren’t currently on the table. She also said there’s “no reason to anticipate” funding freezes similar to the temporary withholding of $7 billion that threw school districts into chaos last summer.

But the Education Department is just one “decision point” on federal spending, and the department remains committed to ending grants it deems wasteful or not aligned with their priorities, Burke said. In her confirmation hearing, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon indicated the department would not cut funding to schools, but is currently seeking cuts to a number of programs and has already cancelled $2 billion in funds, according to Burke.

A year in, the Trump administration has surprised many observers with its far-reaching efforts to close the Department of Education, often a conservative hope but rarely a presidential priority. Late last year, the administration moved a number of education programs to the Labor Department. These efforts face ongoing legal challenges and sharp criticism from congressional Democrats.

The administration has also invited state leaders to seek waivers from federal requirements. It recently approved a waiver in Iowa, though the changes were relatively modest. At the same time, Trump’s Education Department has aggressively used its civil rights arm to target left-leaning education policies related to race and gender.

Burke, the department’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, acknowledged that the administration’s efforts to move education functions to the Labor Department might seem like a “blunt instrument.” Ensuring that education supports the development of a strong workforce is an important federal role, she said, but it’s not the only purpose of education.

“Education really is about forming human souls,” Burke said in response to an audience question, “and about really preparing individuals, preparing students to inherit the blessings and liberties of a free society.”

Here are some of the most interesting things we heard in our conversation with Burke.

The administration wants parents of students with disabilities not to worry

The administration has no plans to cut federal funding for special education and may even increase spending, Burke said.

“Fully funding IDEA has been of interest to many people on both sides of the aisle over the decades,” Burke said.

Burke said she didn’t want to preempt budget negotiations, but the administration plans to fund IDEA at “the current levels that are out there now, and potentially additional support moving forward.” She strongly disavowed the idea of cuts: “There is no world in which anybody’s talking about any reductions in support for IDEA.”

The federal government provides about $15 billion a year to help districts cover special education costs. Under the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, school districts are required to educate all students, regardless of disability, but the federal government has never lived up to its obligation to pay 40% of the cost. Trump’s most recent budget proposal called for flat funding for IDEA.

Money is just one concern for advocates for students with disabilities, who also oppose any plan to move oversight out of the Education Department. The administration’s reorganization push has not affected special education yet — though most of the staff who work on special education were fired during the government shutdown only to be brought back later in response to a lawsuit.

“We are still evaluating the future of things like special education programs,” Burke said. “We do not have an answer yet.”

Regardless of what happens, current protections for students will remain in place, she said.

Burke tacks away from some controversial Project 2025 ideas

Burke said there are no current plans to convert federal special education money into vouchers or to do away with Title I funding that supports schools serving low-income communities. Both those ideas appear in Project 2025, a flashpoint for critics of the administration.

“I’ve written on many ed policy areas over the years, and that’s not something that we are currently contemplating here at the agency,” she said of converting IDEA dollars into education savings accounts. “And of course, anything like that is something that would have to go through Congress.”

And asked whether, in her ideal world, Title I would be phased out, Burke said “no.”

That money currently provides about $18 billion in Title I money that funds extended school days, teacher training, reading tutoring and more.

“Speaking on behalf of the department, what our priority is right now is making sure that these grants are serving families well,” she said.

Nor, Burke said, has the administration taken any steps to prevent children who are undocumented immigrants from attending public school at no cost to their parents. Back in 2024, Burke was the co-author of a separate Heritage Foundation memo that proposed that states charge immigrant parents tuition — a step that would set up a challenge to the landmark Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision.

Burke is still hoping to persuade Congress to fully dismantle the department

Congress created the Education Department and Congress would need to approve its elimination. Burke acknowledged as much, and said the hope is that the administration can provide “proof of concept” by moving key functions to other agencies.

“Congress does have to codify this,” she said. “And so we’re hoping they look at what has transpired so far and see that it’s been effective.”

Yet Burke did not point to any concrete engagement with Congress and demurred when asked to name any Democrats who supported the effort. Some bipartisan support would be needed to overcome a Senate filibuster.

The administration has leveraged robust interpretations of executive authority to go around Congress. Litigation about the department remains pending, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed initial cutbacks at the Education Department to move forward.

It’s unclear if department officials will follow recommendations to re-envision its research arm

Last year, the department temporarily brought on Thomas B. Fordham Institute Senior Vice President for research Amber Northern to help reimagine the department’s research arm, known as the Institute for Education Sciences. IES was decimated by early cuts from DOGE.

Northern, who has returned to her prior role at Fordham, recently delivered the recommendations to department officials, Burke indicated.

Burke said there have not been any decisions made on the future of IES. She also would not say what the recommendations were or whether Northern’s report would be publicly released. Burke did praise Northern’s work and the value of IES generally. It’s “the gem in the crown” of the Department, Burke said. Northern declined to comment.

Watch the full event here or in the recording below.

National editor Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

2026 Colorado General Assembly: The people’s guide to following education issues

2026-01-12T19:55:50+00:00

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Every January, 100 people elected to the Colorado General Assembly gather in Denver for 120 days and make decisions that affect students and teachers in the classroom, university administrators trying to balance their budgets, and parents and students having to make tuition payments.

There are only two bills that legislators have to pass before they adjourn in May: a balanced budget and the school finance act. Both have profound implications for educational opportunity.

Lawmakers also tackle many more education issues, from school meals to school safety, from what students should learn in the classroom to workforce training.

But it can be hard for ordinary citizens to understand how ideas turn into laws.

To explain the lawmaking process and the opportunities for public input, we’ve prepared this guide to the legislative session that starts Wednesday, and how you can get involved:

How a bill becomes a law

Think Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill.”

Legislators get ideas for bills from a lot of places. A legislator might have a passion for a particular topic. The governor’s office or leaders of state agencies might request a policy change. An interest group or ordinary citizens might ask a lawmaker to help solve a problem.

Lawmakers work with bill drafters — nonpartisan legislative staff — to write a bill. Once a lawmaker introduces it, leaders in either the House or the Senate assign it to a committee, usually one with relevant expertise.

Most education bills go to a chamber’s education committee, but a bill on youth mental health might land first in the health committee, or one on police in schools might be heard by the judiciary committee.

A few committees — most infamously the State Affairs committees — are known as “kill” committees, where leadership can send controversial bills, especially those from the opposing parties, to ensure they don’t reach the floor.

A bill must win committee approval to proceed to the full House or Senate. Some bills might need to go through more than one committee.

Bills must get approved twice in the first chamber, before heading to the next chamber, where they go through the process all over again. Bills can be amended at any point in the process, and both chambers must sign off on the same final form of a bill for it to clear the legislature.

Then the governor decides whether to sign it into law.

Who has a vote on the Colorado education committees

For this session, the House Education Committee has 13 members — eight Democrats and five Republicans:

Chair Rep. Meghan Lukens, a Steamboat Springs Democrat
Vice Chair Rep. Matthew Martinez, a Monte Vista Democrat
Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat
Rep. Mary Bradfield, a Colorado Springs Republican
Rep. Ava Flanell, a Colorado Springs Republican
Rep. Lori Garcia Sander, an Eaton Republican
Rep. Lindsay Gilchrist, a Denver Democrat
Rep. Eliza Hamrick, a Centennial Democrat
Rep. Anthony Hartsook, a Parker Republican
Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Fort Morgan Republican
Rep. Jacque Phillips, a Thornton Democrat
Rep. Katie Stewart, a Durango Democrat
Rep. Tammy Story, a Conifer Democrat

Find the committee schedule, documents, and live and archived audio of its meetings at the committee website.

The Senate Education Committee has seven members — four Democrats and three Republicans:

Chair Sen. Chris Kolker, a Centennial Democrat
Vice Chair Sen. Janice Marchman, a Loveland Democrat
Sen. Scott Bright, a Platteville Republican
Sen. Lisa Frizel, a Castle Rock Republican
Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Fort Collins Democrat
Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Commerce City Democrat
Sen. Janice Rich, a Grand Junction Republican

Find the committee schedule, documents, and live and archived audio of its meetings at the committee website.

Find the names and contact information of all current Colorado lawmakers here. And find maps of current legislative districts here.

Can you speak on a bill or submit testimony?

If you’re interested in having your perspective heard, there are a few ways to get involved.

You can speak on the bill in person or remotely, or submit a written statement to the committee. The sign-up process is not difficult. Just fill out this online form.

Speakers are generally limited to two to three minutes, so think about how to make your point quickly and clearly.

Want to know the schedule?

The full schedule of the House and Senate can typically be found online on the Colorado General Assembly website’s landing page.

The session schedule should be posted daily and gets updated as bills move through the process.

How to look up Colorado General Assembly bills

Looking for a bill online? Go to the Colorado General Assembly’s bill search page. There you can search by a bill number, the sponsor, or a topic.

When you click on a bill, you’ll see a summary of what the bill does, the full text of the bill, and other relevant information, such as a fiscal note that explains how much passing the law would cost the state. Often the description of a bill in the fiscal note is easier to understand than the bill language itself.

You can also search through tabs near the bottom of the page that include the bill’s history, when it’s scheduled to be heard again, any amendments, and a summary of the committee votes.

What’s the Joint Budget Committee, and why is it so important?

The six-member Joint Budget Committee is the most influential committee in the Colorado General Assembly. Why? Because it writes the budget that guides the state’s priorities. The committee members this year are four Democrats and two Republicans, with Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat, as chair.

Yes, Gov. Jared Polis does submit a budget every November. And the governor’s priorities guide the Joint Budget Committee’s work. But the committee ultimately writes the budget that gets submitted to the General Assembly for approval.

Other lawmakers also have a chance to submit budget amendments that reflect their own spending priorities — but lawmakers need to pass a balanced budget, and the Joint Budget Committee will strip out amendments that endanger that goal.

The budget shapes every facet of state government, including K-12 and higher education spending.

Learn more about the budget process here.

Want to know more about the education topics we expect to come up this session?

We held our annual legislative preview event on Jan. 6, focused on the education issues we expect lawmakers to consider in 2026. You can watch a recording here.

Need a refresher on what happened last year? We rounded up the education bills of the 2025 session.

Want to know more about how lobbying affects the legislative process? Check out our deep dive on education lobbying, produced in collaboration with data reporter Sandra Fish.

Have questions or a tip? We’re listening at co.tips@chalkbeat.org.

National editor Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

Most teachers don’t have access to paid parental leave. These 2 states are leading the way.

2026-01-12T05:55:49+00:00

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Lori Sebastian had saved up years worth of sick days when she had her first baby in 2016. Her careful planning allowed the Delaware third-grade teacher to spend time with her newborn and still pay the bills.

But after her husband Colin became a stay-at-home dad — the cost of child care would have eaten up his entire paycheck — the couple wondered how they could afford a second child. They had become dependent on Lori Sebastian’s income, and she no longer had a large bank of sick days. Without paid parental leave, they didn’t know how they would pay the bills.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Delaware were considering a paid leave bill, but their original version excluded teachers due to cost concerns. Sebastian joined other teachers from the Delaware State Education Association, the teachers union, to share their experiences and make the case to lawmakers that paid leave was an investment in the workforce — and ultimately in students.

In 2018, Delaware became the first state to adopt a full 12 weeks of paid parental leave for teachers. Critically, the state also agreed to cover the cost of substitute teachers, easing the financial concerns of school district leaders. Sebastian was present and pregnant at the signing ceremony. She still has the pen then Gov. John Carney used.

But more than seven years later, Delaware remains an outlier. Just 15 states and the District of Columbia guarantee any paid leave for teachers, according to a study released Monday by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Arkansas is the only other state that picks up the cost of substitutes for the full 12 weeks.

The United States is the only developed country without a national parental leave policy, and teachers aren’t alone in having to cobble together sick days, vacation time, and short-term disability when they have a baby. But just one-third of teachers reported access to any paid parental leave in a 2024 survey by the research group Rand Corp. — 14 percentage points lower than other workers. And even among those who had access to leave, fewer than half said the benefits were adequate.

That has important implications for school districts and students, NCTQ President Heath Peske said. Among teachers who leave the profession, about 15% cite family obligations, including pregnancy and childbirth. Hiring and training new teachers can end up costing more than family leave would have.

“When we have a revolving door of teacher turnover, this leads to poorer outcomes for students,” she said. “Paid parental leave is an investment in teachers but also in their students. We see it as a really smart policy.”

Delaware and Arkansas have what NCTQ considers model policies. Teachers get 12 weeks of leave at full pay, and the state covers the cost of a substitute teacher for that time period.

Another six states — Maine, New Jersey, Maryland, Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon — offer 12 weeks with partial pay.

And seven states, most of them in the South, plus the District of Columbia, offer teachers full pay for some shorter amount of time.

Without paid parental leave, I went back to teaching three weeks after giving birth

Even in states without paid leave policies, some teachers have access to leave through school district policies. A 2025 NCTQ study found that the share of large districts offering some amount of paid leave had increased in recent years.

But more than half of the districts surveyed still didn’t offer any leave beyond whatever sick days the teacher accumulated.

Arkansas adopted paid leave in a very different political context. An optional paid leave program that involved cost-sharing between the state and school districts was part of a 2023 education reform package that included literacy requirements, a voucher expansion, and teacher pay increases.

When few districts participated in the voluntary program, House Minority Leader Andrew Collins introduced a bill to create a mandatory program in which the state picked up the entire cost of substitute teachers. The bill attracted support from both public education advocates and those who want people to have more children, and it passed on a bipartisan basis.

The program is new this school year.

Paid leave has benefits beyond money, advocates say

Policymakers and district leaders often worry about the financial impact of offering teachers paid parental leave. The profession is overwhelmingly female, and districts can’t just spread a teacher’s work among other employees. They need someone in the classroom.

But in Delaware, the costs have turned out to be manageable — only 3% of teachers used the benefit in 2024. NCTQ developed a cost calculator that considers the number of teachers in a state and typical daily rates for substitutes.

Taylor Hawk, director of legislative and political strategy for the Delaware State Education Association, said the union argued that employees who get paid leave are more likely to return to work after having a child.

Lori Sebastian poses with her husband Colin, left, her daughter Cora, then 2 years old, and Delaware Gov. John Carney at the 2018 signing ceremony for the state's paid parental leave bill.

“Educators are incredible professionals, and they are also human beings with lives,” Hawk said. “They cannot plan their lives around the school calendar. The benefit of acknowledging that they are human beings goes a long way to feeling respected.”

David Wienner found out his wife was pregnant on his first day of orientation as a new teacher back in 2016. He couldn’t take much time off when the baby was born the following April.

Even with Delaware’s paid leave policy in place for their second and third children, Wienner struggled with the idea of leaving his students and with a perceived stigma of a man taking extended leave.

But spending that time with his children turned out to be priceless, he said.

“It did take pushing from my wife because I love what I do,” he said. “But looking back, it was beyond worth it. It’s the greatest thing and I wish everyone had the opportunity. And full pay really makes it possible.”

Sebastian, the Delaware teacher, said knowing she would still have an income while she recovered from childbirth and bonded with her newborn made all the difference.

“It takes the pressure off of planning a family,” Sebastian said. “It allows teachers to breathe and enjoy the time and reset with their families.”

Correction: Jan. 12, 2025: This story has been updated to reflect that Arkansas is the only state other than Delaware that covers the cost of substitutes for 12 weeks. North Carolina and Alabama reimburse the cost of substitute teachers for a shorter period of time.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

The Supreme Court deadlocked on religious charter schools. Round 2 is on the horizon.

2026-01-09T13:00:01+00:00

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An “explicitly Christian” charter school in Tennessee. A “public Christian school” in Colorado. A Jewish virtual charter school in Oklahoma.

A new crop of proposed religious schools are setting up legal challenges that would allow the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in again on whether charter schools can be religious — and whether charter schools are truly public schools at all.

Last year, the Supreme Court tied 4-4 on these questions, a result of Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself due to a close friendship with an adviser to the Catholic charter school at the center of the case. The deadlock meant religious charter schools are still prohibited.

Now, new cases that wouldn’t prompt Barrett to recuse herself are starting to take shape, with the help of conservative law firms that focus on religious liberty. The cases have the potential to rewrite the boundaries of church-state separation and further expand public funding of religious education. Some charter advocates also fear court victories by religious charter schools could undermine broader support for the sector, especially in Democrat-led states.

Legal experts and advocates on both sides expect the Supreme Court to be interested in revisiting the questions raised by the St. Isidore case. The prospect of multiple cases in multiple states also means there could be conflicting lower court rulings that more thoroughly explore the legal arguments involved — factors that make the Supreme Court more inclined to take a case.

“We know that four judges ruled in favor of St. Isidore, and it takes four justices to decide to take a case,” said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm that’s been involved in many prominent religious freedom cases and is now representing the proposed Jewish charter school.

The National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation told Oklahoma’s charter school board in November it wants to run a virtual high school that would combine Jewish religious education and state academic standards.

“Ben Gamla envisions Oklahoma students gaining a rigorous, values-based education that integrates general academic excellence with Jewish religious learning and ethical development,” board member Peter Deutsch wrote in the letter of intent in November.

Deutsch is a former Democratic congressman who founded the Ben Gamla charter school network in Florida, a separate organization from the foundation pitching the Oklahoma school. The Florida schools teach Hebrew language but are strictly secular, in accordance with state law there.

Deutsch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last year that religious charters had the “potential to be a paradigm shift for American Jews,” though he also said at the time that he had concluded Oklahoma was not a practical location for a Jewish charter school.

Deutsch declined an interview request and referred questions to the Becket Fund. Baxter said that Deutsch has had a nationwide vision for a long time, and the St. Isidore case suggested that Oklahoma charter law could accommodate religious schools — even though the state Supreme Court found the exact opposite.

The school’s founding board members include Brett Farley, who served on the board of now-abandoned St. Isidore school.

A spokesperson for the state charter school board declined to comment, noting that Ben Gamla has not yet submitted a formal application.

But Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, has already said he’ll oppose the school just as he opposed the opening of St. Isidore. Drummond has argued that funding any religious charter school would force taxpayers, including religious ones, to fund schools that teach tenants that violate their own faith.

“This matter has already been resolved after the state Supreme Court’s ruling to prevent taxpayer funded religious charter schools was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year,” Leslie Berger, a spokesperson for Drummond, said via email. “Our office will oppose any attempts to undermine the rule of law.”

Meanwhile, a proposal for another religious charter has emerged in Tennessee. Wilberforce Academy, a nonprofit with no previous educational footprint in the state, is suing the Knoxville County Board of Education for refusing to accept its letter of intent seeking to open an “explicitly Christian” charter school. State law requires charter schools to affirm they are “nonsectarian, non-religious” schools, and Wilberforce would not do so, according to court documents.

On the same day the lawsuit was filed, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, also a Republican, issued a legal opinion that the state’s ban on religious charter schools likely is unconstitutional. The state is not named in the lawsuit, but the opinion suggests Skrmetti is sympathetic to religious charters, unlike Drummond in Oklahoma.

The charter school’s lead attorney is the same person Skrmetti hired to successfully defend Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors.

Meanwhile in Colorado, Riverstone Academy, which calls itself a “public Christian school,” quietly opened this fall and is waiting to see if the state education department will deny it public funds. School officials didn’t go through the charter school approval process and haven’t described Riverstone as a charter. Instead, a quasi-governmental school board cooperative group contracted with a nonprofit educational organization to run the school.

In an email obtained by Chalkbeat, a conservative school board attorney said that Alliance Defending Freedom, another prominent law firm that deals with cases involving religious liberty, approached him about finding a new test case in the aftermath of the St. Isidore decision. Riverstone was designed to be that test case, the email suggested. (ADF also represented the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board when Drummond challenged its approval of St. Isidore.)

“Everyone wins when families have more good options for their children’s education,” ADF Senior Counsel Mark Lippelmann said in a statement. “And the First Amendment forbids states from excluding charter school applicants just because of their religious character and activity.”

The involvement of out-of-state organizations make it “very clear that this is an agenda-driven enterprise,” said Steven Green, a law professor at Willamette University who studies church-state issues.

“This is not organic, let’s put it that way,” he said.

Religious charter school supporters eye Supreme Court rulings

It will likely take several years for cases to reach the Supreme Court. So far, only the Wilberforce case is even before the courts. That’s because the Knoxville school board’s denial created a basis for the school to sue.

Green believes Riverstone Academy will prove to be a poor test case because administrators described it as a public school. But the Oklahoma and Tennessee cases essentially would replicate the unresolved issues from the St. Isidore case, such as whether charter schools are legally more like government-run schools or more like other nonprofits that contract with the government.

That’s not an entirely settled issue, despite numerous state laws that describe charter schools as public schools. In cases dealing with teacher and student rights, courts have often — but not always — found that charter schools are what’s known as state actors.

Proponents of religious charter schools lean on a series of court cases in which the Supreme Court found that religious organizations cannot be excluded from benefits available to the general public, such as taxpayer funding for private schools.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools doesn’t have a position on public funding for private religious education, but the group believes it’s critical that the law recognize charter schools as public schools, which would mean they can’t be religious. Any finding to the contrary could lead to states banning charter schools or subjecting the publicly funded but independently run schools to much more government control, they said.

“We need people to understand the risks of pursuing this,” said Eric Paisner, the group’s chief operating officer.

Josh Dunn, a law professor and executive director of the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, said recent Supreme Court precedent suggests religious charter schools have a strong case that prohibiting them amounts to religious discrimination.

“You could have two nearly identical schools,” Dunn said. “Let’s say one has an environmental focus because we want students to come out with an understanding of the dangers we’re facing, and then you could have another with the same focus because we have a duty to creation. It’s hard to see how you could allow one and deny the other.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department approves funding flexibility for Iowa, setting stage for more state waivers

2026-01-08T00:02:14+00:00

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Iowa will have more flexibility in how it uses federal funds after the U.S. Department of Education signed off Wednesday on a first-of-its-kind waiver request that could be a blueprint for other states.

Offering states relief from red tape has been a key component of the Trump administration’s promise to “return education to the states” and one that state schools chiefs from Republican-led states in particular have called for.

But it’s been unclear exactly what that might look like. States already control most aspects of education. Federal funding makes up about 10% of overall education spending, and those dollars do come with restrictions and reporting requirements that aim to ensure money is spent appropriately.

Supporters of the idea say states deserve more flexibility and can use it effectively, but critics worry that broad waivers might leave vulnerable students with fewer resources. While Iowa’s approved waiver request ended up being relatively narrow, a pending waiver request from Indiana could demonstrate just how much new authority the Trump administration is willing to give some states at the expense of federal rules and oversight.

The waiver allows Iowa to consolidate multiple federal funding streams used at the state level into a single block grant. State officials estimated this will free up an additional $8 million in reduced compliance costs over a four-year period. Iowa spends about $7 billion annually on education.

Iowa plans to use the block grant to continue teacher training in effective literacy instruction and launch a new training program that aims to help teachers better support English learners. Iowa’s English learner population has increased 40% over the last decade, state officials said.

Flanked by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, state Education Department Director McKenzie Snow, and attentive students, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the approval of the state’s request at Broadway Elementary School in Denison. McMahon praised the school’s bilingual programming and improvements in reading scores as examples of innovation that the administration wants to support.

Iowa can now reduce paperwork and “invest in proven strategies to build a world class teacher pipeline, close achievement gaps, and open post secondary opportunities to prepare for a great career,” McMahon said.

Iowa’s waiver doesn’t allow districts to consolidate most of their federal funding, which would have represented a much larger pot of money. But it does allow Iowa school districts to take advantage of a 1999 federal provision called Ed-Flex to roll over more money year over year to make it easier to invest in big-ticket items and longer-term strategies like new curriculum or ongoing teacher training.

Districts will also have more flexibility in how they spend federal funds intended for enrichment, technology, and school safety.

The approved waiver request, submitted in September, was significantly more modest than an earlier request Iowa submitted in March.

Anne Hyslop, director of policy development for the advocacy group All4Ed, said it was a good sign that federal officials told Iowa to scale back its request and appropriate that Iowa then did so.

“The things that Iowa was asking for originally, the secretary has no authority to waive,” she said. “They had gone so far beyond the realm of what the secretary had the authority to do.”

Now the state to watch, she said, is Indiana. That state’s waiver request includes state- and district-level consolidation of federal funding streams and changes to the accountability system.

The initial waivers approved by the Education Department likely will shape what other states request.

McMahon invited states to apply for waivers to certain federal requirements back in July. A proposal in Kansas seeks to pause federal school accountability requirements but does not ask for funding flexibility, while Oklahoma’s waiver request is on hold after leadership turnover there. Other states are expected to follow.

Iowa education officials said funding flexibility will allow more money to support teacher training and student achievement, and the public should see results in higher test scores, higher graduation rates, and reduced absenteeism.

Hyslop said there could be some benefits to more flexibility. More leeway for districts could allow schools to invest in, for example, an arts program or a new technology initiative.

But the Education Department still needs to ensure money is being appropriately spent, which is more challenging after massive layoffs.

“I do worry that the US Department of Education right now lacks the capacity to do meaningful oversight of how this program is being implemented or the waiver process in general,” Hyslop said.

Progressive education advocates also fear that money that federal lawmakers intended to support specific student groups won’t reach them.

“I think of red tape equaling protections for students,” said Nicholas Munyan-Penney, assistant director for P-12 policy at The Education Trust. “We want to make sure that students have access to the protections and resources they need to be successful.”

Advocates are particularly concerned that Iowa’s new block grant consolidates Title III funds that are required to go to English learners with other funding streams. The Trump administration laid off most of the staff at the Education Department who support those students, and rescinded a guidance document considered to be the “bible” in that field.

Iowa officials said the teacher training they are planning will benefit more students than the limited programs supported by state Title III dollars.

Iowa officials still will have to tell the federal government how they spent the money, along with estimates of how much time and money they saved compared with the previous system.

In her approval letter, McMahon said the Education Department is open to further streamlining data reporting requirements as well, but that will be an ongoing conversation with Iowa and other states.

But so far, Hyslop said, the administration’s rhetoric on giving states more authority “doesn’t match the impact.”

“The things that would be the most transformative still require congressional approval,” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

What a Supreme Court decision on inclusive curriculum could mean for vaccine laws

2025-12-11T19:52:51+00:00

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What does the book “Pride Puppy!” have in common with a measles vaccine?

Some religious parents don’t want their children exposed to either one.

But is that position enough to overturn New York law and force the state to offer a religious exemption to Old Order Amish parents and others who say their faith does not allow them to vaccinate their children? That’s a question the U.S. Supreme Court recently told a lower court to consider.

In its Mahmoud v. Taylor ruling last summer, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority found that Montgomery County Public Schools’ interest in having all children learn from an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum was not greater than parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing. Parents must have the ability to opt out, the court said.

On Monday, the Supreme Court vacated a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upholding New York’s vaccine mandate, which does not allow for religious exemptions, and told the lower court to reconsider it in light of the Mahmoud decision.

Legal experts told Chalkbeat that doesn’t mean the Supreme Court is poised to require religious exemptions. It’s not unusual for the Supreme Court to ask lower courts to re-examine rulings in light of new decisions that have even a tangential connection, they said. Often, the outcome remains the same.

But if the Supreme Court were confident Mahmoud had no bearing on vaccine law, the justices could have simply declined to take the case and let New York’s law stand, said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California San Francisco who has studied religious exemptions. Vaccine supporters should be concerned by the court’s decision not to take that course, she said.

“At the very least, they think there might be something there,” Reiss said. “But how much they believe it is up in the air.”

The case is playing out during a tenuous time for public health and as the Supreme Court steadily expands the bounds of religious freedom. An investigation by NBC News and Stanford University found vaccination rates falling and the use of exemptions rising in many communities. A measles outbreak killed two unvaccinated children in Texas, and the United States is at risk of losing its measles elimination status.

Many public health experts fear that under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the federal government is dismantling a vaccine infrastructure that saved countless lives and actively undermining public trust in vaccines.

In a Dear Colleague letter earlier this year, Kennedy warned states they risk their federal funding if they don’t allow religious exemptions.

Most states already have religious or personal belief exemptions. Any change in the legal status quo would have limited effect. But it would take away a tool — narrowing or reducing exemptions — that has been shown to increase vaccination rates. Four of the five states without religious exemptions — California, New York, Connecticut, and Maine — tightened their requirements in recent years in response to disease outbreaks.

“It adds worry at a time when we have a lot to worry about with vaccines,” Reiss said.

Religious exemptions raise questions about sincerity

School vaccine mandates go back to the 19th century, and the courts have repeatedly upheld their validity, even without religious exemptions.

A 1970 measles outbreak in Texarkana underscored the role mandates could play in increasing vaccination rates — nearly all the cases occurred on the Texas side of the city, where there was no school mandate. Arkansas, in contrast, had a school mandate and had conducted mass vaccination campaigns. Along with federal incentives, the Texarkana example contributed to more widespread adoption of school vaccine requirements.

Many states adopted religious exemptions, Reiss said, with the assumption that only very small religious minorities would use them. Most major faith traditions allow or even encourage vaccination. But over time, these exemptions became widely abused and hard to police, she said. The government could not make religious exemptions conditional on membership in a particular faith, nor could the government require, say, that a Catholic follow the Pope’s teachings, or that a Jewish person listen to their rabbi.

But more significantly, Reiss said, people lie. Anti-vaccine Facebook groups coach non-religious parents on what to say to obtain a religious exemption, and studies find that parents claiming religious exemptions often cite safety concerns when questioned.

That dynamic contributed to states like California and New York removing religious exemptions. They now allow only medical exemptions.

The Texas-based First Liberty Institute, which is representing the Amish parents, argued in its petition to the Supreme Court that because New York allows medical exemptions, the lack of a religious exemption amounts to discrimination.

“Today in New York, if a vaccine would harm your lungs, you may be exempted; but if it would harm you soul, you may not,” attorneys wrote.

While not all Amish families reject vaccines, no one doubts the religious sincerity of the families suing the state, Reiss said. That makes the case one to watch.

“Yes our Almighty God wants us to fully put our faith + trust in Him,” Joseph Miller, one of the Amish parents suing New York, said in written testimony. “Which is in conflict to put our trust in vaccines. We are also commanded to not be conformed to this world.”

West Virginia’s vaccine mandate, with no religious exemption, has been in place since 1905, and the state enjoys very high vaccination rates. Gov. Patrick Morissey, a Republican, issued an executive order allowing religious exemptions shortly after taking office in January, but the state Supreme Court blocked the order from going into effect. The mandate remains in place for now.

That shift highlights how views of vaccines are increasingly partisan, with support declining among Republicans. In a related development, vaccine legislation became nearly as partisan as abortion even before the pandemic, according to research by Kevin Estep, a sociologist and associate professor of health administration and policy at Creighton University.

“The most dangerous thing right now, in my mind, is putting fuel on the fire of the idea that the government is infringing on parental rights,” Estep said. “That might create new vaccine hesitancy where there wasn’t before.”

It’s unclear how expanding religious freedom affects vaccines

Richard Katskee, an assistant clinical law professor at Duke University, authored an amicus brief in support of the school district in Mahmoud, and he believes the case sets a dangerous precedent. But the justices were careful to stick to curriculum, which could limit how widely it applies.

“I still think there will be real wariness from the court to hurt public health,” Katskee said. “There has been a history of deference.”

Douglas Laycock, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas and the University of Virginia, wrote a brief in support of the parents in Mahmoud. But he agrees that applying Mahmoud to vaccine exemptions could be a stretch.

“One [case] is about asking kids to listen to these stories that are about topics that are pretty religiously sensitive,” Laycock said. “The other is about a medical requirement that protects every kid in the school from diseases that are at best a problem and at worst disabling or fatal.”

Mahmoud isn’t the only Supreme Court decision potentially weighing on vaccine law.

In Tandon v. Newsom, the Supreme Court overturned a California restriction on in-home gatherings during the depths of the pandemic that was challenged by a couple that held Bible study in their home. A federal judge in 2023 cited that case in ruling that Mississippi must allow religious exemptions to its school vaccine mandate.

The reason Mississippi had no religious exemption at the time was because the state Supreme Court had struck it down in 1979. In that ruling, the justices could not believe that the First Amendment requires that “innocent children, too young to decide for themselves … be denied the protection against crippling and death that immunization provides because of a religious belief adhered to by a parent or parents.”

Mississippi regularly boasted the highest vaccination rates in the nation. Now that religious exemptions are allowed, Mississippi still has high overall vaccination rates, but it’s no longer No. 1. Rates for children under 2 years old are now below the national average.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Will federal tax-credit scholarships help public school students?

2025-12-09T00:03:09+00:00

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Could the new federal tax-credit scholarship program pay for summer school or tutoring for public school students? Could it help homeschool families, microschools, and after-school enrichment programs alike?

Or will most of the money mirror voucher programs and flow through large established scholarship groups for private school tuition?

The race is on to shape a program that could become one of the largest federal investments in K-12 education and fuel a dramatic expansion of private school choice. The Treasury Department fired the starter’s pistol right before Thanksgiving when it posted a request for comments on how to implement the new tax credit, which passed this summer as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Requesting comment before developing draft rules is the first step in a process that ultimately will determine how much authority states have to put their own stamp on the program, how attractive it is for nonprofits, and how much flexibility families will have.

Treasury Department rules could influence whether some governors choose to have their states participate at all. The Democratic governors of Colorado and North Carolina already plan to opt their states in. Many others have said they’re waiting on federal guidance before they decide.

But on one of the key questions — can governors put restrictions on scholarship-granting organizations, such as requiring that they serve only low-income families or prohibiting them from discriminating against LGBTQ students? — the answer may already be no.

The request for comment indicates that Treasury expects to require participating states to include all organizations that meet the bare-bones statutory requirements, such as being a federally recognized nonprofit and serving more than 10 students who don’t all attend the same school.

“It’s really a take it or leave it scheme,” said Rachel Canter, director of education policy for the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank.

The law doesn’t define “school,” and the Treasury Department has not explicitly asked for feedback on how it should be defined. That could lead to more questions: Could scholarships be used to cover preschool tuition? What about microschools or students who are homeschooled? School choice advocates want those students to have access to funds raised through the tax credit, but some are wary of creating a federal definition of school through the rule-making process.

People who believe in using private markets to drive educational change and in making public money available to religious schools were the biggest backers of the tax credit, and it’s most suited to serve their needs, said Scott Palmer, co-founder and managing partner of the consulting firm EducationCounsel.

But there is a “real opening,” Palmer said during a recent virtual panel discussion, for supporters of public education to push for what he called an “ecosystem” approach that would make it easy to use the tax credit to raise money for tutoring, arts and music enrichment, and other programming that would benefit public school students.

“When you receive a punch in the martial arts, you can either try to block it or leverage its power to throw the person over your shoulder,” he said. “I think we have an opportunity to think not only about how we might need to block, but how we might need to leverage.”

School choice supporters want flexibility, light regulations

The federal tax-credit scholarship program allows taxpayers to receive a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement for donations of up to $1,700 to eligible scholarship-granting organizations. Those organizations would distribute the money to students from families making up to 300% of local median income, a threshold that makes the majority of American families eligible.

How much money the tax credit generates will depend on how many people participate. Education Reform Now estimated that some 47 million taxpayers owe more than $1,700 in federal taxes each year. If 15% participated — far more than currently participate in most state tax-credit programs — that would generate roughly $12 billion a year. For comparison, the federal government spends about $18 billion a year to support high-poverty schools through the Title I program and about $15 billion a year to help offset the cost of special education services.

The money can go toward any expense allowed under Coverdell education savings accounts, which includes tuition, tutoring, specialized services for children with disabilities, and computers.

The law allows scholarships to go to students in public or private school, but it’s less obvious how the money could be used to benefit public schools and their students. Could a community group raise money to cover the cost of tutoring for public school students? Could that tutoring be provided by the public school itself or only by outside groups?

During the same panel conversation with Palmer, Karen Pittman, a founding partner at the consulting firm Knowledge to Power Catalysts, cited research that parents spend an estimated $232 billion on their children’s education and development. Groups like 4-H Clubs, for example, could use the tax credit to raise money or offer programs that families could pay for with their scholarships.

“We can give the Treasury the facts on how parents are currently spending their private dollars, and say, ‘Why don’t you allow this bill, this tax credit, to cover these things that parents are already covering, that they consider part of their young people’s education?’” Pittman said.

For their part, groups that have long supported vouchers and education savings accounts want minimal regulations that ensure money donated through the tax credit can support microschools and homeschool families, as well as those attending private school.

Supporters said they’re glad to see the rule-making process start early, so that scholarship organizations have more time to plan.

And they’re also particularly relieved that the Treasury Department doesn’t seem inclined to let governors put additional requirements on scholarship groups beyond what the federal law requires.

The tax-credit scholarship “is a tax law,” said Leslie Hiner, vice president for legal policy at EdChoice, an advocacy group. “It’s not an educational program.”

“This was intended to add to what already exists across the country and help that grow, and any action through rule-making that would go in the opposite direction of that cannot happen,” Hiner said.

Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, said in a statement that the program’s goal “is to broaden educational opportunity, especially for low-income families, and the rules should encourage and make it as simple as possible for Governors and all states to opt in – as all should – while ensuring access is maximized and the program is protected from political interference.”

People have until Dec. 26, the day after Christmas, to submit their comments. Then the department will issue draft rules and regulations, and the public will have another chance to comment before they’re finalized.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Q&A: School choice’s progressive roots get the spotlight in Joseph Viteritti’s ‘Radical Dreamers’

2025-12-04T20:17:37+00:00

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The modern school choice movement has complicated roots.

It connects to the free-market theories of economist Milton Friedman; Catholic activists’ efforts to put their schools on equal footing; white parents’ efforts to circumvent federally mandated school integration; and the Black Power movement that fought for community control of education.

Friedman’s vision appears to be winning. A growing number of Republican-led states are adopting universal vouchers or education savings accounts that give public money to families, regardless of their economic status or access to high-performing public schools.

In “Radical Dreamers: Race, Choice, and the Failure of American Education,” political scientist Joseph Viteritti turns the focus back to the most progressive thread of the school choice story, chronicling the contributions of education researchers, lawyers, theorists, and activists — many of them Black men and women — who believed that all children could learn and that what happens in schools matters.

Joseph Viteritti is a professor of public policy at Hunter College in New York.

Viteritti, a professor at Hunter College in New York, describes his front row seat to fitful efforts to improve public schools, his evolution into a supporter of school choice, and the uneasy alliance between conservatives and Black activists that shaped early school choice policy.

After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, disillusion with integration efforts drove support for community control of schools, historically Black independent schools, and school choice policies targeted at the most disadvantaged students. In that context, Viteritti challenges the notion that it is “conservative” to support school choice, or “progressive” to oppose it.

Viteritti has had close personal and professional relationships with many of the people profiled in his book.

There is Ron Edmonds, a researcher on effective schools who sought to disprove the idea that demographics determined students’ destinies. There is Derrick Bell, the father of critical race theory, who argued that white power structures only support Black interests when they converge with white interests.

Howard Fuller, the civil rights activist, former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent, and fierce champion for school choice, gets two chapters. So does Diane Ravitch, an education historian who helped persuade Viteritti of the merits of school choice, only to become one of the most vocal critics of that movement.

Viteritti still believes in school choice as a critical tool for educational justice. He dismisses the idea that modern school choice traces back to the South’s whites-only “segregation academies,” — “segregation began in the public schools,” he notes. But he acknowledges that critics like Ravitch have proved prescient as more states expand vouchers without any accountability measures or limits on who participates.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What prompted you to write this after being less involved with education policy for a good while?

Someone asked me how I arrived at my positions, and I realized that I had an opportunity to work very closely with some major movers and shakers in education policy: Ron Edmonds, Jack Coons, Diane Ravitch, Howard Fuller. They all interacted with each other, looking through the history of school reform, going back to the days of desegregation and bussing, battles over fiscal equity, the frustration of Black families demanding community control, where they said, “If you’re not going to educate our kids, let us do it.”

And when community control didn’t work, they said, “We need access to good schools.”

And what do the people you feature tell us about the evolution of choice and the education moment that we’re in now?

Ron Edmonds was a researcher at Harvard when he came to work in New York as deputy chancellor for instruction. And I was on the chancellor staff. He was kind of a mentor. Ron was very much against segregation, but he said there was so much of an obsession with desegregation among white civil rights attorneys that they really left out the importance of students getting access to good schools. He said you cannot have equity in education if kids aren’t learning.

In "Radical Dreamers" Joseph Viteritti disputes the claim that it is conservative to support school choice and progressive to oppose it.

Jack Coons argued the first case in California court [Serrano v. Priest] to demonstrate that rich school districts spend more than poor districts and that was inequitable. He developed a model of progressive choice, an alternative to the Milton Friedman market model.

Diane is the one who convinced me [of the merits of school choice], and she finally turned around and said, “well, it doesn’t work.” I would say we haven’t done enough to make it work. She makes some very important points that we agree on about where the choice movement has gone, and what the consequences are.

Howard Fuller is the real deal. He’s the one who helped realize the vision of the progressive school choice model. One distinct lesson I got from him, as a political scientist, is that choice is not just about opportunity. It’s about power.

Derrick Bell really explains it when he talks about systemic racism, about racism as a perpetual feature of American life. It sounds provocative, but when you look at it, when you look at the whole story of interest convergence, it makes sense.

You wonder why people are angry and frustrated? Look at the numbers today. The schools are segregated, and kids are not performing. Race and class are still the best predictors, the most reliable predictors of educational achievement in this country.

Today’s school choice policies have moved away from a focus on low-income students or students in low-performing schools. What is the ability of these policies to fulfill the school choice vision that some of the folks that you write about advocated for?

If you look at the beginning of the [modern] choice movement, we were basically trying to meet the needs of underserved, underprivileged Black and brown kids, for the most part. And the biggest opponents to that were people who identified with liberal causes, for example most Democrats, the teachers unions, civil rights organizations like the ACLU, and First Amendment advocates like Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

What you have now is a conservative movement that’s really taken over the momentum and they’re spending with abandon, and it’s not clear what kind of checks there will be and how much spending will result from all of this.

One thing [liberal and conservative approaches] both have in common is who gets hurt. It’s Black and brown and disadvantaged kids. Derek Bell had a theory called the interest-convergence dilemma, and what he said was that white people will support Black people only so long as their interests converge. School choice history is a perfect illustration.

Charter schools have a lot more accountability for their outcomes than private schools. What does this suggest to you about the regulatory structure we might want to have?

I think if you’re accepting public money, then you should be susceptible to public scrutiny. And that’s not where it’s going. We have a lot of schools opening up because of money. It’s going to get worse when the federal [tax-credit scholarship] law hits. Who’s opening the microschool? The lady or the guy down the block? They might be very nice neighbors. Should they be running schools? I don’t know. This is moving so quickly it concerns me.

There are certain people within the school choice movement who support universal programs because they think that’s what’s politically tenable. Universal programs, Social Security for example, get more political support.

What do you make of that argument for universal programs?

Milton Friedman said if you let the market do its thing and create competition, parents will choose the better schools, poorer schools will close, and all will be fine. And there are people who believe in that. I don’t.

I think we need to be reminded of how this could be designed to work better, because I don’t think it’s sustainable. There’s no understanding of how much money is going to be spent on it.

But I don’t think people who identify as liberal or progressive can continue to pretend that leaving children in underperforming [public] schools generation after generation is an example of educational and political justice.

At some point, reality will hit, and maybe we will have an honest conversation when it becomes unsustainable for conservatives who all of a sudden are spending all this money, and unsustainable for progressives to continue to warehouse children in failing schools.

If there was a world in which white liberals had a different response to these earlier iterations of choice, whether it was charter schools or more targeted voucher programs, where do you think that we would be today?

This started as an alliance between Blacks and conservatives. You look at the case studies of Milwaukee and Cleveland, that’s who got this through. Liberals should have been part of that conversation. Instead, they just kind of closed their eyes, stamped their feet, and said, “No, we’re not doing it.”

We could say that there were Republicans who wanted to do a full Milton Friedman model all along. And that’s true, some of them did. But it would have been a lot better to start off with a cooperative agenda focused on poor kids.

I’m not suggesting at all that choice is going to resolve all the problems. What I did believe and still believe is that, if crafted in the right way, it can move us in the right direction.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Cities are in a new cycle of changing who runs schools. Are they just running in place?

2025-11-24T10:54:00+00:00

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The election of a progressive mayor who has said he wants to end mayoral control of New York City schools might seem like a bellwether.

The next largest school systems, Los Angeles and Miami-Dade County, have been run by elected boards for years. Chicago is transitioning to a fully elected board after decades under mayoral control.

But don’t bury mayoral control just yet.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani hasn’t laid out clear plans, and his references to “co-governance” could mean a lot of things, including an ongoing role for the mayor.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, another progressive, supported a “majority-elected” school board when she ran in 2021, but vetoed legislation to create an elected board once she was in office.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer, has continued to exert his influence over the city’s schools in support of union priorities.

And in Indianapolis, some community groups are calling for the mayor, who already authorizes charter schools, to take on a larger role in an increasingly fractured school system.

Many large cities have repeatedly overhauled their school governance to try to address perceived shortcomings and real failures of the previous model. Now a new set of existential threats — declining enrollment, looming school closures and layoffs, persistent academic challenges, and threats from the Trump administration — are reviving conversations about who can claim to exercise legitimate power over schools.

Who gets to make decisions on behalf of students and families feels particularly high stakes in this moment.

Yet there is little evidence that voters consistently prioritize student outcomes at the ballot box, whether they’re voting for mayors or school board members. Nor is there strong evidence that any particular system consistently delivers better results for students, better financial management, or more responsive leadership.

“It’s like getting dirty and changing clothes and expecting to smell good without taking a bath,” said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. “That’s what you’re doing when you change your governance structure.”

School closures put focus on who makes decisions

Education reform policies such as expanding school choice, closing low-performing schools, and welcoming charter schools have been supported by both mayors and elected school boards, sometimes under threat of state takeover. Those changes have reshaped communities in complicated ways.

New schools proliferated, and students got more opportunities. At the same time, the connections between neighborhoods and schools have frayed, competition for students and funding is fiercer, and multiple entities are now responsible for school oversight. These new realities are testing old ways of running schools.

In Indianapolis, the mayor already authorizes charter schools independently from Indianapolis Public Schools, which is run by an elected board. More students now attend charter schools than district-run schools. Legislation from earlier this year that would have dissolved the district failed, but a state-created advisory group, chaired by Mayor Joe Hogsett, is charged with figuring out how city schools should share buildings and transportation services.

Mayoral control over Indianapolis schools could untangle big knots — or create new headaches

The Indianapolis Local Education Alliance is also considering proposals that would give the mayor a much larger role in school governance, including appointing most or all of the board.

Historically, groups associated with education reform have supported mayoral control. Yet the Mind Trust, an influential pro-charter nonprofit that supported an appointed board in the past, hasn’t taken a position yet. Several potential Indianapolis mayoral candidates for 2027 are charter skeptics and supporters of an elected board.

Cleveland, where mayoral control has been firmly entrenched for nearly three decades, is grappling with similar challenges.

As in Indianapolis, a large share of the district’s school-age children attend charter or private schools after decades under the Cleveland Plan, and enrollment in district schools has plummeted. Supporters of mayoral control sometimes hold up Cleveland as an exemplar, but Mayor Justin Bibb’s aggressive school closure plan is causing some community members to demand a greater voice.

Ideastream Public Media reported an exchange at a recent community meeting between Bibb and teacher Sarah Hodge.

“Are you gonna go with us on the plan to make sure that the voters are re-enfranchised to vote for their school board?” Hodge said. Bibb responded that voters can seek a new system if they wish, but he has full confidence in his appointed board and in schools CEO Warren Morgan.

The ability to push ahead with a school closure plan is one of the benefits of mayoral control, said Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right think tank. He contrasted Cleveland with Columbus, where the elected school board has moved more slowly in response to many of the same pressures.

“They’re controversial, they’re hard to do, and it does take leadership,” Churchill said. And there is still a democratic check on the process. People vote for the mayor, he said, and most people know who their mayor is — unlike their school board members.

Hodge has a very different view. “It’s not bold to upset the entire city,” she said in an interview.

She believes an elected school board would listen to parents and ultimately come up with a better plan for what she agrees are necessary closures.

Hodge is working with a small group of other teachers and activists to explore options for restoring the elected board. But Ohio’s Republican trifecta state government is unlikely to go along willingly.

Hodge and other Cleveland activists have watched conservative groups like Moms for Liberty exert their influence on school boards. She wonders why people in Cleveland have fewer rights.

“If the people of Cleveland want to make an idiotic decision, that’s our right,” she said. “Since when do legislatures get to tell people, ‘You don’t get to vote. You’re too terrible to make decisions for yourself?’”

Voters often don’t care much about test scores

If mayoral control of schools is undemocratic, elected school boards raise their own questions about representation.

Most school board members are elected by small numbers of voters who don’t have children themselves and who aren’t representative of the families served in the schools. Once in office, they spend very little time talking about how to improve schools, surveys show.

Vladimir Kogan, a political science professor at Ohio State University, said that’s because voters don’t give them any incentive to do so.

Voters in school board elections might care about home values, taxes, jobs, or “symbolic virtue signaling that they are [on] team red and team blue,” Kogan said, before they care about how well schools are serving students.

School board elections are one of the few places parents can pull on the levers of power, said Keri Rodrigues, a Boston parent and president of the National Parents Union, an advocacy group. But they can turn out to be “democracy in name only.”

It doesn’t have to be that way, said Scott Levy, author of “Why School Boards Matter.” Many school board members would benefit from more training, including on how to understand academic data and budgets.

“If you look at education reform efforts, you can find every permutation except investing in school boards,” he said.

But if school boards don’t spend enough time on schooling, it’s not clear that mayors who do reap big benefits.

Kogan points to former District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty. Public opinion polls at the time showed voters believed the D.C. schools had improved under his controversial appointed chancellor, Michelle Rhee. But he lost the next election anyway: Voters didn’t like the disruptions and job losses that accompanied the overhaul of D.C. schools.

“Reformers have a wrong theory of change about mayoral control,” Kogan said. “The idea is that mayors are more visible, and it’s easier to hold them accountable. That assumes that voters care about academics.”

Progressive mayors want a role in schools

Fights over who gets to control schools often reflect racial and political divisions. Predominantly white business interests, Black- and Latino-led community groups, and teachers unions wrestle for influence. Republican legislatures try to control Democrat-led cities.

Mayoral control spread in the 1990s and 2000s as white flight and shrinking tax bases undermined school systems. Mayors, the thinking went, could elevate the importance of education, marshal resources, and insulate governance from the influence of teachers unions.

Some of these political assumptions have eroded as voters choose more left-leaning mayors.

In last year’s Chicago school board elections — held amid a leadership and budget crisis that pitted Johnson against the superintendent — the mayor’s union-backed allies picked up only four of the 10 elected seats. But with 11 appointees on the 21-member board until 2027, Johnson still controls the school board.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks outside of Austin College and Career Academy on the first day of school in August. Johnson has played an active role in Chicago schools as the district transitions to an elected board.

During recent union contract negotiations, Johnson pressed the district to hire more staff and cover a larger share of pension costs, which district leaders feared would be financially unsustainable. The teachers union also wants Johnson, not the board, to pick the next superintendent.

Wu, Boston’s progressive mayor, became a firm believer in mayoral control once she was in office. During a 2023 WGBH call-in show, a caller reminded Wu that the idea of an elected school board “got more votes than you.”

Wu pointed to frequent superintendent turnover and the recent threat of state takeover to argue against the idea.

“We need to have a focus on stabilizing and getting our school facilities up to date and mental health supports and some of the academic changes that we’re making,” Wu said.

Voters haven’t penalized Wu — she ran unopposed this year and handily won re-election.

New York parents, community groups want more say

Mayoral control in New York City is up for renewal in 2026. If Mamdani goes to Albany and advocates for less authority, he’ll be the first New York mayor to do so.

When Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman, successfully lobbied for mayoral control in 2002, people were concerned not just about student achievement but basic safety. Some of the city’s local community boards, which ran 32 regional school districts, were corrupt or dysfunctional.

Zohran Mamdani wants to end mayor control of NYC schools. It has eroded under Eric Adams.

Bloomberg gained the sole ability to appoint the chancellor and the majority of the city’s school board. He adopted a suite of reforms that included charter school expansion and greater school accountability. Test scores and other metrics improved. New York City represented a “victory lap for mayoral control,” said Collins, the Columbia professor.

But Bloomberg also introduced Lucy Calkins’ now-discredited “Units of Study” reading curriculum into city schools. Outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, who was elected on a public safety platform, overhauled the reading curriculum — initial results are promising but the rollout frustrated teachers. Now Mamdani, who ran on affordability, may give schools and teachers more autonomy.

“That whiplash is a real problem,” said Jonathan Greenberg, a Queens parent and member of the Education Council Consortium, a coalition of parent leaders. “So much of the really deep-seated changes we think need to happen take more than two years or more than four years.”

Mayoral control already has weakened under Adams, with the school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, expanding and exerting more independence.

Finding the right balance for an exceptionally large and complex school system may not be easy. The coalition is proposing a short extension of mayoral control — but with the mayor no longer appointing the majority of school panel members.

Greenberg hopes that policy experts can help the city design a system that allows for community control and a healthy central system that can do things at scale.

Low voter turnout in both mayoral and school board elections should be treated like a crisis, Collins said. A better system would allow for more meaningful participation, and not just at the ballot box.

Unless more people are engaged, Collins said, “there’s going to be a small fraction of people who decide who serves, and the people who are serving are going to be disconnected from the true needs of the folks who are sending their kids to school.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Teachers have the 6-7 trend well in hand. Here are their tips.

2025-11-19T21:03:37+00:00

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The answer to every ice breaker question? 6-7. The answer to what bad listening skills look like? Shouting 6-7 in your partner’s face.

And from the time a group of Indianapolis fourth graders on a recent field trip stepped off the bus to the time they sat down for lunch, it was 6-7, 6-7, 6-7.

All that will surprise no one who spends any time around kids or teens, who have spent months giggling, screaming, and otherwise losing it every time those numbers are uttered. The term originated from the Skrilla song “Doot Doot (6 7)” and made its way into meme culture via basketball video clips set to the song.

Dictionary.com declared 6-7 the word of the year. It became disruptive enough that some schools tried to ban it.

But if you can’t beat ’em — and you really can’t — then join ’em.

Teachers had students write 67-word essays about the 6-7 trend. A Michigan choir teacher had her students write and perform a song about 6-7, an endeavor that required them to control themselves while saying the numbers over and over. The Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana posted a spoof video of school resource officers handing out tickets to students who used the phrase.

We asked teachers how they’re handling the 6-7 trend in their classrooms, and we’ve got some great answers below. As 6-7 starts to wind down, you can apply these same tricks to the next big thing: 41.

‘I use 6-7 to my advantage’

Being an elementary teacher we’ve leaned into it as a building. Our principal and another teacher dressed as 6-7 for Halloween. During our Halloween parade, the costume created an ECE - 5 6-7 chant. It was hilarious. I use a 6-7 attention getter “1,2,3,4,5” and the kids respond with “6-7” while alternating their palms up. I have found that the more we use their language sometimes it goes away faster. 😂

Danielle Zuroweste, fourth grade, Columbine Elementary, Denver

I use 6-7 to my advantage. I only allow the kids to say 6-7 in one circumstance. I have created an attention getter/call and response where I say “4,5” and the kids respond “6,7” and put their eyes on me, listening for next instructions. It has been my most successful attention getter to date and immediately refocuses everyone on me. When the numbers 6 and 7 show up in class, such as in math or a lesson number, I also allow them to say 6-7 once to get it out of their system, with the expectation it will not be said any more after that.

Siena Fiorentino, second grade, P.S. 236 Langston Hughes, the Bronx, New York City

My school has block scheduling so I teach a class that is rostered for periods 6-7. It is a rowdy group. I have embraced the chaos, and I use it as a call and response to get their attention — I say 6 and they respond with 7 (complete with intonation). It works OK! I’m noticing that they are getting less enthusiastic about it as time goes on.

Sally O’Brien, 11th and 12th grade English, Kensington Health Sciences Academy, Philadelphia

I’ve just leaned into it — enough students are bored with it now that we just do the little 6-7 hand gesture, giggle, and resume our day. I’ll even throw it into a conversation with students to make them cringe. Like all fads, they’ll grow out of it, and this one isn’t malicious.

Kali Burks-Mosier, Lynhurst 7th and 8th Grade Center, Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, Indianapolis

I made the mistake of reviewing numbers in Spanish I class. When I got to seis, siete, the whole class erupted in laughter saying seis-siete for minutes afterwards. And after a few minutes, we moved on. Our school really doesn’t need to treat it as a disciplinary matter.

Kathleen Stoker, New Heights Brockton Charter School, Brockton, Massachusetts

Most kids know better than to disrupt our class with 6-7, but we have a few who push the boundary. When we were doing our dice roll greeting for our morning greeting (our greeting changes weekly), every time a child rolled a 6, a couple of children would mouth 6-7!! And do the hand motion. I found it ridiculous since it wasn’t even 6 and then 7. There are no 7s on the die!

Anyway, I shoot them a look and do the teacher whisper-scream “6-7 minutes off recess next time it happens” and that pretty much makes it stop immediately. Kids do have fun saying it outside but if it’s not disrupting anything I think it’s mostly harmless, just annoying.

Grace Loew, District 4, Manhattan, New York

Our school celebrated the 67th day of school! Balloons of 6 and 7 hung around the building. Teachers of different grade levels wore different 6-7 themed shirts. Kindergarten has been working on subitizing [the ability to recognize how many objects are in a small group without counting] so their shirts had dice representing 6-7. Fifth grade used order of operations to create 6 or 7. Our first graders rotated to different rooms to do math activities including a STEM activity building a tower in 6 minutes, 7 seconds. Math fact games of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing 6 and 7 were used throughout all grade levels. Attention calls included teachers counting 1 to 5 and the students chorally answering “6-7.” The art teacher incorporated 6-7 in paintings when talking about different artists. So much fun!

Stacy Cartmel, instructional coach, Clearwater Elementary, Metropolitan School District of Washington Township, Indianapolis

I teach high school, but I also have a 7-year-old son. I do it on purpose — “This activity should take 6 or 7 minutes” — while doing the hand gesture (if you know, you know). It makes it less cool for them to say it because an adult has caught on. I love using Gen Z/Alpha slang in a silly or ironic way. I find this approach works well with both teens and second graders.

Susan Scroggins, English, Herron High School & Herron Preparatory Academy, Herron Classical Schools, Indianapolis

Chalkbeat reporter Aleksandra Appleton contributed reporting from Indianapolis.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

K-12 moving to Labor as Trump administration accelerates bid to dismantle Education Department

2025-11-19T00:16:29+00:00

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The U.S. Education Department is moving management of K-12 and higher education to the Department of Labor and parceling out other job duties to other federal agencies in the most sweeping effort so far to dismantle the agency.

The Education Department announced the changes Tuesday, describing them as fulfilling President Donald Trump’s promise to “return education to the states.”

Management of both the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education will be moved to the Department of Labor, which oversees workforce development programs and protects workers’ rights, among other responsibilities.

The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education oversees major federal funding streams such as Title I, which provides $18 billion a year for high-poverty schools, as well as teacher training programs, support for English learners, and competitive grants for charter schools, arts education, civics, and more.

“If we consider K-12 education as really preparation for adult life, preparation to enter the workforce, nowhere is it better housed than at the Department of Labor that thinks about this night and day,” a senior department official said. “We’re really confident that this will end up being something that provides better services, more streamlined services, reduces bureaucracy.”

These changes involve “necessarily narrowing the size and scope of this federal agency,” the official said. Once implemented, they could serve as “proof points” for further downsizing the department.

The moves accelerate a decades-long push by conservatives to eliminate the department that gained traction when Trump signed an executive order in March to start that process. The decisions also make clear the administration’s willingness to use legal workarounds to avoid seeking approval from Congress.

“This is significantly further than I thought they would be able to go without congressional action,” said Rick Hess, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “I am surprised and impressed, as someone who has always been skeptical of the department’s role. I am open to the idea that it’s good to reduce the department’s footprint. I also think we’re a nation of laws, and it’s important to recognize congressional authority.”

Education advocacy groups widely condemned the changes. Denise Forte, president and CEO of the advocacy group EdTrust, said the administration was “selling the Department of Education for parts.”

“It’s about implementing a business model that transforms students into widgets instead of human beings who need support,” she said in a statement calling on Congress to act.

Karen Hawley Miles, whose father helped create the Education Department in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, said the entire goal was to take functions that were spread across multiple departments and place them in one nimble agency that could prioritize education above all else.

“We’re going back to breaking these things all out,” said Miles, who is the CEO of Education Resource Strategies, which works on school improvement efforts. “The work that we do with school systems and states, when you silo programs and fragment them, you get fragmented results.”

Hess, for his part, predicted the changes would be “neither good nor bad” for students but said they represented an important symbolic step that will be difficult for future administrations to reverse.

Education Department restructuring sidesteps Congress

The restructuring comes on the heels of a lengthy government shutdown. The administration already has eliminated most of the office that supported English learners and slashed staff in the Office for Civil Rights. But workers who were laid off during the shutdown are back on the job for now.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon argued in an op-ed Sunday in USA Today that the shutdown showed “how unnecessary the federal education bureaucracy is.”

“Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes,” McMahon wrote. “The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.”

Only Congress can get rid of a federal department it created. McMahon repeatedly promised to work with Congress on any changes to the structure or duties of the Education Department. These changes were done administratively.

Senior officials said the Economy Act gives the Education Department the authority to contract with other federal departments for goods and services.

Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump administration, called for dispersing federal education functions that are required by law to other departments in its chapter on getting rid of the Education Department. The author of that chapter, Lindsey Burke, now works for the Education Department as the deputy chief of staff for policy and programs.

The Education Department is also moving educational services for Native Americans to the Department of Interior, child care for college students who are parents and accreditation of foreign medical schools to Health and Human Services, and international education to the Department of State.

The Washington Post first reported the outline of the agreements Tuesday.

These arrangements, which the department is calling partnerships, are modeled after one that moved career-technical education to the Department of Labor earlier this year. Policy and statutory oversight will stay with the Education Department, but grant management and other functions will be the responsibility of other federal departments. Education Department staff are expected to move to other agencies.

Funding for federal programs should not be affected, officials said.

For more than a month, rumors swirled that a similar interagency agreement would move oversight for special education to Health and Human Services, a change that disability advocates strongly oppose.

The changes announced Tuesday do not affect the Office for Civil Rights, the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or Federal Student Aid. However, those functions could move to other departments in the future.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, did not respond to a question about what role Congress should play in restructuring the department.

“I agree with President Trump that education decisions should be in the hands of parents and local communities,” Cassidy said in a statement emailed by a spokesperson. “My hope is that these changes further that goal.”

U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican who introduced a bill last year to dismantle the department, said the administration’s approach aligns with his legislation.

“This is an excellent first step, and I look forward to working with President Trump and Secretary McMahon to pass my legislation and finish the job,” he said by email.

But U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said in a statement that the administration was subverting the law, and Republicans should work with Democrats to stop it.

“This is an outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education, and it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise and are gravely weakened — or even completely broken — in the process,” she said.

The School Superintendents Association said in a blog post that its members have serious concerns about consistent provision of services and technical support and about state education agencies’ capacity to take on more work.

David Law, Minnetonka Public Schools superintendent and president of the superintendents association, said school administrators regularly need guidance about which uses of federal funds are allowed or which programs are supported by evidence. The Department of Labor may not have the expertise to help.

“If the Department of Labor is going to do a better job supporting students’ reading and math abilities, that would be a win,” he said. “It would certainly be a new job for them.”

This story has been updated throughout with additional information and comments.

Chalkbeat Senior Reporter Ann Schimke contributed.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Immigration enforcement appears to hurt test scores, and not just for immigrant students: study

2025-11-10T06:14:55+00:00

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Dramatic increases in immigration arrests could be hurting students in the classroom, including U.S. citizen students from Spanish-speaking households.

A study released Monday as a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research uses test score data from a large countywide school district in Florida and immigration arrest data to track the impact of increased enforcement after President Donald Trump took office. Study authors David Figlio and Umut Özek found modest but noticeable declines in spring test scores compared with recent years.

The test score declines didn’t just affect foreign-born students. The effect, which was concentrated in high-poverty schools and among students who were already struggling, was similar for Spanish-speaking immigrant and U.S. citizen students.

That’s “compelling evidence” that students are affected by being part of a community that’s subject to more scrutiny and arrests, regardless of their own or their parents’ immigration status, said Figlio, a University of Rochester economist.

Florida students take state standardized tests three times a year, allowing researchers to see how students were doing before and after immigration enforcement increased under the Trump administration. The analysis found that each percentage point increase in immigration enforcement intensity reduced Spanish-speaking students’ scores on state tests by an amount equivalent to about 10 to 15 points on the SAT.

This decrease accounted for about 10% of the average test score gap between English- and Spanish-speaking students in the district, the study found. The study does not name the district; researchers often grant anonymity to districts and organizations in exchange for data access.

Higher-performing Latino and Spanish-speaking students largely maintained their scores when compared with peers from previous years, but lower-performing students did not.

“This is not turning a kid who was knocking it out of the park into a kid who is struggling academically, but it does appear to be a drag on kids who were already struggling,” Figlio said.

The study adds to a body of research that had already established wide-ranging effects of immigration enforcement on young people, from increased anxiety to higher dropout rates. But this new research reflects the impacts of much more intense interior enforcement efforts under Trump.

Increased immigration enforcement was also associated with a decline in disciplinary incidents for both Latino students and Spanish-speaking students. Figlio and Özek are not sure if this was because students tried to avoid getting in trouble, or if administrators responded with more leniency out of sympathy for student hardships, or if they wanted to avoid exposing students to law enforcement.

Figlio and Özek did not find significant impacts on students’ attendance in the school district they studied, but other recent studies have.

Thomas Dee, a Stanford University education professor, found a 22% increase in daily absences in the two months after a January immigration raid in California’s Central Valley, an agricultural region with large numbers of immigrant farmworkers. That was a sharp deviation from attendance patterns in previous years.

Absences were higher among elementary students, perhaps because parents worried more about being separated from young children.

Another recent study from Kirsten Slungaard Mumma at Columbia University’s Teachers College found increased absences among English learners in both Connecticut and Rhode Island.

In the past, including under the first Trump administration, interior enforcement more often took the form of large workplace raids, which might affect a large number of families in one community.

In recent months, federal agents have raided apartment complexes, arrested parents and teens outside school buildings, and recently dragged a Chicago child care worker from the center where she worked. The Trump administration did away with a longstanding policy that deemed schools and day cares “sensitive locations” where immigration enforcement was largely prohibited.

Administration officials say they are targeting violent criminals. Public records show that many of those detained have no criminal record or committed only minor offenses. ProPublica documented at least 170 incidents in which federal immigration agents detained U.S. citizens, sometimes for days.

“This is an era of immigration enforcement unlike any in recent memory in terms of its intensity and scope,” Dee said. From a research standpoint, acute events like the Central Valley raids are easier to study — there’s a distinct before and after — but immigration enforcement now is an “everywhere and always” phenomenon, he said.

Figlio and Özek try to account for that by tracking increases in immigration arrests by country of origin, identifying schools with a higher percentage of students from those countries, and comparing test scores in schools that serve more and less affected communities.

One Latino mother in Chicago, who lives in a part of the city that’s been targeted by federal immigration agents, said her son traditionally earned As and Bs and is taking several advanced courses this year as a high school sophomore. She’s now noticing more Cs. (Chalkbeat is not identifying the mother due to the sensitivity of her situation and privacy concerns.)

The family doesn’t go out as much, the mother said. Her son is watching videos of alleged ICE activity on social media, and hearing from friends who are worried their families will be targeted by ICE. One of her son’s teachers told her, “before he was more participative and turning everything in, and now sometimes he falls asleep,” she said.

Figlio said his study doesn’t tell us what U.S. immigration policy should look like, but it does point to places where students may need more support.

“Educators are responsible for educating all the students who go to school,” he said. “School districts might want to put more resources into schools that have a lot of foreign-born students and students from the countries that are subject to more enforcement, and not just for the kids who are foreign-born but for everyone.”

Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Reema Amin contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Students with disabilities have unique rights under federal law. What if they weren’t alone?

2025-10-27T09:01:00+00:00

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Imagine two elementary students: One struggles to read because she has dyslexia. The other struggles to read because she received poor reading instruction.

The first student is entitled to specialized instruction — after an expensive evaluation process. The second student is entitled to nothing.

In a paper released Tuesday by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, education researchers Ashley Jochim and Alexander Kurz argue for rethinking the special education system and creating a legal entitlement to an adequate education for all students.

Jochim, a principal at CRPE, said she was motivated by professional and personal experience. Working on early literacy initiatives in Oakland, she saw teachers overwhelmed trying to address the disparate needs students brought to the classroom. At the same time, she saw her own daughter, who was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, make rapid improvements after switching from a progressive private school to a public school where she received more direct instruction.

“I started to wonder: How many kids are diagnosed with disabilities just because we fail to operationalize good instruction in the classroom?” Jochim said.

CRPE also digitized decades worth of data to chart the rise and fall of certain conditions as eligibility criteria changed. A new data dashboard also released Tuesday shows how widely special education identification varies by state as well.

When the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act passed in 1976, 8% of students were identified as students with disabilities, compared with 15% now. Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder; learning disabilities such as dyslexia; and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a condition included under “other health impairment” since 1999, have contributed significantly to that increase.

Jochim said parents fight for diagnoses so their child can get an adequate education. She questions whether so much energy and money would be spent on identification if schools had a legal obligation to provide an adequate education to all students.

Large-scale studies found positive outcomes associated with special education services, including greater academic growth. But CRPE points to test score gaps between special education students and their peers that have widened over time.

The paper comes as the Trump administration is considering moving special education oversight to the Department of Health and Human Services, and after hundreds of staff who worked in civil rights enforcement and special education were laid off from the Education Department.

Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, an advocacy group, called the report’s recommendations flawed and the report itself “politically ill-timed.”

Marshall said addressing broader educational problems should not come “at the expense of the rights of students who need and benefit from the lifeline that IDEA provides.”

Chalkbeat spoke with Jochim about these and related issues. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What were the trends that stood out to you in disability identification and what are the policy implications?

There’s this notion in special ed that identification rates represent some true reflection of the number of kids with disabilities, but it’s really not.

A policy change changes the number of kids identified, but it’s not changing the number of kids who need help in the classroom.

We know from national data that there’s a lot of kids struggling in school right now. The vast majority of those kids are not identified for special ed. And the question is: How are we making determinations about who gets help and how should they get help?

We have a huge achievement gap in this country, and it’s really hard to disentangle. What a learning disability diagnosis does is it asks professional staff to make a judgment about the cause of low achievement. In the case of learning disabilities, we say that the cause is based on an innate difference in the child’s brain. We’re trying to exclude all the kids whose low achievement stems from some other, presumably environmental cause.

And there are costs to this. It’s perpetuated siloes at every level of the system, because it’s a totally different set of rules of the game, totally different set of expectations.

Are you suggesting that too many kids are being identified with disabilities? Are you suggesting that we have a problem with overidentification?

I struggle with that word. There is a group of children who are struggling in school. Some subset of those kids are going to get identified, but there’s a whole bunch of them that look very similar, but they don’t get any help. What does it mean to overidentify? The point is helping kids who need help.

I would like to see us move towards a system which is designed to be responsive to students’ needs. Then we don’t have this problem of trying to understand if we’re over- or under- identifying.

What are the features of a system that helps every kid who needs help?

A lot of what we talk about is very consistent with MTSS [Multi-tiered Systems of Support, a framework schools use to identify struggling students and provide escalating interventions]. But we don’t have the resources to back up an MTSS system in practice.

If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing, it would be to root effective instructional practices into teacher preparation programs so that every teacher walks into their classroom knowing how to manage behavior effectively and knowing how to provide really high quality Tier One reading and math instruction.

To be clear, Tier One is not enough. I firmly believe that kids are going to need different amounts of instruction to reach the same end point, because they start at different points. But it would have a profound impact on the system as a whole.

We have seen some states move to universal screening and universal access to literacy tutoring for kids that are deemed at-risk based on the results of one of these screeners. So that’s an example of how this could work.

You call for the creation of a new needs-based entitlement. What could that look like? And what do you think that would do for students?

There’s a lot of programs that target funding and resources to kids who are educationally disadvantaged in some way. Special education is the only one of those that is structured as an entitlement. Schools are obligated to provide you what you need to succeed at school if you are eligible, and money is not a factor that they can consider in this. If they fail to do so, you go to the courts to seek remedies.

This does not exist for any other group of students in America. A needs-based entitlement would help to solve that problem. It would give families real power.

This is not the way to fix everything wrong in education. But if a parent could sue a district for adopting a math curriculum that is misaligned with the science of good math instruction, I’m betting that more of them would spend time getting up to speed on that science and choosing more wisely.

The Education Department has laid off most of the staff that oversee special education. Many advocates are worried about the loss of civil rights protections. Is this a good time to be questioning the underpinning of the whole system?

I am sympathetic to the concerns of disability advocates, and I want to just acknowledge the grief and the fear that exists in this moment. There’s so much happening, and there’s so much uncertainty that I think there is an impulse to preserve and protect what already exists because it feels threatened.

What I have concluded is that we have a situation in which schools can comply with the law and still fail students.

This is the moment to define the future of special education. When we simply defend what already exists, even though what exists is failing so many kids, that’s what fuels the undercurrent of the politics of resentment, the politics of slash and burn. So we really see it as an antidote to this particular political moment.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Virtual tutoring is here to stay. New research points to ways to make it better.

2025-10-22T15:04:00+00:00

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Three times a week, the young students struggling the most with reading at each of Milwaukee College Prep’s four campuses go to a dedicated classroom, don their headphones, and log into a virtual tutoring session.

For the next 30 minutes, each student gets one-on-one attention from a certified teacher who might ask them about their dog or their baby sister before diving into the lesson.

Virtual tutoring — in this case through a provider called OpenLiteracy — is the only way Milwaukee College Prep could provide so much tutoring for so many children and from such experienced educators, said Erica Badger, director of curriculum and instruction for the 2,000-student charter network.

“We have a hundred kids on at once,” she said. “Being able to have that many adults come into the school building? I can’t even imagine.”

For these reasons and others, virtual tutoring has remained part of the toolbox of American schools long after students returned to in-person classes. It costs less than in-person tutoring, scheduling is more flexible, and providers aren’t limited to hiring in the surrounding community.

But it doesn’t always work smoothly.

Two studies from Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator released Wednesday used natural language processing technologies to review transcripts from tens of thousands of hours of virtual tutoring sessions. Their goal: to better understand exactly what happens between tutors and students in these sessions.

One study examines the impact of disruptions as revealed through tutor comments, such as “You can’t see me? I’m not sure why you can’t see me” or “Sorry. Did you say something? It was hard to hear.”

Researchers found that 19% of available time was lost to disruptions, whether from technological issues, distracted students, or background noise. Time lost to disruptions was even greater when tutors were working with more than one student, especially if one of the students entered the session late.

The other study looked at how tutors divide their time and build relationships with students in one-on-one sessions and in sessions with two students.

Students were randomly assigned to either an individual tutor or to work with the tutor and another student. Tutors spent more time talking overall when they were working with two students, but only about 21% of tutor speech was individualized content instruction, compared with 65% one-on-one sessions. The tutors in the one-on-one sessions also used more phrases associated with motivation and relationship-building.

Both studies involved young students working on early literacy skills.

High-intensity or high-dosage tutoring, generally defined as occurring at least three times a week and for 10 weeks or longer, emerged as one of the most high-profile and effective interventions to address pandemic-related learning loss. But large-scale tutoring programs haven’t always produced the same outcomes as carefully designed pilot programs.

The new studies shed light on why virtual tutoring in particular has a mixed track record, according to studies. They also suggest ways schools and tutoring providers can make these sessions more effective. That’s especially important now that federal pandemic relief has expired, and schools have less money to spend.

“There are specific features that effective tutoring programs tend to have, but what is actually driving effectiveness is kind of a black box,” said Carly Robinson, a co-author on both papers and director of research at Stanford’s SCALE Initiative, which runs the National Student Support Accelerator.

The emergence of virtual tutoring provides new opportunities to provide answers, because new technology allows audio and video from these sessions to be analyzed at scale, Robinson said. Previous research using similar techniques found, for example, that tutors tend to give more attention to the lower-performing student in group sessions, unless that student was a girl paired with a higher-performing boy. In those cases, the boy still got more attention.

Robinson said the research findings shouldn’t deter schools from using virtual tutoring or even from using small group sessions. That 81% of tutoring time was productive even when working with very young children is a “positive finding,” Robinson said.

Students experienced more disruptions when they worked in the corner of a classroom than in dedicated tutoring spaces. Small schools experienced more disruptions than large schools did as they added tutoring sessions. And the youngest children, kindergartners, experienced significantly more disruptions than second graders.

Researchers suggest that schools find a quiet dedicated space for children to work if possible; have an adult on hand to handle tech issues; and be realistic about each school’s capacity to host a lot of video calls at once.

The study on one-to-one versus two-to-one tutoring suggests that tutors may need different techniques, including strategies from in-person small group instruction, to ensure both students get the most possible from each session.

OnYourMark Education, the tutoring provider that was involved in that study, has already overhauled its 2:1 tutoring, CEO and founder Mindy Sjoblom said. Some of these changes were subtle, such as having tutors ask a question and then call on a child, so that both students have to pay attention to the question and think about the answer.

The study took place in OnYourMark’s second year of operation. Now in its fourth year, OnYourMark still offers one-to-one tutoring in places like Massachusetts where the state provides significant funds for tutoring, but when districts are paying out of pocket, they’re mostly opting for two-to-one sessions, she said. The company has lost some clients who decided they could no longer afford tutoring.

OnYourMark is piloting a program that has students work independently on an adaptive tech platform three days a week and meet with a tutor twice a week. If it’s successful, it would cost about 60% as much as two-to-one tutoring.

“If schools can’t afford to implement it, we’re spinning our wheels,” Sjoblom said.

Thinking beyond a tutoring ‘gold standard’

A lot of research on tutoring points to a “gold standard,” said Liz Cohen, vice president of policy at 50CAN, an advocacy group, and the author of “The Future of Tutoring: Lessons from 10,000 School District Tutoring Initiatives.” But schools might also be interested in what a silver standard or a bronze standard looks like.

The two new studies help identify trade-offs in a granular way that can shape training and program design, she said.

“It’s really important research because a big part of making tutoring more effective is figuring out how to scale it and make it more affordable,” she said. “That means figuring out how to make the most out of the tutor’s time.”

But Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center for Reinventing Public Education, said perfecting tutoring programs won’t have much impact if schools don’t also pay attention to their core instruction.

“What does it mean to do high-impact tutoring in a school system where the classroom instruction has not been optimized?” she said. “This is a huge liability. We optimize too much on these design-based studies without thinking about the system as a whole.”

Milwaukee College Prep originally targeted a small group of fourth graders for extra reading help, but Badger said the network school realized that was too late and not enough. A donor approached the school about wanting to fund something that would really move the needle on student outcomes. A gift of $500,000 a year over three years allows the network to provide one-on-one tutoring for 30 minutes a day, three times a week to 200 first and second grade students.

Sarah Scott Frank, CEO of OpenLiteracy, the tutoring provider at Milwaukee College Prep, said she believes strongly in one-to-one tutoring. When students don’t work at the same pace, it can be “crushing” for the slower student, Frank said.

“One kid would be zooming along, and the kids are very perceptive, and they see that, and they think ‘see, I can’t do that,’ and it reinforces that negative identity,” she said.

One-to-one tutoring costs more up front, she said. But she believes it’s more cost effective because it works.

The charter network already had a classroom aide providing small-group instruction in addition to the lead teacher in every classroom. The charter network has also upgraded its literacy curriculum to add more phonics. Tutors and classroom teachers use the same curriculum and can share data easily.

Teachers practice the transition to the tutoring room and do trial runs with the platform so that students can log in smoothly two minutes before the session is supposed to start. An adult is on hand to troubleshoot tech problems. Attendance is measured in minutes.

“It’s not a quiet environment,” Badger acknowledges. “But it’s this hum and excitement of learning.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

This ‘public Christian school’ opened quietly in Colorado. Now there could be a legal fight.

2025-10-22T01:53:22+00:00

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A group that authorized what its leader called Colorado’s “first public Christian school” told the state education department Tuesday that it would be unconstitutional to deny the school state funding.

The school, called Riverstone Academy, opened quietly in southern Colorado this August, just months after a tie at the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the nation’s first religious charter school from opening in Oklahoma.

Riverstone Academy’s website describes a tuition-free public elementary school that “blends strong academics with classical values, hands-on trade-based learning, and a Christian foundation.”

Riverstone Academy's Facebook page cites the school's "Christian Foundation."

But Colorado’s constitution requires that public schools be nonsectarian — meaning not religious — and the Colorado Department of Education is pushing back. Department officials have suggested that Riverstone students may not be eligible for public funding. The school’s backers said they are “alarmed at the threat” and that not funding the school would amount to religious discrimination.

If the disagreement were to end up in court, the outcome of any legal challenge likely would turn as much on the bureaucratic details of how Riverstone Academy is organized and authorized as on larger constitutional questions of religious freedom. And Riverstone Academy likely won’t be the last case to test the boundaries between church and state and the evolving definition of a public school.

“The people who want to tear down the wall of separation between church and state are going to keep pushing these issues because they think they have a sympathetic audience in the current Supreme Court,” said Steven Green, a law professor at Willamette University who specializes in church-state issues.

Few mentions of school’s Christian character in paperwork

Riverstone Academy opened this fall and has just over 30 students occupying four classrooms in a leased space just outside Pueblo city limits. It was authorized by Education reEnvisioned BOCES. The group is one of the state’s 21 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services, which offer services such as special education to member school districts.

Riverstone Academy includes four classrooms and a few offices.

Riverstone exists due to an unusual arrangement involving the authorizer, two nonprofit groups, and two school districts 60 miles apart. Unlike most public schools, which typically take more than a year to plan and open, Riverstone was proposed and launched within months.

Quin Friberg, Riverstone’s executive director, said the school is meant to serve local families who seek an education that “feels like private school but doesn’t cost like private school.”

“I mean that in the sense of smaller classrooms, the religious element, and … we have an emphasis on kind of hands-on [activities],” he said.

Quin Friberg is the executive director of both Riverstone Academy and Forging Education.

Over the summer, BOCES authorized the school and contracted with Riverstone Academy, a new nonprofit Friberg heads, to run it. Riverstone subcontracted with a two-year-old Christian education nonprofit called Forging Education, which Friberg also leads, to help run the school.

District 49, which is based near Colorado Springs, is one of the two school districts that belong to the Education reEnvisioned BOCES and serves as the groups’ fiscal agent. An hour south is Pueblo District 70, which is not part of the BOCES but approved an agreement to allow Riverstone to open within its boundaries.

References to the school’s Christian character are absent or muted in Riverstone’s application materials and contracts. An application for a school code submitted to the state in late June makes no mention of Riverstone’s religious nature. It also went unmentioned in the agreement approved by the Pueblo 70 school board in late June and in the contract between the school and the BOCES approved by the BOCES board in August.

Friberg said Riverstone wasn’t hiding anything, but that the school’s religious foundation wasn’t a relevant response to questions on some of the documents.

Unlike the Oklahoma Catholic school at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court case, Riverstone is not a charter school. Rather, both the BOCES and the Colorado education department have referred to it as a “contract school,” a term that’s not defined in state law.

Ken Witt, executive director of the BOCES, said Riverstone is a public school because it was authorized by the BOCES, and the application went through the BOCES’ normal review process.

“It was a quality educational program that they were describing,” he said. “And we said, [the] U.S. Constitution and federal law says you don’t discriminate based on religion, so we are not going to discriminate based on religion.”

State officials warn that religious public schools are not allowed

Although the first day of school at Riverstone was Aug. 11, state officials didn’t address its Christian affiliation until two months later.

That’s when Witt described Riverstone as “Colorado’s first public Christian school” near the end of a routine 12-minute update about his group’s programming at a District 49 school board meeting on Oct. 9.

“We’re delighted that they came to us and said, ‘Hey, we’d like to operate this school,’” he told the board.

He then cited a 2020 Supreme Court decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which found that states could not exclude religious schools from private school voucher programs.

Witt has long been involved in the Colorado education world, frequently championing conservative positions, including expanded school choice. He was recalled from the Jeffco school board in 2015 following anger over proposed changes to the district’s AP U.S. history curriculum and other issues. In March, Witt resigned as superintendent of the Woodland Park school district.

The BOCES contract with Riverstone states that “The School shall constitute a public school in Colorado” and be subject to all applicable state laws. But it also describes Riverstone as “a provider of educational services at the School” and says Riverstone “is not itself a ‘public school.’”

At the Oct. 9 meeting, one member of the District 49 school board, which leans conservative, expressed alarm after Witt’s briefing on Riverstone.

“Eroding that separation of church and state is very concerning, and for us to be a partner in that … does not sit well with me,” board member Mike Heil said.

Board president Lori Thompson immediately responded, “Just a note of clarification, separation of church and state is not contained in the United States Constitution.”

“Separation of church and state” commonly refers to the First Amendment’s prohibition on government-established religion, but the actual phrase does not appear in the Constitution.

The day after the board meeting, the Colorado Department of Education sent a letter to District 49 and Education reEnvisioned BOCES warning that religious public schools are not permitted under the Colorado Constitution.

The Gazette first reported on the Oct. 9 board meeting and the education department letter.

On Tuesday, District 49 sent a statement to Chalkbeat indicating that district officials will request funding for Riverstone students and let the education department and the BOCES “have appropriate dialogue about eligibility.”

Also on Tuesday, Witt responded to the Colorado Department of Education’s warning letter.

“The U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination against Riverstone solely on account of its religious affiliation as such exclusion from a generally available governmental benefit would be unconstitutional,” his letter said in part.

A spokesperson for the education department said officials there are reviewing that letter.

Riverstone Academy is relying on a loan from Forging Education — not state money — to operate the school for the first several months.

When asked if he’s worried about the state withholding funding, Friberg said “I’ll just say we went in eyes wide open … on every implication of what we’re doing.”

Is Riverstone the next St. Isidore?

After Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself due to a long-standing friendship with an adviser to St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, the Supreme Court justices tied 4-4. That meant the Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that blocked the opening of a Catholic charter school remained intact.

The justices didn’t lay out their thinking, leaving open questions about where the line is. But if Riverstone Academy’s backers say it’s a public school, it might not be a good candidate for such a test, Green and others said.

The trio of cases that have redrawn the line between church and state — Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson — all involve a religious entity being denied access to a benefit that was available to the general public or to secular entities.

Those conditions don’t apply to public schools. Lawyers in the St. Isidore case argued not that Oklahoma should fund religious public schools, but that charter schools aren’t really public.

“A public school cannot be religious,” said Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “The government cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, fund a religious school directly. That’s as established as it gets.”

Riverstone opened without much public scrutiny

BOCES generally operate less publicly and less transparently than many school districts.

Education reEnvisioned BOCES doesn’t record its meetings, and some recent board agendas and minutes are not posted online because the group is revamping its website, Witt said. As is true of other BOCES, Education reEnvisioned board members are not elected by the public, but rather appointed by school districts or colleges that are BOCES members or by BOCES board members.

Originally launched under a different name in 2013, the BOCES authorizes several online and bricks and mortar schools as well as more than 50 homeschool enrichment programs around the state.

Last May, Riverstone Academy submitted a new school application to the BOCES.

In June, the BOCES asked the Pueblo 70 school board to approve an agreement allowing Riverstone to open in the district. During a June 10 board discussion of the agreement, which doesn’t mention that the school is Christian, one board member asked Superintendent Ronda Rein if she had anything to share about the school.

She said the school would have 30 students, then said, “That’s really all the information that I have at this point.”

Neither Rein nor any of the district’s five board members responded to messages from Chalkbeat asking if they knew about Riverstone’s religious foundation prior to agreeing to let it open in the district.

Witt said the BOCES didn’t conceal the school’s Christian affiliation in conversations with Pueblo District 70 leaders.

District 49’s school board wasn’t involved in Riverstone’s authorization. However, if the state eventually agrees to fund the school, the money would pass first to District 49, then the BOCES, and then Riverstone.

A copy of Riverstone’s application, provided to Chalkbeat by Witt, makes only one mention of Christian features in a paragraph about science instruction. It notes the use of a curriculum called Berean Builders offering “a Christian worldview in their exploration of scientific topics.” A paragraph about social studies instruction mentions Master Books, but doesn’t say it’s a Christian home school curriculum.

Witt said BOCES board members were aware of the school’s religious affiliation when they approved it in August. The minutes for that meeting are not posted online.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

A new study confirms a hunch: School cellphone bans can boost test scores

2025-10-20T12:15:09+00:00

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Charles Longshore distinctly remembers the tipping point that led his Alabama middle school to ban cellphones, two years before the state adopted its own ban.

Longshore, then the assistant principal at Dothan Preparatory Academy, had gotten wind that two girls planned to fight in the courtyard between classes and pulled them into the office about 10 minutes before the scheduled rumble. That prevented the fight, but it didn’t stop hundreds of other students from racing to the courtyard hoping to watch a spectacle advertised through texts and chats, with their own phones out ready to record it.

Stories like these — along with countless less dramatic moments of distraction and disengagement — have made cellphone bans a rare point of bipartisan agreement on education policy. Twenty-six states now have state-level bans or restrictions on cellphone use in schools. Two-thirds of principals said their school had a bell-to-bell ban in a recent RAND Corp. survey.

But so far there hasn’t been much concrete evidence about the impacts of school cellphone bans.

“The policy action is just happening at a level that far surpasses the available evidence,” said David Figlio, an economics professor at the University of Rochester. “The available evidence is largely people’s hunches.”

Figlio and Umut Özek, a senior economist at RAND Corp., a research organization, set out to address that gap. Their study, released Monday as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, analyzes data from a large, county-level urban school district in Florida, which was the first state to adopt a cellphone ban.

The study found modest improvements in test scores in the second year of the ban, after an increase in suspensions in the first year.

The Florida school district had adopted a bell-to-bell ban, more restrictive than the state law, which requires that students not use their phones during instructional time. Students violating the ban had their phones confiscated but got them back at the end of the school day. Students could also face discipline, including suspension, for violating the ban.

Florida students take standardized tests three times a year, and schools report discipline and attendance daily, giving researchers a lot of information to work with.

Using data about cellphone usage coming from each school building, the researchers first identified schools where students used cellphones at higher and lower levels before the ban, which went into effect in 2023. Middle schools had higher cellphone use than high schools before and after the ban.

Researchers then used data from the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years to compare changes in schools with the highest cellphone use before the ban and those with the lowest.

This study design, known as difference within difference, allows researchers to draw stronger conclusions about causality.

In the second year of the ban, average test scores on the higher-stakes spring test went up by 1.1 percentiles more in the schools where students previously used their phones a lot, compared with low-activity schools. The results were more significant for middle and high school students, and boys seemed to benefit more than girls.

But the gains came with tradeoffs. Suspensions went up in the first year of the ban, the study found, especially for Black boys.

And white students saw greater test score growth than Black students.

“Black students seem to be accruing fewer of the benefits of the cellphone ban and more of the disciplinary costs,” Figlio said.

The study can’t answer why Black students — who often face disproportionate discipline — were suspended more often. The increase largely went away in the second year of the ban. Still, Figlio said, the finding calls for schools to be thoughtful about how they approach enforcement.

The study didn’t directly measure school climate — the kind of improvement Longshore and other principals often notice most after they adopt a ban — but researchers did track unexcused absences and students changing schools, potential proxies for how content or safe students feel at school.

Both metrics improved after the cellphone ban was in effect. In fact, the study found that the improvements in attendance contributed to about half the increase in student test scores after the ban.

Figlio called the test score increases “meaningful but not game-changing.”

“It’s not transforming test scores,” he said. “But we’re observing palpable improvement. We’re observing kids attending school more.”

Test score declines blamed on cellphones

American students’ scores on key national and international tests have been trending down for the past decade, well before COVID disruptions. Researchers are not entirely sure why, but one theory is that the rise of cellphone and social media use among children has had deleterious cognitive and social effects.

“We lack direct evidence of a causal link between smartphones and learning, but I’m convinced that this technology is a key driver of youth mental health challenges, a distraction from learning, both inside and outside of schools, and a deterrent to reading,” Harvard education professor Martin West told the Senate education committee at a hearing last month.

Because social media wasn’t introduced to children through a randomized controlled trial, it’s hard to isolate the effects, West said at the hearing. Cellphone bans provide an opportunity to study what happens when social media is removed from the school environment.

Girls Athletic Leadership School, a Denver middle school, collects cellphones and other devices at the start of the school day.

But West urged policymakers and parents to address social media use outside of school as well. A study published in JAMA earlier this month found that children who used more social media did worse in reading, vocabulary, and memory tests in their early teen years than those who used little or no social media.

Figlio said he’s prepared to say that cellphones are a driver of test score declines, but there’s not enough evidence to say whether they’re the primary driver.

Longshore, whose school was not involved in the study and who had not read the study when he spoke to Chalkbeat, said state test scores didn’t change significantly after the school started requiring students to leave their phones in a lockbox all day. The school maintained its trajectory of slow but steady growth.

But far fewer students failed their classes, he said. Longshore referred roughly 80 students to summer school the year before the ban. This past summer, it was just 20.

Longshore, who left Dothan at the end of last school year to take a principal job in another district, didn’t suspend students who violated the ban. Instead, after the first offense, the school would hold onto the phone until a parent could pick it up. At a high-poverty school where many parents work multiple jobs, students might go days without their phones — and the parent usually made sure the child didn’t bring it to school again.

With chronic absenteeism already high, Longshore said the last thing he wanted was more students out of class as a result of the ban.

And in fact, discipline at the school improved significantly. There was less drama, Longshore said, and far fewer fights. The lunchroom got loud again with students talking to their classmates.

Future research on cellphone bans could dig into school climate surveys or examine academic or discipline data in different school contexts, Figlio said. The question of impact is “not asked and answered,” he said.

“I care a lot about test scores, but I care even more about kids’ life outcomes — graduating high school, attending college, workforce participation,” he said. “These are things we won’t know for a while.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Math gaps narrowing, but reading scores remain stagnant, new research shows

2025-10-14T04:02:00+00:00

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U.S. students are doing slightly better in math, and test score gaps that widened in the aftermath of the pandemic are narrowing, according to new data from testing organization NWEA.

But reading scores remain stubbornly stagnant, reflecting a concerning trend on other major national tests.

The data released Tuesday comes from MAP Growth Assessments given three times a year to more than 7 million students in grades three through eight in 20,000 schools.

These students attend schools that choose to give the MAP test, while students who take the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, reflect a statistically representative sample. The MAP data comes from the 2024-25 school year, while the most recent NAEP results come from spring 2024. NWEA weighted the results for students from certain subgroups to ensure the results were more representative.

The results add to our understanding of student academic progress — or lack thereof — in the wake of COVID disruptions and other societal changes, such as the increase in children using tablets and cellphones.

In math, student performance has steadily improved since the low point of 2021, though most students are still performing below their pre-pandemic counterparts.

Gaps in math test scores based on race and ethnicity as well as household income remain large but appear to be narrowing. For example, the gap between students at high-poverty schools and the national average in third-grade math shrank by about a third from spring 2021 to spring 2025. The gap for Hispanic students in third-grade math shrunk by about 41%, while the gap for Black students was about 27% smaller.

In each case, students in those groups made more progress than students in other groups instead of the gaps narrowing because some students did worse.

In reading, scores remained near their low points in 2021 for all groups and for most grade levels. Only eighth graders showed slight improvement from the previous school year.

In the immediate aftermath of school closures, math scores took a bigger hit than reading, but in the years since, math has shown improvement, while reading scores have remained stagnant or on some tests even declined further.

Researchers aren’t entirely sure why. Math learning may be more responsive to classroom intervention, while reading recovery may be hampered by trends outside the classroom, including the effects of technology on attention.

Gaps between high- and low-performing students started to widen before the pandemic, but COVID disruptions appear to have accelerated the trend. Recovery has been slow, with data from other assessments showing even students who weren’t in school yet during COVID closures struggling.

Third-grade students who took MAP tests last year entered kindergarten in fall 2021.

Karyn Lewis, vice president of research and policy partnerships at NWEA, said the results reflect “something systemic about education has changed.”

“This speaks to the lingering impacts, the shock to the system as a whole,” she said.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct year that last year’s third graders entered kindergarten.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica atemeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

‘Absolutely devastating’: Rural schools say $100K visa fee could make it hard to hire teachers

2025-10-01T19:32:06+00:00

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The Kuspuk School District owns two small planes and employs a pilot to stay connected with schools spread across 12,000 square miles along the Kuskokwim River in western Alaska.

And to keep those schools staffed, the remote school district works with its own immigration attorney.

Some 60% of Kuspuk’s certified teachers come from the Philippines. That includes all of the special education teachers and all of the teachers at five of the district’s eight currently operating schools. (A ninth school is temporarily closed.)

Most of those teachers hold J1 visas, a cultural exchange visa that allows people to work in the United States for up to five years before returning to their home countries. But a growing number in Kuspuk and in rural districts around the United States hold H1B visas, which allow for longer-term work. That matters in tight-knit rural communities, where connection is key but teacher turnover is high.

Last month, President Donald Trump issued an order to impose a $100,000 fee on new applications for H1B visas, part of a broader effort to restrict immigration and preserve opportunities for Americans. The order focuses on tech sector jobs, which account for the majority of H1B visa holders and where critics argue that foreign-born engineers and programmers have crowded out Americans.

Proponents say that companies can afford the fee if they’re bringing on truly exceptional employees who will generate more than that in profit — otherwise those jobs should go to American workers. But the fee could make it nearly impossible for rural and underserved districts like Kuspuk to hire enough teachers for hard-to-fill jobs, district leaders said.

Kuspuk Superintendent Madeline Aguillard said many of the American teachers she hires are inexperienced new graduates, and many don’t stay long. Grow-your-own programs that train people from small communities to be teachers hold promise, but they’re slow. The international teachers who work in her district’s far-flung villages aren’t a short-term stop gap, she said. They’re a critical part of the long-term workforce — and they stay for years.

“We are able to hire more experienced teachers,” she said. “I have multiple teachers with doctorates. They max out our pay scale. They are top-notch teachers that we can put in front of our kids.”

Susan Nedza, superintendent of the Hoonah district in southeast Alaska, recently hired three teachers on H1B visas to fill positions in special education and high school English and math that had sat vacant for an entire school year. A $100,000 fee would be “absolutely devastating,” she said.

“No district could afford that even for one teacher, much less multiple teachers,” Nedza said. “We would have so many students without teachers.”

Teachers on visas make up a relatively small share of the total teacher workforce and of the H1B program. Federal data analyzed by Chalkbeat indicates at least 2,000 H1B visas sponsored by school districts and charter networks were approved this year. Those teachers work for large districts like New York City, Dallas, Chicago, and Denver, and they work in one-room schoolhouses in Montana.

Many of them work in hard-to-fill positions like secondary math and science, bilingual education, and special education, but in rural districts they can be found in nearly every role, including working as principals in Kuspuk. The large majority of them come from the Philippines, where teachers are fluent in English and the educational system is similar to the United States.

While J1 teachers typically work with an agency that helps place them at no cost to the district, school districts already take on considerable administrative costs and fees — anywhere from $3,000 to $20,000 per teacher candidate, according to superintendents — to sponsor H1B visas. Some superintendents say it’s worth it to hire teachers who can work in their districts long-term. In Alaska, districts have been forced to use the H1B program after J1 agencies stopped placing teachers in school districts off the road system, where amenities, housing, and access to medical care are scarce.

The School Superintendents Association is hoping to secure an exemption from the fee for K-12 educators. The proclamation allows Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to waive the fee for certain sectors if she finds that it is “in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”

“Clearly I’m biased, but I think making sure all children have access to quality educators would be of the greatest national interest,” said Tara Thomas, senior government affairs manager for the superintendents’ group.

Whatever the dynamics are in the tech sector, they don’t apply to rural schools, said Tobin Novasio, superintendent of the Hardin school district in Montana. He’s not outsourcing American jobs or undercutting wages, he said. On the contrary, teachers on visas tend to earn more because they have more experience and education.

“The mindset is that this is a Silicon Valley thing where this is a quarter-million-a-year engineering job, and they’re bringing in an Indian engineer to do it for half the price,” Novasio said. “That’s just not the situation.”

Hardin serves about 1,800 students, most of them on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. Out of 150 certified teachers, 27 are on J1 visas and two are on H1B visas, with a third H1B visa pending. Fully half of Novasio’s special education teachers are visa holders.

“The value of the H1B and the reason we’ve been trying to find pathways, is that once they’re here, they can stay here and stay part of the community,” Novasio said.

Districts are working to increase the supply of American teachers, he said, but it’s a slow process.

“We’ve been very deliberate in building relationships with our local colleges,” Novasio said. “We’ve started a para pathway and have four people in that program. We’re starting an apprenticeship program. We increased our starting salary by $5,000. We’re trying everything we can.”

H1B visas allow districts more stability

The Kuspuk School District had always struggled with staffing, Aguillard said, but Alaska schools used to be able to draw teachers from the lower 48 with higher salaries, even if they didn’t stay long.

But other states have raised their pay — and milk doesn’t cost $16 a gallon in Washington State. The villages in the Kuspuk district are only accessible by plane or, in the summer, by boat. Some villages don’t have stores, and some teachers have to live in their schools because there isn’t any other housing.

“It’s difficult to get here, it’s difficult to live here, it’s difficult to function here,” Aguillard said.

She hired her first international teacher after she had four of five special education teacher positions open and didn’t receive a single application from an American teacher. That teacher, Dale Ebcas, came from the Philippines and is still with the district six years later. He works with preschool through second grade students at Joseph and Olinga Gregory Elementary School in Kalskgag and helps with case management for high school students. With support from Aguillard and the district’s immigration attorney, he was able to convert his J1 visa to an H1B, a difficult process.

It wasn’t an easy adjustment — “I had never seen snow,” he said — but Ebcas said he was drawn to the small class sizes, low student-teacher ratios, and opportunities for professional growth, along with a competitive pay scale. He fully intended to return to the Philippines at the end of his tour, but as he approached his fifth year, the district didn’t want to lose him and he didn’t want to leave his students.

“It takes time to build relationships and trust,” Ebcas said. “It’s really important for the students here. With the community being so welcoming, I really wanted to continue and help the kids.”

Ebcas hopes the federal government considers the needs of rural and underserved schools.

“If exemptions are not given, it would really close the doors for international teachers who bring their skills and knowledge,” he said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica atemeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, new scrutiny on what teachers can — and should — say

2025-09-17T19:04:13+00:00

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America’s teachers have been put on notice.

If they posted “despicable comments” about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, they could lose their state certification, Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas warned in a letter. Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters said the same. Texas says it is investigating some 180 complaints about teachers’ social media posts about Kirk’s death.

Republicans have highlighted the most extreme responses to Kirk’s public murder — “1 Nazi down” one teacher is alleged to have posted — to fuel their message that public schools have become deeply out of step with broader American values. South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace urged the Education Department to withhold federal funding from schools that don’t take action against teachers who “glorify or justify political violence.”

In a video posted to X, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the “small but vocal fringe” celebrating Kirk’s killing nonetheless represented “further evidence of the profound crisis in our classrooms and on our campuses.”

“We must end the ideological capture that causes our schools and universities to become cradles of intolerance and political violence,” she said as she praised schools that had taken action against teachers. McMahon urged others to do the same.

This intense scrutiny of educators’ online comments at the federal and state level has reignited debate about educators’ free speech rights inside and outside the classroom. But it has also underscored tensions between the many roles teachers inhabit: role model, facilitator, change maker, public employee, and private citizen.

What teachers can say legally isn’t the only factor they should consider, said Derek Black, a University of South Carolina professor and constitutional law expert.

“There are things I don’t say at Thanksgiving, and it’s not because I think I’m wrong, but because the peace of the Thanksgiving dinner is more important and the peace of the family is more important,” he said.

But scholars who study education and polarization say that with many states already restricting how teachers approach contentious issues, the current climate only makes it more likely they’ll avoid those topics entirely. That would be to the detriment of their students, they said.

“These efforts to just dismiss people are very dangerous,” said John Rogers, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles. “These efforts have a strong political motivation behind them, and I worry that it will contribute to the feeling that teachers already have that they just shouldn’t say anything.”

Kirk loomed large in young people’s political lives

Kirk, 31, founded Turning Point USA, arguably the most influential organization for young conservatives. Kirk espoused gun rights and Christianity and opposed abortion and LGBTQ rights. He called the passage of the Civil Rights Act a “mistake.”

The group claims some 800 college chapters and more than 1,000 high school chapters, and is credited with helping President Donald Trump secure his 2024 victory by gaining votes among young men.

Politically aware students of all stripes knew Kirk from video clips of his campus debates that circulated widely on platforms such as TikTok. Kirk was participating in just such an event at Utah Valley University when he was shot and killed Sept. 10. Many students encountered gruesome uncensored video of the shooting on their phones.

In social media groups where teachers gather, some wondered about how to guide conversation among students with divergent views about Kirk’s legacy, or whether they really had any wisdom to impart when they themselves were reeling from another act of political violence. Some veteran teachers advised their colleagues to just stick to the lesson plan.

Not everyone had complicated feelings, though. Some people took to social media to say they were glad Kirk was dead. Some said they weren’t sad. Some of those people were teachers.

Right-wing influencers urged their followers to find and report anyone celebrating Kirk’s death. Those targeted have included people who condemned the killing but used harsh words to describe Kirk.

The firings and suspensions soon followed.

Teachers are on leave pending investigations in dozens of districts, according to media reports. One Wisconsin associate principal received death threats after she was falsely linked to a social media post about Kirk. A Massachusetts school requested extra police patrols.

Social media has made controversial private speech public

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1968 sided with a teacher who was fired after writing a letter to the editor complaining about a school board tax proposal, establishing that teachers have most of the free speech rights enjoyed by other citizens when they’re speaking outside the classroom.

But teachers still can face consequences when their speech affects their school or district in a negative way, and conflict can occur across the political spectrum. The Supreme Court declined to take up the case of a Massachusetts teacher fired over social media posts mocking transgender people. But an appeals court sided with a teacher who was disciplined for displaying a Make America Great Again hat during a diversity training.

“People of more conservative persuasion believe that progressive educators have been policing the conversation to their liking over the last five or six years,” Black said.

Technology has blurred the line between public and private speech. Screenshots and sloppy privacy settings convert opinions that once might have stayed among friends into viral content.

That new online reality has led the National Education Association to caution teachers against offensive and vitriolic posts in its guide to social media use. The union highlighted when a Milwaukee teacher was placed on leave after posting that it was “awesome” that conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh was dying of cancer.

“By engaging in personal and vicious commentary, the teacher became an easy target for local outrage,” the guide says.

Now that outrage is nationalized. Vice President J.D. Vance called for investigations into foundations that support left-leaning nonprofits, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that refusing service to Kirk’s supporters may violate their civil rights.

Are teachers being threatened or given fair rules?

But does that zeal translate into clear and fair boundaries for teachers outside their classrooms?

Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, said Kirk’s killing horrified him, and he doesn’t condone comments celebrating it. But personal opinions expressed on social media — especially on pages that teachers may have believed were private — don’t mean a teacher can’t be professional in the classroom.

“The overwhelming majority of teachers saw [the letter] as a threat and not a guidance document,” he said.

Nathalia Medina, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education, said it was “false and misleading” to suggest the state was trying to silence teachers.

“Florida makes it clear: free speech does not excuse unprofessional conduct,” she wrote in an email. “Teachers are entrusted with positions of authority and responsibility over children. The Commissioner is committed to ensuring the educational environment is not impacted by inappropriate statements made outside the classroom.”

Medina did not respond to questions about how Florida defines inappropriate statements.

Public school is often children’s first experience of government and civil society, said Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center. When teachers face severe consequences for private speech, that tells students they don’t really have free speech.

“That’s not the kind of civil liberties education we want to give students or perpetuate as a society,” Kim said.

To encourage student debate, teachers need a plan

Teachers’ classroom speech has also been under more scrutiny in recent years.

Eighteen states have laws restricting how teachers talk about race, history, and sexuality in the classroom or limiting discussion of so-called divisive concepts. Even in states with no restrictive laws, teachers report self-censoring to avoid conflict.

And school districts are spending less time on professional development to help teachers guide students through discussions of contentious issues respectfully, according to research by Rogers of UCLA and Joseph Kahne, a professor at University of California Riverside.

In 2018, more than half of school districts in politically mixed areas conducted such training. By 2022, it was just a third, and it may be even fewer now.

The classroom can be a space where students learn to disagree respectfully, bring evidence to support their arguments, and remain open to other opinions, Kahne said. Teachers can talk about their political views if they have a careful plan for how to share that information and make sure that disagreement is not just tolerated but welcome.

But Kahne fears more teachers will simply steer clear of current events and contentious issues, meaning that students get less practice in the skills that might move us toward a better political climate.

“That is the fundamental goal of a public school in a democratic society,” he said. “The fear is that as partisanship ramps up, more people will try to use the public school as a place to promote their perspective, but perhaps even more that as tensions rise, public schools will just avoid dealing with these issues.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump rule barring undocumented children from Head Start blocked by judges

2025-09-11T23:40:18+00:00

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The Trump administration’s effort to prevent undocumented immigrant children from enrolling in Head Start preschool programs is on hold nationwide after federal judges issued injunctions in two separate lawsuits.

The Department of Health and Human Services in July declared that Head Start, along with a wide swath of health care services and workforce training programs, should be considered public benefit programs, a category of programs only available to U.S. citizens and immigrants with particular statuses, such as legal permanent residents and refugees.

Undocumented immigrants are already excluded from most welfare programs, but the rule changes abruptly expanded the list of programs that would need to verify participants’ immigration status.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to block the rule change on behalf of four state Head Start associations as well as some parent groups. Twenty states and the District of Columbia filed their own lawsuit.

In both cases, federal judges ruled this week that the Trump administration had not followed appropriate procedures for changing rules; that in some cases the rule changes appeared to go against Congressional intent; and that providers, families, and state governments would suffer significant harm if the rules were allowed to go into effect.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island blocked the rule from going into effect in D.C. and the 20 states that sued. McElroy, a Trump appointee, wrote in her opinion that the administration appeared to be arguing that the federal government had been mistaken about its own rules going back to 1996, when Congress passed the law that restricts access to public benefits.

“The Government argues that it has somehow interpreted this statute incorrectly for the nearly thirty years that it has been the law,” she wrote.

On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez of Washington issued a nationwide injunction in favor of Head Start providers. He noted that Congress repeatedly has updated Head Start eligibility rules and never added immigration status to the list of factors to consider.

Head Start’s enabling legislation also requires Health and Human Services to consult with experts and providers before changing rules and not to adopt rules that might reduce services. The department failed to follow this and other procedures, said Martinez, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.

The new rule was set to go into effect immediately in July, but the department put it on pause in some states as part of an agreement related to the lawsuit. Health and Human Services has not issued guidance on how providers were supposed to check eligibility.

Nonetheless, Head Start providers told the court they had already experienced a chilling effect, with some families withdrawing out of fear and some providers asking for proof of citizenship in the form of birth certificates.

“Today the court was clear: HHS does not have the authority to impose an immigration-based restriction on Head Start families,” Jennesa Calvo-Friedman, senior staff attorney in the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, said in a press release. “No child and no family should have to fear accessing critical early learning services, and we will continue to defend the families that Head Start aims to serve.”

The U.S. Supreme Court recently restricted the use of nationwide injunctions, but Martinez said one was necessary in this case because some providers have preschools in multiple states, including programs designed to serve migrant farmworker families.

A spokesperson for Health and Human Services could not immediately be reached for comment. The agency told the Associated Press it disagrees with the decision and is considering next steps.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica atemeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores for class of 2024 show major declines, with fewer students college ready

2025-09-09T04:17:09+00:00

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Students from the class of 2024 had historically low scores on a major national test administered just months before they graduated.

Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released Tuesday show scores for 12th graders declined in math and reading for all but the highest performing students, as well as widening gaps between high and low performers in math. More than half of these students reported being accepted into a four-year college, but the test results indicate that many of them are not academically prepared for college, officials said.

“This means these students are taking their next steps in life with fewer skills and less knowledge in core academics than their predecessors a decade ago, and this is happening at a time when rapid advancements in technology and society demand more of future workers and citizens, not less,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board. “We have seen progress before on NAEP, including greater percentages of students meeting the NAEP proficient level. We cannot lose sight of what is possible when we use valuable data like NAEP to drive change and improve learning in U.S. schools.”

These results reflect similar trends seen in fourth and eighth grade NAEP results released in January, as well as eighth grade science results also released Tuesday.

In a statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the results show that federal involvement has not improved education, and that states should take more control.

“If America is going to remain globally competitive, students must be able to read proficiently, think critically, and graduate equipped to solve complex problems,” she said. “We owe it to them to do better.”

The students who took this test were in eighth grade in March of 2020 and experienced a highly disrupted freshman year of high school because of the pandemic. Those who went to college would now be entering their sophomore year.

Roughly 19,300 students took the math test and 24,300 students took the reading test between January and March of 2024.

The math test measures students’ knowledge in four areas: number properties and operations; measurement and geometry; data analysis, statistics, and probability; and algebra. The average score was the lowest it has been since 2005, and 45% of students scored below the NAEP Basic level, even as fewer students scored at NAEP Proficient or above.

NAEP Proficient typically represents a higher bar than grade-level proficiency as measured on state- and district-level standardized tests. A student scoring in the proficient range might be able to pick the correct algebraic formula for a particular scenario or solve a two-dimensional geometric problem. A student scoring at the basic level likely would be able to determine probability from a simple table or find the population of an area when given the population density.

Only students in the 90th percentile — the highest achieving students — didn’t see a decline, and the gap between high- and low-performing students in math was higher than on all previous assessments.

This gap between high and low performers appeared before the pandemic, but has widened in most grade levels and subject areas since. The causes are not entirely clear but might reflect changes in how schools approach teaching as well as challenges outside the classroom.

Testing officials estimate that 33% of students from the class of 2024 were ready for college-level math, down from 37% in 2019, even as more students said they intended to go to college.

In reading, students similarly posted lower average scores than on any previous assessment, with only the highest performing students not seeing a decline.

The reading test measures students’ comprehension of both literary and informational texts and requires students to interpret texts and demonstrate critical thinking skills, as well as understand the plain meaning of the words.

A student scoring at the basic level likely would understand the purpose of a persuasive essay, for example, or the reaction of a potential audience, while a students scoring at the proficient level would be able to describe why the author made certain rhetorical choices.

Roughly 32% of students scored below NAEP Basic, 12 percentage points higher than students in 1992, while fewer students scored above NAEP Proficient. An estimated 35% of students were ready for college-level work, down from 37% in 2019.

In a survey attached to the test, students in 2024 were more likely to report having missed three or more days of school in the previous month than their counterparts in 2019. Students who miss more school typically score lower on NAEP and other tests. Higher performing students were more likely to say they missed no days of school in the previous month.

Students in 2024 were less likely to report taking pre-calculus, though the rates of students taking both calculus and algebra II were similar in 2019 and 2024. Students reported less confidence in their math abilities than their 2019 counterparts, though students in 2024 were actually less likely to say they didn’t enjoy math.

Students also reported lower confidence in their reading abilities. At the same time, higher percentages of students than in 2024 reported that their teachers asked them to do more sophisticated tasks, such as identifying evidence in a piece of persuasive writing, and fewer students reported a low interest in reading.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores in 8th grade science drop, gender gap returns

2025-09-09T04:11:17+00:00

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American eighth graders posted their lowest science scores since 2009 on a major national test, one more indication of the hit that learning took during the pandemic.

Average scores declined for all students, but the decrease was particularly pronounced for low-performing students, according to results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, science test released Tuesday. The gap between high and low performers was the largest it has been in the history of the test.

In addition, more students scored below the basic level and fewer students scored above the proficient level.

These trends were also reflected in national math and reading scores from fourth and eighth graders during the same time period in early 2024, and in other recent math and science results from U.S. and international tests.

Scores for lower performing students actually started to decline before the pandemic, for reasons that are not entirely clear. But the gaps between students doing well in school and those struggling are now larger.

As in math, a gender gap in science test scores that had largely closed before the pandemic has widened, with girls’ scores declining more steeply.

“These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted, focused action to accelerate student learning,” said Matt Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

One bright spot was scores for English learners. In other standardized tests, English learners seemed particularly hard hit by pandemic disruptions and time spent out of school, but their NAEP science scores increased an average of 6 points.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the results “confirm a devastating trend” and show federal spending has not improved education.

The test results come as the Trump administration has cut funding for science education and is reducing the role of the federal government in sharing best practices and improving teacher training. They also come amid significant turmoil for the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP administration. NCES and the Institute of Education Science were decimated by U.S. Department of Education layoffs and contract cancellations. These science scores originally were supposed to be released in June.

NAEP scores for class of 2024 show major declines, with fewer students college ready

These eighth graders were in fourth grade when schools closed in March 2020 and experienced an especially disrupted fifth grade year marked by remote learning and quarantines. Since then, schools have been under intense pressure to improve reading and math test scores.

Compared with their pre-pandemic peers, students who took the science test in 2024 were less likely to report engaging in inquiry-based learning, such as using evidence from an experiment to explain why something happens. They were also less likely to report they enjoyed their science classes, and less likely to say they felt confident in their abilities.

But students who did well on the test were more likely to say they had the opportunity to do hands-on learning and more likely to enjoy science class.

NAEP not fully aligned with many states’ standards

Some 23,000 eighth graders in about 600 public and private schools took the science test between January and March 2024. It was the first NAEP science test administered since the pandemic. Students were tested in physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences. Average scores declined 3 to 4 points in each content area.

Scores are reported on a scale from zero to 300. A score of 170 is considered NAEP Proficient, a higher level of competency than the proficiency bar on most state standardized tests. A score of 141 is considered NAEP Basic. A student who scores at the basic level might recognize kinetic energy, while a student who scores at the proficient level could describe how kinetic energy changes when an object is in motion.

In 2024, just 29% of students scored proficient, a similar share as in 2009 and a decline of four percentage points from 2019. Some 38% of students scored below NAEP Basic, a five percentage point increase from 2019 and the highest share since the current framework was adopted in 2009.

The NAEP test provides a snapshot of student learning, but it is not designed to answer why students seem to be learning less.

Science educators who spoke with Chalkbeat without having seen the NAEP results said they are just one measure of student learning, but that the trends NAEP identifies are worth paying attention to.

More than 40 states now have science standards and use curriculum that are based to some degree on Next Generation Science Standards, which emphasize inquiry and building conceptual understanding over learning specific sets of facts. NAEP is not yet fully aligned with Next Generation standards but does include questions based on scenarios that require students to show scientific reasoning.

A gender gap in STEM widened during the pandemic. Schools are trying to make up lost ground.

Science education is less dependent on sequential learning than, for example, math, where each unit builds on skills learned in the previous unit, said Christine Royce, a past president of the National Science Teachers Association and a professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. The Next Generation standards also provide avenues to circle back and rediscover concepts students may have missed, she said.

But engaging students in doing science to learn science, as called for in the Next Generation standards, takes time that often is in short supply, said Amanda L. Townley, executive director of the National Center for Science Education.

It doesn’t help that the Trump administration has cut funding for museums, public media, and other institutions that often partnered with schools to support science education, she said, or that even topics like vaccines and infectious disease have become politically contentious.

Students still need a grounding in the basics of science and scientific thinking to do more advanced work in middle school, both Royce and Townley said.

A 2018 report found that the average elementary student gets just 20 minutes of science instruction a day, compared with 60 minutes of math and 90 minutes of literacy. Among older elementary students, just 35% had science every day of the school year.

That means schools are missing out on a key window when kids have a natural curiosity that could be harnessed for science, said Royce, who helps train future science educators.

Elementary school, she said, is “where kids have questions, where they ask why. They really want to know.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Are federal tax-credit scholarships ‘free money’ for Democratic governors, or a poison apple?

2025-08-13T22:23:22+00:00

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North Carolina’s Josh Stein recently became the first Democratic governor to embrace a new federal school choice tax credit — right after vetoing a bill in support of it.

Stein’s veto statement rebuffing Republican lawmakers’ effort to enroll North Carolina in the program described the tax credit, which Congress included in a budget bill backed by President Donald Trump, as bad policy that would funnel “billions in tax giveaways to wealthy parents” whose children already attend private school.

But the program could also help public school students, he said. And the law gives governors the final say over whether their states participate.

“I see opportunities for the federal scholarship donation tax-credit program to benefit North Carolina’s public school kids,” Stein wrote on Aug. 6. “Once the federal government issues sound guidance, I intend to opt North Carolina in so we can invest in the public school students most in need of after school programs, tutoring, and other resources.”

Many Democratic governors have opposed vouchers as diverting public money to private schools. But the tax-credit program doesn’t touch state budgets — instead the federal government reimburses taxpayers for donations to scholarship-granting organizations. And the law allows donations to pay for tutoring and other educational expenses for both private and public school students, not just private school tuition, at a time of growing budget uncertainty.

Chalkbeat asked all 23 Democratic governors whether they plan to opt into the federal tax-credit scholarship. Only two said no, saying it would hurt public schools. Stein’s veto statement represents the first tentative yes. Another indicated he’s “excited” about the program’s potential to help kids from low-income backgrounds. Others declined to comment or said they were waiting to learn more about the program while reiterating their support for public schools.

The hesitation of so many governors underscores the challenges facing the Democratic Party in defining its own education agenda and reconnecting with key constituencies. The gap leaves room for lobbying and political realignments.

Among the groups trying to sway the conversation is Democrats for Education Reform, which for nearly two decades opposed vouchers. CEO Jorge Elorza this year called on Democrats to embrace private school choice as a progressive value.

“What we are trying to do is get Democratic governors to see the possibilities in this,” Elorza said. “A lot of Democrats are choice-curious. Part of the work we’re doing is providing political cover, but we’re also trying to help them see how this advances their own priorities.”

Whether the tax-credit scholarship does, in fact, advance Democratic priorities could depend on rules the Trump administration still needs to develop. They could end up limiting governors’ ability to steer money to the neediest students.

In that scenario, given Democrats’ argument that the budget bill mostly helps the wealthy, “why would they then support a tuition tax program that essentially does the same thing, that gives money disproportionately to wealthy families who already have their kids in private schools?” said Thomas Toch, director of the think tank FutureEd. “Is that an argument that a Democrat wants to run on?”

Tax-credit program gives school choice supporters a foothold

Starting in 2027, the tax-credit scholarship program will offer taxpayers a dollar-for-dollar credit on their federal income tax for donations up to $1,700 to eligible scholarship-granting organizations. The money can go toward any expense allowed under Coverdell education savings accounts, which includes tuition, tutoring, specialized services for children with disabilities, and computers.

Families earning up to 300% of area median income qualify. That threshold includes well-off families in expensive urban areas but might exclude middle-class families in some rural communities.

Because of how the bill evolved in Congress, scholarship groups will need to raise a lot of money from small donors to generate significant revenue, and they’ll need to fight state-by-state battles to expand the program’s reach.

“The original goal was to bring school choice to all 50 states,” said Rob Enlow of the advocacy group EdChoice. “This does not do that. It brings the potential for school choice to all 50 states. It gives the advocates in those states something to grab onto.”

Vouchers are booming, but lack of rural private schools that accept them means students miss out

Norton Rainey, CEO of ACE Scholarships, is happy to grab on. Over 25 years, ACE has given out some 110,000 scholarships to students from low-income backgrounds worth a collective $333 million. He’s prepared to make the case to donors and governors that these scholarships transform lives and deserve their support.

“It’s a game changer for our parents, our kids, our communities, our country,” he said. “I think this is opening up the flood gates.”

Greta Alexander sent four boys to Fort Worth public schools where they struggled to learn in crowded classrooms and where they “sometimes had to fight.” Her youngest son got caught up in drugs. She wanted something different for her daughter Miracle — and an ACE scholarship provided it.

Miracle got one-on-one attention, a safe learning environment, and advanced academics at Temple Christian School, Alexander said.

“That she had the opportunity to be in an environment where she could thrive meant the world to us,” said Alexander, who testified in support of Texas’ voucher expansion and hopes the federal program helps even more students. “I’m so excited that other children will have the opportunity for that.”

Federal rules could sour Democrats on tax credits

Stories like Alexander’s highlight the crux of the school choice debate, said Elorza of Democrats for Education Reform, which is that “across the country, too many schools are just not getting it done for kids.”

School choice also polls well among working class parents of color, a key Democratic constituency where Republicans have made inroads. The tax credits represent “literally free money” to help these families, he said.

But governors like Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, who once supported vouchers, are waiting on federal regulations that won’t be finalized by the Treasury Department for some time. They could dictate the extent to which Democratic governors can steer money towards certain student groups, or put conditions on private schools that ultimately benefit from the tax credits.

Education advocates also wonder whether these rules will let a scholarship-granting organization raise money for public-school tutoring programs, or only for private services. Or could states find a way under the regulations to turn the money into a public school enrichment fund?

“The Shapiro Administration is reviewing potential impacts of the new federal school tax credit provision, which does not go into effect until 2027, and awaiting additional federal guidance,” spokesperson Manuel Bonder said in a statement.

It's not yet clear how much authority governors would have to steer money from federal tax-credit scholarships toward some groups and away from others.

While the law requires participating governors to submit a list of eligible scholarship-granting organizations each year, federal rules are unlikely to grant governors the ability to pick and choose among them, said Jim Blew, co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative think tank.

Governors could encourage the formation of groups that align with their values and help them raise money, Blew said — but the price will be accepting organizations they disagree with.

In Illinois, where lawmakers let a state tax-credit scholarship program expire a few years ago, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he’s concerned about enabling discrimination. But he didn’t rule out Illinois participating.

In response to a reporter’s question last month, Pritzker said the program would have to be inclusive, and “not just a program that’s about private schools, sometimes religious schools, and sometimes schools that would reject having an LGBTQ member as a teacher.”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who supported versions of a state voucher proposal early in his political career, “is excited by the possibility of unlocking new federal tax credits for donations to help low-income kids achieve,” spokesperson Eric Maruyama said. “He encourages the administration to ensure these tax credits lead to improved student outcomes and maintain maximum flexibility for states who choose to participate in this program.”

Other governor’s offices did not respond to Chalkbeat, said they had no comment at this time, or said they were reviewing the federal legislation to understand it better.

So far, only Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said they would not opt in.

Michael Coleman, a spokesperson for Lujan Grisham, said she is concerned students with disabilities might be shut out of the program because private schools aren’t required to admit them; that public schools could lose more students; and that there is no guarantee schools receiving vouchers would provide a high-quality education.

Critics also fear the tax credits could be used to justify cutting federal education spending in the future.

Voters have yet to support vouchers at the ballot box. But Blew believes the opt-in decision could become a potent issue in 2026 gubernatorial races and force a conversation about school choice that puts foes of the tax credits at a political disadvantage.

“You’ll have the education freedom candidates,” he said, “and they will be both Democrats and Republicans.”

Purple states could see power struggles over participation

Education politics can be particularly complicated in states with divided government, such as North Carolina.

Voters there backed Donald Trump in the last three presidential contests and at the same time elected Democratic governors. Republicans lawmakers overrode the veto of the previous Democratic governor to launch a major voucher expansion in 2024. Some Democrats have broken ranks to join Republicans on school choice bills.

Partners/Parents for Educational Freedom said in a statement that Stein’s veto “protects the status quo, deflects from real solutions, delays greater opportunity for students, and signals to every parent that their child’s educational opportunity depends on their zip code, their parents’ income, and political games.”

The advocacy group wants lawmakers to override Stein’s veto.

Heather Koons, communications and research director for the advocacy group Public Schools First NC, sees the federal tax-credit scholarship as “just another voucher program” and fears that any money for public school students will amount to “crumbs.”

“Gov. Stein has been a great friend to public education, and I don’t want to second guess him,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll do everything he can to make lemonade out of lemons, if lemons are going to be shoved down our throat anyway. Ultimately I wish this never existed.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Democratic education advocates launch action fund targeting Tennessee, other Southern states

2025-08-04T09:00:00+00:00

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Two veteran Democratic education advocates announced a new public school think tank and action fund this week aimed at making inroads in four Southern states. But the outfit may face an uphill battle in states like Alabama and Tennessee, where Republican supermajorities have backed privatization efforts in recent years.

The Center for Strong Public Schools Action fund will back center-left candidates in Georgia, Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee, in addition to investing at the legislative policy level with its think tank arm. Former Georgia state lawmaker Alisha Thomas Searcy and Texas education advocate Garry Jones co-founded the group.

Searcy said last week they narrowed their focus to four states where “both the threats to undermine public education and the opportunities to strengthen it are greatest.”

The initiative comes as Democrats have struggled to define their education policy agenda after the erosion of what had been a bipartisan consensus around public school choice and rigorous school accountability policies. Republicans have leveraged parental frustration with COVID-related school closures and conservative backlash to more inclusive curriculum to advance private school choice policies. At the same time, Democratic politicians have backed away from education reform and charter schools.

While CSPS Action said it will make strategic investments in high-profile contests like the upcoming Georgia gubernatorial and state schools superintendent races, the group would likely face an uphill battle on similar goals in Tennessee. The GOP continues to dominate politics in Tennessee, where Republicans hold an entrenched supermajority in the state legislature and Democrats have failed to make substantive gains in recent cycles.

A CSPS spokesperson said the group plans to focus more on state policy goals in Tennessee around accountability, funding equity for public charters, and literacy and math initiatives, though it could dip into more local issues like upcoming Memphis-Shelby County school board races.

Jones and Searcy said they have raised more $1 million from national and local donors, but they declined to answer questions about who is backing the effort.

Searcy noted CSPS aims to keep a spotlight on accountability, an issue that drew heated debate in the Tennessee statehouse earlier this year as Republicans pushed through Gov. Bill Lee’s voucher program. Though participating students must take a standardized achievement test, the program allows private schools to opt out of Tennessee’s standardized testing.

With a continued GOP focus on “privatization,” Searcy said there’s an opportunity for Democrats to “embrace public charter schools,” though she acknowledged there is no consensus within the party regarding public school choice.

“It seems that Republicans are sort of abandoning anything within the public school system,” Searcy said. “When you look at who’s being served in charter schools, many of those students are Black and brown students, many of them are low-income students. These are students that we need to make sure still have a voice, still have access to equitable resources, whether it’s funding or building, because they are all in public schools.”

In addition to public school choice and accountability, Jones said the group would focus on more equitable school funding, supporting teachers, and improving school safety. These priorities bridge areas of traditional Democratic strength with ones where Republicans have gained ground.

Searcy and Jones are both alums of Democrats for Education Reform, a group that once played an influential role in electing school board members and state legislators sympathetic to the reform agenda. Searcy was hired by DFER to expand its reach in some of the same states that now will be the focus of CSPS.

DFER has seen an exodus of longtime staffers amid leadership and strategy changes, and numerous state chapters have closed.

Democrats for Education Reform commissioned a poll in 2023 that found that Democrats had lost the trust of voters when it came to education. CEO Jorge Elorza at the time exhorted Democrats to embrace public school choice policies to win back these voters. In the wake of the 2024 election, Elorza went further, issuing a paper that called on Democrats to be more open to vouchers and educational savings accounts and to invest their political capital in steering these programs toward helping the neediest students.

Searcy and Jones said vouchers represent a bright line that they won’t cross.

“I want to be clear about what sets us apart,” Searcy said. “It’s our commitment to public education. It is foundational for us, and it’s nonnegotiable. We’re committed to remaining focused on strengthening public schools, not creating pathways that take away from them.”

The story has also been updated to include additional information about CSPS’ policy plans in Tennessee.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Penny Schwinn out as nominee for Education Department’s No. 2 job after conservative pushback

2025-07-31T22:31:53+00:00

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Former Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn has withdrawn her nomination to serve in the No. 2 spot in the Trump Education Department after cultural conservatives mounted a campaign opposing her.

The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday that Schwinn would serve instead as a senior adviser and chief strategist, roles that do not require Senate confirmation.

Schwinn enjoyed a good reputation among national conservative education advocates for her work in Tennessee to boost reading proficiency and target pandemic relief dollars toward academic recovery. Schwinn was the second name President Donald Trump announced to lead his Education Department, after Secretary Linda McMahon, even before he was sworn into office.

Despite support from Republicans like Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, increasingly influential conservative commentators in the state almost immediately came out in opposition to Schwinn. They pointed to her support for social and emotional learning and her support for reading curriculum they found objectionable. The right-wing advocacy group Tennessee Stands called Schwinn an “incredibly terrible” pick.

Their persistent opposition raised questions about Schwinn’s prospects for confirmation. Neither Sen. Marsha Blackburn nor Sen. Bill Hagerty, both Republicans from Tennessee, replied to multiple requests for comment through their offices regarding Schwinn’s nomination. But Blackburn in particular may be sensitive to concerns from the right flank of the party as she eyes a potentially crowded Tennessee gubernatorial primary in 2026.

In a press release, Schwinn said she had made the decision to withdraw “after thoughtful consideration about how I can best contribute at this moment in a way that supports progress for students and education.”

“I’m grateful to President Trump and Secretary McMahon, and remain committed to protecting kids, raising achievement, and expanding opportunity – my lifelong mission and north star,” Schwinn said.

Jim Blew, co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative think tank, said he believes Schwinn could have been confirmed — but it might have been an ugly battle. That senators appear to have sided with conservative influencers over their own president raises serious concerns, he said.

“There was a time when senators could explain that they were going to disregard these fringe voices and say they were going to vote with the president,” said Blew, who served in the Education Department in the first Trump administration. “These senators allowed these influencers to shape their opinions in ways that are not good for the country and that are not good for students and that are not good for the administration.”

Asked why Schwinn withdrew and whether she had the votes to be confirmed in the Senate, Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann replied with a copy of the press release.

“I am grateful to Dr. Schwinn for her commitment to serving students, families, and educators across the nation,” McMahon said in a statement. “Penny is a brilliant education mind, and I look forward to continue working with her as my Chief Strategist to Make Education Great Again.”

Advocates hoped Schwinn’s education experience would complement McMahon’s background in business and administration. Her perspective as a former state schools chief would have been particularly valuable, they said, as Trump sought to “return education to the states.”

Schwinn’s critics feared she would undermine Trump’s agenda from inside the department. Less ideological critics also raised questions about Schwinn’s business dealings. Florida business filings indicated that she made plans to start an education consulting business with former Palm Beach County superintendent Donald Fennoy after she was nominated. The 74 reported that Schwinn and Fennoy filed paperwork to dissolve the company shortly before her confirmation hearing.

At her confirmation hearing in June, Schwinn pledged her alignment with Trump’s education agenda. The Senate education committee advanced her nomination in a party line vote later that month, but she never came up for a vote in the full Senate, where lawmakers have been consumed with divisive budget battles.

Many key leadership roles in the Education Department remain vacant as nominees await Senate confirmation even as McMahon tries to move forward with the legally complex task of reducing the department’s footprint.

“It’s lopsided to ask this secretary to do so much work and then not give her the team she needs,” Blew said.

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said Schwinn’s withdrawal reflects poorly on the Republican Party.

“This is a big loss for the country and for the Department of Education,” he said. “Shame on the Republicans for refusing to show any spine.”

This story has been updated to include additional context and reaction.

Chalkbeat Tennessee Bureau Chief Melissa Brown contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

La administración Trump libera miles de millones en fondos federales para la educación

2025-07-30T23:00:25+00:00

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La administración Trump liberará miles de millones de dólares en fondos educativos congelados tras una ola generalizada de críticas, incluso de miembros republicanos del Congreso, sobre los efectos devastadores.

El congresista estadounidense Don Bacon, republicano de Nebraska, anunció el viernes 25 de julio en la red social X que los fondos serían liberados. Madi Biedermann, subsecretaria adjunta de Comunicaciones del Departamento de Educación, confirmó la noticia.

La Oficina de Administración y Presupuesto de la Casa Blanca concluyó su revisión, informó Biedermann a través de correo electrónico, y ordenó al Departamento de Educación liberar los fondos.

“La agencia comenzará a transferir los fondos a los estados la próxima semana”, señaló.

El pasado 30 de junio, la administración de Trump notificó a los estados que retendría cerca de $6.8 miles de millones en fondos educativos que debían ser desembolsados el 1 de julio. El monto incluye recursos destinados a servicios para estudiantes de inglés, estudiantes migrantes, programas de capacitación docente, actividades de enriquecimiento y extracurriculares, así como educación para adultos.

Un portavoz de la Oficina de Administración y Presupuesto (OMB, por sus siglas en inglés) señaló que los fondos estaban bajo revisión para garantizar su alineación con las prioridades de la administración Trump y afirmó que parte del dinero se había destinado a respaldar una agenda de izquierda, una acusación que distritos y gobiernos estatales negaron.

Miembros republicanos del Congreso firmaron una carta pública solicitando la liberación de los fondos. Fiscales generales y gobernadores demócratas presentaron demandas exigiendo que el dinero fuera restituido.

El 18 de julio, la administración anunció que se liberarían $1,300 millones destinados a programas extracurriculares, aunque no se pronunció sobre el resto de los recursos.

La Asociación de Superintendentes Escolares realizó una intensa labor de presión para lograr la devolución de los fondos. En una encuesta a 628 miembros publicada a comienzos de esta semana, casi tres cuartas partes afirmaron que tendrían que recortar programas académicos y la mitad anticipó despidos de docentes y otros empleados si el financiamiento no se devolvía pronto. Una proporción similar indicó que debía tomar decisiones críticas antes del 15 de agosto o incluso antes.

David Schuler, director ejecutivo de la asociación, expresó en un comunicado su “satisfacción” por la liberación de los fondos. La noticia de que los recursos serían liberados se conoció después de que varios medios informaron esta semana que la Oficina de Administración y Presupuesto de la Casa Blanca podría intentar recuperar de forma permanente ese dinero.

La propuesta presupuestaria de Trump para 2026 también plantea eliminar estas partidas y reemplazarlas por una única subvención en bloque, considerablemente menor.

En una declaración, la comisionada de Educación de Colorado, Susana Córdova, agradeció a la secretaría de Educación, Linda McMahon, por ayudar a asegurar la liberación de los fondos y destacó la labor de defensa realizada por maestros, organizaciones comunitarias y líderes locales y estatales.

“Los recursos federales brindan un apoyo crucial para que cada niño en Colorado, sin importar dónde viva, pueda aprender, crecer y prosperar”, señaló.

Por su parte, Keri Rodrigues, presidenta del sindicato National Parents Union, atribuyó la restitución de los fondos a la presión ejercida por padres, educadores y gobernadores de ambos partidos. Rodrigues dijo que el Congreso no había exigido que el dinero asignado por los legisladores en marzo se distribuyera como exige la ley.

“El hecho de que un financiamiento educativo tan crucial pudiera congelarse arbitrariamente durante semanas, sin una intervención inmediata, es un fracaso inaceptable”, afirmó en un comunicado. “Los distritos escolares de todo el país fueron sumidos en el caos justo cuando se preparaban para el nuevo ciclo escolar. Los planes de contratación quedaron en suspenso y los servicios para los estudiantes más vulnerables se vieron amenazados”.

Esta traducción fue proporcionada por el periódico AMERICANO, en asociación con el Centro de Medios Cooperativos de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair, y cuenta con el apoyo financiero del Consorcio de Información Cívica de NJ. La historia fue escrita originalmente en inglés por Chalkbeat y se vuelve a publicar en virtud de un acuerdo especial para compartir contenido a través del Servicio de noticias de traducción al español de NJ News Commons.

Erica Meltzer es editora nacional de Chalkbeat, basada en Colorado. Ponte en contacto con Erica en emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Billions in federal education funding unfrozen by Trump administration

2025-07-25T22:32:23+00:00

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The Trump administration will release billions in frozen education funds after widespread outcry, including from Republican members of Congress, about the devastating impacts.

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, announced Friday on the social media platform X that the funds would be released. Education Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications Madi Biedermann confirmed the news.

The White House Office for Management and Budget has completed its review, Biedermann said in an email, and told the Education Department to release the money.

“The agency will begin dispersing funds to states next week,” she said.

The Trump administration notified states on June 30 that they would be holding back roughly $6.8 billion in education funds that were due to arrive July 1. That money includes funding for services related to English learners, migrant students, teacher training, and enrichment and afterschool programs, and adult education.

An OMB spokesperson said the money was under review for alignment with Trump administration priorities, and that some money had gone to support a left-wing agenda, a charge that districts and states denied.

Republican members of Congress signed onto a public letter calling for the money to be released. Democratic attorneys general and governors sued demanding that the money be restored.

On July 18, the administration announced that $1.3 billion in after-school funds would be released, but said nothing about the rest of the funds.

The School Superintendents Association had lobbied extensively for the return of the money. In a survey of 628 members released earlier this week, nearly three-quarters said they would have to cut academic programming and half said they expected to lay off teachers and other employees if funding was not restored soon. A similar share said they had to make critical decisions by Aug. 15 or even sooner.

In a statement, David Schuler, the executive director of the association, said he was “pleased” that the money would be released.

The news that the funds would be released comes after reporting earlier this week from multiple outlets that the White House Office of Management and Budget might seek to permanently claw back the money.

Trump’s 2026 budget proposal also calls for these funding streams to be eliminated and replaced by a single, much smaller block grant.

In a statement, Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova thanked Education Secretary Linda McMahon for helping secure the release of funds, as well as crediting advocacy by teachers, community groups, and local and state leaders.

“Federal dollars provide critical support for every child in Colorado — no matter where they live — to learn, grow, and thrive,“ she said.

National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues attributed the restoration of funds to advocacy from parents, educators, and governors of both parties.

She said Congress failed to step up to demand that money allocated by lawmakers back in March be distributed as required by law.

“The fact that critical education funding could be arbitrarily frozen for weeks without swift intervention is an unacceptable failure,” Rodrigues said in a statement. “School districts in every corner of the country were thrown into turmoil at a time when they had intended to prepare for the new school year. Hiring plans were put on hold. Services for the most vulnerable students were threatened.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with additional reaction.

A translation of this story was provided by AMERICANO newspaper in partnership with Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media and is supported financially by the NJ Civic Information Consortium.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Schools waiting for frozen federal funds face staff layoffs, dwindling budget reserves

2025-07-25T19:14:43+00:00

Editor’s note: Shortly after this story published, the Trump administration announced it would release the frozen funds.

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Washington state’s Yakima Valley produces cherries and peaches, peppers and corn, wine for grapes and hops for beer. Many of the farmworkers who tend these crops send their children to the Yakima School District.

A dedicated nurse makes sure they get eyeglasses and dental care. Advocates stationed in every school track attendance and academic performance. Graduation specialists at each of the district’s comprehensive high schools work closely with students and their parents, looking for solutions if kids start to fall behind.

Yakima serves one of the largest shares of migrant students in the state, and all this support means that migrant students there graduate at a higher rate than in the rest of the state. In two of the last three years, Yakima migrant students graduated at a higher rate than even other students in the district.

Superintendent Trevor Greene is immensely proud of this work — and it’s all at risk if the federal government doesn’t act quickly to restore withheld funds that Greene was expecting to arrive July 1.

“We’re planning for the worst while we hope for the best,” Greene said.

The Trump administration’s decision nearly a month ago to withhold some $6.8 billion in education aid caused consternation in school districts nationwide, and the impact of that move is coming into focus. Among 628 superintendents who responded to a survey from the School Superintendents Association, nearly three-quarters said they would have to cut academic programming and half said they expect to lay off teachers and other employees if funding is not restored soon.

Even worse than the loss of funds is the timing, superintendents told Chalkbeat in interviews. They set their budgets months ago with every expectation that they would receive the federal funding, which is dedicated to teacher training, migrant education, English learner support, and enrichment programs. In some cases, districts had already gone through painful layoffs and program cuts to ensure they started the year with a balanced budget.

Then came a June 30 email from the White House Office of Management and Budget informing states that money would not be released. On July 18, that office announced it would release some $1.3 billion that helps pay for afterschool programming that parents rely on, but the rest of the money remains under review.

Among survey respondents, 73% said they have to make final decisions about personnel and programming by Aug. 15 or earlier. Some 85% said they have existing contracts that the missing federal funds were supposed to cover.

Some districts are already laying off staff. Others are spending down reserves, hoping the federal money shows up soon.

But it’s increasingly uncertain whether the Trump administration will release the rest of the money to districts — before the start of the school year or ever.

Politico and the conservative Daily Signal both reported that the White House plans to ask Congress to approve a rescission package that will include the withheld education funds, similar to one that clawed back $9 billion lawmakers had previously approved for foreign aid and public radio and television stations.

Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for the superintendents association, criticized that idea.

“Many Republican Senators don’t want to see their constituents lose what they carefully negotiated in March,” she said in a statement, referring to a previous budget agreement. “They understand the damage it would have on children in their districts and across the nation, if they pull these funds.”

But pulling these funds would be in line with the Trump administration’s proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year.

The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment on the possibility of a rescission package, or an update on the review of education spending that the office previously said it was conducting.

‘The impact will be on class sizes’

In Yakima, Greene is short nearly $3.8 million. He thinks he can hold out until some time in September before starting to lay off staff. He already let go of nearly 200 employees since May 2024 — deep cuts in a district that employs some 2,000 people. The May deadline to notify certified staff of any reductions in force has already passed. That means cuts will fall almost entirely on employees not covered by that contract, which include some of the lowest-paid people.

In Pflugerville Independent School District just outside of Austin, Texas, Superintendent Quintin Shepherd is missing $1.6 million that helps cover 11 positions that support the district’s English learners. Those students include the children of workers drawn to local Tesla and Samsung facilities. Those positions are already under contract, which means Shepherd is committed to paying them whether the federal money shows up or not. Students also need those services, he said.

That means the district is looking at a growing budget deficit after careful work to get Pflugerville’s finances in order.

Serving English learners is “a federally required thing to do, and, by the way, good for the education of all students,” Shepherd said. “But now that has to somehow be absorbed into my budget. The impact will be on class sizes. The impact will be on peripheral programs because we have to make up that difference.”

In Harford County Public Schools north of Baltimore, Superintendent Sean Bulson had already laid off 160 people to start the school year with a balanced budget due to state and local funding challenges. Faced with ongoing teacher shortages, Harford County employs some 300 teachers who are not fully certified, people who have entered the profession through non-traditional routes and don’t have the same training and experience as licensed educators.

He’s especially worried about the loss of money for teacher training. These funds paid some of the best teachers to coach their less experienced colleagues through lesson planning, sit in classrooms and debrief at the end of a rough day, and help them make good use of student data.

Without these specialists, the newer teachers who make up roughly 10% of the workforce won’t be as effective, and students will suffer, Bulson said.

Bulson is holding steady for now, spending down reserves while he hopes that federal funds show up sometime this fiscal year.

“We wouldn’t be able to sustain this going forward,” he said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court gives green light to Education Department layoffs

2025-07-15T00:05:15+00:00

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Massive layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education can move forward, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, while a lawsuit challenging those layoffs plays out in the lower courts.

The 6-3 decision Monday overturns a U.S. District Court judge’s order that Education Department employees be brought back to work. A coalition of states, school districts, teachers unions, and education advocacy groups had argued that the layoffs were so extensive they prevented the Education Department from doing its job under the law.

The majority did not issue an opinion explaining their decision. Allowing the layoffs to move forward for now is consistent with other recent Supreme Court decisions allowing the Trump administration to remove federal employees.

The decision is a major blow to education leaders and advocates fighting to preserve a fully functioning federal department. In addition to allowing layoffs to proceed, the decision means the Education Department can resume efforts to move certain functions to different departments.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon previously described the layoffs as a first step toward President Donald Trump’s goal of eliminating the Department of Education, although only Congress can officially shut down the department.

“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a press release. “While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “indefensible” in a dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote.

McMahon laid off roughly 1,300 department employees in March, a week after she was confirmed by the Senate. Coupled with early retirements and buyouts, the move halved the size of the department. A few days later, Trump signed an executive order directing McMahon to do everything in her legal authority to shut down the department.

The Office for Civil Rights, Federal Student Aid, and the Institute of Education Sciences were particularly hard hit. Former department employees have expressed alarm at how many civil rights cases are being dismissed without investigation, while advocates say many cases appear stalled. Colleges, meanwhile, have reported problems with long call wait times and broader disruptions to financial aid, and the future of federal data collection is unclear.

Despite the previous court order, laid-off employees had remained on administrative leave. In a series of court filings, Education Department leaders said they were working through logistics about parking and desk space.

A separate injunction in a different lawsuit ordered the restoration of jobs in the civil rights division. That order remains in place for now, but the administration is expected to appeal based on today’s ruling.

McMahon said Monday the Education Department “will now deliver on its mandate to restore excellence in American education.” She said the department continues to fulfill its obligations under the law while reducing bureaucracy.

Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department employees, called the ruling a “disservice to the American people.” She said McMahon and the Trump administration have a choice in what happens next.

“The agency doesn’t have to move forward with this callous act of eliminating services and terminating dedicated workers,” she said in a statement. “We call on the agency to restore our positions and let us return to work, stand up for students, and ensure every child has the support they need to succeed and build a strong future.”

National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues said the Education Department does important work, including protecting the rights of students with disabilities and making sure federal funds are properly spent. The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to sidestep Congress as it moves toward getting rid of the department, she said in a statement.

“This is not just a policy disagreement,” she said. “It is a constitutional crisis.”

Conservatives had mixed reactions to the decision and what it means next for American schools.

“Challenge: The 1.4K Department of Education bureaucrats who just got canned should get a job actually teaching in a school,” Daniel Buck, director of the Conservative Education Reform Network, posted on the social media site X.

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Robert Pondiscio seemed to downplay the impact.

“Well, good,” he wrote on X. “But there is no ‘get education back to the states.’ The states have always been in control of it.”

This story has been updated with additional reaction.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Lawsuit challenges Trump administration’s $7 billion education funding freeze

2025-07-14T20:14:15+00:00

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Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia are suing the Trump administration to restore billions in education funding that the federal government abruptly froze the day before those funds were supposed to be released.

The June 30 funding freeze held up nearly $7 billion that Congress already had allocated and which schools nationwide were counting on. The money was earmarked for teacher training, support for English learners and the children of migrant farmworkers, after-school and summer programming, literacy initiatives, and enrichment programs focused on STEM education, college and career counseling, and the arts, among other things.

School districts and state education departments that had already set their budgets for the coming school year were left scrambling. District leaders around the country said they may have to cancel afterschool programming that parents rely on and lay off staff who work with vulnerable populations.

“It is impossible for states to effectively budget for an upcoming school year through our departments of education to our local communities when the president takes the football away from us, like Lucy in a Charlie Brown cartoon,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha at a Monday press conference announcing the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, alleges that the funding freeze from the White House Office of Management and Budget violates the Constitution and federal laws, including the Administrative Procedure Act and the Impoundment Control Act. The plaintiffs argue that the administration did not follow rules that govern when the executive branch can refuse to spend money allocated by Congress.

California Attorney General Bob Bonta, who is co-leading the lawsuit with Rhode Island, described visiting a threatened summer program at an elementary school in Napa, California, and seeing children making minestrone soup, working on art projects, and getting lots of exercise playing “zombie tag.”

“I saw how much the program meant to those kids, how irreplaceable it is for them and their families,” he said. The county has been able to backfill lost federal funding for now, keeping the program open, but Bonta called that “a band aid solution.”

California schools and community groups are missing nearly $940 million, Bonta said.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the funding freeze “illegal and unjustified” and said the consequences for students and families would be “devastating.”

At least 65,000 students in New York could lose access to summer and after-school programs and some 80,000 adults could lose access to adult education and literacy programs, according to New York State Education Department estimates. Federal funds also cover the salaries of 67 state employees, many of whom directly support school districts, officials said.

All told, New York is waiting on $463 million in frozen federal funds.

“Congress allocated these funds and the law requires they be delivered,” James said in a statement. “We will not allow this administration to rewrite the rules to punish the communities it doesn’t like.”

The officials that filed suit on behalf of the 24 states and D.C. are either Democratic attorneys general or Democratic governors. A coalition of Democratic attorneys general has sued the Trump administration repeatedly, winning the partial restoration of pandemic relief money, AmeriCorps funding, and more. Of 31 lawsuits brought by that coalition, eight have touched on education issues.

The lawsuit seeks the immediate restoration of funding only in the states that joined the lawsuit. Those include California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, among others. While the case comes several weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the concept of nationwide injunctions, the attorneys general said they would not have sought one in this case regardless.

The Education Department and the Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Office of Management and Budget previously said it was conducting an ongoing programmatic review to ensure education funding aligns with “the president’s priorities.” A spokesperson also said, without providing evidence, that initial findings “have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”

The Trump administration accused New York of using English language acquisition funds to “promote illegal immigrant advocacy organizations” — a charge state officials denied — and Washington state of using those funds to “direct illegal immigrants towards scholarships intended for American students.”

However, Republican-led states have also been significantly affected. Indiana schools are out an estimated $107 million despite leaders there taking their own steps to eliminate programs associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“This is not about political philosophy, this is about reliability and consistency,” Alabama state Superintendent Eric Mackey told Politico. “None of us were worrying about this.”

On Thursday, Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought demanding to know how long the review would take and, if there were concerns, why the review wasn’t started earlier to minimize disruption.

“There is no legitimate reason why any review of these programs should prevent the Administration from fulfilling its responsibility to the American people on time,” the representatives wrote. “No more excuses – follow the law and release the funding meant for our schools, teachers, and families.”

Following the pattern of earlier lawsuits, Republican-led states are not officially challenging the funding freeze. However, they could still benefit if the Democratic states secure a win. The Trump administration quietly restored pandemic relief money to Republican states after Democratic attorneys general prevailed in court.

The withheld funds correspond to programs that the Trump administration had proposed eliminating in the 2026 fiscal year, but Congress has not voted on those changes. Even if approved, they would affect school districts’ 2026-27 budgets, not the upcoming school year.

This story has been updated to include additional information and comments from state attorneys general.

Correction: July 14, 2025: This story has been updated to accurately reflect which attorneys general are leading this lawsuit. New York is a party to the lawsuit. California and Rhode Island are co-leads, along with Colorado and Massachusetts.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Why hasn’t the Education Department brought back laid-off workers? They don’t have parking.

2025-06-25T16:17:18+00:00

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Parking permits. Desk space. Access cards.

Ordered to bring back roughly 1,300 laid-off workers, the U.S. Department of Education instead has spent weeks ostensibly working on the logistics. Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide they don’t have to restore those jobs after all.

The legal argument over the job status of Education Department workers is testing the extent to which President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon can reshape the federal bureaucracy without congressional approval.

The employees, meanwhile, remain in limbo, getting paid for jobs they aren’t allowed to perform.

An analysis done by the union representing Education Department employees estimates the government is spending about $7 million a month for workers not to work. That figure does not include supervisors who are not part of the American Federation of Government Employee Local 252.

“It is terribly inefficient,” said Brittany Coleman, chief steward for AFGE Local 252 and an attorney in the Office for Civil Rights. “The American people are not getting what they need because we can’t do our jobs.”

McMahon announced the layoffs in March, a week after she was confirmed by the Senate, and described them as a first step toward dismantling the Education Department. A few days later, Trump signed an executive order directing McMahon to do everything in her legal authority to shut down the department.

The Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts, along with the American Federation of Teachers, other education groups, and 21 Democratic attorneys general sued McMahon over the cuts. They argued the layoffs were so extensive that the Education Department would not be able to perform its duties under the law.

The layoffs hit the Office for Civil Rights, Federal Student Aid, and the Institute of Education Sciences particularly hard. These agencies are responsible for federally mandated work within the Education Department. By law, only Congress can get rid of the Education Department.

U.S. District Court Judge Myong Joun agreed, issuing a sweeping preliminary injunction in May that ordered the Education Department to bring laid off employees back to work and blocked any further effort to dismantle or substantively restructure the department.

The Trump administration sought a stay of that order, and the case is on the emergency docket of the Supreme Court, where a decision could come any day.

In the administration’s request to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the harms the various plaintiffs had described were largely hypothetical, that they had not shown the department wasn’t fulfilling its duties, and that they didn’t have standing to sue because layoffs primarily affect department employees, not states, school districts, and education organizations.

Sauer further argued that the injunction violates the separation of powers, putting the judicial branch in charge of employment decisions that are the purview of the executive branch.

“The injunction rests on the untenable assumption that every terminated employee is necessary to perform the Department of Education’s statutory functions,” Sauer wrote in a court filing. “That injunction effectively appoints the district court to a Cabinet role and bars the Executive Branch from terminating anyone.”

The Supreme Court, with a conservative 6-3 majority, has been friendlier to the administration’s arguments than lower court judges. Already the court has allowed cuts to teacher training grants to go through while a lawsuit works its way through the courts. And it has halted the reinstatement of fired probationary workers.

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, Joun issued a separate order telling the Education Department that it must reinstate employees in the Office for Civil Rights. The Victims Rights Law Center and other groups had described thousands of cases left in limbo, with children suffering severe bullying or unable to safely return to school.

Meanwhile, the Education Department continues to file weekly updates with Joun about the complexities of reinstating the laid-off employees. In these court filings, Chief of Staff Rachel Oglesby said an “ad hoc committee of senior leadership” is meeting weekly to figure out where employees might park and where they should report to work.

Since the layoffs, the department has closed regional offices, consolidated offices in three Washington, D.C. buildings into one, reduced its contracts for parking space, and discontinued an interoffice shuttle.

In the most recent filing, Oglesby said the department is working on a “reintegration plan.”

Coleman said she finds these updates “laughable.”

“If you are really willing to do what the court is telling you to do, then your working group would have figured out a way to get us our laptops,” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump moved fast and broke things in education. But what he’s creating isn’t clear.

2025-06-20T21:03:38+00:00

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The Grandview school district’s headquarters is nearly 1,000 miles away from the White House. Yet President Donald Trump keeps taking up Kenny Rodrequez’s brain power.

Rodrequez, who leads the 4,000-student district south of Kansas City, Missouri, has never before been asked so many questions by so many people in his community about federal education policy. He reads every Trump executive order closely so he can make sure his board members know what they mean, and what they don’t.

Every aspect of running the district is more complicated. Planning something as simple as back-to-school registration takes longer because Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement has made parents afraid to come to evening events. Planning next year’s budget is tricky too. Federal funds no longer feel reliable.

And Rodrequez chooses his words carefully when he’s talking to colleagues or lawmakers from conservative parts of Missouri who might control state education policy.

“I’m not going to wear my equity shirt everywhere,” he said.

But has anything changed in Grandview classrooms? Something that students or parents might notice? Not really, Rodrequez said. Not yet anyway.

Critics and allies alike say they’ve been stunned by the speed at which Trump has moved to enact an education agenda that was a secondary concern, at best, on the campaign trail. He’s launched the most serious attempt in 40 years to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. He’s hollowed out the offices responsible for traditional federal roles like research and civil rights protection. He’s cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training, pandemic recovery, and STEM education.

Even as Trump has continued to make public promises to return education to the states, he’s deployed the full power of the federal government, sometimes in new and legally questionable ways, to pressure states and school districts to comply with his agenda. But five months into Trump’s second term, much of that agenda is tied up in lawsuits and preliminary injunctions, leaving its future uncertain.

Some observers say Trump is washing his hands of core federal duties that protect vulnerable children while marshalling a calculated attack on public education that will reverberate for years. Others say Trump deliberately unleashed chaos to shatter an entrenched bureaucracy that, at best, did little to support schools’ core mission. Educators, meanwhile, are bracing for impact and thinking about their jobs in new ways.

Teachers walk a line as Trump targets DEI

Trump promised to get “woke” out of American schools. In this vein, his executive orders have targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, restorative justice programs, curriculum that suggests the United States has racist origins, and especially protections for transgender students.

The administration has tried to use funding as leverage. The Education Department took the unprecedented step of trying to strip Maine of its federal funding because it allows transgender girls to compete on girls’ sports teams, and it launched a Title IX special investigations unit with the Justice Department.

The Education Department touted this and other actions as standing up for women and girls and a highlight of Trump’s first 100 days in office. Many transgender students, meanwhile, report an increase in bullying and harassment.

The department told state and district leaders that programs associated with DEI may actually be illegal discrimination. Those include mentorship programs for students and teachers of color and magnet school admissions policies that aim to diversify the student body. Schools that use such strategies are risking billions in federal funding, the department asserted. Many legal experts say this interpretation of the law is incorrect, and federal judges have paused enforcement. But the Education Department continues to open new civil rights investigations based on that view, which it outlined in a Dear Colleague letter.

In fact, federal civil rights enforcement priorities have changed dramatically. ProPublica reported that under Trump the Office for Civil Rights has dropped ongoing investigations into serious racial bullying and mistreatment of students with disabilities and abandoned agreements that required school districts to change how they treated Native students.

And the U.S. DOGE Service’s efforts to root out alleged waste, fraud, and abuse targeted work that officials deemed supportive of DEI.

“We do believe that the Dear Colleague letter puts a target on districts that are supporting our work and puts a target on organizations like ours,” said Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development, which works to diversify the teaching workforce. The center joined teachers unions and civil liberties groups in suing the administration.

Some communities have rushed to comply, either exercising an abundance of caution or sensing an opportunity.

District administrators ordered an Idaho teacher to remove an “Everyone is Welcome Here” sign. A Colorado school district is considering ending discrimination protections for LGBTQ students and staff. An Iowa district backed out of a long-running event that promoted reading Black authors even as other school districts maintained their participation. An Indiana school district ended an incentive program for “minority and local business participation.”

Nicole Neily, founder and president of Defending Education, a conservative parent group, predicted on a recent American Enterprise Institute panel that the Trump administration’s legacy will be “four years of the back of the DEI movement being broken.”

Educators told Chalkbeat they notice shifts even in districts that have not formally changed their policies. The pressure feels more acute in red states, where public sentiment and local laws are more aligned with the Trump administration.

“There is a lot of fear about saying something and losing your job or having to visit the Office of Professional Standards or having a parent complain about you,” said Florida teacher Renée O’Brien.

She no longer feels comfortable inviting students in her argument and persuasion class to discuss and write about politics and current events.

In Indiana, where state leaders have been eager to comply with Trump administration directives, junior high principal Jim Bever hesitates to tout the social-emotional learning interventions that have led to fewer suspensions and expulsions, greater parent and student satisfaction, and fewer violent outbursts from students.

“We have reams of data about positive outcomes, but we can’t talk about social and emotional learning now,” Bever said.

That’s because it has been swept up in national as well as state attacks on DEI, he said, even though the two concepts are completely different.

But to some, the Trump-driven changes aren’t coming fast enough. Priscilla Rahn, a Denver teacher who has been active in Colorado Republican Party politics, said her district still uses language such as “dismantling systems of white supremacy” while she sees little evidence that it’s made schools better.

“We do all these DEI trainings, and our kids still can’t read and write on grade level,” she said. “We still have a 30-percentage-point gap between Black and white students. It isn’t working.”

Some Trump education moves not on ‘bingo card’

The frenzy of federal activity has slowed. It’s unclear if the Trump education agenda is set or whether there is more to come, especially as Education Secretary Linda McMahon and her top deputies settle into their roles. But the rapid changes have created unease and confusion in ways that defy easy ideological categories.

Some conservatives question the expansion of federal power. Some education reformers who traditionally backed Democrats wonder whether some good might come from shaking up the status quo.

The Education Department has only about half the staff it had at the end of the Biden administration, raising questions about how the department will carry out key functions. Education advocacy groups, teachers unions, and Democratic politicians have led the backlash. Yet even conservatives like Neily who support the president’s agenda worry the cuts are so deep, especially in the Office for Civil Rights, that the administration will struggle to carry out its own priorities.

Student protesters participate in the "Hands Off Our Schools" rally in front of the U.S. Department of Education on April 4.

The Trump administration’s battle with Maine could upend school funding and the relationship between the states and the federal government. Or Maine could prevail. But the Trump administration may see political upside to having the confrontation — exacting a price for defiance and scoring points in the court of public opinion.

“I would be very surprised if Maine schools don’t end up getting their Title I money, but at the same time I think these are fights the administration is happy to have,” said Michael Petrilli of the center-right Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “Certainly on the trans sports issue, the public is overwhelmingly on the side of the administration.”

Sometimes the administration seems to be testing the waters to see which ideas generate the most pushback from constituencies they care about. Parents of students with disabilities objected loudly when Trump suggested moving special education oversight to the Department of Health and Human Services. That proposal doesn’t seem to be moving forward — at least not yet. Transgender young people don’t have the same kind of longstanding political capital.

Neither do education researchers, who often are affiliated with the same higher education institutions targeted by the Trump administration. But education research itself is valued across the political spectrum.

That made the decision to eviscerate the Institute of Education Sciences, a congressionally mandated office that oversees research, especially surprising.

“Nobody had it on their bingo card because it doesn’t make any sense,” Petrilli said.

More recently, the administration has taken small steps toward rebuilding IES. McMahon also has promised that the administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, will continue as normal. Results from the test, often known as the nation’s report card, have helped drive many education reforms, including ones like school choice that are championed by conservatives.

But many advocates and policymakers fear that the research cuts will mean they have less information about student learning going forward.

“My gut is that it is a lot harder to fix inequalities if you can’t see them, and that is the point,” said Allison Socol, vice president of P-12 policy, practice, and research at Ed Trust, an advocacy group.

The apparent chaos of the Trump administration’s first months was “both highly disruptive and totally necessary,” said Derrell Bradford, president of the education advocacy group 50CAN. The “move fast and break things” ethos of DOGE finally overcame a bureaucracy that has defeated past efforts at reform, he said.

Some advocates hope a more coherent agenda will emerge with the confirmation of former Tennessee state education chief Penny Schwinn as deputy secretary and North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler to lead K-12 education. Both would serve under McMahon, who has said that literacy, school choice, and local control will be top priorities.

The barrage of executive orders has made it hard for McMahon to develop her own agenda, Bob Eitel, founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute and senior counsel in the Education Department in the first Trump administration, said on the AEI panel where Neily spoke.

“If you let Linda do it, you will see much more productive action than you have seen in the last few months,” Eitel said.

Enhanced local power over schools: blessing or curse?

Not everyone is looking to Washington for a plan of action. Bradford said there’s no going back to the world of No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top in which presidents seek to use federal leverage to get schools to do better.

“It’s difficult for people to internalize that the federal role has been shrinking for years,” he said. “The primacy of local control is here to stay. If you are a parent, it is far more important that you know who your superintendent is than that you know who Linda McMahon is.”

Trump’s most lasting impact may not be in forcing blue states to change their practices, but in fueling a broader attack on public education that’s given powerful momentum to states’ expansions of private school vouchers, said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

“The Texas education system 10 years from now is probably going to look very different from the California education system 10 years from now,” Valant said.

The U.S. Department of Education has about half the staff it had six months ago. The Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences were particularly hard hit.

To Socol of Ed Trust, Trump’s second term has shown that critical federal functions like protecting civil rights and disseminating research were taken for granted. If the federal government steps back from those roles, local decisions become paramount, she said.

Some communities “will continue to uphold what’s good and right for kids and advance equity,” she said, and others will take the changes in Washington as “permission to walk away” from their commitments. It’s up to parents and community members to pay attention and help decide which way their districts go, she said.

El-Mekki, of the Center for Black Educator Development, worries that anti-diversity rhetoric may deter Black young people from entering teaching and that in the long run, that will be worse for all students. But this summer, his organization is planning for its largest group of fellows yet. With the exception of two that lost federal grants, his school district partners are holding steady as well.

“There are so many people who are pushing back against this,” he said.

Many district administrators are holding off on hiring, and they’re eliminating positions, including support roles that help classroom teachers. Some are worried their states will end up on the wrong side of administration directives, but they’re also preparing for austere federal budgets and the possibility of a recession.

“I know districts that are panicking and districts that are planning as if everything is going to be the same,” said Genevra Walters, a retired Illinois superintendent who now consults with district leaders. “We can’t do either. We can’t panic, but we have to have contingency plans at every level.”

Planning for contingencies can extend beyond education policy. Trade wars could kick the country into a recession, economists warn, bringing with it a rise in child poverty. Immigration raids are driving scared parents to keep their children home from school.

Some teachers wonder what will be asked of them in the coming years. That hit home for Deborah Schmidt, a high school teacher in St. Louis, Missouri, when her school held a training on what to do if immigration agents came to the school — a first in her 29 years as an educator.

“As a history teacher, you start to wonder if you are now in one of those situations where you ask your students, ‘What would you have done?’” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump nominee Penny Schwinn pledges alignment with president’s education agenda after GOP criticism

2025-06-05T21:21:37+00:00

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Penny Schwinn, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the No. 2 role at the U.S. Department of Education, said she agrees with his push to dismantle the department and that states are better suited to solve long-standing education problems than Washington.

Schwinn is a former state schools chief in Tennessee who also served in a top role in the Texas Education Agency. She also founded a charter school and served as a district administrator and school board member. Many education advocates hope she will bring a new focus on academics to the Education Department after months of chaos marked by sweeping executive orders, deep cuts to grant programs, layoffs, and lawsuits seeking to block those actions.

Her confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions served as a referendum of sorts on the Trump administration’s education agenda. If confirmed, Schwinn would be in a position to give more shape to that agenda. She said the government owes it to students to make sure struggling schools improve, but also said money spent on federal operations could do more good in states. While cultural conservatives have raised doubts about her, Schwinn promised she was in alignment with Trump’s priorities.

Democratic senators pressed Schwinn and Kimberly Richey, the nominee to serve as assistant secretary for civil rights, on how the department could carry out its duties with a fraction of the staff it previously had and whether they would look out for the interests of all students, including LGBTQ students, students of color, and those with disabilities.

Republicans, in turn, asked the nominees to expound on the importance of school choice, combatting antisemitism, and keeping trangender athletes out of girls’ sports.

Schwinn told the committee Trump chose her for the job because “he wanted a strong, outcomes-oriented, conservative education leader who shared his vision to make the United States the number one country in the world related to student outcomes.”

Schwinn pointed to her work in Tennessee, where she drew praise for a comprehensive reading instruction reform project and directing pandemic relief funds to help bridge learning loss, including establishing a new summer learning camp program that has yielded reading and math gains.

“When states are empowered, we see progress,” she said, describing work she carried out when Joe Biden was president. “In Tennessee, we achieved real outcomes because we had the flexibility to tailor solutions. Rather than being bound by rigid funding categories, we prioritized what mattered most for our students, and it worked.”

In addition, Schwinn cast Trump’s directive to abolish the Education Department as a call to “explore all the opportunities and options around what is in the best interest of students, including shuttering the Department of Education.”

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, asked one of the few questions that focused on academics. She cited a report from the Government Accountability Office that found few states had compliant improvement plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act. How would Schwinn ensure adequate oversight and review so that struggling schools improve?

“There must be a commitment to ensuring that our most struggling schools improve, because our students deserve that,” Schwinn replied, adding that she would study the department’s internal operations to ensure “we have the most efficient practices in place and that we meet our obligations” to Congress.

New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, described the Trump administration as “abdicating” its responsibility to education and fostering “chaos” at the department. She asked Schwinn, from her perspective as a former state chief, if abrupt funding cuts — such as those to mental health grants — would help or hurt students.

Trump Education Department decimates office serving 5 million English learners in public schools

Schwinn said the discontinued mental health grants would be rebid and that she would work with Congress “to ensure that what you have passed is what is actually implemented.”

Indiana Sen. Jim Banks, a Republican, described the Education Department as a “total failure” and asked Schwinn exactly how she would approach dismantling it.

“The department is a building with people in it,” Schwinn said. “What people actually care about is the laws that you all pass and the funding you all appropriate. We need to make sure that those two things are rock solid … and then allow states to figure out the best way to implement that to achieve outcomes for their kids.”

Schwinn said money that currently covers federal operations could help more students get high-dosage tutoring or take Advanced Placement classes.

Trump’s most recent budget proposal cuts $6 billion from federal K-12 education spending and slashes money that would go to the states, while promising more flexibility in how to spend that smaller pot of money.

Schwinn’s approach to diversity drew conservative opposition

Back in Tennessee, Schwinn often riled conservatives, particularly among an ascendant right flank of a party increasingly interested in culture war issues that now dominate the Tennessee General Assembly.

In 2020, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, called for Schwinn’s resignation after the Tennessee Department of Education released guidance to school districts for conducting “child well-being checks” at family homes during pandemic school closures. The program was never implemented after conservative lawmakers balked at what they saw as government overreach.

Right wing advocacy group Tennessee Stands called Schwinn an “incredibly terrible pick” earlier this year. Conservative Tennessee media personalities have sharply criticized the nomination over Schwinn’s previous support of diversity efforts in educator hiring, in addition to fights over reading curriculum with groups like Moms for Liberty.

After stepping down in 2023, Schwinn told The 74 that fights over gender and race were “extraneous politics.” But those issues have come to dominate education policy in the Trump administration.

Despite her Tennessee ties, the state’s U.S. Senate delegation has been quiet on her nomination. Neither Sen. Bill Hagerty nor Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who has soft-launched a bid for governor in the state, responded to Chalkbeat questions regarding their views on Schwinn’s nomination.

Committee chair Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, asked if she was aligned with Trump’s agenda to “make sure that federal funding does not support violations of federal civil rights protections, including the use of divisive race-based ideology, the promotion of leftist ideology, and undermining parental rights.”

Schwinn cited laws passed in Tennessee to restrict the teaching of so-called divisive concepts and to limit “inappropriate” books in classrooms and school libraries.

“My responsibility was to implement the laws as passed, something that I’m very, very committed to,” she said. “And those laws were in alignment with President Trump’s agenda and the executive orders that have been put out.”

Since leaving her job in Tennessee, Schwinn served briefly in a leadership role at the University of Florida. Her ethics disclosure form describes roles she held with a range of education, lobbying, and consulting firms. Schwinn said she would resign these roles if confirmed, the Tennessee Lookout reported.

According to Florida business filings, Schwinn also had plans to start an education consulting business with former Palm Beach County superintendent Donald Fennoy. The 74 reported that Schwinn and Fennoy filed organizing documents after Schwinn was nominated and filed paperwork to dissolve the company just last week. The venture, New Horizon BluePrint Group, was not included on Schwinn’s ethics disclosure.

The Senate education committee voted along party lines last month to send North Dakota Superintendent Kirsten Baesler to the full Senate for consideration as assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education.

Chalkbeat Tennessee bureau chief Melissa Brown contributed.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Religious charter schools blocked after U.S. Supreme Court deadlocks

2025-05-22T22:55:09+00:00

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Religious charter schools will continue to be illegal after the U.S. Supreme Court tied 4-4 in a case that many observers considered one of the most consequential education cases in decades.

The deadlock means an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that blocked the opening of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School stands. It also means that the thorny issues about church and state and about what constitutes a public school remain undecided by the high court.

Many charter school advocates cheered the outcome. They had feared a ruling in favor of the proposed religious charter school would upend charter laws in dozens of states and potentially lead to new restrictions on the sector.

Supporters of St. Isidore had argued that charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run, are more like private entities that contract with the government. Not allowing for explicitly religious charter schools would amount to religious discrimination, they said.

But charter sector advocates have long held that they are public schools, and state laws describe them as such. The lack of a decision leaves the status quo unchanged.

“Today’s decision from the Supreme Court leaves the lower Court’s ruling in place and sends an important message: public charter schools are just that, public,” Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said in a statement. “This case may not be the last time the Court takes up the question of religious charter schools, but today’s outcome offers clarity for families and educators.”

The Supreme Court decision provided no arguments on either side and did not say which justices took which side. During oral arguments last month, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed receptive to the idea of religious charter schools and uncertain that charter schools constitute “state actors” in a legal sense. But of the conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts seemed the most skeptical.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, setting the stage for the tie decision. She is close personal friends with Notre Dame law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett, who advised St. Isidore and authored an influential brief in favor of religious charter schools.

“Public schools remain public. That’s the headline,” said University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black. “This threatened to be the most consequential school case since Brown v. Board. We can breathe a sigh of relief and see if another case comes up.”

The St. Isidore case was the most recent in a string of Supreme Court cases that eroded the traditional line between church and state. In Carson v. Makin in 2022, the court ruled that states that have private school choice programs can’t exclude religious schools from participating. That case set the stage to consider religious charter schools.

While charter school supporters have always described them as part of the public school system, critics have charged that they represent a stepping stone toward privatization. Different lower court decisions have treated charter schools as more like private or more like public schools for matters of employment, student discipline, and open meetings laws.

Supporters of charter schools feared that a ruling that these schools were closer to private entities, and thus could be religious, would give fodder to critics and lead to intense backlash in blue states where charters have traditionally enjoyed broad support.

Some supporters of religious education believe charter status would inevitably erode the independence and faith-based character of religious schools. But others say parents who want this education for their children should have the same access to taxpayer-funded schools that public school families enjoy.

The prospect of public funding remains appealing for some religious schools, especially those serving low-income families or struggling with enrollment. A new school proposal could emerge to put the issue back in front of the Supreme Court.

“This case raised some novel issues involving the First Amendment’s religion clauses and could be resolved in several different ways,” said Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, in a statement. “With no majority and no separate opinions, we can’t know how the Justices wrestled with these different options. The issues raised here will likely return to the Court, perhaps in a case better suited for resolution.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Virginia high school admissions policies target of Trump Education Department probe

2025-05-22T22:12:06+00:00

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The federal departments of Education and Justice are investigating whether changes to the admissions policy at a prestigious Virginia high school violated the civil rights of Asian American students, even though the U.S. Supreme Court already let the updated admissions policy stand.

The investigation comes after the Virginia Attorney General’s Office said its own investigation found “reasonable cause” to believe bias against Asian American students motivated the changes at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, and referred the case to federal authorities.

Under President Donald Trump, the Education Department has warned school districts that even race-neutral policies that aim to diversify magnet schools and honors programs could amount to illegal discrimination, despite court rulings that have repeatedly upheld such policies.

Many school systems with selective high schools are in the midst of ongoing debate about how students should qualify for those schools.

This is the first civil rights investigation during the second Trump administration to look specifically at high school admissions. Other cases have targeted mentorship programs for students of color and antiracist teacher training that federal officials say invoked racial stereotypes as the Trump administration tries to root out common practices associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Fairfax County Public Schools changed the admissions criteria for the school, commonly known as TJ, in 2020 with the goal of creating a more diverse student body.

The 1,800-student school draws from five area school districts and often sends students on to elite colleges and successful careers. In the years before the change, the student body typically was more than two-thirds Asian American. Most students came from just a few middle schools. Very few Black and Latino students attended the school.

The district dropped the use of standardized test scores, incorporated “experience factors” into the admissions process, and reserved seats for students from each middle school in the area. Parents, many of whom were Asian American, organized as the Coalition for TJ and sued the district over the changes, but the Supreme Court declined to take the case in early 2024. That seemed to be the end of the matter.

But this week Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, said a two-year investigation had found evidence that anti-Asian American bias had motivated the policy change. Miyares said school board members in private communications described the policies as having “an anti asian feel” and that the changes would “kick out Asians.”

After the policy change, Asian American students went from 73% of admitted students to 54%, the attorney general’s office said. The share of white, Black, and Latino students all increased. The study body is currently about 60% Asian American, 20% white, 7% Latino, and 5.5% Black.

The attorney general’s office did not release a full report that would provide more context for board member comments and told Chalkbeat to obtain it from the school district. The school district said it would consider the request but did not immediately share the report. Coalition for TJ also alleged in its lawsuit that the school district was biased against Asian American students, but the court did not find that the policy change violated equal protection requirements.

Miyares referred the case to the federal Justice and Education departments, which announced they would open Title VI investigations into the district. Title VI protects students from discrimination on the basis of race or shared ancestry.

“Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County has long had a reputation for producing some of our nation’s brightest minds, due in no small part to its rigorous admissions process,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement announcing the investigation. “The Fairfax County School Board’s alleged decision to weigh race in TJ’s admissions decisions appears to be both contrary to the law and to the fundamental principle that students should be evaluated on their merit, not the color of their skin.”

A spokesperson for Fairfax County Public Schools said the district was reviewing documents related to the investigation and would have a more detailed response in a few days.

“This matter has already been fully litigated,” the district said. “A federal appellate court determined there was no merit to arguments that the admissions policy for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology discriminates against any group of students.”

Admissions policy changes are contested ground

Yuyan Chou, a member of Coalition for TJ, told local TV station WUSA9 that the federal investigation gives parents new hope.

“The Supreme Court decided basically not to hear our case and at that point, I thought the American dream died,” she said. “There’s no path forward, there’s nothing going to happen again until today. I believe there is a chance we can revive that dream.”

Chris Kieser, a senior attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented Coalition for TJ and regularly brings lawsuits opposing affirmative action, said he was pleased to see the federal government take another look at the case.

“We certainly think there are grounds to investigate,” he said. Just because the Supreme Court didn’t take up the case “doesn’t mean there were no issues.”

Kieser said the Pacific Legal Foundation continues to hope that the Supreme Court will take up a high school admissions case. Policies that aim to diversify selective high schools often end up discriminating against Asian American students, Kieser said, and the fact that those student continue to gain admittance at high rates under revised policies doesn’t mean they don’t discriminate against individual students.

Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, said civil rights investigations can apply a different standard in seeking to protect students than the Supreme Court did in declining to hear the case. But the Education Department’s interpretation of the law appears to be in direct violation of court rulings.

“They have no legal authority to enforce Title VI in a way that is inconsistent with the law,” he said. “If TJ is willing to stand up for itself, it will have to challenge the administration in court. And this is what has been going on all over the country.”

Civil rights investigations often result in negotiated settlements in which school districts agree to make certain changes. The federal government also has the power to withhold federal funds to penalize school districts. Historically that hasn’t happened. But under Trump, the federal government has used its civil rights enforcement powers more aggressively in an effort to get states and school districts to comply with its interpretations of the law.

Black said the department appears to be applying disparate impact theory — a type of legal analysis that looks at whether certain policies affect certain groups in disproportionate ways — to a high school admissions policy just weeks after Trump signed an executive order barring the use of disparate impact theory.

The administration would need a “smoking gun” that showed bias against Asian American students to conclude that the district violated those students’ civil rights, Black said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica atemeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Congress usually snubs private school choice expansion. Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ embraces it.

2025-05-16T22:54:03+00:00

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A big Republican budget bill in Congress would establish a nationwide, federal school choice program — a potential political breakthrough that conservative lawmakers and advocates have discussed for years but which has consistently stalled.

The $5 billion, 50-state school choice expansion would bring taxpayer-subsidized private school scholarships to dozens of states that have resisted the voucher movement.

The tax-credit scholarship proposal would establish a one-for-one annual tax credit worth up to 10% of adjusted gross income for taxpayers who donate to eligible scholarship-granting groups. That makes the donation essentially free to the taxpayer, with the federal government paying them back.

Longtime proponents of private school choice, who see their movement as expanding educational opportunity, are ecstatic that a federal tax-credit scholarship program has a viable path to become law.

“What it will do is help thousands and thousands and thousands of families with opportunities they never had before,” said Robert Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice, an advocacy group.

The proposal comes as private school choice has expanded dramatically at the state level in recent years. Texas and Tennessee are among the states that passed universal or near-universal programs this year. Pro-voucher governors tapped outside money to oust anti-voucher rural Republicans from their state legislatures, reshaping the political landscape in favor of private school choice.

At the same time, the increasing polarization of education politics coupled with the questionable track record of voucher programs in improving student outcomes have made private school choice a tougher sell in Democrat-led states. Illinois let its tax-credit scholarship program expire in 2023. And Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who previously expressed support for vouchers, has not backed recent efforts to expand existing tax-credit scholarships in that state.

Although the federal government supports vouchers for District of Columbia students, previous attempts to provide broader backing for school choice have run aground on Capitol Hill. Backers say the rise of the parental rights movement in the aftermath of COVID and growing momentum at the state level have created a political moment where a new federal program is possible.

But supporters like Enlow aren’t popping champagne corks just yet. He said that “we’ve got to see the final version before we say, ‘hey, this is something we really support.’”

Already the bill has been modified to require that schools accept students with disabilities, while still allowing them to maintain their own admission policies. Enlow and other voucher proponents say such requirements would interfere with schools’ independence and deter schools from participating.

Voucher skeptics fear a major change to education policy is side-stepping the normal legislative process, where it would face more debate and scrutiny and where it would be unlikely to earn sufficient votes.

The House budget reconciliation bill includes a host of higher-profile changes to tax policy and major federal programs like Medicaid that have divided Republicans. President Donald Trump and others have said the legislation represents a chance to pass a “big, beautiful bill.”

If enacted, opponents worry it would enable discrimination and further erode the idea of public education as a common good.

“It ends up being a very quiet and sneaky way to fund a voucher program and impose it on states because it’s just wrapped up in this gargantuan and confusing tax bill,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

The budget legislation incorporates the tax-credit scholarship program described in the Educational Choice for Children Act, a bill authored by Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican who leads the Senate education committee, and other GOP senators.

That bill would require 60 votes to pass the Senate on its own, a near impossibility. A similar proposal in Trump’s first administration failed to get much traction even with Republicans. Including the proposal in the House reconciliation bill as a tax policy means it only needs 51 votes to pass.

How the tax-credit scholarship program would work

For some potential donors to the proposed scholarship program, the tax credit would be quite generous. Taxpayers could donate stock to avoid paying capital gains on investments, saving even more than the face-value of the donation.

While most of the revenue reduction would be borne by the federal government, an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that states that tax capital gains would also lose out on millions of dollars.

“This is a tax shelter-voucher hybrid,” said Josh Cowen, a Michigan State University professor who has studied voucher programs and is the author of “The Privateers,” a book about the voucher movement.

Tax credits would be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis, up to $5 billion a year. Each state would be guaranteed at least $20 million.

Scholarship-granting organizations would distribute the money to eligible students, who could use scholarships not just for tuition but also for books, homeschooling supplies, fees, and educational therapies. These organizations might support certain types of schools, for example Catholic or Jewish religious schools, or serve certain student groups.

Families earning more than 300% of their region’s gross median income would not be eligible. That excludes the most well-to-do families. But an analysis from the Brookings Institution found that threshold would mean wealthy families in areas with high median income would still qualify, while middle-class families in poorer areas might be excluded.

Rural families would be particularly affected because median incomes in rural areas tend to be lower than in urban areas. Rural families also have less access to private schools.

The original tax-credit scholarship proposal from Cassidy called for a $10 billion program, which would have made it one of the larger federal education programs. Title I, which provides extra money to schools serving lots of students in poverty, provides about $18 billion a year, while the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provides about $15 billion.

Even the $5 billion version included in the House reconciliation bill would be larger than federal spending on charter schools, English language learners, teacher training, and civil rights enforcement combined.

Opponents question why the federal government would throw that much support behind programs that have not consistently improved the test scores of students from low-income backgrounds. (Some studies have found that such students who received vouchers earned a college degree at higher rates than similar peers who stayed in public school, but those studies couldn’t fully account for the fact that voucher students might be different in other ways that benefitted them.)

They fear there won’t be any accountability for whether schools do a good job educating students and that both schools and scholarship-granting organizations would be able to exclude LGBTQ students, those who are not religious, or students with disabilities.

The proposal doesn’t include any requirements that students take tests or that schools meet certain quality standards. It also allows schools to maintain their own admissions policy. For proponents like Enlow, that light regulatory touch is a good thing. Parents need flexibility to find the best fit for their children, and schools need independence to craft their programming, he said.

“We’ve got to make sure that private schools’ voices are being heard so they’ll be there to participate in the program,” he said. “That’s a real key factor.”

In states with vouchers, some parents of students with disabilities report being turned away from private schools. At the same time, EdChoice found that specialized options for students with disabilities expanded in Arizona, where the state offered substantially more money for students who needed special education services. LGBTQ-friendly private schools have also emerged.

Cowen said he doesn’t blame individual parents for using vouchers, but from a policy standpoint, these programs move away from the idea of public schools as places where people from different backgrounds come together.

Greatest impact expected in states without vouchers

The tax-credit scholarship program would supplement state efforts in places that already have education savings accounts or vouchers. But the greatest impact would likely occur in states that don’t have such programs.

When Illinois let its tax-credit scholarship program expire in 2023, organizations like Big Shoulders, which provides scholarships to help low-income families send their children to Catholic schools, had to scramble to maintain support for as many families as possible.

While some individual donors dug deeper, according to Big Shoulders President and CEO Josh Hale, the group has “a lot less” money and is serving fewer students today than a few years ago.

Hale continues to have conversations with Illinois lawmakers about restoring the program. Private school choice often polls well with Black and Latino voters. But it’s an uphill battle politically in a Democrat-controlled state.

A federal program would make more resources available much more quickly.

“Sometimes it’s shown as, this is wealthy people trying to get a break,” Hale said. “I see it as more resources going to underresourced, underrepresented communities, however that shows up. This is to help the least among us find pathways for their children. If that’s an incentive for people to give more, I think we’re all cheering for it here.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica atemeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

The gender gap in math is back. The pandemic isn’t the only reason.

2025-05-13T06:51:06+00:00

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Girls had closed long-standing gender gaps in math test scores and were doing about as well as boys on standardized tests in the years leading up to the pandemic.

But the gender gap in math has come roaring back. And according to a new analysis from the testing and research organization NWEA, girls seem to have fallen further behind since students returned to in-person school.

NWEA also found that fewer girls were enrolling in algebra in eighth grade than before the pandemic. Because taking algebra in eighth grade sets students up to take calculus by the end of high school, it’s an important indicator of whether students will be able to pursue STEM fields in college and beyond.

The finding comes as most American students still have not recovered from the effects of disrupted pandemic learning and as the federal government is pulling back its support for research, particularly research that focuses on disparities.

The analysis draws from eighth grade scores on major international and national tests coupled with data from two million students who took NWEA’s MAP Growth Assessment.

The gender gap returned on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, a test given every four years in 64 countries, and on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a test often referred to as the nation’s report card.

Among eighth graders who took NWEA’s assessments, boys did better than girls in math.

“All these indicators that we’re seeing across these different tests, they’re giving flashing warning signs that there’s something big happening here,” said Megan Kuhfield, director of growth modeling and analytics at NWEA and lead author of the report.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of state test scores found similar trends.

NWEA’s analysis can’t explain why this is happening. Researchers and educators have tended to focus on the ways the pandemic affected girls differently than boys. Girls’ mental health suffered more, and older girls especially took on more responsibility at home, doing housework or caring for siblings when schools were closed.

“When I first started looking at this, I thought, ‘Well, COVID changed everything,’” Kuhfeld said. “When we started digging into it, the fact that the gaps really started to widen from 2022 to 2024 more so than from 2019 to 2022, made that theory less strong to me.”

By 2022, most students were back in school. And girls continue to outperform boys in reading.

“Maybe it’s less about these global impacts on girls’ mental health and more about the classroom dynamics with students and teachers,” Kuhfeld said.

NWEA found that the math gender gap was more pronounced for higher performing students, with boys scoring much higher than girls on average. Among the lowest performing students, girls did better than boys in both reading and math.

“There needs to be a focus in middle school on making sure girls who are potentially interested in science and math get support to stay on those trajectories,” she said. “At the same time, we can’t lose sight of the boys at the bottom who are struggling.”

Research has found that teachers tend to judge math mistakes more harshly among girls and students of color and are more likely to attribute those students’ errors to lack of innate ability. Teachers who believed that gender inequality was no longer a problem were especially likely to penalize female students’ work.

“What we are finding over and over again is that when there is a mistake, when the answer is not fully correct, teachers assume that girls don’t have the math ability, or they are less capable than boys,” said Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, an associate professor of teacher education at the University of Southern California who has studied bias in teacher perceptions. “So girls could be receiving more implicit messages about not belonging in math classrooms, or they don’t have the capacity to do the work.”

Copur-Gencturk, who was not involved in the NWEA study, said it’s frustrating to see the gender gap return, but she’s glad to see data highlighting the issue. “That could be the problem and the solution, to raise awareness that it is not a done deal,” she said.

At the same time, she’s concerned that deep cuts to federal education research, and in particular to studies that touch on issues such as implicit bias and gender, mean there will be less information about what works going forward.

Algebra enrollment could be a warning sign

Kuhfeld worries that today’s gaps will grow over time. NWEA also found that fewer girls are taking eighth grade algebra than before the pandemic, which could mean fewer girls pursuing STEM majors in college. Last year, 24% of eighth grade boys and girls enrolled in algebra in the schools NWEA surveyed, but before the pandemic, 26% of girls took algebra in middle school. Boys’ participation has stayed steady.

Last year’s eighth graders were in fourth grade when schools closed in spring 2020. The years when they should have mastered foundational skills like fractions — critical to understanding algebra — were deeply disrupted.

“Eighth grade achievement is a lagging indicator for elementary school math,” Kuhfeld said. “It might mean that they’re not as prepared academically. Absent of COVID and these big changes, there’s a whole class of girls who might have been academically prepared who were routed out of these things.”

Enrollment in eighth grade algebra has been declining for years, said Elizabeth Huffaker, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and author of a brief on algebra access and placement. Curriculum changes saw more algebra content incorporated into middle school integrated math courses, making it harder to move some students ahead earlier. And “algebra for all” policies have not had the results advocates hoped for.

Girls’ absolute decline in algebra enrollment is small, and other surveys find slightly higher enrollment. But Huffaker said the decline should serve as a warning sign, especially when coupled with test score declines that defy easy explanation.

States such as Texas and North Carolina have statewide initiatives to use test scores to place students in eighth grade algebra, she said. Historically such policies have helped more girls take algebra early, but if girls now are doing worse on tests, they could have the opposite effect.

Huffaker said she would not have predicted that the pandemic would have led to widening gaps between girls and boys, and the trend deserves more investigation.

Schools should consider multiple ways of determining whether students are ready for algebra, not just test scores, she said. Tutoring and summer programs could help some students who are close to qualifying be more prepared for algebra.

But ultimately, Huffaker said, the best way to improve test scores and algebra readiness for all students, including girls, would be to make sure they learn math well in elementary and early middle school.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Judge orders Education Department to restore pandemic relief funds in some states

2025-05-06T22:04:12+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education must abide by earlier promises to give states more time to spend COVID relief money, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Edgardo Ramos issued the preliminary injunction in response to a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, 15 other Democratic attorneys general, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The injunction only applies in the states that sued and not nationwide. California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Jersey are among the states that joined New York and Pennsylvania in the lawsuit.

“The Trump administration’s illegal decision to cut off essential education funding put some of our most vulnerable students at risk of falling behind in school,” James said in a statement. “This is a major win for our students and teachers who are counting on this funding to help them succeed.”

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon had told states on March 28 that they had run out of time to spend pandemic relief money, even in cases where department officials had previously agreed to give extensions through March 2026. “COVID is over,” a department spokesperson said at the time to justify the decision.

The abrupt suspension of payments left state education departments and school districts scrambling. In some cases, school districts were in the middle of construction projects or had to suspend tutoring contracts. In other cases, local agencies had already paid for services and were waiting for reimbursements.

The coalition, led by James in New York, sued to restore the flow of money. The lawsuit alleged the decision was “arbitrary and capricious,” that the department failed to provide a sufficient explanation, and that the move was contrary to Congress’ intent.

The federal government allocated roughly $190 billion to U.S. schools across three separate aid packages to help them respond to the challenges of COVID. The last and largest of these, the American Rescue Plan, provided $123 billion to K-12 schools, with 20% of the money required to go toward academic recovery.

Schools originally had until January to spend the money, and most schools met that deadline. But the Biden administration created a process that allowed states to request extensions on their own behalf or on behalf of school districts. Department officials confirmed those extensions in February, after President Donald Trump took office. Nearly $3 billion remained unspent as of March, according to an Education Department spreadsheet originally obtained by The 74.

The judge’s order temporarily blocks the Education Department from enforcing the policy laid out in the March 28 letter and requires the department to file proof that it informed employees of this change within three days.

That would restore access to more than $1 billion across the 17 states, the New York Attorney General’s Office said, while the lawsuit plays out in court.

If the Education Department wants to make other changes to deadlines for spending pandemic relief money, it must provide states with 14 days notice.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump budget proposal slashes $6 billion from K-12 spending but gives charters a bump

2025-05-03T00:35:33+00:00

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President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget would cut nearly $6 billion from K-12 education and consolidate 18 grant programs into a single funding stream that states could spend as they wish.

The proposal to do away with distinct grant programs could serve as a test run for converting federal education funds to block grants, which allow more flexibility but provide less accountability for how money is spent.

The budget proposal released Friday is for the 2026 fiscal year, which starts in October and affects school district budgets mostly in the 2026-27 school year.

It calls for holding funding steady for Title I, an $18 billion program that supports schools serving students from low-income households, and for the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, or IDEA, which provides $14 billion to offset a portion of special education costs. These are prominent and popular programs that Education Secretary Linda McMahon has promised would not be cut.

But the budget would eliminate programs that support English language learners and the children of migrant farm workers and cut the budget of the Office for Civil Rights by more than a third.

Another $4.6 billion in cuts target higher education programs, including those that support first-generation college students and adults who need help with basic skills.

The only proposed increase would bring the federal charter school program budget to $500 million, a 14% increase. The program helps fund new charter schools and expand successful charters. The U.S. Supreme Court could soon open the door for religious charter schools.

Total cuts to the U.S. Department of Education exceed $10 billion, part of $163 billion in total cuts that also would affect social programs, preschool, and public health. The budget calls for $113 million more in defense spending.

Trump Education Department decimates office serving 5 million English learners in public schools

The budget proposal is unlikely to become law in its current form but provides insight into how the Trump administration hopes to run a significantly reduced Education Department and change how states receive and spend federal money.

The Education Department already cut its staff in half, and Trump signed an executive order to eliminate it. The president has pledged to “return education to the states,” though states already have significant authority over curriculum, academic standards, funding, and teacher training. At the same time, the Education Department is trying to use its civil rights authority to root out practices associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, and force states to end inclusive policies that protect transgender students.

McMahon said in a press release that the budget proposal reflects that the agency is winding down and shifting responsibilities to other agencies and to the states.

“President Trump’s proposed budget puts students and parents above the bureaucracy,” McMahon said. “It reflects the historic mandate I have been given to serve as the final Secretary of Education. The federal government has invested trillions of taxpayer dollars into an education system that is not driving improved student outcomes — we must change course and reorient taxpayer dollars toward proven programs that generate results for American students.”

McMahon said the budget would save “billions in taxpayer dollars from going to duplicative, unaligned, or non-essential programs.” The budget document written by the Office of Management and Budget describes existing programs as supporting woke agendas, DEI, and “radical leftist ideology.” The administration has used similar justifications to abruptly cut numerous grant programs and research projects — and the budget would codify those cuts.

Many public education advocates expressed dismay at the budget proposal. Amy Loyd, CEO of the advocacy group All4Ed and a former assistant secretary of education in the Biden administration, said this is a time when the United States should be investing more in education, not less.

“I don’t understand how this administration is envisioning a world in which education drives economic mobility and yet they are cutting core statutory programs,” she said. “This is not just an attack on the woke agenda. It will harm real students in communities around the country.”

Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which advocates for students with disabilities, said the administration cannot say it is supporting students when funding for IDEA and early intervention is flat.

The $14 billion in IDEA funding “continues to be touted and supported as supporting children with disabilities, despite the fact that the number of students identified by schools is going up,” Marshall wrote in an email.

Marshall said she’s also worried about cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, which lost nearly half its staff to layoffs. A large share of complaints involve students with disabilities. ProPublica reported that in recent months, the office has dismissed a large share of complaints without opening an investigation, and ongoing investigations have abruptly stopped. Meanwhile, the office has reoriented to investigate cases of DEI practices and transgender students playing sports.

The budget document says the Office for Civil Rights has cleared through a “massive backlog” and that rightsizing is “consistent with … an overall smaller Federal role” in education. The office will still be able to ensure programs comply “while removing their ability to push DEI programs and promote radical transgender ideology.”

Budget would end grant programs, give states more control

The budget cuts the Education Department’s operating budget by $127 million, or 30%, to reflect its smaller staff.

The budget proposal also cites the reduced workforce as a reason to consolidate grant programs. “This long-overdue consolidation would lower substantially the costs of both administration and compliance.”

The budget document does not name the 18 grant programs that would go away, but they include both discretionary grants and formula grants. The Education Department did not respond to a question about which programs would be affected.

The School Superintendents Association said in a blog post that it appears both Title II funds, which pay for teacher training programs, and Title IV, which supports a range of programs to provide a more well-rounded education, help schools adopt new technology, and support student health and safety, are affected.

The budget allocates $2 billion for the new funding stream, which appears to be a cut of $4 billion, the superintendents group said.

The budget also consolidates seven grant programs for students with disabilities into a second new funding stream.

“This feels like a pressure test for block granting,” Loyd said. “It certainly could be a way to get a foot in that door.”

Many conservatives have called for the federal government to convert education funding into block grants, in which states get large amounts of money with few strings attached, rather than maintaining dedicated funding streams for particular student groups or particular programming.

The idea faces significant political and legal hurdles because most federal funding is mandated by law and changing how it is distributed would require congressional approval.

Public education advocates have raised concerns that removing guardrails would mean money won’t go to the students who need it most. Loyd said the federal government would also lose the ability to learn which programs are more effective.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Why national charter leaders are very worried about Oklahoma’s religious charter school

2025-04-28T19:39:43+00:00

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The case of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School could represent a seismic shift in American education.

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa are seeking to open the nation’s first religious charter school, challenging traditional understandings of church and state as well as state laws that require charter schools to be secular.

But the Oklahoma Supreme Court found that the school was unconstitutional and that state authorities should not have granted St. Isidore a charter. Now the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether the school can open.

The case is not just about whether public funds can support religious schools. Legally, the question at the heart of the St. Isidore case is: Are charter schools really public schools?

A finding that charter schools are private entities would require revisiting decades-old legal assumptions while giving rhetorical ammunition to the sector’s strongest critics. Charter supporters fear that public funds, their treasured autonomy, and perhaps even their existence are at risk.

“We could see a situation where almost every charter law has to be opened up and reconsidered and relegislated,” said Eric Paisner, chief operating officer for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in opposition to St. Isidore.

These publicly funded but independently run schools once enjoyed broad bipartisan support as an alternative to vouchers and other forms of private school choice. Charters have flourished in states whose constitutions clearly prohibit public funding for private schools. But while they remain popular with parents, the charter sector is increasingly embattled politically, especially in Democrat-led states.

That should not be a concern of the courts, said Nicole Stelle Garnett, a law professor at Notre Dame University who laid out the legal blueprint for religious charter schools in an influential paper for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

That state laws refer to charter schools as public schools has little bearing on their legal status, she said, and there’s a strong case to be made that they are private entities that contract with the government to provide a public good. If that’s true, denying taxpayer dollars to religious charter schools is simply discrimination, she said. And discrimination is bad and illegal.

“They are worried about the political blowback,” she said of charter leaders who want the high court to rule against St. Isidore. “Those are not legal arguments.”

Charter schools have a hybrid legal status

Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter school in 1991, just a year after the nation’s first voucher program launched in Milwaukee. Today there are roughly 8,000 charter schools in 46 states and the District of Columbia serving some 3.7 million students. State laws typically describe charter schools as public schools and require that they be nonsectarian — secular rather than religious.

These schools are funded by the state, they can’t charge tuition, they’re accountable to the government for student performance, and they generally can’t choose their students. They might be authorized by school districts, universities, or the state itself. Charters have withstood legal challenges in states that prohibit taxpayer dollars from being used at private schools, with courts finding that charters are public schools.

“Charter schools are public schools” is the automatic response supporters give to both critics and the merely confused who see them as something else, something halfway to a private school.

But charter schools also are exempt from many laws and regulations that govern district-run schools. They’re run by independent, unelected boards and often organized as non-profit entities. In some states, such as Michigan, even for-profit companies can run charter schools.

Charter schools themselves have argued — often successfully — that they are non-state actors when they need to defend personnel decisions or student discipline policies in court.

Most recently, a North Carolina charter school argued that its dress code, which required girls to wear skirts, could not violate the civil rights of its female students because it was not a state actor. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. North Carolina had delegated its educational function to the charter school, and the dress code had to go.

That school and other classical academies, along with the North Carolina Coalition for Charter Schools, has filed its own friend-of-the-court brief arguing that if charter schools are found to be government entities, that would expose them to lawsuits and regulations, “sanding off the edges of cultural and pedagogical difference until the schools are virtually indistinguishable from their public-school counterparts.”

“Charter schools have wanted to have it both ways, where they were public for matters that they like, like funding, and private for things that they may not like, for instance, teacher rights,” said Preston Green, a professor of education at the University of Connecticut who has written extensively about charter schools.

Is public education dead or just redefined? Author Cara Fitzpatrick on the history of school choice.

Now the debate about whether charter schools should be viewed as state actors — entities that act with the same authority as the government and are bound by the same constitutional limitations — is on a collision course with the Supreme Court’s evolving view of religious freedom.

For many years, the First Amendment’s prohibition on government establishment of religion was interpreted to mean public money could not fund religious institutions. More recently, though, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has found that denying public funding to religious organizations is a form of discrimination.

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Carson v. Makin that states that have private school choice programs cannot exclude religious schools from participation.

Oklahoma officials leaned heavily on that decision when, in 2023, they gave approval to St. Isidore of Seville to start a virtual Catholic charter school. Now the state’s charter authorizing board wants the Supreme Court to decide that St. Isidore charter school should be viewed as a privately owned and run school.

Many charter leaders fear fallout of St. Isidore ruling

In its friend-of-the-court brief, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools argues that the Supreme Court could turn down St. Isidore without even touching the question of whether charter schools are state actors. Directly authorizing and funding a religious school would represent a state establishment of religion, their attorneys write, and is not comparable to giving parents money that they can choose to spend at religious or secular schools of their choice.

But if the court does take up the state actor question, the justices should find that charter schools are state actors, at least in this circumstance, they argue. Charter schools only exist because the government creates them.

“No school existed on June 5, 2023, then the State Board issued the charter at its meeting, and now there is a school,” the charter alliance brief says. “The resulting school, St. Isidore, is neither all church nor all state, but a blend of church and state.”

Democratic attorneys general and politicians from both parties who wrote some of the nation’s first charter laws have filed their own briefs, arguing that charter schools were conceived to solve problems within public education using public tools. Even the fact that charters are exempt from some laws and regulations is evidence that they are a function of state government.

Robert Reed, vice president of legal affairs for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, fears that some Democrat-led states, if forced to approve religious charter schools, would simply end their charter programs.

“Those states probably couldn’t stomach those types of schools,” he said.

Students make their way down the hall following a Mass celebrating Pomona Catholic High School's 125th anniversary in 2023. Catholic schools have struggled with financial sustainability and cultural changes in recent decades.

Where state constitutions bar funding private schools, a finding that charter schools are fundamentally private in nature might reopen the question of whether they can receive taxpayer dollars, Reed said. It could also prevent charter schools from using bond funds for facilities and lock charter teachers out of state pension systems.

Green doubts that policymakers and politicians will abandon charter schools, even in blue states.

“In a lot of Black and Latino communities, charter schools are very popular, and the separation [of church and state] issues may not resonate as much in these communities,” he said. “In a lot of communities, there is still going to be support for charter schools because they see them meeting needs that traditional public schools do not.”

But states that don’t want to authorize religious charters may need to change their laws to make charter schools more definitively public. In a recent paper, Green and University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor Suzanne Eckes draw on case law from other heavily regulated sectors, such as railroads, to suggest that having government-controlled boards would make it much harder to argue charters are private entities.

“If they want to be public, they may need to take steps to have more government control,” Green said.

But charter sector leaders fear that outcome as well. More government control “would turn charter schools into district-run schools, which was never the point,” Reed said.

Demand for religious charters uncertain

Garnett believes concerns about widespread impacts are overstated. The Supreme Court decision will turn on the specifics of Oklahoma’s laws and may not apply to all states or all charters. She doubts there will be a flood of applications from other religious organizations, and local and state governments still will have a say in which schools open.

“States can continue to apply all their secular criteria,” she said. “You have to have your disability plan and your proof-that-you’re-needed plan and whatever else the authorizer requires.”

But religious groups are watching the case closely. Already a group in Minnesota is hoping to open Abraham Knowledge Academy as an Islamic charter school with a focus on civic participation.

Religious charter schools used to feel like a “pie in the sky” idea, said Michael Petrilli of the center-right Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a way to offer parents more choices in states hostile to vouchers. But charter schools were public schools, and the combination didn’t seem legally workable.

“What has made this more inevitable in recent years is the courts’ own jurisprudence,” he said.

Some Catholic educators have argued against seeking charter status that would inevitably involve the government in theological questions. On the other side of the equation is access to public dollars. Catholic schools are under financial pressure as enrollment declines, and per-pupil funding would bring in more money than tuition.

Petrilli believes Catholic schools would struggle to resist public dollars or to explain to families why they should keep paying tuition.

A recent analysis by Shaun Dougherty, who directs the Catholic Education Research Initiative at Boston College, found that the opening of charter schools in cities contributed to the closure of nearby Catholic schools as families sought out free options that provided similar rigor.

But that doesn’t mean families would rush back. “There is a question about who the audience is,” Dougherty said. “The Catholic population has not gotten larger because of this case. It’s not clear to me that the appetite for charter enrollment is limitless.”

Petrilli finds himself personally torn now that religious charters could become reality. More litigation and legislative fights could lie on the other side of the St. Isidore case.

“I hope they say, ‘These schools are public schools,’ and we go about our way,” he said.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct university affiliation of Suzanne Eckes. She is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

States sue Trump Education Department to defend school diversity efforts

2025-04-25T22:51:21+00:00

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A coalition of Democrat-led states is suing the U.S. Department of Education to block its demand that states certify compliance with the Trump administration’s position that many common diversity practices represent illegal discrimination.

The Education Department had given states until Thursday to sign a document certifying they comply with federal anti-discrimination requirements and with the administration’s interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The decision barred the use of race in college admissions, and under President Donald Trump, the Education Department has said that means that a range of common practices associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, could be illegal.

States that don’t comply could lose their federal funding.

The lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts asks the federal courts to declare the certification requirement null and void and find that states have no duty to comply or investigate whether school districts have complied.

Led by New York Attorney General Letitia James and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, the lawsuit calls the administration’s interpretation of the law “new, vague, confusing, and incorrect.” The states, which include California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and others, further allege that the Education Department has not clearly described what actions or practices it wants to stop and that the department is pressuring schools to end practices that are actually necessary to protect students’ civil rights. Meanwhile, billions of dollars are at stake.

The lawsuit describes the certification requirement as “subjective and illegal punishment for not acceding to an agenda to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion of any kind in schools — even though federal funding and civil rights statutes require public education to be open and welcoming to all regardless of protected characteristics, and inclusive and equitable, especially for those students who have disabilities and need accommodations.”

“The president does not have the authority to rewrite Congress’ allocation of these funds, any more than he can rewrite the clear directives of the Civil Rights Act,” Raoul told reporters on Friday. “This administration has consistently declined to define which diversity, equity, and inclusion practices it finds objectionable, or what the basis of its legal objections are. That’s because it can’t.”

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

The certification requirement is already on hold after judges issued injunctions in response to earlier lawsuits filed by national teachers unions and civil rights groups. Two of those lawsuits initially were brought to block enforcement of a February Dear Colleague letter in which the Education Department first laid out its new interpretation of civil rights law.

The judges in those cases each reached slightly different conclusions, blocking either the Dear Colleague letter or the certification requirement on different legal grounds, creating a legal patchwork that could be overturned on appeal.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said the states’ lawsuit differed from others challenging the DEI certifications in a few key ways. The lawsuit spans a broader range of executive actions than those at issue in the other lawsuits. The lawsuit spans multiple jurisdictions. And the states’ legal claims, which involve spending, separation of powers, and appropriations, could end up being stronger, he said.

“We have different claims, that we think are very strong claims, and could be the winning claims,” Bonta said. “We also, as states, have a separate, strong, and unique interest in ensuring that these billions of dollars in Congressionally mandated education funds continue to flow.”

None of the attorneys general from California, Illinois, New York, nor Minnesota said they’d heard anything from the Department of Education since the deadline passed Thursday without their states filing certifications.

“This silence speaks for itself,” James said.

The lawsuit is just one of several that the states have filed seeking to block the Trump administration from pursuing its education agenda. Trump has signed executive orders aiming to dismantle the federal Education Department, expand school choice, and remove “woke” influences from schools. He has repeatedly threatened schools with the loss of federal funding.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon oversaw layoffs and buyouts that reduced the size of the Education Department by half, and she abruptly stopped distribution of remaining COVID relief dollars that states and school districts had been granted permission to spend.

During a Friday court hearing in a separate case contesting mass layoffs at the Education Department, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun peppered the government’s lawyer with questions about the administration’s position that the staff reductions should not be subject to a legal challenge.

The states challenging the layoffs say that the Education Department is so diminished it cannot provide basic services, enforce civil rights protections, and distribute funding to school districts — functions that are required by law and can only be undone by Congress.

After the government’s lawyer argued that the plaintiffs were seeking to act “as chief human resources officer for the Department of Education” by forcing the administration to rehire workers, Joun offered an analogy. Imagine walking into a Dunkin’ Donuts and there’s no one behind the counter, the Massachusetts judge said.

“I don’t think the plaintiffs are saying that Dunkin’ Donuts should hire these […] employees back,” said Joun, who has not yet issued a decision. “I think what they’re saying is they want their cup of coffee.”

Chalkbeat reporter Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Trump Education Department efforts to get DEI out of schools hit roadblock

2025-04-24T23:28:36+00:00

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The Trump administration’s efforts to use its civil rights authority to root out practices associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion from American schools are on hold after judges issued temporary injunctions in response to three lawsuits.

The injunctions come the same day that the U.S. Department of Education had set as a deadline for states to certify compliance with the Trump administration’s contested interpretation of civil rights law — or risk their federal funding.

Taken together, the injunctions block the Trump administration from penalizing states that don’t sign the certification document and from enforcing civil rights guidance from a February Dear Colleague letter in which the Education Department first laid out its new interpretation.

The injunctions also delay what had been a looming standoff between the Education Department and more than a dozen states that had refused to sign the certification. Leaders in those states said they already comply with civil rights law and that the administration’s demands were too vague and may not even be legal.

The Education Department did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Typically the Trump administration has appealed preliminary injunctions, with occasional success. The administration has also pushed back against nationwide injunctions, such as judges issued in two of the three lawsuits, and asked the courts to grant more limited relief just to the groups that sued.

“Today’s decision affirms what we have always known: this administration’s attempts to censor schools, teachers, educators, colleges, and universities is unlawful,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, an advocacy group that represented the American Federation of Teachers in one of the lawsuits, said in a statement. “The nationwide injunction will pause at least part of the chaos the Trump administration is unleashing in classrooms and learning communities throughout the country.”

Trump escalates attacks on DEI in schools

President Donald Trump came into office pledging to remove “woke” from American classrooms. He signed an executive order banning schools from teaching DEI, while defining it as “discriminatory equity ideology.” What that meant became clearer when the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a Dear Colleague letter in February that described how officials intended to interpret and enforce federal anti-discrimination requirements.

The letter pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, which banned the use of race in college admissions. That decision, the letter said, means practices such as trying to recruit more teachers of color or diversify magnet school enrollment could also represent illegal discrimination.

The letter also warned schools about the use of race-neutral criteria that were adopted with the aim to increase racial diversity. Classroom instruction or training programs that asked participants to consider how race shaped their perspective or that suggested some groups might carry a greater moral burden could also be a problem, if they created a hostile environment for some participants.

Many legal experts say the administration’s interpretation goes well beyond established law.

On April 3, the U.S. Department of Education told state education agencies that they must certify they are in compliance with the administration’s interpretation of federal civil rights law.

States that don’t sign will lose their federal funding, including Title I dollars that provide critical resources for high-poverty schools, the department said.

The Trump administration has signaled that states should take its threats to withhold funding seriously. In an unprecedented move, the Education Department is moving to strip K-12 aid from Maine following an investigation under Title IX — the federal law banning sex discrimination in education — into the state’s policy for transgender athletes.

Nonetheless, at least 16 states, most of them led by Democrats, already have said they do not intend to sign. Another 16 states and the territory of Puerto Rico have signed the letter, according to a tracker maintained by Education Week. Some school districts are changing their practices in response. For example, one Indiana school district ended a program giving contracting preferences to minority-owned and local businesses.

In two lawsuits by national teachers unions originally filed against the Dear Colleague letter, educators said the new guidance was so vague that it was nearly impossible to tell what was and wasn’t allowed. They also said the guidance goes against established law and decades of civil rights precedent. Those lawsuits were later expanded to ask courts to block the certification requirement.

In a third lawsuit representing parents and students, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said the Dear Colleague letter and certification requirement put pressure on schools to back away from obligations to better serve Black students that they had never fully met in the first place. They pointed to an Iowa school district that had withdrawn students from an African American reading event as just one example.

U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty issued the first preliminary injunction Thursday in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the National Education Association, its New Hampshire chapter, and the Center for Black Educator Development.

McCafferty declined to block the Trump administration’s enforcement efforts nationwide. Rather, the injunction blocks the Education Department from withholding federal funds from any school district or other government entity that employs teachers represented by the NEA or associated with the Center for Black Educator Development, a training and advocacy organization. The NEA says it has about 3 million members.

“Today’s ruling allows educators and schools to continue to be guided by what’s best for students, not by the threat of illegal restrictions and punishment,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in a statement.

Shortly afterward, U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher issued a separate order in a lawsuit brought on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers, the other national teachers union, its Maryland chapter, and an Oregon school district. Gallagher said the Education Department did not follow proper procedures in developing new civil rights rules.

The February Dear Colleague letter about civil rights enforcement represented a substantial enough change, Gallagher wrote, that it should have gone through a more formal process that allowed for public feedback.

In the third case, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich issued a nationwide injunction against the certification requirement but declined to issue an injunction against the Dear Colleague letter. Friedrich did not think issuing the letter violated any procedural requirements, and she said the federal courts couldn’t prevent school districts from changing their policies in response to the new administration.

But she did find that the new guidance was so vague and the consequences for violating it so significant as to be potentially unconstitutional.

The differing decisions and reasoning are representative of the confusing legal landscape that has developed since Trump took office.

Nonetheless, Allison Scharfstein, an attorney with the Legal Defense Fund, said she felt confident that the “patchwork of relief” would block the Education Department from pursuing its new approach to enforcement while the lawsuits continue.

This story has been updated throughout with an additional judicial decision and more background information.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump signs orders to promote stricter school discipline, end analysis of racial disparities

2025-04-24T00:10:54+00:00

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President Donald Trump signed executive orders Wednesday that aim to promote stricter school discipline and discourage schools from considering whether discipline policies have a greater impact on students of color.

The executive orders target civil rights guidance from the Obama administration that Trump revoked during his first administration and Biden never formally restored. Some school leaders, teachers, and conservative education advocates blamed the Obama-era guidance for deteriorating safety conditions in schools, alleging that administrators let bad behavior slide rather than risk additional scrutiny.

The most recent federal data, from the 2021-22 school year, shows students report fewer assaults and less harassment and bullying than they did a decade ago. Still, a rise in school shootings along with viral videos of vicious assaults have fueled fears about school safety. Two-thirds of schools reported at least one violent incident on campus in the 2021-22 school year.

Under former President Barack Obama, the Education Department warned schools that policies that led to students of certain racial groups being suspended or expelled at much higher rates could be discriminatory. In particular, Black students tend to be suspended at higher rates than other students.

This approach to civil rights enforcement is an example of disparate impact analysis, which considers whether ostensibly race-neutral policies affect certain racial or ethnic groups differently.

The executive orders ban the use of disparate impact analysis in civil rights enforcement and threaten schools with consequences if they use “racial discrimination and preferencing” in school discipline.

They were two of seven education-related executive orders that Trump signed Wednesday afternoon. Other orders encourage schools to train students to use artificial intelligence, pledge to expand apprenticeships, promote historically Black colleges and universities, and target the university accreditation process.

During the ceremony, Trump said the school discipline executive order was especially important to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and handed her the signed copy to hold.

“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, schools were forced to consider equity and inclusion when imposing discipline,” McMahon said in a statement. “Their policies placed racial equity quotas over student safety — encouraging schools to turn a blind eye to poor or violent behavior in the name of inclusion.”

“Disciplinary decisions,” she wrote, “should be based solely on students’ behavior and actions.”

The school discipline order requires federal officials to issue new guidance to state education agencies and school districts. It also calls for federal officials to author a report analyzing “DEI-based school discipline and its consequences” with strategies for how the federal government can ensure its dollars do not support “racially preferential policies” such as model school discipline policies.

The report should include information about the status of “discriminatory-equity-ideology-based school discipline and behavior modification techniques in American public education,” the order says, as well as information about nonprofits promoting such approaches with support from federal grants.

The order does not call out particular practices, such as restorative justice, by name, and it is not clear what discipline practices federal officials might consider discriminatory.

Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos, rescinded the Obama-era guidance after much public debate and attempts to link less harsh school discipline to school shootings.

That guidance led students to be “disciplined differently depending on their race, and some students who should have been suspended or expelled for dangerous behavior remained in the classroom,” the Trump administration said in a fact sheet.

President Joe Biden promised to reinstate the Obama-era school discipline guidance on the campaign trail, but that never came to fruition. In 2022, his education secretary, Miguel Cardona, did call for reduced suspensions and expulsions for students with disabilities — and there is some overlap as Black children with disabilities are more likely to face harsher discipline at school — but his focus was less on race.

Still, the Trump administration said the Biden administration used Title VI, a civil rights law that prohibits racial discrimination in schools and other federally funded activities, “to promote a DEI approach to school discipline, which makes schools less safe.”

Trump was joined at the signing ceremony by Annette Albright, a North Carolina educator who suffered a concussion and other injuries in 2016 after she was assaulted by students who had recently returned to her school from an alternative school.

In the aftermath of the assault, Albright campaigned for stricter penalties and alternative educational settings for students with a record of behavioral problems. She said administrators sometimes cover up violent incidents to avoid making tough decisions or drawing scrutiny.

“This is very important and critical legislation that we have to keep our educators safe,” she said. “We have to keep our students safe, and public schools have to be safe environments.”

School discipline wasn’t a big issue for Trump on the campaign trail, though some Republican state lawmakers have pushed for stricter school discipline following the pandemic, sometimes with Democratic lawmakers’ support.

Many states and schools saw a dramatic drop in suspensions and expulsions when lots of students learned remotely or maintained physical distance from one another during the pandemic. But as students returned to in-person learning, often lacking social skills or with new trauma, some places saw an increase in students acting out.

The executive order banning disparate impact considerations would require U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to repeal or amend all civil rights regulations that take into account disparate impact. Where the law requires the consideration of disparate impact, agency heads should deprioritize enforcement.

A White House fact sheet says that looking at different impacts on different racial groups — rather than discriminatory intent — “violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment for all by requiring race-oriented policies and practices to rebalance outcomes along racial lines.”

This has been a major point of disagreement between progressives and conservatives when it comes to civil rights enforcement.

These orders come as the Trump administration is also pressuring schools to abandon policies related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The administration has demanded that states sign new certifications that they are complying with an interpretation of civil rights law that sees initiatives, such as trying to hire more teachers of color or offering mentorship to students of color as potentially discriminatory. Those that don’t sign risk their federal funding, administration officials have said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Trump’s anti-DEI funding threat hit like an earthquake. This is what’s happened since.

2025-04-14T18:46:20+00:00

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President Donald Trump’s assault on what he’s called “discriminatory equity ideology” is underway, and it’s been virtually impossible to miss.

The president broadcast his intent very early to strip away practices and beliefs in education that he believes are not just against the law, but contrary to American values. Since then, his administration has translated that desire into aggressive actions to get schools on board.

Perhaps the most forceful of these involves Trump’s attempt to banish from schools what federal officials call illegal emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.

Supporters say it’s a justified countermeasure to the left wing’s attacks on merit and unlawful obsession with racial and other disparities and differences. Critics allege that by threatening to withhold funding from schools that don’t comply, it’s the Trump administration that’s breaking the law, not schools, and that Trump is maliciously misrepresenting what educators are doing.

Below are details of what the federal government has done, the response from state and local officials, and what might come next.

How has Trump’s anti-DEI push taken shape?

On April 3, the U.S. Department of Education told state education agencies that they must certify they are in compliance with the administration’s contested interpretation of federal civil rights law. Those that don’t sign will lose their federal funding, including Title I dollars that provide critical resources for high-poverty schools, the message said.

State schools chiefs are being asked to certify they are in compliance with Title VI, which bans discrimination on the basis of race or shared ancestry. States and school districts already regularly certify Title VI compliance. But the document goes further by also asking them to certify compliance with Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a 2023 Supreme Court decision that barred the use of racial considerations in college admissions.

The Trump administration argues that many common practices under the umbrella of diversity, equity, and inclusion are now illegal in light of the Students for Fair Admissions case. Many legal experts disagree.

The department originally gave states 10 days to comply, with state agencies responsible for guaranteeing school districts were also in compliance. That deadline has since been extended to April 24, and the department has agreed not to enforce the certification process in the interim.

The certification requirement follows a February Dear Colleague letter in which the Education Department told school leaders that the department’s Office for Civil Rights would be enforcing federal anti-discrimination requirements through the lens of the Students for Fair Admissions case.

The Trump administration is signaling that states should take its threats to withhold funding seriously. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Department of Education said Friday it was moving to strip K-12 aid from Maine following an investigation under Title IX — the federal law banning sex discrimination in education — into the state’s policy for transgender athletes.

What has Secretary Linda McMahon said about DEI?

Administration officials say they want to root out illegal discrimination and the certification request should not be controversial. But questions about an exact definition of DEI, and inappropriate uses of it, can produce a blizzard of confusing responses.

The Education Department put out guidance earlier this year that clarified that schools, for example, could teach African American history and celebrate Black History Month. But programming that “acts to shame” students based on their race or “accuse them of being oppressors” could create a hostile environment.

The department also said efforts to diversify honors or magnet programs using non-racial criteria, such as ending the use of test scores in admissions, could be illegal. The same goes for things like scholarships for teachers of color, and separate graduation ceremonies to celebrate students of color.

Asked about the department’s DEI crackdown April 8 at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said “discrimination is the bad thing.”

“We shouldn’t have discrimination anywhere, whether it’s religious, whether it’s race, whether it’s sex, there should be no discrimination,” she said. “Everyone should be treated equally, educated equally.”

How Democrat-led states responded to the DEI demand

National teachers unions have sought to block enforcement of the certification requirement. But many Democratic-led states are also signaling that they will not change their practices and are asserting that they already comply with federal civil rights requirements, regardless of what the federal government is demanding.

New York came out first and most forcefully against the Trump administration. The day after the federal Education Department sent its demand, state education officials said they would not sign any additional certifications. They indicated the federal department lacks the power either to change the terms of federal grants absent a formal process, or to compel agreement with its interpretation of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling.

“We understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI).’ ... But there are no federal or State laws prohibiting the principles of DEI,” Daniel Morton-Bentley, New York State Education Department counsel and deputy commissioner, wrote in a letter. “And USDOE has yet to define what practices it believes violate Title VI.”

Asked about New York state’s response, an Education Department spokesperson told Chalkbeat in an email: “The Department is simply asking school districts to certify they are following the law and not using race preferences or pernicious race stereotypes in schools.”

Minnesota took a similarly forceful approach, as did Washington state. Other states, including Pennsylvania and Illinois, also told federal officials they are already in compliance with federal requirements while questioning the legal basis for the new certification. Michigan’s state superintendent signaled his state won’t comply, as did top education officials in California.

Colorado Commissioner of Education Susana Córdova said April 10 she would not sign the certification and that the Trump administration’s demand runs afoul of another law, the federal Paperwork Reduction Act. But she did say she would sign an assurance that the state is in compliance with Title VI.

In Vermont, Education Secretary Zoie Saunders initially asked school districts to certify compliance while also downplaying any need to change their practices. Facing pushback from local leaders, she backtracked and said the state would send its own compliance letter.

“The political rhetoric around this federal directive is designed to create outrage in our communities, confusion in our schools, and self-censorship in our policy making,” Saunders said in a statement. “But we are not going to allow the chaos to control how we feel, or how we respond.”

As of Friday, 11 states said they were declining to sign the certification sought by the Trump administration, according to Education Week.

States risk significant financial penalties — including the potential for private parties to bring claims of fraud — if they agree to the certification and are later found to have maintained a practice the administration disagrees with.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, meanwhile, has threatened to sue the Trump administration if it cuts off funding over DEI-related practices.

Conservatives take different approach to Trump DEI demand

At least a few places where Republicans hold power are taking a different approach.

On April 7, Puerto Rico became the first state or territory to sign, the conservative news site Breitbart reported. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon applauded the move.

Indiana followed, with state education officials saying they intended to sign the certification after collecting certifications from school districts. They noted that Republican Gov. Mike Braun also signed a state executive order replacing “DEI in government with MEI,” or merit, excellence, and innovation, and that schools need to comply with both federal and state requirements to end DEI practices.

New Hampshire, where the local chapter of the NEA has filed a lawsuit with the national teachers union and the American Civil Liberties Union to block enforcement of the administration’s DEI crackdown, has posted a public tracker of which school districts have already signed in compliance.

Like Indiana, New Hampshire and Puerto Rico have Republican governors.

The onus is on state and local officials to respond to the federal Education Department’s pressure over certification. But others are on notice as well: The first investigations opened under the Trump administration’s controversial interpretation of Title VI focused on universities’ support for a conference for Ph.D. candidates of color because it was not open to white graduate students.

The PhD Project, the nonprofit that organized the conference, has since opened its membership to people from all backgrounds.

Legal experts told Chalkbeat that programs and groups that exclude students or teachers of any racial background may not be legal. The Biden administration also warned schools against creating race-exclusive affinity groups.

Meanwhile, a conservative parent group has filed a complaint against Chicago’s Black Student Success Plan. The program aims to address longstanding disparities in how Chicago Public Schools educates Black students, but the parent group noted that students of all races struggle academically.

Chicago Public Schools has defended its approach and says it has no intention of changing its practices.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump tariffs could have chilling effect on school purchases from bananas to laptops

2025-04-09T18:11:38+00:00

Editor’s note: After this story published, President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs but said tariffs on China would increase to 125% in retaliation for the China’s response to American tariffs.

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Faced with rising food costs and delivery fees approaching $400,000 a year, Lauren Weyand decided this spring that it was time for her North Carolina school district to invest in another walk-in freezer.

Storing more food on site would help Weyand save money over time, one piece of the complicated budget puzzle she’s constantly working on as the nutrition director for Craven County Schools.

But even the lowest bid gave her sticker shock. Two years ago, she paid $100,000 for a freezer of the same capacity. Now it would cost $160,000.

“‘I can promise you, if you wait till next school year, this isn’t going to get any better,‘” Weyand said the company representative told her. “I asked, ‘How much more?’ And he said, ‘You saw what they imposed. That cost is going to trickle down.’ ”

From heavy kitchen equipment like freezers and ovens to the gloves that cafeteria workers use, from laptops and tablets to pencils and paper, U.S. schools likely will feel the impact of sweeping tariffs going into effect this week.

Tariffs are a tax on imported goods. That tax is paid by the company bringing the product into the United States, and some or all of the cost is passed on to buyers.

President Donald Trump campaigned on imposing tariffs to bring in new revenue and boost American manufacturing, goals that many economists say are in conflict. But many business leaders expected Trump to use tariffs primarily as a negotiating tactic to extract concessions from other countries and ensure more favorable markets for American goods.

That looks increasingly unlikely, at least in the short term. Trump has said he is open to reversing tariffs in return for “phenomenal” offers but so far has turned down most attempts to negotiate. Meanwhile, China and the United States appear headed for a trade war.

A 10% across-the-board tariff on most imported goods went into effect April 5. Much higher tariffs, which the administration is calling reciprocal tariffs, take effect April 9 against a long list of countries. Trump set tariffs on China at 104%.

It’s hard to put firm numbers on the impact because there is significant uncertainty about how long tariffs will last and how high they’ll go. Some vendors will be able to shift production to American suppliers, while others will not, especially in the short term.

Schools could delay some purchases or construction projects rather than take on higher costs, but even repairing old equipment could get more expensive as many parts come from abroad.

“We’re still learning a lot, as this is a moving target,” said David Albert, chief communications officer for the New York State School Boards Association. “But schools are pretty large purchasers of many goods. They’re like mini cities.”

Tariffs increase economic uncertainty in already rocky times

American school districts already are dealing with budget hits from declining enrollment and the expiration of pandemic relief money, with many districts considering layoffs and school closures. Stocks have plummeted in response to fears that tariffs will tank the economy. Some economists predict the U.S. is headed for a recession, which also would affect state and local tax revenues.

One California superintendent said she’s worried about the market because capital gains taxes are an important source of state funding. If investors lose money, they don’t pay capital gains taxes.

Voters feeling their own economic pain may be more reluctant to approve levies and school bonds that would raise their property taxes.

Most school districts are working on their budgets now, Albert said, and would have to find cuts somewhere to absorb price increases later, assuming tariffs are still around in a few months. But if tariffs lead to a stronger manufacturing base and more good-paying jobs, Albert said, that would be good for school district budgets over time.

Equipment costs a growing concern for school nutrition directors

By law, most food served in school cafeterias must come from American sources, but there are exceptions for items that are difficult or too expensive to source domestically. Nearly all bananas, for example, come from five Latin American countries that now are subject to 10% tariffs.

Tariffs are landing after several years in which food prices have soared and federal reimbursements haven’t kept pace, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a School Nutrition Association spokesperson. The Trump administration canceled a major grant program that helped schools buy from local farmers, and Republicans in Congress are debating further cuts to school meals programs.

Pratt-Heavner said school nutrition directors expect continued food cost increases related to inflation, but the real concern when it comes to tariffs is equipment costs. Many schools have outdated kitchen equipment that is increasingly expensive to repair, so they’re looking to buy new equipment, she said. Equipment might come from abroad or be assembled here using parts from abroad.

Schools are preparing to comply with new rules adopted under the Biden administration that require that meals have less sugar and salt. That means more scratch cooking, but even mixing bowls or gloves come from overseas, Pratt-Heavner said.

In North Carolina, Weyand said she keeps a detailed spreadsheet of the repair history of every piece of equipment across 25 schools. A one-man maintenance team fields “at least 10 emergencies” daily to keep equipment in working order for kitchens that serve 500 to 600 meals an hour every day.

Weyand wants to do more scratch cooking that makes better use of the USDA commodities her district receives. She sees that as key to controlling costs — but doing that requires investing in equipment whose prices keep going up.

“I look at my spreadsheet,” she said. “How much equipment do I have that I feel confident will give me another five years so that I could invest in more ingredients for scratch cooking? Do I need to spend more money on equipment? It’s a game of chess.”

School construction costs likely to increase

With the U.S. importing everything from steel to desks to lighting fixtures from China, tariffs are expected to have a big impact on construction costs.

Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, a trade association representing non-residential builders, said schools with projects already under contract shouldn’t be affected much because districts typically enter into fixed-price or maximum-price contracts.

But future projects could get more expensive.

U.S. steel mills have some capacity to increase production and that could offset some of the impact of tariffs on everything from structural steel beams to the studs that hold up wallboard, he said. But aluminum, which goes into window cladding, likely will continue to be imported. A lot of cement comes from Canada and Mexico. Copper tariffs, which would affect the cost of wiring, are still up in the air.

“Both the uncertainty and the certainty are making things more difficult,” Simonson said.

Laptops don’t live forever

Laptops and tablets became standard school supplies during the pandemic, and many districts continue to want every student to have a personal device. But many of the devices purchased with pandemic dollars are reaching the end of their lifespans and are in need of replacement.

Planning for those costs just got a lot harder.

“Because of the changes, even in the last couple weeks, it’s impossible to know what schools will have to pay for devices or even crayons or pencils,” said Sara Kloek, vice president for education and children’s policy with the Software Information Industry Association, a trade association that represents information industry companies, including many curriculum suppliers and educational technology companies.

Companies likely won’t pass on all their extra costs because they want to be good partners and know school district budgets are limited. But they also have to watch their own bottom lines.

Repair costs are likely to increase because so many parts come from abroad. And the reality of giving devices to kids is that they will need repairs.

“It’s unpredictable for schools if they don’t know if they’re going to have to pay 30% to 50% more on a charging cord that somebody lost when they moved apartments,” Kloek said.

One company encouraged school districts to shift more repair costs to parents.

Costs for learning games and materials for math and science lessons could also rise, Kloek said.

But more traditional learning materials might see the least price increase. Books are generally exempt from tariffs, and most books for the American market are printed in the United States.

The paper they’re printed on, however, comes from Canada and will still face tariffs.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

States must promise their schools don’t use DEI or lose federal money, Trump administration says

2025-04-03T23:02:24+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education is giving state education agencies 10 days to certify that their schools do not engage in any practices that the administration believes illegally promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Those that do not sign a certification that they are in compliance with the administration’s controversial interpretations of civil rights law will not receive any federal funding, officials said. Federal funding represents about 10% of all K-12 funding nationwide but makes up a larger share of local budgets in high-poverty districts.

The Trump administration has pledged to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and return education oversight to the states. At the same time, the Education Department has made aggressive and unusual use of its civil rights authority to extract concessions from elite universities and pressure states to change their policies.

Some experts questioned the basis for the demand and said the administration could not legally withhold money from states that don’t sign. The threat comes as many school districts are preparing their budgets for the next school year amid significant economic uncertainty.

“Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. “When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal antidiscrimination requirements.

“Unfortunately, we have seen too many schools flout or outright violate these obligations, including by using DEI programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another based on identity characteristics in clear violation of Title VI.”

Title VI is a provision of federal civil rights law that bars discrimination on the basis of race or shared ancestry. States regularly certify that they are in compliance with Title VI in order to receive federal funds.

Thursday’s demand goes further by requiring states to say they also are in compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The case banned the use of race in college admissions decisions. The Trump administration interprets the ruling to mean many common diversity practices are illegal.

Seth Galanter, an attorney who served as principal deputy assistant secretary in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Biden administration, called the new certification “a baffling document that appears only to be trying to bully states and school districts.”

In signing, state education officials would be promising that all of their school districts are in compliance and acknowledging that they could be liable for fraud under the False Claims Act if they request federal funds and are later found to be in violation of the law.

The False Claims Act, a federal law, also allows private parties to sue for damages, Galanter said, and win higher penalties than in civil rights cases. By invoking the False Claims Act, Galanter said the administration appears to be threatening states and school districts with more serious financial risks if they want to defend their diversity policies.

Trump gave states 10 days to sign an anti-DEI policy. NY Education Department is refusing.

But states shouldn’t need to sign the new certification, Galanter said, when they have already certified compliance with civil rights law. The new certification also doesn’t appear to have followed federal laws related to creating new paperwork, he said, meaning states can’t be penalized for refusing to sign.

Nor is it reasonable to give state education agencies 10 days to make legally binding promises about the practices of the nation’s thousands of school districts, he said.

“That is not serious governance,” Galanter said. “It’s stagecraft.”

Demand based on new interpretation of Supreme Court case

Education Department officials said in a February Dear Colleague letter that the Students for Fair Admissions decision meant any consideration of race or of proxies for race in educational settings would violate civil rights law.

The Trump administration has said the ruling extends to considering race as a factor in school admissions, hiring or promoting staff, awarding students scholarships or prizes, providing students with administrative support, and deciding how students should be sanctioned or disciplined.

For example, dropping the use of test scores as an admissions criterion for a selective program with the hopes of increasing racial diversity, or holding a separate graduation ceremony to recognize students of a particular ethnic group, could violate the law.

The first investigation opened by the administration under this new interpretation began last month. It targeted colleges and universities that partnered with an organization that provided mentorship for graduate students of color.

Many legal experts believe the administration’s interpretation goes much further than the Supreme Court did and is not supported by the law.

The Dear Colleague letter generated significant confusion among school and district leaders and is being challenged in court. Conservative groups have adopted its argument to challenge initiatives that aim to address long-standing disparities, such as Chicago’s recently unveiled Black student success plan.

Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy at EdTrust, an advocacy group, said the certification demand appears to be an effort to put states on notice that they could be investigated, similar to the way the administration has targeted Maine over transgender athletes.

States do have an obligation to ensure their programs don’t discriminate based on race, he said, but they also have an obligation to work to fix racial inequities. Federal law hasn’t changed, he said, and states could choose to defend their diversity programs based on their own understanding of the law.

“It’s really in states’ hands right now,” he said.

‘Diversity is a superpower’ says NYC chancellor

Several state education agencies told Chalkbeat they are reviewing the letter and consulting with their attorneys.

“Diversity is a superpower here in New York City, we are always going to honor that,” New York City Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in response to questions at an unrelated event Thursday. “We are always going to make sure that we are serving every child and family in New York City.”

At a policy committee meeting, Philadelphia Board of Education member Joan Stern, reflecting on the likelihood that any funding threats will be challenged in court, said, “Anything that appears to be final is usually not final.”

‘We’re gonna sue’: Chicago mayor says Trump threat to cut funding over DEI is ‘unconstitutional’

Every presidential administration attempts to use its influence to shape local policy, Galanter said. The Trump administration is using that influence differently, though. Trump’s Office for Civil Rights has publicly opened investigations based on media reports rather than formal complaints, and has reached conclusions relatively quickly.

Historically, even when the federal Education Department found school districts to be in violation of civil rights law, the federal government has worked with them on resolution agreements rather than actually withhold funding.

But any school district or state education agency considering its options now will have to look at the example of Columbia University, where the Trump administration abruptly canceled $400 million in grants and contracts after finding that pro-Palestinian protests had created a hostile environment for Jewish students.

The Education Department presented the university with a list of demands that included ceding control of one academic department, and the university complied.

“There’s lots of ways to influence behavior that are perfectly legitimate, and they may put schools on the spot, but the schools still have real choices,” Galanter said. “What this administration is doing is trying to rule by edict. They say, ‘do it our way, or something bad may happen.’ And they tried to make it so that the threat seems credible.”

This story has been updated throughout with reaction and additional background information.

Carly Sitrin, Amy Zimmer, and Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Programs like tutoring in jeopardy after Linda McMahon terminates COVID aid spending extensions

2025-03-31T23:37:14+00:00

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HVAC projects to improve indoor air quality. Tutoring programs for struggling students. Tuition support for young people who want to become teachers in their home communities.

These were some of the ways Maryland schools were using what remained of the state’s federal pandemic relief dollars.

Those projects and similar ones in schools around the country are now on hold — and states and school districts are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars — after Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the U.S. Department of Education would not pay for any more expenses related to pandemic recovery.

In a letter to state education leaders Friday, McMahon said the department would not honor deadline extensions to spend COVID aid it had approved just a few months ago under the Biden administration.

“Extending deadlines for COVID-related grants, which are in fact taxpayer funds, years after the COVID pandemic ended is not consistent with the Department’s priorities and thus not a worthwhile exercise of its discretion,” the letter states. “The Department’s initial approval of your extension request does not change anything.”

The last opportunity to spend pandemic relief money was 5 p.m. Friday, the same day McMahon sent the letter.

Maryland State Superintendent Carey Wright called the decision “catastrophic.”

“These funds have been spent or committed with every expectation of reimbursement,” she said. “The federal government must keep its word to students, educators, and families.”

The original deadline for schools to spend that money was January — and most schools met that deadline. But some ran into supply chain problems. And labor shortages slowed down construction projects as well as tutoring programs. In other cases, fewer students than expected enrolled, so the programs cost less than anticipated.

The needs that pandemic relief funds were meant to address haven’t gone away. Results from national and international tests find that student performance remains below pre-pandemic levels. Students continue to miss school at a high rate.

The Biden administration created a process for states to request extensions on their own behalf and on behalf of school districts. An analysis by K-12 Dive late last year found that the U.S. Department of Education had approved at least $1.7 billion in extension requests and expected to approve more.

Schools with extensions would have until March 2026 to spend the last of their COVID relief dollars.

School districts and state education departments went ahead with contracts for construction, tutoring, and more based on those deadline extensions.

In an emailed statement, Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the federal Education Department, said those extensions set a bad precedent and allowed money to be spent beyond their intended purpose.

“COVID is over,” she said. “States and school districts can no longer claim they are spending their emergency pandemic funds on ‘COVID relief’ when there are numerous documented examples of misuse.”

States can submit requests for reconsideration for individual projects, and decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis, Biedermann said.

But state education officials said they already explained the purpose of their projects when they requested deadline extensions.

“We went through an extensive process of justifying these expenses during late liquidation, and now we’re being asked to do it again, and also being told we may not receive these funds,” said Joshua Michael, president of the Maryland State Board of Education. “This feels like the opposite of efficiency to me.”

The federal department did not respond to questions about how much money is being withheld or how many states or school districts are affected.

Maryland education officials said the state already had reimbursed school districts $305 million for which they had expected federal reimbursement, and school districts had made commitments for another $113 million, some of which they may have spent.

Michigan education officials said 27 school districts had entered into construction contracts worth some $40 million based on assurances that they had another year to spend the money. State Superintendent Michael Rice said school districts may have to eat into their savings or cut costs elsewhere to honor those contracts.

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy said 20 school districts could lose out on $85 million.

The Council for Chief State Schools Officers said it is still working to understand the full scope of the issue.

Elleka Yost, director of advocacy and research for the Association of School Business Officials, said school districts still will have to honor their contracts, which could mean cutting other budget areas.

“Federal funding has become increasingly unpredictable for districts, making it very difficult for school business professionals to accurately forecast and plan,” she said.

Before McMahon’s letter, many states already reported delays in reimbursements for which they had already submitted paperwork. Earlier this year, the Department of Education announced it would apply greater scrutiny to requests for reimbursement, requiring states to first spend money and then show that it was for an approved purpose.

Still, states may yet be reimbursed for some of the money that’s currently outstanding.

Marguerite Roza, who has closely tracked pandemic relief spending as director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, said many states worked hard to spend all their money before the original deadline, when the need was greatest.

Those that were slower to ramp up spending are now more exposed to the changing political tides in Washington, Roza said. At the same time, the Biden administration encouraged states and school districts to find ways to keep spending the money rather than return it — and districts acted on those incentives.

McMahon’s letter, she said, is making the process “needlessly chaotic.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Schools must share child gender identity info with parents, Trump Education Department says

2025-03-29T18:54:26+00:00

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Schools cannot withhold documents that discuss a child’s gender identity from parents, the U.S. Department of Education said in a Dear Colleague letter to educators.

The Friday letter said many schools and states have misinterpreted federal student privacy laws in ways that prevent parents from knowing when their child is going by a different name or pronouns at school.

Advocates for LGBTQ youth say that most schools try to involve parents but not all parents are safe or supportive.

The letter said many school districts have formal or informal policies of treating “gender plans” — plans that support students who want to socially transition at school — as something other than educational records so that they do not have to share them with parents.

That practice violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which lays out students’ privacy rights in school and also gives parents access to students’ educational records, according to the letter from Frank Miller Jr., acting director for the Student Privacy Policy Office in the Education Department. All information that a school maintains about a student, with a few narrow exceptions, should be considered an educational record and shared with parents, Miller Jr. wrote.

The letter also addresses how schools should handle cases in which one student makes a serious threat against another.

The line between parental rights and students rights has been a fraught one in the debate over transgender rights at school. The letter comes as the U.S. Department of Education has opened investigations into California and Maine for alleged FERPA violations related to policies that call for schools to respect students’ chosen names and pronouns. President Donald Trump has also used executive orders to attack transgender rights on numerous fronts.

Dear Colleague letters are not equivalent to federal law or regulations, but do represent a presidential administration’s interpretation of the law.

In a cover letter, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said some schools, by using students’ preferred names and pronouns and generally respecting their new gender identity, have set children and teenagers on a path toward medical transitions that they later regret.

“The practice of encouraging children down a path with irreversible repercussions — and hiding it from parents — must end,” McMahon wrote. “Attempts by school officials to separate children from their parents, convince children to feel unsafe at home, or burden children with the weight of keeping secrets from their loved ones is a direct affront to the family unit. When such conduct violates the law the Department will take swift action.”

Written records related to a student’s gender identity, as well as school counseling records, would be considered educational records, said LeRoy Rooker, who oversaw FERPA administration at the U.S. Department of Education for 21 years and is now a senior fellow at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. That means parents have the right to see those records at the K-12 level until a student turns 18.

That’s not a new interpretation of the law, Rooker said, though the issue is more prominent now than in the past. FERPA doesn’t require schools to notify parents about changes in a student’s gender identity or reveal information that isn’t part of a written record, but schools can’t withhold records that parents request.

California law prohibits school districts from requiring parental notification. Maine’s policies, which are guidelines and not requirements, state that schools should respect students’ gender identity, even if parents don’t agree. The guidelines don’t directly address parental notification or withholding information.

Sarah McDaniel, president of the Portland, Maine, chapter of PFLAG, an advocacy group for parents and allies of LGBTQ people, said it’s not true that schools are encouraging children to become transgender behind their parents’ backs.

Any policy on parental notification has to prioritize students’ safety, she said.

“Parents who are unsupportive can be extremely unsupportive, to the point that they kick their kid out of the house,” said McDaniel, who is the mother of a trans son who came out in high school. “A high schooler who is scared to tell their parents what their pronoun is, they know their parental situation and they should not be forcefully outed.”

The Education Department has also targeted Maine for policies that allow transgender athletes to compete on teams that align with their gender identity and threatened to withhold federal funding.

Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, a group that supports the legal rights of LGBTQ students, called the letter “the latest intimidation tactic” to suppress support for gay and trans youth in school.

“When Linda McMahon says ‘parents’ rights,’ she’s not talking about every parent,” she said in a statement. “LGBTQ+ students and their parents are wondering why what’s left of the Education Department is so focused on pushing a climate of exclusion instead of advancing a vision where every student is set up for success.”

Schools’ approaches to gender identity vary

Around the country, states and school districts have adopted a range of policies and laws about students’ requests to change their names and gender identity.

Indiana requires schools to notify parents of any student request to use a different name, pronoun or gender. Some school districts there won’t use a different name or pronoun without parental permission.

Colorado state law requires school districts to respect non-legal name changes. But school districts have a range of policies on parental notification. In some conservative communities there, school districts still require parental permission for a child to go by a different gender at school.

New York City policy says situations in which students don’t want parents to know about their gender identity should be handled with care on a case-by-case basis.

Michigan’s non-binding state guidance has a similar provision, noting that privacy considerations vary by age.

A number of parents have sued their school district, alleging that officials withheld critical information about their child. The courts have generally sided with the school districts, and in some cases, the situation has been more complicated than initially presented.

Trump used his joint address to Congress to highlight the case of January Littlejohn, a Florida parent who accused her school district of carrying out a “secret gender transition.”

According to Politifact and other media accounts, court records later revealed that Littlejohn informed her child’s teacher that the child identified as nonbinary and wanted to use they/them pronouns. In an email, Littlejohn said the child could take the lead at school, even though she and her husband would not change what they called the child at home.

The school initially denied Littlejohn access to a support plan that had been developed but eventually shared the document.

A federal judge dismissed Littlejohn’s lawsuit. The family is appealing.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case that involved a Wisconsin school district’s gender support polices because none of the plaintiffs had a child in the school district who had changed their gender identity without a parent’s knowledge. The case involved a theoretical harm, rather than an actual family.

Through executive orders, the Trump administration has attempted to ban transgender service members from the military, refused to issue identity documents with updated gender markers, and threatened hospitals that provide gender-affirming care. All of these orders have been challenged in court, with litigation ongoing.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with information from LeRoy Rooker, an expert in FERPA.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

A big change for kids with disabilities is underway, Trump says. Critics say it’s against the law.

2025-03-24T14:52:06+00:00

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President Donald Trump made a brief announcement Friday morning of a policy that could upend how the nation serves its 7.5 million students with disabilities.

Offering virtually no details, Trump said he’d decided that the Department of Health and Human Services would handle students’ “special needs” instead of the Education Department.

“Rather complex,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I think that will work out very well.”

But many legal experts and advocates for children with disabilities say the president does not have the authority to move funding or oversight of special education to another agency. That would require an act of Congress, they say.

Many educators, parents, and disability rights advocates worry that the president will try to move forward anyway, and that this plan could end up stripping children with disabilities of legally required educational support and services — and sideline them in an agency that doesn’t have the expertise, staff, or training to properly serve them.

“There was a recognition that the education of students with disabilities should occur alongside non-disabled students,” when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, was signed into law in 1975, said Robyn Linscott, the director of education and family policy at The Arc, which advocates for children with disabilities.

“To be able to say that students with disabilities are this monolith and we can just pluck them out of the general population of students and plop them into a different agency,” Linscott said, “is just bonkers.”

What the law says about Education Department’s role

IDEA predates the creation of the federal Education Department by four years, and was enacted when education fell under what was then known as the Health, Education, and Welfare Department.

IDEA would remain on the books even if the Education Department ceased to exist. But advocates said enforcement of the law is bound up in the infrastructure of the Education Department, as the two evolved together. Students with disabilities are part of nearly every other education law, from school accountability to higher education access.

In the hours since Trump’s announcement, neither the Education Department nor the Health and Human Services Department has offered any concrete details, including exactly what responsibilities would move to HHS and when.

In response to a list of questions, an Education Department spokesperson referred Chalkbeat to a short video clip of a Friday afternoon interview with Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in which she said that “some” of the programs that fall under IDEA would be given to Health and Human Services. She did not specify which ones, and the Education Department did not respond to follow-up questions.

Emily Hilliard, the deputy press secretary at HHS, responded to a list of questions by pointing Chalkbeat to a social media post by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in which he said his agency “is fully prepared to take on the responsibility of supporting individuals with special needs” and that his agency would “make the care of our most vulnerable citizens our highest national priority.”

Multiple laws say the Education Department is responsible for overseeing and funding the education of children with disabilities.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act established the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services within the Education Department and said that it must include an Office of Special Education Programs, “which shall be the principal agency in the Department for administering and carrying out” IDEA, along with “other programs and activities concerning the education of children with disabilities.”

The law that created the Department of Education said the department must include an Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

IDEA also says the education secretary is responsible for administering IDEA grants. The most recent budget laws give control of IDEA funds to the Department of Education and say those funds can’t just be transferred to another agency.

“If they’re trying to just completely eliminate ED’s responsibility to oversee IDEA and the things that are required in statute, they can’t do that,” said Blair Wriston, the senior manager of government affairs for EdTrust, a nonprofit that advocates for students’ civil rights. “That’s illegal. It would require an act of Congress.”

McMahon has said she would work with Congress to shrink the Education Department.

It’s unclear what part of HHS would oversee special education. Some disability rights advocates say it could be the Administration for Community Living, which supports adults with disabilities, or the Administration for Children and Families, which includes the federal preschool program Head Start and child welfare.

Would special education become an afterthought at HHS?

Many advocates for students with disabilities, some of whom spoke to Chalkbeat before Trump’s comments Friday, have significant concerns about moving special education to HHS.

The department is a massive agency whose responsibilities include approving new drugs, responding to emerging diseases, and administering Medicare and Medicaid. Advocates fear that special education would be an afterthought at the agency and that employees there lack the necessary expertise to interact with state education agencies and school districts about the services kids are legally entitled to receive.

Several education advocates expressed concern that Kennedy would oversee services for children with disabilities. Senators were not able to press Kennedy during his confirmation hearing about his knowledge and approach to educating children with disabilities, as they were McMahon.

“RFK Jr. has repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of autism as a real diagnosis,” Keri Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union, said in a statement. “Putting someone with this perspective in charge of children’s services — especially for children with disabilities — is a betrayal of families who have fought for decades to secure educational rights and protections for their kids.”

Denise Marshall, the CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said that her members oppose moving special education to Health and Human Services.

“That department does not have the expertise or the knowledge, not only about what the law requires but about best practices, about what works, and about ensuring that students with disabilities learn to read and write and do math and graduate at higher percentages,” she said.

Education Department staffers understand how IDEA money is supposed to be spent and have experience providing guidance and support to states on how to use their funds legally and effectively, said Lindsay Kubatzky, the director of policy and advocacy for the nonprofit National Center for Learning Disabilities.

A large share of cases filed with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights — more than half in many years — involve students with disabilities.

Nicole Fuller, a policy manager who works with Kubatzky, said the special education and civil rights offices work closely together to make sure schools have the resources and knowledge to appropriately serve students with disabilities. She doesn’t trust that states would do the same.

Texas, for example, maintained an unofficial cap on identifying students with disabilities. The result was that many students missed out on services they were legally entitled to and struggled in school.

State education officials denied there was ever a cap, but the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under the first Trump administration found widespread violations and ordered the state to rectify the situation.

“It did really take that oversight and insistence for Texas to do the right thing,” Fuller said.

Advocates also fear it represents a return to viewing disabilities as medical problems that need to be fixed.

“It feels like moving your public school district from the leadership of a superintendent to the leadership of your local hospital CEO,” said Jennifer Coco, the interim executive director at the Center for Learner Equity, a nonprofit that advocates for students with disabilities. “It fundamentally misunderstands disability.”

Public schools have not always lived up to the “bold, significant” promise in IDEA that every child should get a free and appropriate education, Coco and other advocates acknowledge.

“I don’t think that’s grounds to throw out the promise or to throw out the systems that make sure that promise is fulfilled,” Coco said.

This story has been updated to reflect a change in Jennifer Coco’s title. Nicole Fuller is based in Washington, D.C., not Texas.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump signs executive order that aims to close U.S. Department of Education

2025-03-20T21:43:36+00:00

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President Donald Trump has signed a much anticipated executive order that he said is designed to close the U.S. Department of Education.

The order Trump signed Thursday tells Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities” to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” At the same time, the order says McMahon should ensure “the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

Despite polling to the contrary, Trump said in his speech Thursday that closing the department is a popular idea that would save money and help American students catch up to other countries. He also said his order would ensure that other federal agencies take over major programs now housed at the Education Department, like those for students from low-income backgrounds and students with disabilities.

“Beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department,” Trump said. “We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good. We want to return our students to the states.”

President Donald Trump speaks during an event at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, when Trump signed an executive order intended to close the U.S. Department of Education.

The executive order represents a symbolic achievement for Trump, who for years has expressed a desire to close the department. Yet the president has already radically transformed the department without relying on such an order. McMahon announced massive layoffs and buyouts earlier this month that cut the department’s staff nearly in half.

Beyond the rhetoric, it’s unclear how exactly the order will impact the department’s work or existence.

By law, only Congress can eliminate a cabinet-level agency authorized by Congress; White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt seemed to acknowledge as much Thursday before Trump signed the order, when she said that the Education Department will become “much smaller.” And during his Thursday remarks, Trump expressed hopes that Democrats as well as Republicans would be “voting” for the department’s closure, although prominent Democratic lawmakers have blasted the idea.

The order does not directly change the department’s annual budget from Congress. And federal law dictates many of the Education Department’s main functions — changing those would require congressional approval that could be very hard to secure.

Still, Trump’s move to dramatically slash the department’s staff could impact its capacity and productivity, even if officially its functions remain in place.

At her confirmation hearing, McMahon promised to work with Congress on a reorganization plan. Project 2025, a prominent blueprint for conservative governance from the Heritage Foundation released before Trump’s second term, says that along with closing the Education Department, the federal government should move the department’s education civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice, while the collection of education data should move to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In a statement on Thursday, McMahon said closing the Education Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them.

“We will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs,” she wrote. “We’re going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working with Congress and state leaders to ensure a lawful and orderly transition.”

The executive order could be challenged in court. Many of Trump’s efforts to remake the federal bureaucracy are already tied up in litigation, including the Education Department layoffs.

The executive order notes that the Education Department does not educate any students, and points to low test scores on an important national assessment as evidence that federal spending is not helping students.

“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them,” the order says.

Trump order is triumph for department’s foes

The Republican governors of Florida, Texas, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, Tennessee, Idaho, and Nebraska were present during the signing ceremony. Trump said they “badly” wanted the federal government to give their states more control over education.

“Probably the cost will be half, and the education will be maybe many, many times better,” Trump said. States that “run very, very well,” he said, could have education systems as good as those in Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway — countries that tend to outperform the United States on international reading and math tests.

The Education Department administers billions of dollars in federal assistance through programs such as Title I, which benefits high-poverty schools, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which offsets the cost of special education services.

The department also administers financial aid for college students, shares information about best practices with states and school districts, and enforces civil rights laws. And it oversees the school accountability system, which identifies persistently low-performing schools to extra support.

States and school districts already make most education decisions, from teacher pay to curriculum choices.

Conservatives have wanted to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education since it was created by President Jimmy Carter and Congress in 1979, and Trump talked about doing so in his first administration. But those efforts never gained traction.

Conservatives say that for decades the department has failed to adequately address low academic performance. They also see the department as generally hostile to their political and ideological perspectives.

The executive order says that McMahon must ensure that “any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology,” a reference to policies intended to make schools more welcoming for students of color and LGBTQ students.

The department has moved to publicly target and root out diversity-focused practices in schools in recent weeks. And the department has already threatened to withhold federal funding from Maine for allowing trans athletes to compete on teams that match their gender identity.

Public education advocates say critical expertise will be lost and students’ civil rights won’t be protected if Trump further diminishes the department. They also fear that a department overhaul could endanger billions in federal funding that bolsters state and local education budgets.

They say they’re already seeing impacts from layoffs, which hit the Office for Civil Rights, Federal Student Aid, and the Institute of Education Sciences particularly hard.

Even before McMahon took office, the U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting initiative run by billionaire Elon Musk, canceled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research grants and contracts.

The Education Department already was one of the smallest cabinet-level departments, with around 4,100 employees, before the layoffs. With buyouts and layoffs, the department now employs just under 2,200 people.

Chalkbeat senior national reporter Kalyn Belsha contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Andrew Ujifusa is a story editor at Chalkbeat.

10 ways COVID changed American schools

2025-03-18T19:56:19+00:00

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COVID had already killed thousands of people in other countries and was spreading in the United States when a top federal health official said schools should prepare to offer “internet-based teleschooling” in case they had to close for a period of time.

“We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare for the expectation that this could be bad,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, then a leader in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s pandemic response, told reporters on a Feb. 25, 2020 conference call.

School leaders said they weren’t really set up for remote learning.

But ready or not, three weeks later, nearly every school in the country was closed. Some would not open their doors again for more than a year.

Teacher Joicki Floyd starts her day for Newark's Weequahic High School remotely while her daughter Donnell looks over her shoulder in March 2021.

Five years on, the impact of COVID-era closures — the ways schools rose to meet the moment and the ways they failed — continue to reverberate through the American education system and in the lives of students, parents, and teachers.

“We just didn’t do nearly enough of what we needed to do, and the results speak for themselves,” said Robin Lake, who runs the Center for Reinventing Public Education. “We have a learning chasm that is shocking. We failed an entire generation of kids.”

Teachers were too overwhelmed, Lake said, and the drive to return to normalcy was too great.

Student academic performance remains below pre-pandemic levels. Inequality has grown, with students in more affluent school districts largely back to normal — academically at least — and those in high-poverty communities still struggling.

Students carry lingering emotional scars from the deaths of family members, from the anxiety and weight of responsibility they felt during the pandemic, and from the isolation of school closures. Far more students miss school regularly than before the pandemic. And teachers report many students seem less engaged in their lessons.

“We are the generation that spent important years of our lives in the COVID-19 lockdown, then released back into the world without the tools to cope,” high school senior Adonte DaCosta told New York City Council members at a hearing last fall.

With the pivot to remote learning, technology is now everywhere in American schools, but a new digital divide has opened up between those filling out worksheets on Chromebooks and those learning how to use generative AI. Divisions over school closures and COVID safety protocols turned schools into political war zones and fueled the rise of the conservative parents’ rights movement.

Here are 10 ways schools have changed in the last five years:

Students are still paying for COVID learning disruptions

Karyn Lewis recalls thinking that the worst had passed when she saw promising signs from testing during the 2021-22 school year. Lewis is vice president of research and policy partnerships at NWEA, which administers the MAP test used by many school districts.

But it’s clear now — on NWEA’s own assessments and on numerous other national and international tests — that the impact of COVID learning disruptions have only grown.

“We were just thinking about the act of missing school in the wrong way,” Lewis said.

Students who missed out on foundational skills are struggling to learn more advanced material later on. Even students who would have been in preschool during the height of the pandemic are behind their prepandemic counterparts. Research finds that students are making up ground — but not fast enough to make up for what was lost.

In retrospect, Lewis said, it should have been obvious that recovery would be a multiyear effort and one that will need to continue into the future. An NWEA analysis suggests it may take seven years to see full recovery in math.

Schools should have been treated like emergency rooms, Lake said. Children should have been triaged for learning loss, given individualized assessments, and routed to specialized teams trained to help. Instead, classroom teachers were expected to address learning loss largely on their own — an impossible task.

“I didn’t imagine that people wouldn’t act as if there were a crisis,” Lake said. “Business as usual took hold.”

Middle school algebra teacher Manuel Sanchez supports both struggling elementary students and advanced middle school students as an academic interventionist at Edwards Elementary, a K-8 school in Chicago.

Schools recognize struggling students need individualized support

School districts around the country invested in tutoring, summer school, and academic interventionists. These strategies often showed promising results, even as districts struggled to scale those interventions to serve enough students effectively. In the process, many educators and administrators realized students needed this kind of support all along.

Manuel Sanchez was a veteran math teacher with three decades of experience when his Chicago elementary school tapped him to be an academic interventionist. But at first he felt “lost” in his new role. Because students often hesitate to ask for help, he hadn’t realized just how far behind some students were.

Teacher and academic interventionist Manuel Sanchez said his new role helped him build better relationships with students.

Sanchez now works with several small groups of students, pulling them out of their classrooms for intensive help and also “pushing in” to classrooms to help teachers offer extra support. The relationships he’s developed with students have helped him find his stride.

He also works with a small group of high-achieving middle schoolers on more-advanced math.

“Students now trust me in a way that they can ask me anything,” Sanchez said.

The challenge going forward is how to keep paying for these positions now that federal pandemic relief dollars have expired.

Around the country, districts are reallocating money and lobbying their state legislatures for funds to keep tutors and other academic supports.

Schools more active in addressing student mental health

School closures upended routines and left many students isolated from their peers and cut off from supportive teachers. Students also faced the loss of family members to the virus and the upheaval of parents losing jobs and housing.

Students now struggle with mental health challenges that feel more pervasive and more persistent than before the pandemic. Schools continue to report more behavior problems and less student engagement.

All of this has led schools to take a more active role in supporting student mental health and emotional well-being. They’ve invested in social and emotional curriculum — about 83% of principals reported last year that their schools use an SEL curriculum compared with fewer than half before the pandemic. Schools have also hired more social workers and counselors.

Students present their self-portraits at a Lunch Buddies peer support session at Oliver Academy in East Orange, New Jersey.

In New York, local and state officials are ramping up investments in student wellness clubs and peer-to-peer mental health programs. The peer-led model allows students to hear from people their same age or just a little older, who have been through the same experiences. They can be more credible messengers than adults.

Tamar Cox-Rubien, a youth peer leader at the National Alliance on Mental Illness NYC, was 20 when the pandemic arrived. She hit “rock bottom” during that time.

“That allowed me to realize what I needed to change in my life,” she said. “Forcing that growth can be really painful but needed, and I know that’s true for many other young people as well.”

School closures leave legacy of mistrust, political strife

Susan Meek already was a veteran of political battles over school vouchers when she was elected — on the cusp of the pandemic — to the school board in Douglas County, a conservative suburban district southeast of Denver. But nothing could have prepared her for the intensity of fights over masking, hybrid learning, and quarantines — decisions that kept her up at night as she weighed complex trade-offs.

“School boards became ground zero for debates on individual rights versus collective responsibility,” said Meek, who spoke for herself and not on behalf of the district. “When you think about the role of school boards, parents advocate for their own child’s needs, and school board members are responsible for the collective. We’re responsible for all students.”

Keri Rodrigues Langan, founding president of the National Parents Union, said the pandemic broke the relationship between parents and schools. Parents were no longer welcome inside schools due to safety protocols, and they haven’t been welcomed back in the years since, she said. Conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education have used the sense that schools are hiding something to advance their priorities.

5 years on, COVID still casts a shadow over American school boards

Some parents didn’t like what they saw during remote learning, including that many teachers struggled with basic technology. In some large cities, the influence of teachers unions contributed to schools staying closed longer.

“There were a lot of teachers who were heroes, but there were a lot of teachers who weren’t,” Rodrigues Langan said. “They were just whipping out packets, watch this YouTube video, answer three really quick and simple questions on Google Classroom. And that’s learning? And I think people were really shocked because they were expecting more and wanted more.”

Not long after the pandemic officially ended, most parents still gave their local school high marks. But the broader public perception of American schools is at an all-time low. And the political fallout can be seen in the recent expansion of school choice and in efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

School feels optional. Lots of kids are opting out.

Kids missed school at alarmingly high rates during the pandemic. Students got COVID. They got sent home to quarantine after exposure to COVID. Their parents kept them home for sniffles and coughs. And when their classmates and teachers were absent too, school felt kind of pointless.

All of that contributed to a dramatic spike in the share of students nationwide who were considered chronically absent, a designation that typically means they missed 18 days of school or more.

Chronic absenteeism peaked during the 2021-22 school year when nearly 30% of students missed that much school, almost double the pre-pandemic rate.

A lunchroom sign encourages attendance at Samuel Gompers Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. In the wake of the pandemic, schools have tried a range of approaches to get students back into the classroom.

Many states have made improvements, but chronic absenteeism remains a stubborn problem.

Schools have tried every strategy in the book. They hired more staff to call home and knock on doors. They bought better computer systems to flag kids as they accrued absences. They hosted family events to make school feel more inviting.

None of these strategies have been particularly effective at reducing absenteeism, a nationally representative survey of school district leaders conducted by the nonprofit RAND Corporation and Center on Reinventing Public Education last year found. But why?

Lydia Rainey, a Center on Reinventing Public Education principal who conducted follow-up interviews with a dozen of the surveyed districts, heard repeatedly that more students feel school is optional and not as important. To address that, schools have to make sure families know why in-person attendance matters and give students a reason to be there.

Did COVID change educators more than it changed students?

“If there is this cultural shift away from thinking daily attendance is really critical, then we need different strategies that get toward that — which the early warning systems and the calls home don’t get to,” Rainey said.

That reflects the experience of Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, executive director of Counseling in Schools, an organization that provides counseling services at roughly 50 New York City schools. He’s seen students grapple with questions like, “Why do I have to show up in school? I used to sit at home on my computer,” or, “Why do I have to take this course, when life can be fleeting and things can happen that are out of our control?”

Something has gone very wrong with reading

Student reading scores on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, were the lowest in 30 years — even as students showed modest improvement in math.

Many states recently adopted policies to promote evidence-based reading instructional practices, in particular more explicit phonics instruction. These policies may take time to show up in test scores.

Math may be easier to remediate now that students are back in school, while gaps in foundational reading skills could be following students into older grades where teachers have less training in teaching students how to read. Students who leave elementary school as poor readers may struggle the rest of their academic careers.

Surveys also find that far fewer students read for pleasure than in the past, and cell phones and social media could be sapping children’s attention spans.

Technology is ubiquitous. Some educators are seizing the opportunity.

The pandemic fueled a technology access explosion in American schools.

Before COVID, fewer than half of students had access to a personal device at school. Now it’s estimated that 90% of secondary students and 80% of elementary students do.

But surveys indicate the most common way students use technology at school is taking online tests and quizzes. Some educators are determined to buck that trend.

Before COVID, English teacher Adrienne Staten had little interest in incorporating technology into her classes at Philadelphia's Northeast High School. Now she embraces it.

“I didn’t use those computers until COVID,” said Adrienne Staten, a veteran English teacher in Philadelphia who was far more comfortable with textbooks, paper, and handwriting. “COVID was the catalyst.”

Now Staten weaves generative AI — another innovation she initially greeted with skepticism — into her own lesson planning and what she asks her students to do. She wants them to understand technology’s potential and its pitfalls, including built-in biases and privacy risks.

AI has been especially helpful for her students who are learning English as a second language, giving them more confidence in how they express themselves and opening up more content areas, Staten said.

English teacher Adrienne Staten pursued training with the encouragement of the Philadelphia school district.

Staten has the support of the Philadelphia school system, where officials want to become leaders in using AI in education.

By the end of the school year, Staten’s seniors will use Google’s Gemini chatbot and Adobe’s Express Firefly image generator to create virtual zines about a community they belong to, in conjunction with reading the novel There There, which follows the stories of Native American characters in Oakland.

“I just want to know that I gave them all the equipment and tools that they need to be OK out there,” Staten said.

Schools have fewer students and more staff

Districts large and small have seen a steady decline in the number of students. Declining birth rates and rising housing prices play a large role, but the pandemic accelerated underlying trends. Families who didn’t like their pandemic schooling options moved to private schools or opted to homeschool, and some haven’t returned. Expanded voucher programs in a dozen states provide financial support for alternatives to public schools.

What’s the result? Even as the student population has declined, schools employ more adults than before the pandemic, according to an analysis by researcher Chad Aldeman in partnership with The 74.

Federal COVID relief paid for many of these positions — and research suggests that money helped improve student academic recovery — but now that money has gone away.

With school district budgets largely dependent on student population counts, these trends set the stage for painful budget decisions, layoffs, and school closures.

Christina Stevens, with her daughters Naomi, 1, and Chloe, 5, at the Brilliant Detroit Morningside educational facility in 2024. The program is part of Hope Starts Here, an ambitious early childhood education initiative launched by the Kresge and W.K. Kellogg foundations in 2016.

Child care is now everyone’s problem

Many child care centers stayed open through the pandemic to serve the children of essential workers even as schools shut down.

Staff at Chelsea Ndaiga’s Day Early Learning Center in Indianapolis, divided into two teams to maintain social distancing, and became experts in ever-shifting CDC protocols.

“If they don’t have their children in a safe spot, they can’t do their quality work,” Ndaiga said. “Families need to feel safe, need to feel that their children are safe, in order to do that.”

The pandemic made clear that a functioning economy depends on families having access to reliable child care. Federal pandemic relief helped shore up an early childhood sector that nearly faltered under the weight of lost income and staffing shortages.

But advocates warned of a “child care cliff” when that money ran out. While the worst-case scenarios have not come to pass, child care supply isn’t expanding and prices are rising, according to a report from The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank.

Families tour Day Early Learning Center in 2023. The pandemic underscored the value of child care to the economy, as well as to families.

With significant federal help unlikely, states have forged their own solutions. In Indiana, that looks like deregulation coupled with expanded access to child care subsidies. The state can now offer child care to 62% of the 466,000 children who need it, up from 55% in 2021, according to an analysis by Early Learning Indiana.

But a smaller share of Indiana’s available childcare seats are in high-quality programs, according to the state’s evaluation metric. And there’s now a wait list for subsidies.

Colleges are adjusting to lower expectations in K-12

The University of Northern Colorado, where about 40% of students are the first in their family to go to college, launched University 101 before COVID to help freshmen adjust to college expectations.

But in the pandemic’s aftermath, the course has evolved to cover more basic ground.

“I can’t believe the class expects me to show up in person,” one student told University 101 program director Angela Vaughn last fall via a class feedback form. “I should be able to make that decision for myself.”

“How dare you say I can’t have my cell phone,” she said another student wrote. “I’m an adult.”

Students attend University 101 at University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado, in 2022.

Relaxed expectations for high school students have become a habit that’s hard to break. Higher education institutions, in turn, are having to do more to educate students about how to be a student.

“Students are pushing back even more against those boundaries, those expectations of college,” Vaugn said. “They’re struggling with understanding why those things might be important.”

University 101 instructors meet weekly to discuss strategies and find better explanations than “because I said so.” They bring in upperclassmen to talk about why University 101’s expectations are normal, and they emphasize how college expectations relate to workforce demands.

“They’re starting to become adults, and we’re here to help them expand their perspective beyond what they’ve experienced and what they know or think they know,” Vaughn said.

Chalkbeat staff Aleks Appleton, Kalyn Belsha, Jason Gonzales, Mila Koumpilova, Julian Shen-Berro, and Carly Sitrin contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

U.S. Department of Education slashes staff

2025-03-12T00:54:22+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday that it’s cutting its workforce nearly in half — a move that Education Secretary Linda McMahon said is a first step toward eliminating the department.

Roughly a third of staff will lose their jobs through a “reduction in force,” the department said in a press release. Combined with voluntary buyouts, the Education Department will have just under 2,200 employees by the end of the month, compared with 4,133 when President Donald Trump took office with promises to shutter the department.

The layoffs represent a significant escalation of Trump’s efforts to reduce the department’s role in education, which is mostly run by states and school districts. Already, the administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and contracts that paid for education research, technical assistance to states and school districts, and teacher training programs.

Affected staff will be placed on administrative leave starting March 21, the department said. Ahead of the announcement, workers were told to leave the office by 6 p.m. Tuesday and that the office would remain closed until Thursday “for security reasons.” McMahon later said this was standard corporate process when layoffs occur.

“Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” McMahon said in a press release. “I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department. This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”

The Education Department administers major federal funding programs such as Title I, which provides extra money to high-poverty schools, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which supports special education. It also investigates civil rights complaints and oversees an accountability system that pushes states to identify low-performing schools and provide them with additional resources.

Exactly how the layoffs will affect specific programs was not immediately clear. A former Education Department staffer, who spoke with Chalkbeat on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information, said the entire Office for Civil Rights teams based in Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland, Boston and New York were let go. That represents half of regional civil rights offices.

The department said all divisions are affected but did not describe specific positions that were eliminated. In the press release, department officials said all functions required by law will continue.

Only Congress can eliminate the department, but such deep cuts could leave the department a shell of its former self.

Appearing on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News shortly after the layoffs were announced, McMahon said Trump had given her a clear mandate to shutter the department. She said she would work with Congress to do that. Immediately cutting these positions would help the federal government send more money to the states, she said.

“I said ‘OK we have to identify where the bloat is, where the bureaucracy is, and we’re going to start there,’ McMahon said. “We need to make sure that that money does get to the states.”

Trump is expected to sign an executive order to start the process of eliminating the department, but has not yet done so. Conservatives say that for decades the department has failed to adequately address low academic performance and is a bloated bureaucracy.

On Fox, McMahon reassured viewers that programs such as IDEA would still be funded through congressional appropriations. Asked what IDEA stood for, McMahon responded, “I’m not sure I can tell you exactly what it stands for except that it’s programs for disabled needs. It’s my fifth day on the job, and I’m really trying to learn quickly.”

Conservative state school chiefs said in a letter to McMahon last month that they need more flexibility in how to use federal money, rather than following complex rules that ensure specific funding streams benefit certain student groups.

Public education advocates fear that if money flows unrestricted to states, there’s no guarantee it will help the most vulnerable students. Even without an executive order, they worry that administrative changes could affect the department’s ability to perform basic functions.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, condemned the layoffs.

“Denuding an agency so it cannot function effectively is the most cowardly way of dismantling it,” she said in a statement. “The massive reduction in force at the Education Department is an attack on opportunity that will gut the agency and its ability to support students, throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country.”

Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employee Local 252, which represents 2,800 Education Department employees, said the union will fight back against the layoffs and against what she called a misinformation campaign about the department’s work.

“We must ask our fellow Americans: do you want your and your children’s rights enforced in school? Do you want your children to have the ability to play sports in their school districts? Do you need financial aid for college? Are you a fellow civil servant that relies on student loan forgiveness? Does your school district offset property taxes with federal funding?” she said in a statement.

“If yes, then you rely on the Department of Education, and the services you rely on and the employees who support them are under attack.”

Shortly after she was confirmed, McMahon sent a message to Education Department staff describing a “final mission” that would affect staffing, budgets, and agency operations.

Department staff were given one-time offers of up to $25,000 to retire or resign in advance of a “very significant reduction in force.” More than 500 employees took some form of buy out.

Another 1,300 employees are losing their jobs through the reduction in force McMahon announced Tuesday.

Employees who are laid off will be paid through June 9.

This story has been updated to include comments from Linda McMahon on Fox News, reaction to the layoffs, and additional information about affected offices.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Trump expected to sign executive order on U.S. Department of Education. Here’s what we know.

2025-03-06T20:43:57+00:00

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President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order soon that would seek to close the U.S. Department of Education.

A draft of the executive order viewed by Chalkbeat tells newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities,” to the maximum extent allowed by law.

But crucially, the draft order acknowledges legal limitations. In fact, only Congress can close the department or reassign its duties. That means the order could fall short of accomplishing Trump’s stated goal of shutting the department down, yet still force changes to its role and size when it comes to issues like special education, civil rights, and more.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the draft order and said sources indicated the order could be signed as soon as Thursday. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called the story “fake news” on the social media platform X. She said the order would not be signed Thursday but did not dispute its description of the order itself in her post on X.

The White House press office did not provide additional clarification.

The order calls the federal role in education a failed experiment and cites recent sobering national test scores as evidence the status quo is not working. “To ensure America’s future competitiveness and prepare its future leaders by restoring excellence in our schools, the Federal bureaucratic hold on education must end,” order says.

At the same time, the executive order says federal funds should be withheld from programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, a move that would increase the federal government’s involvement in local decisions about curriculum and teaching.

Getting rid of the department would fulfill a campaign promise that goes back to Trump’s first administration, and has been widely anticipated by conservatives who feel that the department is an inefficient bureaucracy that’s ideologically hostile to their priorities.

The draft was labeled “pre-decisional,” meaning it could still change. In a message to department staff shortly after she was sworn in, McMahon laid out a “final mission” for the department that called for significant changes that would “profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations” but stopped short of describing the elimination of the department.

Public education advocates condemned the effort even before Trump signed the order. They fear the executive order is a prelude to major funding cuts, that critical expertise will be lost, and that students will lose civil rights protections.

“This is part of a broader attack on public education and public institutions,” said John King, a former education secretary and now chancellor of the State University of New York, at a press conference Thursday.

Here’s what we know so far.

What does the U.S. Department of Education do?

The Education Department employs about 4,200 people who oversee major federal funding programs. These include Title I, which supports low-income schools, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which provides funding for special education and lays out the rights of students with disabilities.

The department also provides the framework for school accountability, helping states identify low-performing schools and provide extra resources to improve academics. The department handles most civil rights investigations in schools and can pressure districts to make changes to policies.

The department also funds and disseminates research on educational best practices. However, the future of this work is uncertain after the U.S. DOGE Service — the cost-cutting enterprise run by billionaire Elon Musk — canceled hundreds of contracts and grants.

The department also oversees federal financial aid programs and student loans.

States already exercise significant control over issues like funding and teaching.

Can Trump close the Education Department by executive order?

No. Only Congress, which established the department in 1979, can get rid of it. Congress also would need to sign off on plans to move functions that it has assigned to the Education Department to another agency.

However, the administration could phase out programs that aren’t congressionally mandated, reassign or fire staff, leave positions vacant, or dramatically change the mission of certain offices, as the administration is already doing with the Office for Civil Rights.

The order comes as the Trump administration undertakes an unprecedented initiative to overhaul the federal bureaucracy through executive actions. With help from DOGE, it has fired thousands of workers, abruptly terminated grants and contracts, and essentially shuttered both USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, agencies created by Congress, by abruptly stopping spending and placing staff on leave.

Many legal experts say refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress is illegal, and that if it continues, it could bring about a constitutional crisis.

At her confirmation hearing, McMahon promised to work with Congress on any overhaul. Even with Republican control of both chambers, most observers do not believe there are enough votes to actually close the department.

So far, the Republicans who control Congress have not challenged Trump’s approach.

Many administration actions have been challenged in court, and judges have ordered some spending restored and some fired workers returned to their jobs.

How would Trump’s order change the Education Department?

The draft executive order doesn’t provide a lot of details.

Most proposals for getting rid of the department call for moving required functions to other departments: civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice, special education to Health and Human Services, student loans to the Treasury Department.

President Donald Trump enters the U.S. House for a joint address to Congress Tuesday. Trump has wanted to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education since his first term.

Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right education think tank, predicted such a plan would amount to a “nothing burger.”

“It’s moving boxes around and changing some reporting lines,” he said.

Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative parent group Moms for Liberty, fears that simply dividing up different Education Department functions would mean people hostile to the conservative agenda would maintain their influence in the federal government.

“I want to kill woke,” she said. “I don’t want to carve it up and create a hydra. I want to make sure that we’re actually making the changes that need to happen.”

Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, said he has yet to see a substantive argument for moving mandated functions to other departments.

“It feels like the only reason to do that is to use it as part of a symbolic attack on the Department of Education,” he said. “You have pieces you have to preserve because it’s in law and because you would upset a lot of people if it went away.”

What would happen to IDEA and special education?

The draft executive order doesn’t address this.

At her confirmation hearing, McMahon floated the idea of moving IDEA to Health and Human Services, but said she would have to study that idea more after she started the job. She also told senators that funding for special education — which has never met legal requirements — would be protected.

Disability rights advocates are especially concerned about moving IDEA out of the Education Department. They said it feels like a step backwards to a time of institutionalization and exclusion.

“IDEA is an education law,” said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy for The Arc of the United States. “It’s not a social service. It needs to live where the other education laws are enforced. Otherwise it’s saying that students with disabilities don’t deserve an education.”

There are practical concerns as well.

If special education is based on Health and Human Services and civil rights enforcement moves to the Department of Justice, advocates fear there will be less coordination and less expertise to resolve these cases.

What about other federal funding for K-12 schools?

The draft executive order directs McMahon to withhold federal money from any program engaged in discrimination, “including illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms.”

This aligns with other executive orders Trump has signed seeking to end diversity programs in the federal government and barring schools from teaching what he deems “radical indoctrination.” The Education Department has also threatened the state of Maine with loss of federal funding if it doesn’t bar a transgender high school student from participating in girls' sports.

In a Dear Colleague letter, the Education Department already warned schools they could lose federal funding for diversity practices that Trump officials believe amount to illegal discrimination. That interpretation is being challenged in court as both contrary to case law and so vague that schools can’t reasonably comply, although the department released a subsequent document seeking to clarify its position.

The order does not otherwise address federal funding, which represents about 10% of K-12 spending nationwide and much more in high-poverty communities.

Funding could continue at current levels even without an Education Department or be cut through the congressional budget process even if the Education Department continues to exist.

Some conservatives want to see federal funding consolidated into block grants and for states to have much more flexibility in how to spend that money. A group of state schools superintendents from Republican-led states called for just that approach in a letter sent to McMahon earlier this year that was first reported by The 74.

Many public education advocates fear that giving states too much flexibility will leave vulnerable students unprotected.

“There is a reason we had to create the Department of Education,” said Keri Rodrigues, co-founder of the National Parents Union. “We had to ensure that students had equitable access to education.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Linda McMahon lays out ‘final mission’ for the U.S. Department of Education

2025-03-04T17:01:57+00:00

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon laid out a “final mission” for the U.S. Department of Education after she was sworn in Monday.

President Donald Trump has said he wants McMahon to “put herself out of a job” and to get rid of the Education Department. Many observers expect him to sign an executive order kicking off that process. But McMahon could also present a plan to reorganize the department — which would almost certainly require congressional approval — without such an order.

The U.S. Senate confirmed McMahon Monday in a party line vote, and her message, emailed to department staff, was posted online later that evening.

McMahon’s message focuses on the “elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education.” It stops short of describing the complete elimination of the department itself, but envisions a smaller agency with a different mission.

McMahon cited Trump’s many executive orders seeking to root out what he sees as “radical indoctrination” in the teaching of history and race, end accommodations for transgender students, and promote school choice, including private school vouchers.

“The Department of Education’s role in this new era of accountability is to restore the rightful role of state oversight in education and to end the overreach from Washington,” she said. “This restoration will profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations here at the Department.”

Before the message was posted online, independent journalist Marisa Kabas shared what she described as a draft email message from McMahon to Education Department staff. The draft message referred to an executive order to eliminate the department, “which has given us a clear and final mission.” The published message does not include those same references.

As of Tuesday morning, Trump has not signed an executive order to eliminate the Education Department.

Even before McMahon took office, the cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service terminated hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research contracts and training grants within the U.S. Department of Education.

The Office for Civil Rights has also signaled a major shift. It has opened investigations into schools that allow transgender students to use restrooms or participate in sports teams that align with their gender identity, and issued guidance that suggests many school diversity initiatives represent illegal discrimination.

On Friday, department staff were given one-time offers of up to $25,000 to retire or resign in advance of a “very significant reduction in force.”

Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, said McMahon’s message suggests to him that the department will continue to exist in some form, but its mission and how it uses its authority could look very different. That won’t necessarily mean a smaller role, if the department inserts itself in curriculum decisions or targets schools supportive of transgender students.

While the department’s existence has taken on great symbolic importance, he said, how the department handles civil rights investigations and whether it continues to not spend congressionally appropriated funds “could have direct implications for students and schools — maybe even more so than the possible changes to the Department.”

Read McMahon’s full message below:

When I took the oath of office as Secretary of Education, I accepted responsibility for overseeing the U.S. Department of Education and those who work here. But more importantly, I took responsibility for supporting over 100 million American children and college students who are counting on their education to create opportunity and prepare them for a rewarding career.

I want to do right by both.

As you are all aware, President Trump nominated me to take the lead on one of his most momentous campaign promises to families. My vision is aligned with the President’s: to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children. As a mother and grandmother, I know there is nobody more qualified than a parent to make educational decisions for their children. I also started my career studying to be a teacher, and as a Connecticut Board of Education member and college trustee, I have long held that teaching is the most noble of professions. As a businesswoman, I know the power of education to prepare workers for fulfilling careers.

American education can be the greatest in the world. It ought not to be corrupted by political ideologies, special interests, and unjust discrimination. Parents, teachers, and students alike deserve better.

After President Trump’s inauguration last month, he steadily signed a slate of executive orders to keep his promises: combatting critical race theory, DEI, gender ideology, discrimination in admissions, promoting school choice for every child, and restoring patriotic education and civics. He has also been focused on eliminating waste, red tape, and harmful programs in the federal government. The Department of Education’s role in this new era of accountability is to restore the rightful role of state oversight in education and to end the overreach from Washington.

This restoration will profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations here at the Department. In coming months, we will partner with Congress and other federal agencies to determine the best path forward to fulfill the expectations of the President and the American people. We will eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy so that our colleges, K-12 schools, students, and teachers can innovate and thrive.

This review of our programs is long overdue. The Department of Education is not working as intended. Since its establishment in 1980, taxpayers have entrusted the department with over $1 trillion, yet student outcomes have consistently languished. Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology, or saddled with college debt for a degree that has not provided a meaningful return on their investment. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves after just a few years—and citing red tape as one of their primary reasons.

The reality of our education system is stark, and the American people have elected President Trump to make significant changes in Washington. Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly.

As I’ve learned many times throughout my career, disruption leads to innovation and gets results. We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul—a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great. Changing the status quo can be daunting. But every staff member of this Department should be enthusiastic about any change that will benefit students.

True change does not happen overnight—especially the historic overhaul of a federal agency. Over the coming months, as we work hard to carry out the President’s directives, we will focus on a positive vision for what American education can be.

These are our convictions:

Parents are the primary decision makers in their children’s education.
Taxpayer-funded education should refocus on meaningful learning in math, reading, science, and history—not divisive DEI programs and gender ideology.
Postsecondary education should be a path to a well-paying career aligned with workforce needs.

Removing red tape and bureaucratic barriers will empower parents to make the best educational choices for their children. An effective transfer of educational oversight to the states will mean more autonomy for local communities. Teachers, too, will benefit from less micromanagement in the classroom—enabling them to get back to basics.

I hope each of you will embrace this vision going forward and use these convictions as a guide for conscientious and pragmatic action. The elimination of bureaucracy should free us, not limit us, in our pursuit of these goals. I want to invite all employees to join us in this historic final mission on behalf of all students, with the same dedication and excellence that you have brought to your careers as public servants.

This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students. I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.

Sincerely,

Linda McMahon

Secretary of Education

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Linda McMahon is confirmed as education secretary. DOGE and a department overhaul await her.

2025-03-04T06:31:38+00:00

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Linda McMahon was confirmed Monday as education secretary to lead a department that President Donald Trump has said he wants to dismantle.

McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive and billionaire donor, promised during her confirmation hearing to maintain key education funding streams near current levels and to work with Congress on any reorganization plan for the department.

Many observers expect Trump to sign an executive order soon kicking off that process, though McMahon could develop an overhaul plan without one.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Nebraska Republican, said McMahon had the appropriate background to lead the department. The secretary of education is not some kind of national schools superintendent, he said. Rather, the job involves running a federal bureaucracy, something McMahon showed she could do when she ran the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first administration.

“I have no reason to believe that she cannot run the Department of Education,” Grassley said Monday. “I think she understands the difference between the state and federal role in education. I also expect that she understands the difference between the executive and legislative branches when it comes to the serious policy making of education.”

Several Democratic senators said they opposed McMahon’s nomination because she appeared ready to put herself out of a job, at Trump’s request.

“We can talk about Linda McMahon’s qualifications, or frankly lack thereof,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, who spoke Thursday wearing a T-shirt from the public high school he attended under his suit jacket. “President Trump isn’t looking for someone with the background or the commitment to strengthen education in America. He is looking for someone to destroy it.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, noted that during her confirmation hearing McMahon couldn’t name a single requirement in the main federal education law or say whether teaching African American history would violate the president’s executive order seeking to root out “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools.

McMahon was confirmed in a 51-45 party line vote.

In an emailed message to department staff, which was also posted to the department website, McMahon described a “final mission” for the agency that would “profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations.”

“We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul — a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great,“ McMahon said. ”Changing the status quo can be daunting. But every staff member of this Department should be enthusiastic about any change that will benefit students."

McMahon will be taking the helm of an Education Department that has already set a dramatically different tone on civil rights enforcement than under the previous administration.

Former President Joe Biden and former Education Secretary Miguel Cardona emphasized equity goals for students of color and immigrant children and tried to enshrine protections for transgender students in law. But under Trump the Office for Civil Rights has already opened several cases related to bathroom access and sports participation by transgender students and threatened Maine’s federal funding.

A Dear Colleague letter to school leaders from the top acting civil rights official warned school districts many common diversity practices could be discriminatory and gave them a two-week deadline to abandon them or risk losing federal funding. That guidance is being challenged in court by three groups, including the American Federation of Teachers.

The Trump administration’s approach raises questions about whether the administration will usher in a smaller role for the federal government or simply a different one. Trump has previously pledged to return control over education to the states.

Meanwhile, the U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk, has slashed education research contracts and grants and abruptly closed technical assistance centers that supported states in efforts to improve education. In press releases, the Education Department has linked the canceled programs to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, or said they were wasteful, but provided little information to back up those claims.

The Education Department has not answered questions about who made these decisions or why.

McMahon told senators that she would examine these cuts and might reverse some of them. A source close to McMahon told the Washington Post she was “frustrated” with Musk’s approach.

Trump taps experienced state officials at Education Department

Kendra Cornejo Muñoz, a lead youth organizer for Make the Road Action who was detained for protesting McMahon’s confirmation hearing, said the transgender and immigrant youth she works with in New York City are already terrified to go to school.

She doesn’t trust McMahon to look out for students or protect school funding, she said in an interview shortly after the hearing: “Entire communities are going to suffer.”

Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative parent group Moms for Liberty, called McMahon competent, smart, and “very decisive.” Justice hopes McMahon’s business background will help her combat inefficiency in the federal bureaucracy. She’s also looking forward to the civil rights office combating diversity efforts and transgender rights.

“The Department of Education has been used to undermine our civil rights as parents, as Americans in so many different ways, and we need to right that ship,” she said.

Mike Petrilli, president of the Fordham Institute, a center-right education think tank, said he expects McMahon to be “an adult in the room” along with Penny Schwinn, a former Tennessee schools chief nominated to be deputy director, and North Dakota State Superintendent Kirsten Baesler, Trump’s nominee to lead elementary and secondary education.

While McMahon has very little education experience, Schwinn and Baesler both have extensive experience and reputations for focusing on students and rebuffing pressure from cultural conservatives.

“We have to believe that inside the Department of Education, between McMahon and the political appointees and DOGE, there will be some big fights,” Petrilli said. “We have to be rooting for McMahon and her colleagues to win.”

This story has been updated to add a statement from McMahon.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

With an ally in the White House, Moms for Liberty renews its fight against a longtime target

2025-02-27T23:07:38+00:00

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In a small recording studio near Nashville, Tennessee, conservative activist Kelly Schenkoske urged an online audience of parents to scour school district websites for contracts that mention social and emotional learning.

“Social-emotional learning is far more than just kindness,” Schenkoske said. “It is a bait and switch.”

The bait, according to Schenkoske and other panelists at the recent Moms for Liberty training event, is small shifts in the school day to introduce students to lessons about virtuous qualities like empathy and compassion.

The switch, they said, is to make children sympathetic to what they see as progressive ideas, ranging from open borders and acceptance of homosexuality to gun control, action against climate change, and redistribution of wealth.

“You send your child with your value system, your own beliefs, and now they’re getting the government’s value system installed into them,” warned Schenkoske, who hosts a podcast from her California home about education and parent rights.

The two-hour training session was the first installment in Moms for Liberty U, an online course meant to drive conservative parent activism in the group’s continuing effort to sway local and national education agendas.

That it focused on social and emotional learning illustrates the staying power of conservatives’ concerns about schools’ role in addressing student well-being. These concerns stretch back years, even as research on SEL shows wide-ranging benefits for students.

Now Moms for Liberty has an ally in the White House, with President Donald Trump painting schools as centers of radical indoctrination and signing executive orders that seek to stamp out teaching about systemic racism and policies supportive of transgender youth.

The group’s future trainings will cover critical race theory, restorative justice, sex education, library content, Marxism, and more — topics that are under scrutiny by the new administration and more prominent in public conversation.

Tiffany Justice, a Florida mom, activist, and former school board member who co-founded Moms for Liberty, sees SEL at the root of everything. She hopes the administration soon will call it out by name too.

“It’s very hard to focus on learning math if we’re all talking about, you know, Johnny’s dog that died.”
Tiffany Justice, co-founder, Moms for Liberty

Parents who agree with the Trump administration can “take those executive orders, that messaging, and really make it come alive throughout the entire country,” Justice told Chalkbeat.

SEL use grew in schools after the pandemic

Social and emotional learning is an educational approach introduced in the 1960s to teach life skills designed to help children manage stress, treat others with respect and empathy, work cooperatively, and recognize and regulate their emotions.

The use of SEL tools has increased as educators seek to help students rebound academically and emotionally from disruptions to schooling and children’s daily lives after the COVID pandemic emerged in early 2020.

About 83% of principals reported last year that their schools use an SEL curriculum or program, compared with 73% in the 2021-22 school year and 46% in 2017-18, based on a nationally representative survey by RAND Corp. and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL.

A cafeteria mural at a Tennessee school promotes kindness, a tenet of programs that emphasize social and emotional learning. The educational approach was introduced in the 1960s to teach life skills designed to help children manage stress, treat others with respect and empathy, work cooperatively, and recognize and regulate their emotions.

Educators say the pandemic deeply affected students’ mental health, contributing to higher rates of depression and anxiety. And national studies highlight an urgent need to provide kids with tailor-made interventions. An infusion of federal aid for education during the pandemic helped to fuel the growth in SEL adoption.

The programs vary in quality. But a large analysis of studies on SEL published in 2023 found a wide range of positive effects, including better academic performance, homework completion, and attendance, a major area of concern nationwide since the pandemic.

Though teachers sometimes complain that SEL is one more thing piled on their very full plates and could distract from pure academics, the analysis also found that programs led by teachers had more positive effects than those led by counselors or outsiders.

“It’s frustrating to see the science and impacts in schools and then to see the noise around the banning of SEL,” said Christina Cipriano, an associate professor at Yale University and lead author of the meta-analysis, which synthesized more than 400 studies over 13 years that collectively included half a million children.

Cipriano recalled a trip to Washington, D.C., to talk with policymakers about using science to make decisions, including about social and emotional learning. One Republican congressional staffer told her that their constituents would love everything about her work — except the name.

“You have a Control-F problem,” the staffer said, referring to the computer keyboard command that lets someone easily find a term in documents such as school district contracts to purchase SEL products and services.

Polls back that up. Large numbers of parents support the idea that schools should teach interpersonal skills and self-regulation, but far fewer react positively to the term “social and emotional learning.”

Another SEL backlash brews

Justice, now a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with close ties to the Trump administration, described social and emotional learning as a “Trojan horse” that opens students to ways of thinking that run counter to what parents teach at home. For example, an emphasis on kindness might lead a student to feel pressure to use a transgender classmate’s preferred pronouns, she said, when that makes the first student uncomfortable and runs counter to their parents’ values.

That’s why Moms for Liberty U started its parent training series with a focus on social and emotional learning.

“We had to start here, because this is what opens the child up to the indoctrination,” Justice said. “It’s the programming mechanism that allows for gender ideology to come in, for critical race theory to come in.”

The training session, which was taped early this year, describes SEL as being tucked into dozens of programs and tools in common use in schools, from teacher-parent messaging platforms to programs designed to make recess a more positive experience. Panelists named surveys on youth well-being as another example of SEL.

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice (far right) moderates a panel discussion during the organization's new national training program for parents on monthly education topics. The first session, recorded near Nashville, featured (from left) author Alex Newman, parent activist Kelly Schenkoske, and psychology professor Jennifer Kom.

Alex Neuman, a conservative author who appeared on the inaugural training panel, said the ultimate goal of SEL is “de-Christianizing education,” something he traces back to Horace Mann, the 19th century social reformer considered one of the fathers of public education.

Panelist Jennifer Kom, a psychology professor at Bethany Lutheran College in Minnesota, said SEL forces teachers to be therapists and leads children to disclose personal matters that can lead to bullying.

Their arguments were enough to convince Tennessee mom Genevieve Pahos to take her activism a step further.

Pahos was part of a small live audience at the taping. A Moms for Liberty chapter leader in Williamson County, south of Nashville, she already had heard many of the arguments against SEL, but she said the session inspired her to start filing more public records requests about SEL programs in her local districts.

“I learned a lot from some of the speakers,” she said, “about how to find out what’s really happening in our schools.”

Speaking to Chalkbeat after the training session, Justice said schools should stick to academics.

“Kids are sad sometimes; it’s OK to be sad sometimes,” she said. “But we need to help children be resilient and find their way through (sadness) by finding interest in life and success in school and giving them the confidence that they get from mastery of skills in the classroom.”

Put another way: “It ends up having kids marinating in their feelings all day. It’s very hard to focus on learning math if we’re all talking about, you know, Johnny’s dog that died.”

Researcher: Schools should include families in SEL programming

Even supporters of social and emotional learning are sometimes fuzzy on what SEL is and isn’t, Cipriano said, which can make it hard to have productive conversations across different viewpoints.

SEL is not therapy or a mental health intervention, she said. But done well, it might mean fewer children need mental health support down the road, just as teaching reading properly to all students might mean fewer students need special education services.

Building resilience — so that students can focus on academics even when bad things are happening around them — is one goal of SEL.

School leaders should think about what problems they want to solve and how they’ll support teachers, Cipriano said, not just adopt a social and emotional learning curriculum because it seems like the thing to do.

She’s working on a public database that she hopes will help school communities make better decisions about which curriculum or products to invest in. Users will be able to see what outcomes were generated by certain programs and the types of communities where these programs have been tried.

She sees lots of room for improvement — better teacher training, more rigorous reviews of existing curriculum, and better communication with parents.

“It seems to me that we have a real opportunity to engage families at the outset of implementation so they’re aware of what’s happening in the schools,” she said. “When you talk to parents and families about the strategies involved in social and emotional learning, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t want their child to be a good friend or have less test anxiety.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Educators sue to block enforcement of anti-diversity civil rights guidance

2025-02-26T01:10:22+00:00

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Three educator groups are suing to block the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing new civil rights guidance that targets a wide range of practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The guidance came in the form of a Dear Colleague letter to school leaders on Feb. 14. The letter cited the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race-conscious admissions policies in higher education, and warned schools against giving any consideration to race in hiring, training, discipline, student supports, graduation ceremonies, and other aspects of academic life.

The letter, from acting Assistant Secretary for the Office for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, gave schools ranging from preschools to universities until the end of the month to end all practices related to DEI or risk losing federal funding.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court by the American Federation of Teachers and the union’s Maryland affiliate, as well as by the American Sociological Association, asked a federal judge to block enforcement of the letter on the grounds that it misstates the law, doesn’t explain the legal basis for arriving at its interpretation of the law, and is so vague that it could ban nearly any activity in schools, including discussing other civil rights guidance that mentions race.

“This Letter radically upends and re-writes otherwise well established jurisprudence,” the lawsuit states. “No federal law prevents teaching about race and race-related topics, and the Supreme Court has not banned efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. The Department of Education is attempting to establish a new legal regime when it has neither the lawmaking power of Congress nor the interpretative power of the courts.”

The lawsuit alleges the letter is written so broadly that it’s impossible for schools to know what they need to do to comply. The letter says schools may not use proxies for race to achieve diversity, raising questions about programs for low-income students, who are disproportionately students of color. It also warns schools against teaching about structural racism or taking race into consideration in any form.

Among the activities the letter appears to ban: “a school hosting a panel discussion by alumni on the challenges Black students might have navigating the university; a training for teachers on combatting anti-semitism; or a workshop on why use of racial slurs are harmful,” the lawsuit states.

The plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward Foundation, which is involved in a number of other cases against the Trump administration.

The lawsuit names Trainor, acting Education Secretary Denise Carter, and the U.S. Department of Education.

The Education Department declined to comment on the lawsuit. The department typically does not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit alleges that the Dear Colleague letter infringes on the free speech and free association rights of students and teachers and violates existing civil rights law. The lawsuit also alleges that the Education Department violated the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to go through the steps required when a federal agency makes a big change to how it interprets the law.

“This vague and clearly unconstitutional memo is a grave attack on students, our profession and knowledge itself,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “Federal statute already prohibits any president from telling schools and colleges what to teach. And students have the right to learn without the threat of culture wars waged by extremist politicians hanging over their heads.”

Some conservatives cheered the Dear Colleague letter as taking a stand against practices they believe undermine unity and common purpose in schools or teach overly negative perspectives on American history. But the letter also sparked fear and confusion in some blue states. New York City postponed a hearing on school segregation so as not to draw unwelcome attention. Colorado State University plans to remove references to DEI from its website and reassign some employees, but promised protesting students that campus cultural centers are safe.

Some officials in Democratic-led states have pushed back.

Illinois State Superintendent Tony Sanders told school districts they should keep teaching Black, Asian American, and LGBTQ history as required by state law. Chicago went ahead with the rollout of a much anticipated plan to promote Black student success in school, but kept the launch event closed to the public. A conservative parent group almost immediately filed a complaint about the plan.

“Federal laws regarding public education remain unchanged, as executive orders and memos cannot modify or override statutory requirements or regulations or unilaterally impose new terms on existing agreements,” the California Department of Education and the California State Board of Education said in a joint statement.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Teens with disabilities were getting help with life after high school. Then DOGE started cutting.

2025-02-26T00:43:05+00:00

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When teens and young adults with disabilities in California’s Poway Unified School District heard about a new opportunity to get extra help planning for life after high school, nearly every eligible student signed up.

The program, known as Charting My Path for Future Success, aimed to fill a major gap in education research about what kinds of support give students nearing graduation the best shot at living independently, finding work, or continuing their studies.

Students with disabilities finish college at much lower rates than their non-disabled peers, and often struggle to tap into state employment programs for adults with disabilities, said Stacey McCrath-Smith, a director of special education at Poway Unified, which had 135 students participating in the program. So the extra help, which included learning how to track goals on a tool designed for high schoolers with disabilities, was much needed.

Charting My Path launched earlier this school year in Poway Unified and 12 other school districts. The salaries of 61 school staff nationwide, and the training they received to work with nearly 1,100 high schoolers with disabilities for a year and a half, was paid for by the U.S. Department of Education.

Jessie Damroth’s 17-year-old son Logan, who has autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other medical needs, had attended classes and met with his mentor through the program at Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts for a month. For the first time, he was talking excitedly about career options in science and what he might study at college.

“He was starting to talk about what his path would look like,” Damroth said. “It was exciting to hear him get really excited about these opportunities. … He needed that extra support to really reinforce that he could do this.”

Then the Trump administration pulled the plug.

Charting My Path was among more than 200 Education Department contracts and grants terminated over the last two weeks by the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service. DOGE has slashed spending it deemed to be wasteful, fraudulent, or in service of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility goals that President Donald Trump has sought to ban. But in several instances, the decision to cancel contracts affected more than researchers analyzing data in their offices — it affected students.

Many projects, like Charting My Path, involved training teachers in new methods, testing learning materials in actual classrooms, and helping school systems use data more effectively.

“Students were going to learn really how to set goals and track progress themselves, rather than having it be done for them,” McCrath-Smith said. “That is the skill that they will need post-high school when there’s not a teacher around.”

All of that work was abruptly halted — in some cases with nearly finished results that now cannot be distributed.

Every administration is entitled to set its own priorities, and contracts can be canceled or changed, said Steven Fleischman, an education consultant who for many years ran one of the regional research programs that was terminated. He compared it to a homeowner deciding they no longer want a deck as part of their remodel.

But the current approach reminds him more of construction projects started and then abandoned during the Great Recession, in some cases leaving giant holes that sat for years.

“You can walk around and say, ‘Oh, that was a building we never finished because the funds got cut off,’” he said.

DOGE drives cuts to education research contracts, grants

The Education Department has been a prime target of DOGE, the chaotic cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to Trump.

So far, DOGE has halted 89 education projects, many of which were under the purview of the Institute of Education Sciences, the ostensibly independent research arm of the Education Department. The administration said those cuts, which included multi-year contracts, totaled $881 million. In recent years, the federal government has spent just over $800 million on the entire IES budget.

DOGE has also shut down 10 regional labs that conduct research for states and local schools and shuttered four equity assistance centers that help with teacher training. The Trump administration also cut off funding for nearly 100 teacher training grants and 18 grants for centers that often work to improve instruction for struggling students.

The total savings is up for debate. The Trump administration said the terminated Education Department contracts and grants were worth $2 billion. But some were near completion with most of the money already spent.

An NPR analysis of all of DOGE’s reported savings found that it likely was around $2 billion for the entire federal government — though the Education Department is a top contributor.

On Friday, a federal judge issued an injunction that temporarily blocks the Trump administration from canceling additional contracts and grants that might violate the anti-DEIA executive order. It’s not clear whether the injunction would prevent more contracts from being canceled “for convenience.”

Mark Schneider, the recent past IES director, said the sweeping cuts represent an opportunity to overhaul a bloated education research establishment. But even many conservative critics have expressed alarm at how wide-ranging and indiscriminate the cuts have been. Congress mandated many of the terminated programs, which also indirectly support state and privately funded research.

The canceled projects include contracts that support maintenance of the Common Core of Data, a major database used by policymakers, researchers, and journalists, as well as work that supports updates to the What Works Clearinghouse, a huge repository of evidence-based practices available to educators for free.

And after promising not to make any cuts to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, the department canceled an upcoming test for 17-year-olds that helps researchers understand long-term trends. On Monday, Peggy Carr, the head of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP, was placed on leave.

The Education Department did not respond to questions about who decided which programs to cut and what criteria were used. Nor did the department respond to a specific question about why Charting My Path was eliminated. DOGE records estimate the administration saved $22 million by terminating the program early, less than half the $54 million in the original contract.

The decision has caused mid-year disruptions and uncertainty.

In Utah, the Canyons School District is trying to reassign the school counselor and three teachers whose salaries were covered by the Charting My Path contract.

The district, which had 88 high schoolers participating in the program, is hoping to keep using the curriculum to boost its usual services, said Kirsten Stewart, a district spokesperson.

Officials in Poway Unified, too, hope schools can use the curriculum and tools to keep up a version of the program. But that will take time and work because the program’s four teachers had to be reassigned to other jobs.

“They dedicated that time and got really important training,” McCrath-Smith said. “We don’t want to see that squandered.”

For Damroth, the loss of parent support meetings through Charting My Path was especially devastating. Logan has a rare genetic mutation that causes him to fall asleep easily during the day, so Damroth wanted help navigating which colleges might be able to offer extra scheduling support.

“I have a million questions about this. Instead of just hearing ‘I don’t know’ I was really looking forward to working with Joe and the program,” she said, referring to Logan’s former mentor. “It’s just heartbreaking. I feel like this wasn’t well thought out. … My child wants to do things in life, but he needs to be given the tools to achieve those goals and those dreams that he has.”

DOGE cuts labs that helped ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in reading

The dramatic improvement in reading proficiency that Carey Wright oversaw as state superintendent in one the nation’s poorest states became known as the “Mississippi Miracle.”

Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, based out of the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University, was a key partner in that work, Wright said.

When Wright wondered if state-funded instructional coaches were really making a difference, REL Southeast dispatched a team to observe, videotape, and analyze the instruction delivered by hundreds of elementary teachers across the state. Researchers reported that teachers’ instructional practices aligned well with the science of reading and that teachers themselves said they felt far more knowledgeable about teaching reading.

“That solidified for me that the money that we were putting into professional learning was working,” Wright said.

The study, she noted, arose from a casual conversation with researchers at REL Southeast: “That’s the kind of give and take that the RELs had with the states.”

Wright, now Maryland state superintendent, said she was looking forward to partnering with REL Mid-Atlantic on a math initiative and on an overhaul of the school accountability system.

But this month, termination letters went out to the universities and research organizations that run the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories, which were established by Congress in 1965 to serve states and school districts. The letters said the contracts were being terminated “for convenience.”

The press release that went to news organizations cited “wasteful and ideologically driven spending” and named a single project in Ohio that involved equity audits as a part of an effort to reduce suspensions. Most of the REL projects on the IES website involve reading, math, career connections, and teacher retention.

Jannelle Kubinec, CEO of WestEd, an education research organization that held the contracts for REL West and REL Northwest, said she never received a complaint or a request to review the contracts before receiving termination letters. Her team had to abruptly cancel meetings to go over results with school districts. In other cases, reports are nearly finished but cannot be distributed because they haven’t gone through the review process.

REL West was also working with the Utah State Board of Education to figure out if the legislature’s investment in programs to keep early career teachers from leaving the classroom was making a difference, among several other projects.

“This is good work and we are trying to think through our options,” she said. “But the cancellation does limit our ability to finish the work.”

Given enough time, Utah should be able to find a staffer to analyze the data collected by REL West, said Sharon Turner, a spokesperson for the Utah State Board of Education. But the findings are much less likely to be shared with other states.

The most recent contracts started in 2022 and were set to run through 2027.

The Trump administration said it planned to enter into new contracts for the RELs to satisfy “statutory requirements” and better serve schools and states, though it’s unclear what that will entail.

“The states drive the research agendas of the RELs,” said Sara Schapiro, the executive director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition that advocates for more effective education research. If the federal government dictates what RELs can do, “it runs counter to the whole argument that they want the states to be leading the way on education.”

Some terminated federal education research was nearly complete

Some research efforts were nearly complete when they got shut down, raising questions about how efficient these cuts were.

The American Institutes for Research, for example, was almost done evaluating the impact of the Comprehensive Literacy State Development program, which aims to improve literacy instruction through investments like new curriculum and teacher training.

AIR’s research spanned 114 elementary schools across 11 states and involved more than 23,000 third, fourth, and fifth graders and their nearly 900 reading teachers.

Researchers had collected and analyzed a massive trove of data from the randomized trial and presented their findings to federal education officials just three days before the study was terminated.

“It was a very exciting meeting,” said Mike Garet, a vice president and institute fellow at AIR who oversaw the study. “People were very enthusiastic about the report.”

Another AIR study that was nearing completion looked at the use of multi-tiered systems of support for reading among first and second graders. It’s a strategy that helps schools identify and provide support to struggling readers, with the most intensive help going to kids with the highest needs. It’s widely used by schools, but its effectiveness hasn’t been tested on a larger scale.

The research took place in 106 schools and involved over 1,200 educators and 5,700 children who started first grade in 2021 and 2022. Much of the funding for the study went toward paying for teacher training and coaching to roll out the program over three years. All of the data was collected and nearly done being analyzed when DOGE made its cuts.

Garet doesn’t think he and his team should simply walk away from unfinished work.

“If we can’t report results, that would violate our covenant with the districts, the teachers, the parents, and the students who devoted a lot of time in the hope of generating knowledge about what works,” Garet said. “Now that we have the data and have the results, I think we’re duty-bound to report them.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Chris Rufo’s social media posts appear to be driving Education Department cuts

2025-02-20T19:17:47+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Education has terminated millions of dollars worth of grants after influential conservative activist Christopher Rufo posted snippets of training materials paid for with those grants on the social media site X.

Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, popularized the idea that critical race theory had infiltrated American schools and government. He has a combative social media presence and talks openly about his strategies for shifting public discourse.

On Tuesday, Rufo made a series of posts showing screenshots of an academic paper on designing more inclusive curriculum to counter white overrepresentation in STEM fields, video of Indigenous educators discussing de-centering whiteness in school settings, and video of a trainer telling teachers to avoid gendered language when addressing students.

“The Department of Education has granted more than $200 million to 21 ‘comprehensive centers’ that push left-wing ideologies in local districts,” Rufo wrote in one post Tuesday morning. “They believe America’s schools are systems of ‘institutionalized privilege’ and that there are too many ‘White students’ in STEM.”

Billionaire Elon Musk responded with two exclamation points.

“This is taxpayer-funded witchcraft. It must be defunded,” Rufo wrote in another post Tuesday afternoon.

He then tagged one of the X accounts of the U.S. DOGE Service — Musk’s cost-cutting team that has wreaked havoc on the federal bureaucracy — in his next post: “Hey @DOGE_ED, let’s terminate the contracts for the ‘comprehensive centers.’ What do you think?”

Within 24 hours, the Education Department had done just that. In a press release, the department said it had cancelled 18 grants worth a total of $226 million that had funded the Comprehensive Centers Program.

“These grants went to a network of regional and national centers funded to provide scalable ‘capacity-building’ services to states and systems within their regions, including reports and convenings to improve instructional materials and educational outcomes,” the press release said. “Instead, Comprehensive Centers have been forcing radical agendas onto states and systems, including race-based discrimination and gender identity ideology.”

As evidence, the press release linked to Rufo’s X posts.

Rufo had shared the news on social media even before the press release went out.

“Winning,” he wrote.

The posts are part of a larger strategy of using diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to justify dismantling swaths of the federal government — including the Education Department — with conservative activists and social media influencing decisions at a rapid pace.

Rufo teased last week that he had a large trove of material that he would roll out once “Department of Education” started trending on X.

“The idea is to wait for the moment of maximum drama and public attention, then flood the zone with viral content that can help the administration abolish the DOE. Soon,” he wrote on Feb. 12.

That was the day before Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing, which focused attention on President Donald Trump’s plans to eliminate the department. DOGE had already canceled a large number of research contracts.

Rufo began to post a series of videos and screenshots of teacher trainings and presentations that covered anti-racist pedagogy and support for transgender youth. Other conservative commentators shared Rufo’s posts, describing them as evidence the Education Department’s “permanent bureaucracy needs to be annihilated.” They said the grants had been used to push ideologies far outside the mainstream into American classrooms with taxpayer support.

“I’m hearing murmurs that the @DOGE team is following my posts about the Department of Education,” Rufo posted on Feb. 13.

The terminations of grants and contracts picked up steam as Rufo continued to post. Swept away: Regional Equity Centers that had their origins in desegregation efforts, Regional Education Laboratories that design research projects in cooperation with states and school districts, and millions in teacher training grants. Inside Higher Ed noted that Rufo’s posts preceded those earlier rounds of cuts.

People who worked on the canceled projects said the vast majority of work related to core education issues, such as reading, writing, math, and career pathways. Equity initiatives were designed to make sure all students benefitted.

What did the Comprehensive Centers do?

Comprehensive Centers Programs go back decades and are authorized by Congress. The program included a national center and 14 regional centers whose staff members helped state education departments and school districts on school improvement, teacher retention, and other priorities. Teams at four content centers provide specialized support focused on English language learners, early school success, fiscal equity, and strengthening the educator workforce.

The comprehensive center grants run for five-year periods and were just re-issued last year.

The Education Department did not respond to questions about who made the decision to cancel the grants and what criteria they used.

Rufo could not be reached for comment.

Program priorities described in the Federal Register include addressing the teacher shortage, improving the quality of instruction, building career pathways, encouraging parent engagement, and helping student groups with distinct needs, such as English learners, refugee students, and those with disabilities.

The termination letters that went out to the grantees — universities and large research organizations — said the department’s priority is to eliminate discrimination. That includes not funding programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in any form.

“The grant is therefore inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities,” the letter states.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

School diversity efforts could violate civil rights, Trump administration says

2025-02-17T22:10:40+00:00

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Schools that take steps to enroll more students of color in selective programs or to hire a more racially diverse teaching force could face civil rights investigations under the Trump administration — even if they’re using criteria other than race to achieve those goals.

In a Dear Colleague letter intended for school leaders, the U.S. Department of Education’s top acting civil rights official said Friday that discriminatory practices had proliferated in American schools “under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’”

“But under any banner, discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal,” wrote Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department.

The letter cites the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which found that universities cannot use race as a factor in college admissions. Since that decision, conservative groups have tested its implications for scholarships for prospective teachers of color, programs that provide extra support to students of color, and admissions policies that aim to diversify magnet schools.

But the Supreme Court has not yet revisited the question in one of these other contexts. By not taking up the case, the court even allowed a change in admissions policies at an elite Virginia high school that de-emphasized test scores to remain in place. Asian American parents had alleged the district discriminated against their children in its pursuit of a more diverse student body.

Legal experts said the Dear Colleague letter misstates the law in the aftermath of the Students for Fair Admissions case and represents an “enormous leap” in telling school districts and universities they can’t use non-racial criteria in pursuit of diversity goals.

The admissions case does create a higher bar for taking race into consideration, said Derek Black, a University of South Carolina law professor. Schools may need to rethink programs that appear to benefit one group to the exclusion of others, as Los Angeles Unified School District did when it overhauled its Black student success program in response to a legal challenge.

But for nearly two decades school districts have believed they are in a legal “safe harbor” when they use non-racial criteria such as household income and ZIP code to diversify their schools, Black said.

“This letter is saying, ‘You don’t even have safe harbor anymore,’” he said. “That’s a mind-blowing, incorrect statement of the law.”

Cara McClellan, an associate practice professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, expects a widespread “chilling effect” from the letter even though it doesn’t accurately describe the law. Its description of a colorblind society flies in the face of history and data about persistent inequalities, she said.

“I think the letter is just as much intended to impact the public narrative about whether or not attempts to address inequity are fair or not and to redefine what discrimination is,” she said.

The letter says the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights will “vigorously enforce” the law in preschools, K-12 schools, and higher education settings. And while the letter’s interpretation could be challenged in court, repeated civil rights investigations of this kind could discourage schools from pursuing or continuing diversity programs that have long been considered legal.

The shift in civil rights enforcement comes as President Donald Trump is seeking to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in every part of the government. Trump also has signed executive orders threatening the funding of schools that engage in “radical indoctrination” and those that recognize the existence of transgender people.

It’s not clear where the Trump administration’s line is. Department of Defense schools, run by the federal government, already stopped celebrating Black History Month and are reviewing affinity groups for students with shared racial or cultural identity.

At her confirmation hearing last week, Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to lead the Education Department, said schools should celebrate Black History Month but said she could not answer questions about affinity groups without looking more closely at both the executive order and those groups’ activities, which often involve community service, cultural programming, and peer support.

The letter states that schools have 14 days to bring their policies into compliance and risk losing federal funding if they don’t comply. Historically, it’s been very rare for the department to withhold funds.

The Education Department did not respond to follow-up questions about what types of practices would and wouldn’t run afoul of its interpretation of the law. Additional guidance will be issued “in due course,” the letter said.

Civil rights enforcement often changes between Democratic and Republican administrations. The Obama administration, for example, used a Dear Colleague letter to warn schools that they might be violating students’ civil rights if their discipline policies led to disproportionate numbers of Black students being suspended or expelled. That letter was rescinded during the first Trump administration.

Trump executive orders on DEI and schools big on drama, but impact will take time to emerge

This most recent Dear Colleague letter warns schools against any consideration of race in admissions, hiring, financial aid, scholarships, administrative support, discipline, and graduation ceremonies. DEI programming that relies on racial stereotypes or assumes certain racial groups carry unique moral burdens prevent students from participating fully in the life of their school, a violation of their civil rights, the letter says.

Using personal essays or extracurricular activities to predict race and extend any preferential treatment is illegal, the letter says.

The majority opinion in the Students for Fair Admissions case left open the possibility that universities still could consider whether a student had overcome hardships related to racial discrimination or whether their cultural background would help them contribute to the campus community. Many universities added application questions that give students the opportunity to share information about their background.

“Relying on non-racial information as a proxy for race, and making decisions based on that information, violates the law,” the letter states. That includes getting rid of standardized testing to achieve more racial diversity in a school or program.

There likely will be no shortage of test cases. Conservative groups regularly file civil rights complaints about school districts that have mentorship programs for teachers of color, that host student affinity groups, or that set goals to diversify the teacher workforce.

At the same time, it’s not clear how well staffed the Office for Civil Rights will be. The Trump administration has promised to slash the federal workforce and already laid off thousands of probationary workers.

ProPublica reported that the Trump administration has opened far fewer new civil rights cases than the Biden administration had at this point. At least two of those cases involve restroom access for transgender students after the Trump administration declared there are only two genders that cannot change and said it would enforce Title IX prohibitions on sex discrimination accordingly.

Thousands of other open civil rights cases, meanwhile, are reportedly in limbo, with civil rights staffers under gag orders.

Dear Colleague letters can shape school district policy through a relatively small number of high-profile investigations. The school discipline letter, for example, is widely viewed as contributing to a decline in the use of suspensions nationwide. Many school districts don’t have full-time legal counsel and want to avoid a confrontation with the federal government.

But school districts that are committed to their policies don’t have to toss them simply because the Education Department issued a letter, Black said. They can go through the administrative process of a civil rights investigation and appeal in district court if necessary.

“If you think that for your community of 30,000 students, that it’s important for you to do as much as you can within the law to ensure racially equitable access, if that’s what you believe and that’s what the social science tells us you should be doing to help all children achieve, then you’ve got to stick by your guns because you’re right on the law,” Black said.

“What you really have is a department that is trying to cement its world view about race on top of a set of laws that don’t match up with their views.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department reorganization won’t hurt funding, McMahon promises in confirmation hearing

2025-02-13T22:36:02+00:00

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Linda McMahon said she stands firmly behind President Donald Trump’s calls to gut the U.S. Department of Education at her confirmation hearing to lead the department.

But she promised to work with Congress to do so — acknowledging some limits on the president’s authority as Trump seeks to remake the government through executive orders. And she tried to reassure teachers and parents that any changes would not jeopardize billions in federal funding that flows to high-poverty schools, special education services, and low-income college students.

“We’d like to do this right,” McMahon said. “It is not the president’s goal to defund the programs, it is only to have it operate more efficiently.”

Trump has called the Education Department a “con job” and said that McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive and billionaire Republican donor, should work to put herself out of a job. McMahon called this rhetoric “fervor” for change.

The Trump administration’s chaotic approach to spending cuts so far raise questions about whether McMahon’s statements — an effort to neutralize the most significant criticism of plans to get rid of the Education Department — will prove true over time.

Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, punctuated by occasional protests, served as a referendum of sorts on the value of the Education Department. Republicans said it had saddled schools with red tape without improving student outcomes. Democrats said the department protects students’ civil rights and funds essential services.

Democrats also pressed McMahon on Trump’s threats to withhold federal funding from schools that violate his executive orders and on the details of a potential reorganization — questions that McMahon largely deflected as ones she could better answer after she takes office.

“It’s almost like we’re being subjected to a very elegant gaslighting here,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire.

McMahon pressed on what DEI orders might mean

Even as Trump has called for the Education Department to be eliminated and schooling to be “returned to the states,” he’s also sought to expand its mission with executive orders threatening the funding of schools that employ diversity, equity, and inclusion practices or teach that racism and discrimination were part of America’s founding. The federal government is barred by law from setting local curriculum, as Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska pointed out during the hearing.

In a tense exchange, Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who’s championed school desegregation and diversity efforts in education, asked McMahon how schools would know if they were running a program that violates Trump’s executive order seeking to root out “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools. Many schools have no idea what’s allowed, Murphy said, because the order doesn’t clearly define what’s prohibited.

McMahon said in her view, celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Black History Month should be permitted, after Murphy noted that U.S. Department of Defense schools would no longer celebrate Black History Month in response to Trump’s order.

But McMahon would not say that running affinity groups for students from certain racial or ethnic backgrounds, such as a Black engineers club or an after-school club for Vietnamese American students, was permitted. She also would not say whether schools might put their federal funding at risk by teaching an African American history class or other ethnic studies program.

“That’s pretty chilling,” Murphy said. “You’re going to have a lot of educators and a lot of principals and administrators scrambling right now.”

Later in the confirmation hearing, McMahon agreed schools should teach “the good, the bad, and the ugly” parts of U.S. history, and that it’s up to states, not the Department of Education, to establish curriculum.

McMahon’s record on DEI has sometimes been at odds with the Trump administration. She backed diversity issues when she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education, the Washington Post reported.

During her hearing, McMahon said DEI programs are “tough,” because while they’re put in place to promote diversity and inclusion, they can have the opposite effect. She pointed to examples of Black and Hispanic students attending separate graduation ceremonies — though those are typically held to celebrate the achievements of students of color, not to isolate them.

Republicans see McMahon as an outsider who can overhaul department

McMahon told the committee that many Americans are experiencing an educational system in decline — she pointed to sobering national test scores, crime on college campuses, and high youth suicide rates — and said it was time for a renewed focus on teaching reading, math, and “true history.”

“In many cases, our wounds are caused by the excessive consolidation of power in our federal education establishment,” she said. “So what’s the remedy? Fund education freedom, not government-run systems. Listen to parents, not politicians. Build up careers, not college debt. Empower states, not special interests. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats.”

Republican Senators reiterated these themes, arguing that bureaucrats in Washington had had their chance and that it was time for a new approach.

They asked McMahon about Trump administration priorities such as expanding school choice, including private school vouchers, and interpreting Title IX to bar transgender students from restrooms and sports teams aligned with their gender identities.

McMahon said she was “happy” to see the Biden administration’s rules on Title IX vacated, and she supported withholding federal funds from colleges that did not comply with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law.

Teachers unions and other critics of McMahon have said she lacks the proper experience to lead the Education Department, though McMahon and others have pointed to her time serving on the Connecticut State Board of Education, as a trustee of Sacred Heart University, and her role as chair of the America First Policy Institute, where she advocated for private school choice, apprenticeships, and career education.

A protester yells in defense of public schools during Linda McMahon's confirmation hearing. Protesters interrupted the hearing several times.

McMahon also ran the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first administration. Her understanding of the federal bureaucracy is an asset, supporters say.

Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, said McMahon’s background made her uniquely suited to tackle the pressing challenges facing the American education system today.

“For the poorest kids in our country, disillusioned about the American dream, the answers they are looking for rarely come from Washington,” Scott said. “With all of our good intentions, the Department of Education has simply failed the poorest kids in the United States of America, the greatest nation on the planet. To turn that around, we need someone who’s already succeeded in business and in government.”

Funding, protections for students with disabilities at stake

McMahon said multiple times that parents of children with disabilities should not worry about federal funding being cut for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, though she said it was possible that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would administer the money instead of the Education Department.

But it appeared that McMahon had limited knowledge of the rights outlined in IDEA, the landmark civil rights law that protects students with disabilities. And she said it was possible that civil rights enforcement — a large portion of which is related to complaints about children with disabilities not getting the services to which they’re entitled — would move to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Dismantling the education department by moving key functions to other departments is a tenet of Project 2025, the playbook the conservative Heritage Foundation developed for a second Trump administration. Most of these functions are mandated in federal law, and moving them would require congressional approval.

McMahon struggled to articulate the goals of IDEA beyond saying students would be taken care of and get the assistance and technology they need.

“There is a reason that the Department of Education and IDEA exist, and it is because educating kids with disabilities can be really hard and it takes the national commitment to get it done,” Hassan, the New Hampshire senator, said. “That’s why so many people are so concerned about this proposal to eliminate the department. Because they think kids will once again be shoved aside, and especially kids with disabilities.”

McMahon also could not name any requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal law that replaced No Child Left Behind. ESSA requires states to identify low-performing schools and intervene to improve student learning, but it gives states more flexibility in how they do so than the previous law.

McMahon seemed open to reversing some of the cuts enacted by the U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk.

She said, if confirmed, she would look into whether staff who’d been placed on administrative leave — including some who investigate civil rights complaints — should return. She also said she’d assess the programs that were cut when DOGE terminated 89 contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences and 29 training grants.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said her office had heard from a former teacher who developed an intensive tutoring strategy that was used in a dozen schools in the state. The teacher had a pending grant application to evaluate the program and its effect on student outcomes, and the teacher worried it would be in jeopardy. Collins asked if the department should keep collecting that kind of data so it could help states determine what’s working for kids.

“I’m not sure yet what the impact of all of those programs are,” McMahon said. “There are many worthwhile programs that we should keep, but I’m not yet apprised of them.”

The Senate education committee is scheduled to vote on McMahon’s confirmation on Feb. 20.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Trump plan to abolish the Education Department could fall short yet still hamstring the agency

2025-02-12T04:05:27+00:00

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President Trump campaigned on abolishing the federal education department. Still, even many conservatives were skeptical last year that it would happen.

Now, a flurry of activity from the Trump administration and his political allies has made a major reduction in the department’s work and influence, if not its outright dissolution, appear more likely.

Recent actions by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service offer a preview for how Trump could try to hamstring the agency. Whether Congress or the courts will restrain the administration from what many experts view as an illegal power grab remains an open question.

At stake is the extent to which things like student rights, school accountability, and academic achievement can or should be federal issues as well as state ones. Major programs such as Title I spending for high-poverty schools and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funding could remain intact even without a federal education department. Or they could get hit amid broader budget cuts and Trump’s push to fund private school vouchers.

Numerous political and legal hurdles remain in Trump’s way. Simply put, it would take an act of Congress not just to eliminate the department but even to significantly reduce its role and function. Much of the Education Department’s work is federally mandated, such as civil rights enforcement and oversight of career and technical education.

How are Trump’s education actions affecting your school? Take our survey.

The programs the president could simply do away with represent “a comparatively short list,” said Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow in education policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025.

Still, the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on the federal bureaucracy — including freezing billions in spending and shuttering two congressionally authorized agencies — raises major questions about checks and balances.

“What I am seeing right now is nothing short of a constitutional coup,” said William Resh, an associate professor of public policy and management at the University of Southern California.

How Trump could shrink the department without Congress

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the general outlines of a draft executive order to abolish or significantly scale back the department in early February.

But conservatives — including Trump — have talked about getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education since it began in 1979. Project 2025, a playbook for the second Trump administration, offered a roadmap to achieve that.

It called for moving key functions to other agencies: civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department, student loans to the Treasury Department, and research to the Census Bureau. Title I — worth over $18 billion this fiscal year — should be phased out, and IDEA funding should be turned into block grants for the states to administer, the plan says.

Trump’s order reportedly would call for the Education Department to present a plan to Congress for its own dissolution. Most observers believe there aren’t enough votes for that even among Republicans.

The next step would be for the Department to significantly reduce its own staff and budget, eliminate programs that aren’t legislatively mandated, and send key functions to other departments.

The proposal acknowledges that Congress has a role to play, and the administration cannot unilaterally get rid of a cabinet-level department created by Congress.

Butcher, who said he had not seen the draft order, said there could be other approaches. Trump could seek an opinion from the Department of Justice that most federal education law is not enforceable because the U.S. Constitution doesn’t name education as a government function.

The order could also direct the department to research whether certain programs are effective. Those programs found lacking could be struck from Trump’s future budget proposals.

Congress often ignores or downplays the importance of presidential budget blueprints. But the fact that these proposals would require congressional approval doesn’t make them “a fool’s errand,” Butcher said.

“The way that politics work, the president says what his priorities are, and the members of Congress who support his aims will work in the same direction,” he said.

Trump, DOGE alter federal staffing and funding

In contrast to his first administration, Trump has used executive orders and sudden spending cuts to push rapid and sometimes confusing changes.

Already, the Education Department has scrubbed references to diversity, equity, and inclusion from its website and placed dozens of employees on leave. It also ordered an end to programs that support transgender youth, a move that could affect school-based mental health services and homeless student services.

Some of these changes are within a president’s authority and others are not, experts said. That’s especially the case when it comes to not spending money that Congress appropriated.

The White House rescinded a late January budget memo ordering a freeze on nearly all federal grants after public outcry and legal resistance. But the department continues to suspend grants that run afoul of executive orders opposing DEI initiatives and transgender rights. States and non-profit organizations report that many contractors still can’t access federal funds.

President Donald Trump and Linda McMahon speak at a press conference during his first administration, when she led the Small Business Administration. Her supporters say her experience with federal bureaucracy will be an asset at the Education Department.

The department was an early target of the U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting team headed by billionaire Elon Musk that helped shutter USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, both independent agencies authorized by Congress. DOGE drove the decision to abruptly cancel scores of research contracts and teacher training grants collectively worth nearly $1 billion.

Resh said it’s “unprecedented and problematic” how much power the president has given the unvetted group of young engineers who make up DOGE.

On Tuesday, Trump issued a new executive order directing every department to come up with plans to drastically reduce its workforce in cooperation with an assigned DOGE team lead.

These actions give a sense of how Trump could limit the department without dismantling it or even issuing an executive order to start that process. So far the Republican-led Congress has not asserted its budget authority to rein in Musk or Trump.

“Certainly it is possible to render the department inert,” said Donald Sherman, executive director and general counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “You demoralize the staff so much that everyone who can retire does so, you make it so nobody in their right mind would want to go work there, and you completely change the mission of the organization.”

The department: Crucial student support or failed bureaucracy?

Arne Duncan, who served as education secretary under President Barack Obama, said the Department of Education serves three main purposes: fighting for all students to have the same opportunities, pushing for higher standards, and providing opportunities for schools to innovate so that others can learn from them.

“For all the many, many challenges we have in education, they are being solved somewhere,” he said. “One of my great joys was traveling the country and seeing those examples. But we don’t scale.”

Public schools in America are run by state and local governments, which make curriculum, pay, and hiring decisions. Federal money is a small share of total K-12 spending at roughly 10%, but it plays an outsized role in high-poverty communities — urban and rural — and helps offset the costs of educating students with greater needs. Schools also benefit from programs outside the Education Department, such as the Medicaid and the National School Lunch Program, which is run by the Agriculture Department.

Federal money also comes with rules and conditions that steer states and school districts to adopt that administration’s preferred policies, whether that was teacher evaluation under Obama, an equity focus under Biden, or opposition to diversity and inclusion under Trump.

But the department also protects students’ educational rights, said Blair Wriston, senior manager of government affairs for EdTrust, a group that advocates for students of color and those from low-income families. In practice, that means the federal accountability system requires states to identify low-performing schools for interventions. Its Office for Civil Rights investigates complaints and pushes school districts to do better by their students.

Yet other agencies wouldn’t have the same expertise to do that student- and school-focused work, especially if they’re also being hollowed out, Wriston said.

Trump plan to ax the Education Department might affect kids with disabilities a lot — or a little

Conservatives see an entrenched bureaucracy that hasn’t moved the needle on student performance, especially in the pandemic’s wake.

“The Department of Education doesn’t teach anyone,” Butcher, of the Heritage Foundation, said. “But if their goal was to not make things worse, they haven’t achieved that.”

And Betsy DeVos, education secretary in the first Trump administration, wrote in a recent op-ed that all the department does is move money around and “has almost nothing to do with actually educating anyone.”

Efforts to get rid of the department can’t be viewed in isolation, given the Trump administration’s backing for vouchers, Wriston said.

“From our vantage point, this is going to dismantle public education,” he said. “It’s going to leave our most disadvantaged students in the dark. It’s scary, to be honest.”

Lawsuits, public pushback may change Trump’s approach

Trump named Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive who also headed the Small Business Administration during his first term, to lead the Education Department. He said her job is to put herself out of a job.

Her confirmation hearing, scheduled for Thursday, likely will be a referendum on the future of the department.

But the courts and public opinion will also play a role. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed to block Trump administration actions, including efforts to restore lost grant funding and keep DOGE out of sensitive student financial aid data. More are expected. Federal judges have issued at least 10 injunctions so far — and already found the Trump administration in violation of at least one of them, as many groups still struggle to access promised federal funding.

Already, the administration has shown it’s sensitive to public opinion, such as when it rescinded the funding freeze memo, said Sherman, the ethics watchdog, whose organization is also suing the government to block the firing of federal workers.

Sweeping education cuts could be felt just as much by red states as blue states, Resh pointed out. Meanwhile, he said, Congress can’t sit on the sidelines forever. The government is only funded through March. That could force Congress to confront Trump’s spending decisions or provide an avenue to legitimize them.

“The majority party is abdicating their constitutional responsibility to keep the executive branch in check,” he said. “They can [choose to] not exercise their oversight powers. They can hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. But eventually they have to appropriate.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

How are Trump’s education actions affecting your school?

2025-02-04T23:55:27+00:00

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President Donald Trump has taken a series of executive actions in his first two weeks in office that aim to change how schools deal with politically and socially sensitive topics.

Trump wants to end practices associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion and root out what he considers “radical indoctrination” in schools. He has cleared the way for immigration enforcement near schools. He also has declared that there are only two genders, male and female, that cannot be changed, and his administration has said it will enforce Title IX through that lens.

Executive actions first and foremost direct federal agencies to make plans and interpret the law in certain ways. But they also send a message about the administration’s intentions, and in some cases, they include threats to withhold funds from states and school systems that don’t comply. Many of these executive orders are being challenged in court.

We want to better understand what teachers and parents think about Trump’s approach and whether any changes are happening at the school-level in response to executive orders. Has your school adopted a new policy or scaled back a practice that might run afoul of these executive orders? Or is everything business as usual?

Please take our short survey below — feel free to skip questions that don’t speak to you. If you prefer to communicate directly with us, you can send a regular text message to (908) 827-1448 or use the Signal app to send an encrypted message.

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Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump executive orders on DEI and schools big on drama, but impact will take time to emerge

2025-02-03T23:57:09+00:00

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With a series of sweeping executive actions, President Donald Trump is seeking to remake K-12 education in a conservative image. In the process, he’s pushing legal and political boundaries on how far the federal government can reach into American classrooms.

But the executive orders on their own have little power to radically and rapidly change an American school system in which states, school districts, and even individual schools have traditionally called the shots on everything from what kids learn to which restroom transgender students use.

Some conservatives are cheering the new approach — one they believe better reflects the views of most Americans. Many left-leaning education advocates and those who champion traditional public schools say the executive orders have little legal power.

It will likely take months for the full impact of the executive orders to be clear.

In the first two weeks of his second term, Trump said the federal government would only recognize two sexes, male and female, which could have big implications for transgender students’ rights. He wants to root out “radical indoctrination” in American classrooms and send more federal funding to private school vouchers.

He also cleared the way for immigration arrests at schools, and sought to freeze certain federal funds for schools and early childhood programs. The administration continues to selectively block payments to programs it deems not aligned with its values or policy priorities in the face of numerous legal challenges.

Taken together, these actions show the Trump administration is ready to lean on various levers of power — from the bully pulpit to federal investigations to threats of withholding funding — to convince or coerce schools to comply with its worldview, whether or not the federal government has the legal authority to do so. Disappointing national test scores and state-level wins for Republicans could also be fueling Trump’s ambitions to stake a greater political claim on K-12 education.

“The president is responding to what he feels like the voters who put him in office feel strongly about,” said Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank whose policy proposals are often embraced by Trump. “It sort of changed the mission statement on these issues of gender, race, down to school choice, and beyond. That’s an important starting point.”

Trump likes Indiana schools. Are they winning the war on ‘woke’ he wants to fight?

Some effects were swift. The U.S. Department of Education removed hundreds of documents from its website related to diversity and equity initiatives and suspended at least 50 staffers. Civil rights staffers are now enforcing 2020 Title IX rules, which don’t offer explicit protections for trans students as did now-defunct rules issued under President Joe Biden. And some schools have seen attendance dip among immigrant students whose families worry they could be detained by immigration agents during school dropoff.

Some of the high-profile orders have had little or no tangible effect on schools so far. They direct federal agencies, not states or districts, to develop plans over the next several months. At the same time, some observers worry schools will preemptively make changes to their teaching or programs — even if they aren’t legally required to.

The executive orders “have a lot of power to create chaos and fear and confusion, and that’s real, immediately,” said Ary Amerikaner, a former Education Department official and the executive director of Brown’s Promise, which conducts research and advocacy on school desegregation and school funding. Yet she also said Trump’s actions were “mostly bluster” that lacked “a lot of power to actually affect what’s happening on the ground, because they can’t change existing law.”

The orders leave a lot of room for interpretation, several education policy experts said. Forthcoming guidance and federal grant notices could help fill in blanks.

“I want details,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, who oversees advocacy and governance for The School Superintendents Association. “How do these proposals continue to roll out?”

The executive actions also highlight an ongoing tension in the Trump administration’s approach to K-12 education.

Trump and his allies have said they want to shrink the size and role of the federal Education Department, if not abolish it entirely. Trump is reportedly preparing an executive order to diminish the department’s size. But his orders so far indicate a certain desire to wrest power from local schools by dictating what they can and cannot teach about topics such as systemic racism, white privilege, and gender identity. Numerous laws prohibit federal officials from deciding what program of instruction or curriculum a school uses, which some state officials have been keen to point out.

The incoming education secretary has been tasked with issuing several reports on how various executive orders could be carried out. Yet attempts by Trump officials to directly control daily school decisions could quickly trigger lengthy court battles.

“They’re not the nation’s school board,” Ellerson Ng said.

Trump order has potential effects on classroom instruction

Some worry Trump’s executive order seeking to withhold federal funds from schools that teach “discriminatory equity ideology” or “gender ideology” has the potential to alter classroom instruction and cut support for trans students.

The order defines “discriminatory equity ideology” as any classroom instruction that treats people “as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability.” It has the same acronym — DEI — as the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts Trump is seeking to eliminate throughout the federal government.

“Gender ideology,” meanwhile, includes any instance in which a school recognizes that a child can be a gender other than the male or female sex they were assigned at birth. It targets classroom instruction, as well as counseling for students and school policies, such as those asking teachers to use the name and pronouns that correspond with a child’s gender identity.

The order seeks to stop schools from teaching that people can be inherently racist, sexist, privileged, or oppressed based on their race, sex, or other characteristics — taking direct aim at concepts such as white privilege and unconscious bias. It also seeks to bar teaching that the U.S. is fundamentally racist, a concept that about 1 in 3 students says comes up often at their school, a recent nationally representative survey of high schoolers found.

Students displaced by the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles read in their new classroom at Nora Sterry Elementary School. Disaster recovery assistance is just one way federal funds support K-12 schools. The Trump administration has pledged to use federal money as a lever to get compliance with its policy priorities.

The language mirrors the text of several state laws that target critical race theory, an academic concept that says racism is embedded in the U.S. legal system and government policies.

Eighteen states already have laws or official policies that prohibit similar lessons. But there is reason to believe some teachers will self-censor or face new pressures from their district or school leaders. It’s happened before.

A 2022 national survey, for example, found that 1 in 5 teachers in states without official limits on teaching about racism and sexism were asked to curtail discussion of hot-button social and political topics.

“This administration is clearly thriving in a culture of creating fear,” said Amerikaner, of Brown’s Promise. “The thing that I think is most important for educators and administrators on the ground is to not take the bait.”

Similarly, advocates for LGBTQ students are advising schools they don’t need to change their policies because of the president’s order.

“School districts need to be aware that LGBTQ students’ rights have not changed,” said Brian Dittmeier, the director of public policy at GLSEN, an organization that works to create safe school environments for LGBTQ youth.

Are Trump’s executive actions about DEI and immigration changing your school? Take our survey.

Trans kids and other LGBTQ students still have various protections under the U.S. Constitution and federal civil rights laws. And state laws that protect LGBTQ students remain in effect in those states.

Executive orders don’t reverse case law, Dittmeier said. Regardless of shifting Title IX regulations, court cases such as Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board held that transgender students have a right to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity. And the U.S. Supreme Court found in Bostock v. Clayton County that discrimination against gay or transgender people is a form of sex discrimination, although pending cases have the potential to change the legal landscape.

In a Jan. 31 letter to education officials, a Trump official said the reinstated 2020 Title IX rules do not protect students from discrimination based on sex stereotypes.

Still, schools that fail to protect LGBTQ students’ rights in an effort to comply with Trump’s executive order could be subject to lawsuits and civil rights complaints, including in the 26 states that have their own civil rights processes, Dittmeier said.

Landscape for education civil rights complaints could change

To Butcher, of the Heritage Foundation, the executive order about “discriminatory equity ideology” is asking schools to follow existing anti-discrimination laws.

He envisions, for example, that there could be a federal civil rights investigation if a school grouped students into affinity groups by race or limited discipline for Black and Hispanic students as a way to meet internal “ratios” and avoid suspending too many students of color. That could have prompted a civil rights probe under now-rescinded Obama administration guidance.

How exactly the Trump administration will monitor whether schools are violating the executive order remains to be seen.

Conservative parent groups file frequent federal civil rights complaints objecting to teacher diversity programs and student affinity groups. Under Trump, these complaints could get a friendlier reception.

Even under the Biden administration, the Los Angeles school system was forced to overhaul a program to promote Black student achievement in response to such a complaint.

The Trump Education Department has already taken a step on a related issue: It has dismissed 11 civil rights complaints related to alleged book bans, which the agency labeled a “hoax.”

Some states with similar prohibitions set up a reporting process so parents, school staff, and others can flag materials or lessons that may not comply with state law.

But creating a national reporting tool would be logistically challenging and time-consuming, said Butcher, who wants to see the Department of Justice take the lead on investigating with help from state education officials and state attorneys general.

“Not every report or accusation is accurate,” Butcher said. “There is a lot of follow up that has to be done. That, I think, is beyond the scope of what Washington should be doing right now, especially at the Department of Education, if the goal is to be winding it down.”

School districts may also decide to be extra cautious with their budgets to avoid the risk of losing federal funds if they somehow violate a presidential order.

Sarah Abernathy, the executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, which tracks federal investments in education on behalf of several groups, said she’ll be listening for school district discussions about laying off staff or ending programs to comply with a federal order — or get ahead of one.

She also worries schools will be afraid to talk about it publicly for fear of drawing any attention to themselves. On a recent call with members of her organization, Abernathy asked for examples of how the presidential orders could affect K-12 schools financially and all she heard was “crickets.”

“I don’t think anyone in the education world wants the administration using them as an example of something that is wrong,” she said.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump executive order seeks to steer federal funds to private school vouchers

2025-01-30T01:44:54+00:00

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that aims to steer large amounts of federal money away from public schools and toward private-school vouchers and other “educational alternatives.”

The executive order cites disheartening national test scores released Wednesday as one justification, saying families need options outside the public system. Securing federal funding has been a longtime goal of supporters of vouchers and educational savings accounts, which families can tap to pay for private education.

Until now, with the exception of a voucher program in Washington, D.C., the use of taxpayer dollars for private education largely has expanded through state policy. A proposal to use federal tax credits to fund private school scholarships has not advanced in Congress — though new versions were recently introduced.

The executive order sidesteps Congress and directs the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to find ways to take existing money that goes to public schools, child care providers, and nonprofits and give it to families to use at private schools or for homeschooling expenses.

The order was one of several education-related actions Trump took Wednesday. Another executive order would defund schools that teach “discriminatory equity ideology” or “gender ideology.”

Like other executive orders, Trump’s school choice order is sure to face legal and political pushback. It’s not clear how much leeway the Trump administration has to redirect money without Congressional approval.

Within 60 days, the education secretary is to provide guidance “regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives,” the order says. Formula funds include programs such as Title I, which send billions of dollars each year to high-poverty schools based on population formulas.

Similarly, within 90 days, the HHS secretary must provide guidance on whether and how states can use Child Care and Development Block Grants to support families who want “educational alternatives to governmental entities.” These block grants go to states to help low-income families afford child care. In many cases, families already get vouchers that they can use at public preschools and at private providers, but states also use the money to improve the quality of child care.

Project 2025, a playbook for the second Trump administration written by the conservative Heritage Foundation, also calls for block grants to be converted into vouchers that go directly to families rather than being used to support programs that benefit a larger population.

The order also directs the Department of Education to prioritize school choice programs in its discretionary grants.

Unlike formula grants such as Title I, which are awarded based on states’ and districts’ student populations, discretionary grants generally are awarded by criteria set by the department. The Biden administration made pandemic recovery, equity, and systemic change priorities for awarding discretionary grants.

The Trump order also directs the Department of Defense and Department of the Interior to make vouchers available to military and Native American families whose children attend schools those agencies oversee.

Schools run by the Department of Defense have long outperformed national averages, and the 2024 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, were no exception. Bureau of Indian Education schools have a troubled track record but have also suffered from poor management and underfunding.

The order claims that “a growing body of rigorous research” supports the idea that school choice improves academic outcomes. However, most recent research on voucher programs has found little improvement in test scores — and sometimes students did worse.

Less research exists on programs that make vouchers available to all or nearly all students because those initiatives are so new and because many programs don’t require voucher recipients to take the same standardized tests as public school students. Many families that use the vouchers already had children in private school.

Programs that give families taxpayer money to spend at private schools or homeschooling expenses have expanded dramatically in states in recent years. Republican leaders in states such as Texas and Tennessee that don’t yet have universal voucher programs have made enacting them a top priority.

In a statement, Robert Enlow, president and CEO of private school choice advocacy group EdChoice, said the proposal reflects ideas that both his organization and the Heritage Foundation have championed.

“This initiative reflects a commitment to funding students not systems and to ensuring the proper role of the federal government in education,” he said. “Empowering families to choose the right fit for their children is key to ensuring every child’s success.”

Norton Rainey, CEO of ACE Scholarships, which manages publicly funded education savings accounts and advocates for private school choice policies, said the executive order represents “a significant advancement” for private school choice.

But EdTrust, an organization that advocates for school improvement and equity in education, decried the proposal as well as the effort to use poor NAEP scores to reduce funding for public schools.

“Let’s call Trump’s proposed plan what it really is: ending public education by diverting taxpayer dollars to private schools,” the group said in a statement. “This plan will cut essential funding and destabilize the public schools that serve the vast majority of students.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Trump rescinds memo freezing federal grants, but spokesperson says freeze still in effect

2025-01-29T19:25:42+00:00

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The Trump administration on Wednesday rescinded a budget memo that would have frozen money flowing to grant programs, including those going to schools.

However, a White House spokeswoman said on X that withdrawing the memo does not mean that federal funding will be restored.

“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” Karoline Leavitt posted. “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”

Asked about the issue at a press conference Wednesday, Leavitt said the pause “means no more funding for illegal DEI programs. It means no more funding for the Green New Scam that has cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. It means no more funding for transgenderism and wokeness across our federal bureaucracy and agencies.”

That leaves significant confusion about how grants will be affected going forward. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed executive orders to withhold funding from all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, as well as those that acknowledge gender identity or transgender people. Those orders remain in effect.

The stated purpose of the budget memo, issued Monday by the Office of Management and Budget, was to stop money from going out while officials looked for evidence of programs that were not aligned with administration directives within existing grant programs. That would include programs that had elements of what the memo called “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.”

The order carried widespread implications for schools and child care providers, as well as education research and nonprofits whose work supports education and vulnerable children and families. Federal grants support everything from charter school startup costs to trainings for teachers and parents to emergency response programs.

The wording of the order also sparked widespread confusion about its scope. Multiple states reported that Head Start payment portals were frozen Tuesday morning, preventing preschool providers from accessing money they need for daily operations. Later in the day, the administration clarified that the order was not intended to include Head Start or large formula grant programs such as Title I, which sends billions of dollars to high-poverty schools.

Legal experts also said the order was illegal, violating laws that govern when and how presidents can decide not to spend money authorized by Congress.

Several states and organizations filed lawsuits against the order. A federal judge issued a temporary order late Tuesday blocking the freeze from going into effect.

The two-sentence memo rescinding the order instructs agency directors to consult with their general counsel if they have questions about implementing executive orders.

Other Trump executive orders remain in effect.

The memo rescinding the first budget memo was shared by Democracy Forward, the advocacy group whose lawsuit led to the temporary injunction. Democracy Forward brought the lawsuit on behalf of the National Council of Nonprofits, the American Public Health Association, Main Street Alliance, and SAGE, a group that advocates for LGBTQ elders.

“While we hope this will enable millions of people in communities across the country to breathe a sigh of relief, we condemn the Trump-Vance administration’s harmful and callous approach of unleashing chaos and harm on the American people,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement.

A separate lawsuit was brought by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP results: Tennessee students buck grim national trends on nation’s report card

2025-01-29T05:09:00+00:00

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Tennessee students held their ground on a major national test in a year when average student test scores declined nationwide.

Results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released Wednesday, show that average test scores in Tennessee increased slightly in fourth and eighth grade reading and math, compared with 2022, though the gains were not statistically significant.

Tennessee’s latest post-pandemic results stood in contrast to declines seen nationwide and in many other states. And Tennessee students scored three to four points higher than the national average in math and one to two points higher in reading.

“Tennessee students did well relative to other states, and we did better than some of our neighbors,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said.

“We didn’t move backwards, we moved a little bit forward, and we expect to do better next year,” added state Rep. Mark White, of Memphis, who chairs a key House education committee and also serves on the NAEP governing board.

Math scores outpace reading scores

Tennessee has launched numerous initiatives aimed at bolstering early literacy, but the latest NAEP showed the state’s most dramatic improvements came in math.

In fourth grade math, 42% of students scored proficient or advanced, an increase of 6 percentage points from 2022. The state was one of 29 jurisdictions that posted scores similar to 2019, before the pandemic. Only Alabama had average scores higher than 2019. Nationwide, average scores are down three points, and 22 states had declines.

In eighth grade math, Tennessee’s proficiency rate also grew, while the national average declined. Tennessee was one of just two jurisdictions with similar scores to 2019. Average scores dropped 9 points.

In fourth grade reading, Tennessee was one of 47 states with no statistical change from 2022. Nonetheless, its scores were up slightly, whereas the nationwide average dropped by two points from 2022 and by five points from 2019.

The small increases in eighth grade reading scores were not statistically different from 2022 or 2019, but again, the small increase stood in contrast to nationwide averages that dropped 5 points since 2019. Tennessee also saw more notable increases in scores among higher-performing students in the 75th percentile.

The relatively strong showing in math, according to state officials, could be tied to the full return to in-person learning, which studies show is especially important for math instruction; Tennessee’s 2021 adoption of new math standards; and the subsequent rollout of math curriculum to align with those standards.

They expect that trend to continue with passage of a 2024 state law spotlighting more analysis of and support for math instruction.

Tennessee was an early adopter of pandemic-era interventions

Tennessee has been held up as a model both for how it managed federal pandemic relief spending — quickly steering money into tutoring, summer learning camps, and afterschool programs aimed at students who had fallen furthest behind — and for its intense focus on early literacy. State test results from 2024 show students there making steady progress since 2021.

The challenge now will be to maintain progress and deploy state funds to replace federal pandemic relief aid that expired last year.

“We still have that obligation at the state level to continue to support districts in as many ways as possible,” said Reynolds, the state’s education chief. She cited free professional development resources provided to school systems by her department as one example.

“Local school officials also knew that the money was ending, so they’ve been building in their own sustainability practices to keep the work going,” she said.

White, the state lawmaker and NAEP official, said the state’s controversial 2021 third-grade reading intervention and retention law was a key part of the mix. It pushed children whose families might have opted for summer breaks into summer learning programs and motivated schools to increase support for struggling readers.

“If a child is not reading proficiently in third grade, we want to really understand why and not just pass them on,” he said.

State officials already are digging into the latest NAEP data on how various student groups performed — to study how they can offer better support.

Tennessee’s growing population of English language learners saw across-the-board improvement, while students with disabilities showed slight decreases.

The national results track with test score trends from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, which in 2024 showed that students continued to improve from post-pandemic lows.

The alignment of national and state data is important, said Amy Owen, the state’s senior education policy director, because “it shows that our students will be able to compete with students from across the country when they look at post-secondary and career opportunities.”

“We’re seeing steady increases, which is significant when you think about where our kids were during COVID,” added Reynolds. “Our fourth graders were kindergartners then, our eighth graders were fourth graders.”

Memphis district opts out of separate NAEP assessment

Since 2018, NAEP has also released results for Memphis Shelby County Schools, one of roughly two dozen large urban districts participating in national math and reading tests through the Trial Urban District Assessment program, which is designed to help those districts measure student performance against districts in other large cities.

But last year, leaders of the Memphis district chose not to participate in the program.

White, who represents part of Memphis, said the lack of participation represented a “leadership breakdown” as the district cycled through superintendents.

“That’s sad that we don’t have their scores,” he said. “We can’t continue that trend.”

What is NAEP?

Not every Tennessee fourth-grader or eighth-grader took the national test when the federal government administered the assessments in early 2024.

NAEP tests a nationally representative sample of students in every state. In Tennessee, each of the four assessments was taken by about 1,700-1,800 students in 80-90 schools.

The results, published as the nation’s report card, allow comparisons across states and are an important marker for showing how students are doing over time.

The last three testing cycles happened in 2019, 2022, and most recently in 2024, providing an especially helpful comparison of what students knew before the pandemic and how much they have rebounded from COVID-related learning disruptions.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores show disheartening trends for the lowest-performing students

2025-01-29T05:01:00+00:00

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Most American students are still performing below their pre-pandemic counterparts in reading and math, while the yawning gap between high-achieving and low-performing students got even wider, data from “the nation’s report card” shows.

Results released Wednesday from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, paint a sobering picture of academic haves and have-nots. Scores are increasing for many students who already do well, while struggling students stagnated or fell even further behind their peers. That’s making a trend that began about a decade ago even more pronounced.

In some cases that divide was historic: Lower-performing fourth and eighth graders posted the worst reading scores in over 30 years. In eighth grade math, the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students was the widest in the test’s history.

“The news is not good,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told reporters on Tuesday. “Student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, reading scores continue to decline, and our lowest performing students are reading at historically low levels.”

Scores saw a dramatic decline in 2022 after students endured two disrupted pandemic school years marked by closures, quarantines, and remote learning. But in 2024, reading scores declined even more for both fourth and eighth graders.

“This is a major concern — a concern that can’t be blamed solely on the pandemic,” Carr said. “Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading.”

Fourth grade math was the lone bright spot, with average student scores ticking up two points on the 500-point scale. But much of that increase was driven by improvement among top performers.

Eighth grade math scores held steady, with gains among higher-performing students canceling out declines among lower-performers.

All of the children who took the NAEP last year had at least some of their education affected by the pandemic. The fourth graders were in kindergarten when schools closed in March 2020, while eighth graders were in fourth grade.

The results are sure to fuel ongoing debate about whether schools are doing enough to help struggling students, especially those who are the farthest behind, the role that school closures played in exacerbating learning gaps, and whether schools effectively spent the nearly $190 billion they received in federal COVID relief dollars.

The new NAEP scores have landed as conservatives push to expand private school choice, public schools grapple with budget cuts, culture war skirmishes persist, and chronic absenteeism remains at historically high levels. Students who performed the worst on the NAEP test were more likely to be frequently absent from school, Carr noted.

“We have a larger-than-in-recent-memory share of American students who are failing to demonstrate even partial mastery of the types of skills educators have defined as important,” said Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the vice chair of the NAEP Governing Board, which decides the test’s content and approves questions. “That doesn’t bode well for their futures or for our collective futures.”

The new data come from tests taken in early 2024 by nearly half a million students across thousands of U.S. schools.

Worrying decline in NAEP reading scores continues

On average, fourth and eighth grade students scored two points lower in reading than their counterparts in 2022 and five points lower than students in 2019. Only in Louisiana, where the state superintendent has put a major focus on reading, did fourth grade reading scores rise above 2019 levels.

The share of fourth graders who scored at the very bottom of the NAEP scale was at its highest point in 20 years. The share of eighth graders scoring at the lowest level was the highest ever. And in both grades, students who did not reach the NAEP Basic level — relatively low performers at the 25th percentile and under — had lower scores than in 1992, when the first NAEP test was given.

When a fourth grader can’t meet the NAEP Basic level, it doesn’t mean they cannot read. But it likely means they would struggle with easier skills, such as sequencing events in a story or stating an opinion using supporting evidence from a text. Eighth graders who fall below NAEP Basic would have trouble identifying basic literary elements, such as character motivation and the main idea.

NAEP results show how many students score below, at, or above two thresholds: NAEP Basic and NAEP Proficient. Proficient is considered a high bar, above what most states set as grade level expectations. Reaching the NAEP Basic threshold indicates students have achieved partial mastery of fundamental skills and knowledge for that grade level.

The rise in students who don’t meet that mark is of particular concern.

The dips in reading come as dozens of states overhaul their reading instruction with materials that better align with the science of reading. And while federal education officials are usually reticent to explain what caused a particular increase or decrease in scores, Carr cautioned that the near-universal dips in reading should not be taken as evidence that reading reforms have not worked.

She pointed to the example of Louisiana, where fourth graders are scoring better in reading than they did in 2019, bucking the national trend. That state has focused heavily on the science of reading “but they didn’t start yesterday,” Carr said.

“They were able to pull this off, and not only improve to pre-pandemic levels, but exceed them, and bring their lower-performers along,” she said. “I would not say that hope is lost.”

Still, Lesley Muldoon, the executive director of the NAEP Governing Board, said the growing share of children who cannot read at the NAEP Basic level, which generally corresponds with state proficiency standards, is concerning.

If a fourth grader can’t meet that in reading, “we’re saying that they’re unlikely to determine the meaning of a familiar word using context from the text,” Muldoon said. “That is a crucial skill that students really need for entering middle school.”

NAEP math scores show recovery — but also stagnation

In fourth grade math, average scores increased two points from 2022 but were still three points lower than pre-pandemic levels. Only in Alabama did fourth graders have higher scores than their 2019 counterparts. The average score was lifted by high-performing students who saw greater gains, while lower-performing students did about the same as in 2022.

Fifteen states and 14 urban districts saw improvements compared with 2022. District of Columbia Public Schools posted 10-point gains, well above the national average. D.C. schools also showed improvements for both low- and high-performing students, as did schools in Atlanta, Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade County, and Guilford County, North Carolina.

Eighth grade math was a different story. There was no change in average scores because while high performers did better than their counterparts in 2022, low performers did worse.

Middle school math has been a problem area in the pandemic’s wake. Some students struggled to learn key concepts virtually, such as how to divide fractions or graph a line. That lack of knowledge followed them. Others may have had content repeated often because their classmates were absent a lot, which put them behind in their lessons.

West, the NAEP Governing Board member, said it appeared the pandemic accelerated the decline among low-performing eighth graders in math, but it was even more striking that “the bottom continued to fall out” from 2022 to 2024.

“The main takeaway is that: What we’ve done as a nation, including the federal recovery dollars, has been insufficient,” he said.

Students who struggle in middle school often end up locked out of more advanced math in high school that can open doors to higher-paid careers in STEM fields.

Mark Miller, who teaches eighth grade math in Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain School District, said declining student motivation and “stick-to-it-ness” might be contributing. In recent years, struggling students in his classroom have needed a bigger nudge to dig in on difficult problems than when he started teaching nearly two decades ago.

“The coach in me has had to reach into my coaching motivational speeches in my classroom just as much as I have had to on the court or on the field,” said Miller, who is also a former NAEP Governing Board member. Many students think: “If I want to know something, I can look it up in two seconds, why do I need to persevere through learning how to solve systems of equations or learning how to solve a word problem?”

One thing his school is trying: Keeping kids who did not meet certain math standards in the same classes as their peers while providing extra support, instead of moving them to remedial math. The hope is that teachers can fill in gaps with mini lessons along the way, and that struggling students will feel more confident in their math abilities if they’re learning alongside their peers.

NAEP score gaps have consequences for ‘equitable society’

While the pandemic surely has had a lasting impact on students, the gap between high- and low-performers appears to have started growing about a decade ago. Similar gaps have appeared on international tests and are more stark for American students than for those in other countries that also experienced pandemic disruptions.

Theories abound: The federal government eased up on school accountability measures, and school leaders took their eyes off the lowest performers. The Great Recession, with its economic traumas followed by deep spending cuts, left a lasting scar on American education. Phones are sapping our attention span and cognitive abilities.

Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, highlighted the trend in an analysis posted last week in advance of the NAEP release. He noted that the growing divide between high and low performers even shows up on a recent skills test for adults who haven’t been in school in years, complicating the idea that something school-related is the main driver.

The trends defy easy explanations and likely have multiple causes, he said.

Tests such as NAEP can’t answer the why. But Malkus hopes that researchers with access to student-level data can start digging in more. Are low-performing students concentrated at certain schools? Do they share certain characteristics? Or are they enrolled in schools with both high and low test scores?

He also hopes that superintendents and principals seek out this data about their own schools and find ways to support low-performing students even when average test scores look good.

“What this means for the story for an equitable society is enormous,” he said.

Yet there doesn’t seem to be enough urgency to get to the bottom of the problem, said Dan Goldhaber, who directs the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research.

While his research and others found that federal pandemic aid helped academic recovery, Goldhaber said it’s reasonable to ask if it could have done more. In the rush to get money out the door, a real opportunity was missed to collect data that would have shown which interventions really move the needle for struggling students, he said.

“I think we will look back in 25 years, and we will see all these kids have these outcomes in life that were predicted by this major decline,” he said. “The message is everywhere, but I don’t see much appetite to address it.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.